The one where I do a Good Deed

When I went to check my mail about 8:30 this evening, I found a violin sitting on top of the mailboxes for the apartment building I live in.

I gave it a couple minutes in case somebody remembered they'd forgotten it before taking it into my apartment. I found a label on the case with a phone number, and called that; no one was home, so I left a message on the answering machine.

Shortly after 9, I got a call back; the violin belongs to a lady that had lent it several years ago to a kid who's parents were musicians. The kid kept promising to return it, but never quite got around to it, so when she learned that I had her violin, the lady was rather pleased. Not 15 minutes later, she came by to collect it, driving a fairly new Jeep Cherokee-looking vehicle.

I didn't ask for any kind of reward, and wouldn't have accepted one -- except that she didn't even suggest it. Nothing. Zero. Bupkis.

Now, I don't know what a violin goes for (it patently wasn't anything like a Stradivarius or anything), but it certainly SEEMED like a nice enough musical instrument. Along with it having been missing for several years, you might think that she'd have at least offered something to the person that got it back to her -- but no.

Well, it's her karma...

Pointless bitching

Just a few things that have drifted through my mind on their way to somewhere else...

• "Common" courtesy -- I've been racking my brain trying to see if I can figure out when parents stopped trying to instil some measure of this trait in their kids. When I was but a wee lad, people were generally willing to make at least SOME small effort to show courtesy to others; nowadays, not so much.
• Thinking and planning ahead -- When the hell did THIS go out of fashion? Do people really not grasp the concept of actually choosing to take deliberate actions to bring about some future result? Don't they realize that if doing "A" results in "B" happening, then NOT doing "A" produces a different result? The honcho types at a lot of financial institutions that jumped on the marginally-legitimate default-swap deals, high-risk investments, and other dubious deals without thinking "what if..." fall into this category, too -- except that the rest of the country got strong-armed into bailing THEIR dumb asses out of the jam they got themselves into.
  
• Honesty/integrity -- By now, I expect that all of us have seen ample evidence of the folks that somehow misplaced theirs. They'd be the ones that "overstated" their income to get a home loan, and ended up getting foreclosed on. As an added bonus attraction, a fair number of them failed the "planning" test, too, and are now living in conditions that they could avoided easily enough.
• Personal responsibility -- Again, when I was just a little guy running around, I was taught that I was responsible for my own actions (or lack thereof). Nowadays, it seems like anyone and everyone in or with any kind of trouble immediately starts demanding protection or compensation or salvation for whatever ails them. Taking an example from the "healthcare reform" situation: does no one realize that insisting an insurance company cover a pre-existing condition (yes, that's something that needs to be more narrowly defined) bears an uncanny resemblance to trying to buy auto insurance for your vehicle AFTER you've gotten into an accident?
• Congress -- they've steadily gotten more and more polarized over the years, and less and less willing to play nice. Whichever one has the majority is more than willing to try and bully the other into doing things their way; then when the situation is reversed, get payback-plus-interest. And THEN the dumb fucks wonder why their approval rating is the lowest it has been in decades. Here's a clue, shitheads: neither of the major parties has a hammerlock on the One True Way™. You dumbasses need to stop thinking "my state/district/party" and do what you were elected for -- imagine that you're there to do work for the whole freakin' country. 'kay?
  

Nightmares are made of these

If you're prone to nightmares, you can have a look at this assortment of deep-sea and marine critters to see if anything looks familiar. Some of them aren't too bad -- others are the kinds of things that you'd only want to see IN a nightmare that you could wake up from...

Almost

I'm sure everyone has heard the old saying that "'Almost' only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes". I think most would agree that the same principle applies to 'wants' and 'intentions'.

Well, if His Obamaness can win the Nobel Peace Prize for his intentions to change the world and all that when he took office, then I by-God want my Nobel prizes in Math and Physics, since I fully INTENDED to get degrees and make big advances in those fields when I was younger.

I mean, fair is fair...

Charity telemarketing

In the last few days, I've received several calls from assorted charitable organizations seeking donations.

The thing is, each and every one of them has started out with the person on the other end asking for someone other than me ("Marsha", "John", etc).

I'm wondering: is this simply a case of several telemarketers individually trying to recover from an error (mis-dialed or erroneous number), or an example of a new technique in telemarketing -- an attempt to somehow get past most people's initial negative reaction to being solicited for money?

Inquiring minds want to know...

The End is Nigh...

I fear that we are about to witness the end of Civilization as we know it -- thanks to Microsoft.

Watch this, and see if you don't agree...

With a hat tip to the Constitution Club, I present you the Children of Hamas:



freakin' dooshbags...

I hope to hell I'm wrong

I just woke up from the gott-DAMNEDest dream. It quite frankly scared the hell out of me, and I'm going to try and get it written down while it's still fresh in my mind -- and hope and pray that I can get the full sense of it across, because it was just that damn scary to me.

It started out with me just kind of floating up in the air - not like a balloon or anything, but just hanging there in one place - and I was watching what was going on below me. Every so often, my vision would zoom in on a newspaper headline, or I'd be able to hear as people talked to each other, but other than that, I wasn't actively DOING anything.

I'm not entirely sure what the hell was going on, but it was like I could watch as history unfolded beneath me -- at least, in broad terms. I didn't have any sense of exact time or anything like that; all I recall is that I could just tell what the big events were, not the little ones... kind of like when you're high up over the ocean and can see the big waves, but not the ripples, only this was history, okay?

Anyway, it started from shortly after Obama got elected President. He started pushing for a lot of the things that he's been campaigning for, and wasn't getting a lot of traction - at least, at first. But then a hellacious lot of the people that voted for him started kicking up a fuss that Congress should start doing what he wanted -- they elected him President, after all. It took a little while, but making laws for the stuff that Obama has been saying, most of them driven by poor people. Some of the poor were White, but most of them were Black, and a lot of the talk was about how it was time Black folk got their 'share'. There were some people (Black AND White) that tried to explain that the country couldn't afford all the social programs and such, and tried to point out the bad side of some of the policies and programs that were being called for, but they kept being shouted down; too many people wanted Obama to keep his campaign promises, and they were giving him the power to actually do it. The other part was that he didn't get rid of all the negative Bush bullshit. Stuff like USA PATRIOT, warrantless wiretaps, and all the DHS/TSA crap stayed because Obama thought he might be able to use it.

I don't know exactly, but I got the impression that Obama lasted two terms; by the time he was leaving office, pretty much everybody was starting to realize that doing all the crap he wanted was actually hurting everyone, so the next President to get elected was a conservative that campaigned on the promise that he'd 'fix' all the shit Obama broke. He got elected by a landslide, and once he was sworn in, started trying to do what he said. Thing was, he got carried away, and another liberal got voted in to replace him. The two sides went back and forth like that for a long time - each of them trying to undo what the one before them did.

Even though the two sides were trying to undo each others shit, they never quite managed to get it done - there would always be little bits and pieces of legislation, rules, laws, policies, and other crap that didn't get erased. That meant that no matter what else happened, each side was building ON TOP OF the little bits of stuff left over from whoever came before them - so that each time one side or the other tried to build something new, they were starting with more than they really knew - and so that no matter WHAT the hell the voters thought was going to happen, the bottom line was that we ended up with a few more rules and regulations and such than we had before.

I got the sense that what was happening was like politics was a big pendulum, making little swings to either side of the middle - except that from Obama on, the swings kept getting bigger and bigger: we'd go from a conservative to a liberal to a bigger conservative to a bigger liberal to an even bigger conservative, and so on and so on. And no matter WHO got into the Presidency, the Congress kept farting around: taking campaign "contributions", trying like hell to stay in office, doing whatever they could get away with, and generally being a bunch of worthless fucks.

Along the way, different government offices (on their own) started issuing "directives" under the guise of security, stability, or whatever: all email and phone calls monitored; had to have a permit to own a computer and/or get on the Internet; no new guns sold, old ones confiscated at owners death; people relocated against their will in the name of 'energy conservation'; travel restricted; library usage monitored; and other crap like that.

The whole thing ended when some hyper-conservative asshole got into office, got the rest of the government actively backing him, and declared martial law until he could get his own "security forces" (think Nazi Gestapo, with similar uniforms) in place. When I woke up, it was right after I watched a couple of random, completely innocent (somehow, I knew) people get stopped for their 'papers' and get hauled off. The rest of the folks on the street didn't even look at them after they got stopped, never mind when they were being taken away.

The sense I got was that the idea of "Law" got watered down by unenforceable 'feel-good' laws (the kind of things that politicians try to pass after some tragedy) so that it stopped having any tangible meaning; the Constitution and Bill of Rights gradually started to mean what the Government wanted them to, and less any kind of protection, because nobody insisted; damn near everybody was poor as they could be because they'd all agreed to letting the government do for them what they should have done for themselves, and got left hanging when those in power weren't so nice.

Looking back on it, I guess the dream was about people being played off against each other until someone decided to play for keeps; as all that was happening, more and more people were demanding special priveleges while abdicating responsibility for themselves, and demanding "someone" protect them from everyone else.

Please, god, let it just be a dream and never actually happen.

Goofy shit

Sometimes, some really goofy shit pops into my head. F'rinstance:

It's said that the measurement unit of a 'foot' came about because it was the length of an actual person's foot. So... if a mile is made up of 5280 feet, does that mean some poor bastard had to walk heel-to-toe for a mile, counting how many times he had to put a foot down? If so, I gotta wonder how many times he had to start over again when he lost count. Were there people around, deliberately trying to fuck up his counting ("873. 1,719. 88. 3,944.")?

NIMBY

Want to know why the prices on various oil-derived products keep going up?

It isn't just the price of crude.

It's the fact that the U.S. hasn't built a new oil refinery in 30+ years. That means that no matter how much oil we import, it can only be converted to gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and such so fast.

And why haven't we built a refinery for so long? Take a wild guess.

Anybody want to take bets that these folks are bitching just as hard as anyone else about high fuel prices when reporters aren't around?

Big Brother is watching

Okay, so now we're pretty much screwed, methinks.

The 114-page wiretapping bill looks like it's going to be passed -- and when it is, private communications will be at the mercy of whatever twit happens to be in the Whitehouse:

1. There doesn't seem to have been any kind of 'compromise' between the Whitehouse (and by extension, Republicans) and Dems; Dubya is getting pretty much anything and everything he wanted -- if not more.
2. The bill doesn't add anything to the capabilities of the National Security Agency, CIA, or any of the other similar or related organizations. The NSA has always been able/willing to keep an eye on any communications that 'exited' the United States; all that's really changed is that now they can use a bigger vacuum cleaner to suck up all the data.
3. Now the telecoms are given an advance blanket protection against being sued by the customers they're betraying -- all they have to do is tell a FISA court "The President said it was okay!", and they're off the hook.
4. No guarantee (or even vague promise) that this law is the One True Way of dealing with the issue of surveillance, wiretapping, and the like -- after all, the FISA system was supposed to be the One True Way, until Dubya decided he didn't like it and went on to violate it (and, incidentally, the Constitution). So the next "We know what's best for you" government we get could scrap this abomination in favor of something even MORE intrusive.
5. The law isn't even clear about who's supposed to be doing what, or what the limits are. One report on it declares
   

   To be fair, wiretapping is so classified, and the language of the bill so opaque, that no one without a "top secret" clearance can say with any authority just how much surveillance the proposal will authorize the government to do. (The best assessment yet comes from former Justice Department official David Kris, who deems the legislation "so intricate" that it risks confusing even "the government officials who must apply it.")

I've just got one question about all this.

Why are we allowing our own government to do to us the very same things that we used to slam the former Soviet Union used to do?

Confuzion - I haz it.

In the process of watching the various news reports of the last few weeks, and reading the comments and letters to the editor of online and print media, I have to confess that I have no small measure of confusion about a few things:

Polygamy sect(s)
Could someone explain to me -- using something other than religious grounds -- just exactly WHAT is wrong with polygamy? I'm not talking about the 'marriages' of underage kids to adults (which should be illegal, anyway), but the practice as engaged in by adults. It's not anything I would have any interest in; I'm just curious to know what the basis is against it. For that matter, why is 'marriage' limited to a one-and-one definition, anyway? If the goal/purpose of marriage is to provide for children, stability in the relationship, and ensure that the family is suitably provided for, then I'd think that any kind of union that accomplished those goals would be acceptable. Besides, whose business is it what happens in a marriage except for those involved?
Considering all the different religions and cultures in the world, maybe it's time to stop thinking of 'marriage' as a religious construct, but rather a LEGAL one.

Gay Marriage
Again, I'm at a loss here. If two people want to join their lives together, what the hell should it matter to anyone else? Yes, I hear and read all the fussing (usually involving quotes or citations from the Bible), but none of that answers the question: what business is it of yours? If 'you' believe that marriage between two people of the same sex is immoral or sinful or whatever, then don't do it; regardless of what you may think or believe, you do NOT have any inherent 'right' to deny anyone else the freedom to live as they wish -- unless, of course, you're willing to subject yourself to someone else's beliefs, in turn?

Crime and Punishment
Lest anyone think that I'm a Liberal (with that capital 'L'), I'm not: conservatively, I think that we should have as few Laws (and as little Government) as we can manage; but that what laws we DO have should be enforced quickly and fully. I believe, for example, in the death penalty for a couple of reasons. First, that there are simply some crimes that are so vile and heinous that the death of the perpetrator is called for; second, that when the death penalty is enforced, it can serve as a deterrent to others committing the same crime. In this second case, I would call for a restoration of the policy of making such executions PUBLIC. Yes, watching someone die by hanging, electrocution, firing squad, or whatever is highly disturbing -- and that should be exactly the point: people should be able to see the consequences of committing a crime for which there is the death penalty. If someone is sentenced to the death penalty, don't give them an additional 20 years of life while they file appeal after appeal after appeal. Rather, have a team of independent judges and attorneys review the case in detail, fill in any missing details or options (i.e. a DNA test that wasn't inclued in the trial for a rape/murder), verify that all the details were properly tended to, and promptly proceed with the execution if everything matches up.
Similarly, I don't see any reason why prisons and jails should be so livable. Even though he may be going a bit overboard, I think Sheriff Joe Arpaio has the right idea. I don't think that criminal suspects and convicts should be denied legal representation or treated inhumanely, but I don't think that they should enjoy the same 'rights' as everyone else, either: they should be punished for filing frivolous types of lawsuits, they shouldn't have some inherent 'right' to cable TV, and so on. Instead, I would suggest that convicts receive only the barest minimum of treatment and care (and be worked to compensate their victims), and then earn the priveleges of (additional) TV, access to a library, recreational equipment, and so on. The money saved could be applied toward self-improvement programs (education, anger management, and the like) that would help keep them from being incarcerated again. Similarly, there should be room for DECREASING a prisoners options in the event they continue to misbehave in jail or prison: reducing the time they get to spend outside of their cells (and for what purposes), what they may have in their cells, exercise and entertainment options, and such. Basically, I'm advocating increased punishment for bad behavior, and rewarding good so that they learn (at the 'gut' level) how to behave.

Government
As mentioned before, I'm in favor of having as little Government and Law as we can manage. I don't see any point to passing laws that aren't routinely enforced. For example, here in Billings, we have a law against loud car stereos:

No driver or occupant of a motor vehicle on any public or private property shall operate or permit the operation of a sound amplification system from within a motor vehicle so that the sound is plainly audible (heard) at a distance of fifty (50) feet or more from the motor vehicle. Billings City Code- sec. 24-352. Exemptions: a. A system being operated to request assistance of an emergency nature or to warn of a hazardous situation; b. A system being operated on a vehicle of a gas, electric, communications or water utility company or governmental entity; c. A system permitted by the Billings City Council or the Billings Police Department; d. An authorized emergency vehicle; or e. Audio alarm systems installed in vehicles. BCA.sec.24-353

Good luck on filing a complaint, however: with my own two beady little eyes, I've seen 'boom cars' sitting at traffic lights right next to Billings PD vehicles. Yeah, it made someone feel warm and fuzzy inside to 'do something' about boom cars. I don't doubt that the law was passed with the best of intentions -- but since there doesn't seem to be anyone willing to enforce it, what's the point? All it seems to be for, now, is to give cops something else to add to whatever charges they might have against a driver; that, in turn, begs the question of how valid the charges are for whatever (s)he was stopped for in the first place. Here's a thought: how about if we go into the court records at the various levels of the court system, compare what charges were brought, and then eliminate any laws that haven't been used for X number of years (I'm thinking 10, but that's just a starting point) that they've been on the books? This would 'exempt' laws that haven't been in effect long enough to have much of an impact while still getting rid of the nonsense laws that have had little or NONE. Then repeat this every X years...
Next on the agenda is taxation. I don't have any problem with paying my share of the Governments operating expenses. What I do have issues is that there's virtually no way of telling whether or not what I'm paying is 'fair' -- which leaves us with the question of what we mean by 'fair'. Does fair mean that every adult pays the same flat amount (budget divided by adult population), or that everyone pays the same percentage of their income? If the former, then people making less than a certain amount are going to be hit with a tax bill they can't pay; if the latter, then those with higher incomes are shouldering more of the burden: 5% of a million dollars is a trifle more than 5% of fifty thousand. This is the kind of thing that causes the tax code to turn into a plate of spaghetti, as far as being legible is concerned. For example, the very first part of the tax code -- where it just defines who has to pay -- runs to 30,527 words on 61 pages, including all the notes, citations, and other Legal Noise. After that, things start getting seriously obtuse, what with all the sub-sub-sub-sub-clauses, cross references, exceptions, exemptions, specifications, and everything else. Just as an exercise, go to your local library, and find the shelves (there will probably be more than one) that hold all the Federal laws -- what are commonly called "Titles" (maybe some lawyer can explain the how/why of that). What you're after is the tax code, or Title 26. Pull that sucker down off the shelf, open it up anywhere, and have a look at it. Notice the size and density of the print. Have a try at reading it. THAT, friends and enemas, is what we're supposed to 'know' -- that old "ignorance of the law is no excuse" bit. Could somebody please explain to me just exactly why we need that much literary diarrhea to tell us how much money we're supposed to give the Government? Why, in God's name, can't the tax code (in its entirety) be reduced to something that a mere mortal can read and understand? Something, say, the size of a paperback book? Something that says, simply and clearly, "The tax on gross individual income will be X%. The tax on gross business income will be Y%. The following types of organizations shall be exempt from business income taxes: This, and That, and The Other One. The following goods will be taxed at the rate indicated: Petroleum products and derivatives - A% per gallon or pound, as appropriate; Foodstuffs - B% per gallon or pound, as appropriate; imported ____ - C% per ___", and so on. Also note those little periods at the end of each sentence -- as in thud, complete stop, no 'except' or 'unless' or anything else. Hell, if the damn tax code was intelligible to anyone but a lawyer, we might be able to pay it as we go along, and not need to file income tax returns. Wouldn't that be nice?
Somewhat related to the problem with the tax code is the number of federal employees we have. I actually did the research (email me, and I'll be glad to send you the resulting file), graphed the results, and found out that since 1946, the ratio of federal employees (in the whole government) versus population has halved -- that is, we now have twice as many federal employees (for our population) as we did sixty years ago. In 1946, there were just over 51 people for each federal employee; as of 1999, there was a federal employee for ever 21 peeps:
(click on image to see it better). Does anyone out there seriously believe we're getting roughly 2 1/2 times more service? Or is that much more government is 'servicing' US, instead? You think maybe if we had a little (lot!) less Government, it might not need so much money to operate?

All in all, I think all of us would be a lot better off if we were willing to assume more responsibility for ourselves and our choices, and demonstrate less interest in claiming (and trying to exercise) authority over other individuals.

But, hey, that's just me.

Don't be spied on...

According to an article on Wired, the Chinese have been spying on various and sundry assorted people and groups by sneaking through (yet another) Microsoft Word flaw.

This is just another reason that I use Open Office for my word processing needs. Yes, there are versions for just about any operating system, and they all talk to each other very nicely.

Cognitive Dissonance

I was accompanying a friend of mine in Wal*Mart this morning, and happened on something that left me wondering if there's any hope for the human race...

On a table, W*M had a nice display of Easter Baskets - but these baskets were all 'themed': there were some that were oriented toward Spiderman, NASCAR, Batman, cartoon characters, and so on. These all struck me as being a little 'off subject' for Easter, but I'm willing to let it go.

But the one that absolutely, positively threw me was the one that included a variety of "army men" and an assortment of military objects - a HMMV, missile(s), guns, and so forth.

In a farookin' Easter basket.

Yum, yum!

I've just recently finished one of my (very!) rare forays into McDonalds for a meal.

This time, I elected to go with the Chicken Select option with Honey Mustard sauce. As I was eating, I got to reading the label on one of the sauce packets (keep in mind that items are listed in order of percentage of content):

• water
• sugar
• dijon mustard (distilled vinegar, water, mustard seed, salt, white wine, citric acid, tartaric acid, spices)
• soybean oil
• honey
• corn syrup solids (um... isn't 'solids' kind of contrary to the idea of 'syrup'?)
  
• distilled vinegar
• modified food starch (modified from what to what?)
  
• egg yolks
• xanthan gum
• salt
• mustard flour
• titanium dioxide (wtf?)
  
• sodium benzoate as a preservative (great - the sauce will probably last longer than I do)
  
• propylene glycol alginate (don't know what it is, but it sure sounds appetizing, don't it?)
  
• spices (apparently I don't need to know which ones)
  
• tumeric
• artificial color (FD&C Yellow #5, FD&C Yellow #6)
• contains egg ingredients (I wasn't sure about that 'egg yolks' part, until they added this)
  

I'm not sure if that is supposed to be food, or a list of contents for a chemistry set...