Snowflakes in Hell

I’m a good bit more socially liberal than Clayton Cramer, but San Francisco still scares the crap out of me. Those links are not safe for work, or anywhere else really. I warned you! San Francisco was originally founded by the Spanish in 1776, so all the weirdos in the world could live in one place.

UPDATE: Kevin Baker’s comment on the whole thing is just wrong, but quite hilarious.

So, is it good luck that both times you’ve been struck by lightning, you survived?  Or is it bad luck that you’ve been struck by lightning two times?  Maybe this guy’s diet is a bit too high in iron or something.

Much to Bitter’s dismay, I am a cat lover, rather than a dog lover. She’s trying to convince me of the merits of having a small dog. I actually have no real problem with dogs, I just prefer cats. A small dog would be fine, as long as it’s not a foo foo dog. If Bitter wants a foo foo dog, she has to walk it :) But despite my preference for felines, I’m not this crazy:

I recently paid $11,000 in veterinary bills for my cat, Fritz. I’ve been hesitant to tell friends about this expenditure, which I know seems extravagant. But after hearing a radio financial guru answer questions from two callers about tapping their 401(k) accounts for veterinary bills, I realized I am not alone.

Read the whole thing. If you’re my cat, and the vet estimates 11 grand, it was nice knowing ya cat! I can always get another one that looks just like it. But seriously, people understand why they have to suffer to get medical treatment. Animals don’t. That why we don’t put them through prolonged pain.

I could not help wondering how poor families with fixed budgets and work schedules cope with such matters. How do parents tell their children that they cannot afford to treat a beloved pet? And how do vets deal with clients who refuse to pay much of anything for a sick pet, perhaps requesting euthanasia for an otherwise healthy animal?

Having a pet die is part of growing up, and actually, I think a pretty important lesson for kids. I had more than a few pets growing up, all dead now, the small ones buried in the back yard after my mother vacuum sealed them, so dogs wouldn’t dig them up. Every once in a while, I would dig them up, and see what they looked like. I have to wonder if the new owners of the house have done any landscaping yet, and wondered why there are bags of goo buried in the yard.

Hat tip to Rand Simberg

Bitter was telling me she saw the Kissmobile today, and all I’m thinking of is a van or bus driven by these guys:

But it turns out it was just the Hershey Kissmobile.  Seriously, take a look at the Kissmobile:

How fast do you think that thing can go?  I’m wondering, because I think the funniest thing in the world would be for someone to steal the Kissmobile and take it on a high speed chase with the police.  On a slow news day, you couldn’t really write better stuff.   It would be even more funny if the panels were to come off at high speed revealing chocolaty goodness underneath.  Imagine a spectacular crash at the end, that spills Hershey’s kisses all over the highway, with the highway patrol having to shoe small children away from the scene.

We always say that criminals will just steal guns if you pass useless crap like one-gun-a-month and other such useless restrictions.   In Australia, a man proves that mantra with some very large guns, the kinds that are on tracks and move:

A FORMER Telstra worker allegedly stole a tank and used it to demolish six mobile phone towers as he led police on a wild two-hour rampage through western Sydney yesterday.

More than 20 police chased the tank but were powerless to stop it, retreating to a safe distance as the huge vehicle cut a path of destruction through six suburbs.

They could only watch as the driver, hanging out of the top at times, allegedly rammed the tank through fences and into six mobile phone towers, telecommunication relay sheds and an electrical substation.

No word yet on whether Rebecca Peters will be leading a new crusade for more stringent tank control laws in Australia.

I’m not Catholic, but isn’t crap like this what caused Martin Luther to tack up his 95 Theses to the door Catholic Church in Wittenburg in 1517?  You’d think after sparking the reformation, the Church might have rethought this policy, but apparently not.

Via my co-worker George:

You could say a lot about this guy, but I don’t think you can question his dedication to science.

First the swordfish sword, now poisonous snakes.

… against the undead. From the Federal Vampire Zombie Agency:

Shotguns are somewhat less effective against zombies because of the zombie’s primitive mental capacity and enormous pain tolerance. As with any zombie weapon, you should use the shotgun only to buy enough time for escape.

Or if a rifle is more your style:

Vampires: FVZA sharpshooters used rifles with night vision scopes to pick off vampires as they emerged from their shelter for a night of hunting. But for home defense against bloodsuckers, the rifle is not very practical.

Zombies: When the zombies are coming, a rifle from a fortified, elevated position is just about the best weapon there is. There’s no danger of catching zombie fluids and viscera in the eyes, nose and mouth, and no danger of a zombie grabbing the barrel of the rifle. Picking off zombies from a safe spot can even be, dare I say, more than a little fun.

There are a few things that are surprising, like the fact that crossbows are not particularly effective against vampires, and that the flamethrower has a long and distinguished history in undead combat.

Apparently in Canada, someone is charged with six counts of murder using a gun with a certain sex toy on the end of it. Would that make it an AOW here? Not sure, but maybe not if it’s just attached on the end, because then it would still be designed to fire using a single hand.

It would be kind of amusing to submit a design for one to the ATF for evaluation on its classification.

We hear quite a lot of calls for gun restrictions based on the fact that they are great instruments for people committing suicide. I think this method is probably a bit more effective:

A man cut off his own head with a chainsaw after stabbing his 70-year-old father to death in their apartment in the German city of Cologne, police said.

Clearly easy access to chainsaws is to blame. Also, does anyone else notice that these really bizarre news reports always seem to come out of Germany?

Most people’s hearing drops off in adulthood, with higher frequencies being the first to go. Apparently shopkeepers in the UK exploited this as a way to ward off rowdy teens. The device they made emits a 17 KHz audio signal, which teens can hear, but most people over thirty cannot.

Teens apparently have caught on to this idea, and turned it against the adults, by creating a ring tone out of it. Teachers and other adult authority figures can’t hear calls or messaging, allowing stealth communication among their peers. Clever.

There is a demo on the site linked. I can still hear it, so I must have young ears. There is a similar issue with detecting the flyback transformers on older NTSC televisions, which is 15 KHz, or thereabouts. Most people lose the ability to hear them at a certain age.

We definitely have some weird people in Pennsylvania, but we don’t generally elect them Governor:

James E. McGreevey, who resigned as New Jersey governor in 2004 after saying that he had had an extramarital affair with a man, has become an Episcopalian and wants to be ordained as a priest in that faith, according to a published report.

The former governor, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, was officially received into the Episcopal faith on Sunday at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan, said the Rev. Kevin D. Bean, the church’s vicar.

I guess he was impressed that the Episcopal Church has accepted openly gay bishops. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Perhaps certain state legislators in Pennsylvania should enact Snake Control. Check this out:

Jackson picked up two western diamondback rattlesnakes, a pigmy rattlesnake and two copperheads to try to keep police from taking her into custody, authorities said.

Jackson, who was raising the snakes for laboratories, received several bites during the standoff and was taken to a hospital after police subdued her with a stun gun.

The snakes were later donated to a zoo in Hershey.

We have some weird people in this state. Clearly something has to be done about the proliferation of assault snakes within the commonwealth.

Hat Tip: Dave Hardy

Bruce has the skinny on an attempt to charge 20 dollars for your Sunday cookout, all to fight global warming, of course.   The best part is:

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Wow!  I almost feel like this has to be a joke.   Can people really be this stupid? Can they?  The people that came up with this need to emigrate to Texas, and try it there, where I’m sure the population would be happy to give this the response it deserves.

I don’t agree with the hippy sentiment on display here, but If you have a lot of junk in your safe, and not much in the way of furniture, there’s a British artist out there that might have some ideas to help you out.

This one chair looks like it uses Kalashnikov receivers that are pretty much intact.  Believe it or not, I think importation of some of that furniture into the USA would be a violation of ATF regulations concerning importation of machine guns, as a receiver that was once part of a machine gun is regulated as such.  I believe the ATF requires machine gun receivers to be cut into several pieces in order to be considered demiled.

A few months ago I came across this Wikipedia Article describing a portion of the border of Delaware and New Jersey:

Its existence dates from a deed to William Penn from the Duke of York on August 24, 1682, which granted Penn:

all that the Towne of Newcastle otherwise called Delaware and All that Tract of Land lying within the Compass or Circle of Twelve Miles about the same scituate lying and being upon the River Delaware in America And all Islands in the same River Delaware and the said River and Soyle thereof lying North of the Southermost part of the said Circle of Twelve Miles about the said Towne.

The fact that the circle extends into the Delaware River makes for a fairly unique territorial possession. Most territorial boundaries that follow watercourses split the water course between the two territories by one of two methods, either by the midpoint of the watercourse (the Grotian Method, after Hugo Grotius) or, more often, midpoint of the main flow channel, or thalweg. However, due to the text of the deed, within the Twelve-Mile Circle, all the Delaware River to the low-tide mark on the east (New Jersey) side is territory of the state of Delaware.

I’m not sure that type of water border is really that unusual though, because if I’m not mistaken, the entire portion of the Potomac River belongs to Maryland and Washington, D.C., with Virginia and later West Virginia not starting until the shore. The interesting thing here is there’s a small piece of land on the New Jersey side that actually belongs to Delaware:

That’s not a mistake. I’ve seen it on other maps too. I’ve always thought it would be great fun to have a “shoot trap with a shotgun that’s illegal in New Jersey” party on that little bit of land, plant a Delaware flag and lay claim, and just generally annoy the hell out of the anti-gun ninnies in New Jersey by taking Delaware’s “weak” gun laws over to that side of the river, and having a fun time.

Of course, this could also increase an already tense situation:

Regardless of the Supreme Court’s admonition to the two states against further litigation on this subject, they were back before the court as late as November of 2005, when New Jersey’s desire to approve plans by BP to build a liquefied natural gas terminal along the New Jersey shore of the Delaware River fell afoul of Delaware’s Coastal Zone Act. The court on January 23, 2006 appointed a special master to study the border dispute, a process likely to take years. Meanwhile the Delaware House of Representatives considered a (symbolic) bill to call out the National Guard to safeguard the State’s interests, while New Jersey legislators made comments about the Battleship New Jersey, moored upriver from the site.

Hell, I’ll join the Delaware National Guard in that case. I’m pretty sure Delaware could take New Jersey in a gunfight ;)

Via Slashdot, laws of physics that don’t apply in Hollywood.

With the string of new kung fu films out (they run the gamut from The Matrix to Charlie’s Angels), you just can’t escape the small matter of bad physics. Yeah, the action scenes look great and all, but in reality momentum is conserved, such that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So, when you see a gal kick someone across the room, technically, the kicker (or holder of a gun) must fly across the room in the opposite direction – unless she has a back against the wall.

Pretty much.  Read the whole thing.  It’s pretty good.

From the Land of Snow and Beavers, comes this fun piece:

“Our first thought was to Taser it, but we didn’t think that would go over well in front of people,” Evans said. “It would be a safe way to control the animal and it wouldn’t hurt, but the public might not think that.

“They ended up wrestling it, or at least trying to wrestle it. On the third or fourth attempt they finally got it to the ground and got the can off.”

Evans said the deer ran into the bush uninjured, but with the imprint of a coffee can around its face.

I’m not sure I’d advise taser use to incapacitate a wild animal. They aren’t even really all that effective on people sometimes, and, with the exception of all but the biggest ones (kidney belts, I’ve heard, are pretty much impossible to fight through), depend on a psychological component that you wouldn’t have in a scared animal who’s brain is wired a bit differently. I suspect it would have some effect, but I would say you’re probably likely to injure the animal or be injured yourself trying to deal with it. Plus, here’s one from the Taser manual:

The nervous systems of animals are greatly different than human beings. The ADVANCED TASER is designed to be effective on a human attacker. Accordingly, it will not be as effective at incapacitating an animal as it is on a human being. The ADVANCED TASER should not be used as sole protection from wild, uncontrollable, or attacking animals. Law enforcement can use the ADVANCED TASER or dogs, but it is advisable to have animal control officers present to “collar” the incapacitated dog while the T-waves are working.

But the funny part is these Canadian cops thought that wrestling the thing to the ground was a good alternative :)

CNN has an odd but interesting defense of other story:

A man says he broke into an apartment with a cavalry sword because he thought he heard a woman being raped, but the sound actually was from a pornographic movie his upstairs neighbor was watching.

“Now I feel stupid,” said James Van Iveren, who has been charged in the case. “This really is nothing, nothing but a mistake.”

According to a criminal complaint, the neighbor told police that Van Iveren pounded on the door and kicked it open without warning February 12, damaging the frame and lock.

I don’t honestly think charges in this case are appropriate. A reasonable person, hearing what sound like screams of help coming from a neighboring apartment, I think is perfectly justified in doing something here, even if I wouldn’t do exactly what Mr. Van Iveren ended up doing. I think Van Iveren is civilly liable for the damage he caused, but what he did should not be criminal, and society ought not encourage the “don’t get involved, let the professionals deal with this” mentality that prevails among government officials.

This does illustrate the risks we face in coming to the defense of others; it’s something we do at our legal peril. I think the real lesson here is that if you like loud, screaming pornos, keep the volume down.

I see Bitter is running the same story, from a different source.

UPDATE: Bitter updates on the post linked above that it turns out it’s not particularly screeching porn, which I suppose would make a difference.  At the very least, this should keep things interesting for whoever ends up on that jury :)

I couldn’t resist dropping the Monty Python quote in relation to this story coming out of Western Pennsylvania:

CONNELLSVILLE, Pa. - A woman gave birth to a boy outside a western Pennsylvania hospital - a delivery that happened so quickly that the newborn wound up in his mother’s sweatpants.

Having visited that part of the state a few times (Southeast of Pittsburgh), I can believe the local hospital didn’t have a maternity ward.

This is the 24 year old’s fourth child. No word yet on whether she’s Catholic, or has any plans to subject her kids to medical experiments.

but can’t pass the LSATs?   Well, don’t try to bribe the LSAC employees for a copy of it.

Norm Pattis has something out of the strange files, having questioned the low bail amount set for Lisa Marie Nowak, the Astronaut that stands accused of attempted murder and kidnapping.  He managed to get a hold of the transcript:

Court:  Ms. Nowak, you understand that you are required to appear in court for preliminary hearings and can be orderd rearrested if you fail to appear?

Ms. Nowak: Yes.

Court:  The state is recommending a $1 million bond, but I think that is too high.

Ms. Nowak:  I forgot my diaper, and I have to pee.

Court:  One minute. Do you promise to appear as ordered?

Ms. Nowak: Yes.

Court:  OK. Bond set at $25,000. Ms. Nowak is not to leave the planet.

Man, talk about weird.  I don’t know if any of you read Crime and Federalism, but Norm and Mike both post some good stuff.  Some of it is a bit esoteric for us non-lawyer types, but I’ve always enjoyed reading their blog.

This is just really weird.

h/t: Volokh Conpiracy 

My friend Andrew brings me this sad but vaguely amusing story from his home town of Helena, MT.

A young mulie buck survived a jump from the I-15 overpass above Helena’s Sixth Ward train depot onto a boxcar last week, but had to be destroyed after being further injured by a leap from the boxcar to the ground.

This is where it gets amusing:

“We decided that the only way to get him off of it was for it to jump on its own,” he noted. “We wanted to give it a chance.”

Loewen climbed atop the boxcar and the deer took a flying leap.

“He landed on all four feet,” Arnold said. “But then we could see that he also had a broken back leg, too.”

They decided that the buck stopped here, and shot it. The wardens transported the carcass to the wildlife center, where it was fed to the few bears that hadn’t yet gone into hibernation.

Gotta love Montana.