This weekend is Saint David's Day, and for the occasion I'm buying my wife a few items from Curio City, one of the neater corners of the web.  (I fully recognize that the feast of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, is not a big deal for most Americans, but my wife is descended to the second generation from Welsh immigrants on every side of her family, speaks Welsh, and lived there for some time, so anyway…)

We're big fans of Ken (no relation to the guy who occasionally blogs here), who runs Curio City, and really like his one-man shop, which as the name suggests offers merchandise curious, quirky, and funky at very reasonable prices.  Ken blogs about his business, which seems to be a precarious but rare success story in this economy, at Curious Business.

And no, unlike bigger bloggers who seem to post Instantaneously about what goes on in the Amazon and other far corners of the world, I am not getting money, a sponsorship deal, or even a discount on dog frisbees, magnets, or offbeat jewelry for posting this.  I'm simply posting about a neat store that sells neat stuff.

Of course I won't get a damned thing in return on Saint Patrick's Day.  I don't have a drop of Irish blood.

There is no right to be free of offense. At least not in America. (In Canada, who knows.) Certainly there are people who think they ought to have a right not to be offended. Such people are morally cowardly ninnies worthy of scorn.

These seem to be propositions widely accepted among conservatives and libertarians.

Yet bizarrely, there also seems to be an insidious sentiment that people who occasionally give offense ought to have some nebulously defined right to be free of being branded as racists or assholes as a result. Case in point: the venerable and on most occasions awesome Clint Eastwood:

Acting legend Clint Eastwood , 79, apparently believes that political correctness has rendered modern society humourless, for he accuses younger generations of spending too much time trying to avoid being offensive.

The Dirty Harry star insists that he should be able to tell harmless jokes about nationality without fearing that people may brand him "a racist".

"People have lost their sense of humour. In former times we constantly made jokes about different races. You can only tell them today with one hand over your mouth or you will be insulted as a racist," the Daily Express quoted him as saying.

"I find that ridiculous. In those earlier days every friendly clique had a 'Sam the Jew' or 'Jose the Mexican' – but we didn't think anything of it or have a racist thought. It was just normal that we made jokes based on our nationality or ethnicity. That was never a problem. I don't want to be politically correct."

Clint merely makes explicit a premise that lurks behind many a gripe about "political correctness": people ought to suck it up and not be offended when I tell racial or religious jokes or make comments that they don't like, but if they call me a dick or a bigot in response, why that's just over the line, and in a decent society I ought not to have to endure it. It's a proposition that manages to be simultaneously narcissistic and hypocritical. And it's increasingly prevalent. Some "thinkers" work themselves up into such a lather that they convince themselves that being called a racist is somehow a structural flaw in the marketplace of ideas from which society must protect them.

But it's all bogus. Clint is free to continue to tell hilarious Mexican jokes. And anyone who thinks this makes him sound like an asshole is free to tell him so. If Clint doesn't like to be called a racist, that distaste is no more profound or worthy of respect or protection than the distaste of Jews or Mexicans who don't like Clint's jokes. For Clint to suggest otherwise is silly, whiny, and frankly embarrassing.

There is genuine, objectionable political correctness in our society, which we enjoy skewering here. But, as I have argued before, there is also a lot of unbecoming whining about political correctness that amounts to little more than "boo hoo, I acted like an asshat and now people are calling me an asshat." Man up, for Christ's sake. If you want to revel in the right to be offensive, grow a thicker skin about being called offensive, if you ever want to be taken seriously.

Including General Motors.

Dave Capps, of Capps Van and Truck Rental in Dallas, is creditworthy and has a solvent business.  He wants to expand it by 1,000 new GM vans.

General Motors has an insolvent business, is receiving bailout money from taxpayers, and should desperately want to sell 1,000 new vans.

General Motors Acceptance Corporation, which has financed Capps's fleet purchases in the past and has an ongoing relationship with him, has an even more insolvent business and has received bailout money, which the government has demanded that it lend in order to stimulate the economy.

So why does Dave Capps, who was spurned in his attempts to finance his fleet expansion by GMAC, have to take out billboards to advertise for a willing lender?

If GM wants more bailout money, and it does, the government should set one precondition: that GM's top management and directors all resign before the company gets another penny.

Aussie foes of that fine nation's ridiculous game censorship policies have been frustrated. One man — South Australia Attorney General Mark Atkinson — has managed to block the creation of an 18+ game rating, thus managing to block publication of games deemed too violent, sexual, or otherwise adult to fit into other classifications. Atkinson assures Aussies that a little loss of freedom for the sake of the chiiiiildruun is a good thing:

Some of your readers may believe that the present system restricts adult liberty. It certainly does restrict choice to a small degree, but that is the price of keeping this material from children and vulnerable adults. In my view, the small sacrifice is worth it.

Certain games cannot be permitted at all, you see, because even if an adult buys them, the little shits will just boot them up and play them when the adults are all of drinking or working or whatever:

In cinemas, the age of moviegoers can be regulated, and at the video store people must provide ID to hire R18+ videos. Once electronic games are in the home, access to them cannot be policed and the games are easily accessible to children. These days, older children (18-30) are often living in the family home with younger children (under 18). This means games belonging to older children or parents can easily make their way into the hands of those under 18.

And if that happens, children will be exposed to violence and sex. And the next thing you know you'll have a nation of convicts, or something.

Anyway, this attitude enraged Australian gamers, as it should. Gamers pondered. How could they express their demand for freedom and their contempt for government regulation of content, yet simultaneously convey that they are serious, reliable, sober individuals, not violent Grand-Theft-Auto-twisted freaks, and thus win the public over to their side?

But of course! A cosplay march on the government!

Fortunately somebody wised up. Because, you know, when Joe Citizen sees a 350 pound guy dressed up like Lara Croft, he's not thinking "I must vindicate this person's free speech rights."

On the other hand . . . that gives me an idea. Maybe the cosplay people were just using the wrong spin . . .

According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who killed Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver International Airport in October 2007, a stapler is a dangerous weapon justifying the use of lethal force.

Const. Gerry Rundel told the public inquiry into the death of Dziekanski that the stapler the Polish man was holding could have been used as a weapon against the officers or members of the public.

Rundel testified earlier this week that he feared for his safety when Dziekanski turned toward the officers clenching the stapler

However, several other civilian witnesses who watched Dziekanski before police arrived have testified they were not afraid of him.

These witnesses, of course, are not trained law enforcement officers.  They don't know enough to be afraid of staplers, stupid civilians.

For those who don't recall, Dziekanski's killing (he was shot by five officers wielding TASERs, for the apparent crime of being a non-English speaker stranded in a confusing place), sparked massive outrage in the news and on blogs at the time.

Via The Agitator.

In high school, the rumors don't spread so fast, and once you leave for college, they're gone for good.

Have a look at a current Google News search for Verizon iPhone. Currently there are around fifty stories, all from the past few days, pumping the rumor that Apple will ink a deal with a wireless carrier other than AT & T.  Many cite "unnamed sources," which is journalism for "aonymous leakers."

But did the anonymous leakers exist?  Did any of these journalists actually speak to any source at Apple or Verizon?  Or were they just repeating the same rumor, sparked by the appearance of a story from September 2008 in a February 2009 RSS feed?

Correction 11:56 a.m. PST: We messed up. The 9 to 5 Mac blog we cited below is in fact from September 2008, so it turns out this is an old rumor. Because it showed up in our RSS feed Saturday, we, like a number of other publications, took it as a recent post and went from there. Apologies for the confusion.

To its credit, CNet has acknowledged the goof (and it's a serious one, because the date is stamped right under the headline of the old blogpost which started the rumor), but many haven't.  There are still recent stories floating around citing a five month old rumor, and those "unnamed sources" predicting the imminent arrival of the Verizon iPhone.  Of course it's anyone's guess as to whether a source, named or unnamed, was actually interviewed.

More's the pity.  I'd consider buying an iPhone, but I won't deal with AT&T.

One of the hallmarks of good systems design is that a well-designed program has safeguards built in to prevent human users from making idiotic mistakes.  For a program that assists with an important activity, such as bond trading, this is especially important.  Even the most sophisticated users, after all, can make mistakes.

Such as buying 31 billion dollars worth of Capcom bonds.

A Japanese unit of Switzerland's UBS AG said its computer systems mistakenly placed a $31 billion order for convertible bonds of videogame maker Capcom Co on Wednesday, but it was able to cancel the trade at no cost.

UBS Securities Japan said that it had intended to place a 30 million yen order to simultaneously buy and sell the bonds in a so-called cross-trade but that its computer system placed a 3 trillion yen ($31 billion) order instead.

While the botched trade was the biggest in monetary terms in the history of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, it was placed through an off-hours trading system, traders said it had no real impact on financial markets and it was cancelled at no cost to the Swiss Bank.

While Capcom, known for producing the Street Fighter and Resident Evil games, is probably a better investment than UBS at this point, $31 billion is many times the worth of the company.  Had the trade gone forward, UBS's tax-evading clients would have had yet another reason to sue the bank.

Does the New York Times, which itself has a pretty horrible environmental record, have any business preaching to Americans on the virtues of rough, sandy, irritating recycled toilet paper?

Unlike some, I'll mourn when the Times goes bankrupt, as it will.  But I'll understand.

Via the John Locke Foundation.

Having refined what was once the profession of law to a science, the faculty at Harvard Law School are turning their sights to what, in their eyes, must be the only disciplines less scientific than the law: economics and psychology.

What Harvard wants to know is: what sort of mental illness drives a man to believe in free markets?

Continue Reading »

Via Jonathan Turley, I see that the TSA, long vigilant against the threats to our transportation system posed by Decepticons and charm bracelets, have now identified a new threat: mulus, the common mule. Or, more specifically, their handlers, "mule skinners," who actually drive mules rather than actually skinning them. During work hours, anyway.

Yes, so-called mule skinners — in this case, seasonal workers who dress in colonial garb at a historical park in Easton, Pa. — must apply for biometric Transportation Worker Identification Credentials (TWIC), according to the Transportation Security Administration, which says it is bound by federal law.

The requirement has officials of the Hugh Moore Historical Park perplexed.

"We have one boat. It's pulled by two mules. On a good day they might go 2 miles per hour," said Sarah B. Hays, the park's director of operations.

The park's two-mile canal does not pass any military bases, nuclear power plants or other sensitive facilities. And, park officials say, the mules could be considered weapons of mass destruction only if they were aimed at something resembling food.

In December, Hayes wrote to Rep. Charles Dent, R-Pennsylvania, about the requirement. Dent, in turn, wrote to the TSA requesting a waiver, noting the mode of transportation involved was "mule-drawn canal boats."

In January, the TSA responded, noting the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 applies to all mariners holding U.S. Coast Guard-issued credentials.

Remember: caution is the watchword. Sure, a guy who earns a living dressed in a smock and knee socks looking at a mule's ass all day may not seem like a major threat to our economic infrastructure. But let me tell you, that sort of thing can grind a man down, hoofbeat by hoofbeat. Sooner or later he's at the end of his historically accurate hempen rope. Then he's angry. And he has a grudge.

And he has a mule. And he's not afraid to use it.

We must make sure this man is in our biometric identification system, which has been designed by TSA, the same agency that has recognized the Mule Threat in the first place, that has no doubt devised the system based on its steely command of science and information security. Remember, the government is here to help you.

As someone currently losing weight (about 20 pounds by now) by dint of the unpleasant method of not eating things I want to eat, I always have my eye out for a quick, painless shortcut. It's the American way. Why should I eat these child-sized bento boxes of compressed vegetable fiber, or even (God forgive me) exercise, when there are people on the radio who assure me that my weight problem is a result of impacted mac & cheese in my colon that can be cleansed out with their $29.99 pills and a four-day weekend in the bathroom?

But no matter how desperate I am for a method that will not force me to accept responsibility for my actions, I can guarantee you one thing: I am not going to go on national television and pretend to be a Jedi named "Master Ken" and prance around with a plastic lightsaber in a bid to lose weight, no matter how effective it is supposed to be. I have some self-respect, jiggly through it may be.

Via.

Over at Stitch in Haste, Kip illuminates and comments upon a particularly outrageous element of what may or may not, depending upon the day and who you ask, be the Obama Administration's tax policy:

The White House says it is unfair for high-income people to get a bigger tax break than middle-income people for claiming the same deductions or making the same charitable contributions.

Of course, as Kip points out, the reason that the higher-income person gets a bigger break is that they're paying more taxes in the first place.

Read Kip's whole piece. Something is going on — and I'm not sure if it is mendacity, ignorance, or poor message control.

We're told that bloggers are not journalists because real old-media journalists use real sources and stuff and bloggers just look things up on Wikipedia.

Via Regret the Error, I see the cracks continue to appear in that particular facade. See, an internet prankster saw that the heroically named Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg was to be named the new German economy minister. The prankster decided to see if anyone would notice if he altered Karl-Theodor's Wikipedia entry to throw an extra "Wilhelm" in the middle.

No one did.

In fact, multiple German media sources, reporting on the appointment, copied the embellished name from Wikipedia and ran it.

This is my favorite part:

Along with other papers across the country, both Bild and Spiegel Online published corrections, but their tone seemed less apologetic than irritated at having had their reliance on Wikipedia revealed. On Thursday Bild wrote that the 37-year-old had been the “victim of a falsification” that many media sources, “including Bild, fell into.”

Yes, because when you can't crib out of Wikipedia, what is the world coming to?

Mike at Crime and Federalism has a cautionary tale about why it's dangerous to issue prosecutors shiny badges: sometimes they try to flash them like they see on TV. To get into the courthouse? To be let past the tape at the crime scene? To get into jail to interview that witness? Nope, in a drunken attempt to steal a hot dog:

William Michael Olson, 36, was arrested on misdemeanor charges of public intoxication and theft of services, Athens-Clarke police said.

Olson was released from jail after posting a $500 bond, then resigned during a meeting with Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Ken Mauldin.

….

A vendor told the officer that Olson ate a hot dog and walked away without paying, but before he left the prosecutor put his hands on the vendor’s chest two times, according to police.

When the officer caught up with Olson, the prosecutor said he didn’t know anything about a hot dog, though he had ketchup and mustard on his shirt, police said.

The officer noted Olson’s speech was slurred and his eyes bloodshot.

The officer told Olson he would arrest him if he didn’t pay for the hot dog, at which time the prosecutor pulled out his wallet and flashed his assistant district attorney badge and cautioned the officer, police said.

He “told me I needed to be careful” and asked if “I was sure that I wanted to do this,” the officer wrote in a report.

You're probably thinking this story is a bizarre outlier. But the day I started my training as a federal prosecutor (the same day O.J. Simpson was acquitted, in fact), we were specifically and repeatedly told that flashing your credentials improperly would get you a sixty-day unpaid vacation automatically. That's because both the DAs and the feds had such a problem with it — dopes flashing their badges (a few AUSAs had them) or creds in bar disputes, to traffic officers, in yard-raking arguments with neighbors, and in shouting matches about returning merchandise at department stores.

To which I thought, holy shit, you'd have to be drunk or one of God's own morons to think that was a good idea. Especially the one about flashing federal prosecutor credentials to local cops. In Los Angeles — where after the federal Rodney King case and the Rampart investigation, feds are not beloved of locals — that's like saying "hey, I'd really like to 'bump my head' on the way into the back of your cruiser, please."

Being a government lawyer definitely poses a risk of getting an entitlement complex. But where do people get the sense that it's a good idea to waive government credentials around to get out of trouble?

I mean, unless you're a cop.

Since my mother died ten years ago, there's been very little daylight between thinking about doing and doing for my father. Thus, as I've gotten older and more curmudgeonly myself, and he's therefore grown more inclined to listen to my opinions, I've increasingly had occasion to pose questions to him regarding judgment calls. "Dad, where would you even put another antique Japanese screen in this house if you drove up to San Francisco to buy it?" "Dad, are you sure you really want to say that about the trial judge in this appellate brief?" "Dad, if you know the 14-year-old dachshund is incontinent, why did you let it on the couch in the first place?" And so on.

Though diplomacy is not my long suit, I make every effort to pose such questions in a diplomatic matter. After all, what I owe to my father is deep and incalculable, as is my respect and affection for him. I don't want to start hollering and berating him and shaking him and breaking his toys in front of him, like I do with my kids. He's entitled to better.

In the same vein, because of the historical, social, and cultural debt America owes England, we ought to restrain ourselves from grabbing it by its unfashionably wide and shiny lapels and shaking it while shouting "WHAT THE FUCK, ENGLAND, WHAT THE FUCK? DOES THE MAGNA GODDAMN CARTA RING A BELL? DON'T YOU REMEMBER SIR THOMAS' MOORE'S SPEECH ABOUT THE LAWS FROM 'A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS?'"

Instead, we ought to sit down and find respectful, supportive, and constructive ways to probe England's bizarre behavior. We ought to ask France and Spain about whether they've noticed anything odd, and perhaps see if Belgium will nip over and check in on England when we are away for the weekend to make sure it hasn't fallen in the tub or something.

Because England seems, in an apparent rush of dotage, to be plunging into a society ripped from a derivative graphic novel.

Continue Reading »