JuicyCampus, one of the vilest social networking websites ever created, is no more:

JuicyCampus, a site that let students anonymously post gossip about other students at their schools that had been wrangling university administrators, has shut itself down, citing the economic downturn, the Associated Press reported.

Launched on seven campuses in 2007, the site was attracting over 1 million unique visitors.

The site's notorious posts on topics like "the biggest slut on campus" had also prompted several schools to block access to the site, and a probe to determine whether it violated New Jersey's Consumer Fraud Act.

Well, that's one benefit of the economic downturn.

I have been slowly working on a "best of Popehat" retrospective that I'd intended to run at the new year.  That will have to wait for another milestone, perhaps our approaching 2000th post.  But whenever it's completed, it will surely include one of my co-blogger Ken's finest posts, on JuicyCampus and its thuggish founder Matt Ivester, "Squeezing the Juice".

Hypocrisy watch:  The Natural Resources Defense Council is one of the groups most actively promoting the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, the law that mandates expensive, in fact ruinous, testing of any consumer product intended primarily for children under 12.  Just yesterday, the Council, working with Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, obtained a ruling from a court in New York that makes the law's effects retroactive.  While, technically, the ruling only effects non-compliant products (those containing lead or phthalates), in practice, this means that stores must throw out any untested merchandise already in their inventory, if they wish to avoid tort liability.

Here's the hypocrisy.  The NRDC (what do diapers, toys, and lunchboxes have to do with natural resources, anyway?) is one of the worst offenders.  You can, as of this writing, buy non-compliant onesies from the NRDC.  Onesies that may contain deadly lead and phthalates. Deadly to children!!! We can't know, because the onesies haven't been tested.

Even better:  The NRDC, on Twitter, stated that the onesies are in compliance, because:

The NRDC attorney who worjed[sic] on our suit about #CPSIA tells me the testing requirements only apply to manufacturers.

But there's still more, as the commercials say.  According to the NRDC's own press release, on yesterday's victory:

NRDC and Public Citizen filed the lawsuit in December, following a CPSC attempt to create a loophole in the congressionally mandated ban, which goes into effect February 10, 2009. The loophole would have allowed retailers to stockpile and continue selling dangerous products as long as they were manufactured before the ban date.

So which is it?  Retailers, or manufacturers?  Who's actually in touch with the NRDC's lawyers?  Their press release department, or their twitter feed?  Or is this just yet another example showing this law to be so confusing that even the groups who want to sue under it don't have a clue what it means?

Update:  I see that the NRDC has changed its tune.  They're now giving away these potentially deadly, untested onesies, as a free gift (in return for a minimum $25 donation).  Sorry NRDC, that sham won't help in court, any more than it helps a ticket scalper who throws in a free pair of tickets, for customers who buy a ballpoint pen for $500.

The toxic onesies must go!

Hat tip: Walter Olson

In our society, laws grow out of control like barnacles on a derelict ship. In large part, that's because legislators pass laws in order to be seen as doing something popular. Vote for my I Like Puppies bill! Endorse the We Approve Motherhood Week act! Support my declaration admiring America's heroes, so that we know that the government doesn't hate America's heroes!

When the laws are just fluff like that, they do little harm, and I'm content that the legislators are strutting about enacting various commemorative weeks rather than wrecking the economy. But other times legislators actually make what might be described as a substantive attempt to address a perceived social problem. The more that the social problem can be spun as terrifying and a Danger to our Children, the more our leaders are encouraged to enact elaborate and noisy schemes without any particular thought about their actual impact. So, for instance, a few Thomas the Tank Engine toys are found to be painted with lead-based paint, and pretty soon Congress is blithely legislating entire industries out of existence.

No law is too ridiculous when Our Children are at stake. Hence we have a sort of arms race to determine which state can come up with the most onerous restrictions on the movements of convicted sex offenders. Washington state came to play; they want to implant tracking chips into them. Those collars from The Running Man that blow your head straight off are only just around the corner. Meanwhile, as the legislative right hand rarely knows what the legislative left hand has done or is doing, the ranks of potential registered sex offenders continue to include folks like streakers, teens who send their boyfriends nude pictures of themselves, and teachers who lose control of their computers to pop-up ads in cities where prosecutors don't understand technology.

Moreover, such attempts to Think of The Children, or address other social problems, rarely consider whether we already have effective laws or measures to defend ourselves from a particular harm, and whether those laws and measures are competently administrated. What basis is there to believe that a new, expensive, elaborate, or technologically sophisticated method of protecting The Children will work, when existing, straightforward, well-established methods don't work because of the well-documented incompetence or indifference of government? If my state of California decides to one-up Washington and implant GPS devices with auto-destruct modules in convicted sex offenders, that system will be installed, maintained, and operated in a government culture in which a cop convicted of raping multiple women under color of law can be knowingly hired to work with vulnerable patients for the County of Los Angeles in a medical setting, then fired when someone points out the issue, then re-hired by the same County a month later to do the same work even after the scandal had broken.

What makes anyone think that more laws will help, when the new laws will be executed by the same people who couldn't handle the old laws?

It's possible I'm hallucinating. But I'm almost sure that as I was driving to work this morning, I heard a commentator on NPR suggest that the stimulus package would work because a Keynesian economist had written something approving about it in his Facebook status.

Popehat friend and occasional commenter "Rob" (there are many Robs, but "Rob" is the only Rob who bears the Popehat seal of approval), has begun an interesting new photography blog, documenting his project to take a photo of some aspect of his life each day of the year 2009, and upload it to the web with commentary.  At the end, I suspect that Rob will have quite a bit more memory than most of us of what the year gone by was actually like.

A sample:

Yes, that does appear to be a copy of the Dungeons and Dragons Fiend Folio behind the miniature.  Be warned that most of Rob's images have far more aesthetic appeal, and far less retro-geek appeal, than this one.

You can find this project, including photos for each of the past 36 days, at Unqualified to Blog.

It will include DEA agents with plastic firearms, and a dead plastic dog.

First in the series though, is the TSA screening security play set.

Via Kids Prefer Cheese, which has a nice alternative headline for this.

I think it is our duty as a blog to enrich your lives, especially on a Friday. With that in mind, I offer you a poem. Now, I thought long and hard about how best to bring erudition to the huddled masses. Perhaps a missive about Bagpipe rape? No, I think we need a poem to explain football. My friend Ben was kind enough to send me the poem after the Superbowl. I really think it distills this most American of games into it's purest form. I give you American Football, by Harold Pinter.

I am writing this from my iPhone. It's very cool. Funny that I have had the phone for months, and had the app to post here installed since the beginning and am just now using it. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that the iPhone's text program automatically capitalizes Klingon. Beautiful!

We are experiencing some technical difficulties with forum registration right now and have been forced to disable them for the short term.  Anyone who would like to register on our forums should click the "contact" link and express your wishes to do so, in 300 words or less, and we'll get you set up.

Why would you want to register on our forums?  Because it's the virtual equivalent of us wandering around in our homes, nay our dominions, pantless.  For reasons that are difficult to articulate but should just "feel right", this is something everyone should experience at least once.  Currently our forums are featuring fascinating topics like like Left 4 Dead the "zombie" themed shooter from Vavle software that has very little to do with zombies (technically, your foes are "infected" with some sort of mutant strain of rabies, just like the film 28 Days Later, only not), but is a terrific game and has tremendous atmosphere.  Atmosphere that is worthy for a Romero movie, in fact. Consider our thread on Dreams, which has won awards, and for example the dream I had last night that made me wake up screaming.  Or even fetishes.  Our official policy is to neither condone nor praise fetishes as a general rule, but judge each on its own merits and artistic flair.  We also judge based on composition and technique.

So contact us if you feel so inclined and we'll get you set up in no time.

You'll float down here. We all float down here.

Sheer brilliance.  Patterico, one of our favorite bloggers, is set to interview Greg Packer, the most ubiquitous "man on the street" in the history of journalism.  According to Packer's Wikipedia biography (yes, this average "man on the street" has a Wikipedia entry):

Gregory F. Packer (born December 18, 1963), an American highway maintenance worker from Huntington, New York and a 1983 graduate of Huntington High School located on Long Island's North Shore. He has been quoted in more than 100 articles and television broadcasts as a member of the public (that is, a "man on the street" rather than a newsmaker or expert). According to the Nexis database from 1994 through 2004, Packer has been quoted or photographed at least 16 separate times by the Associated Press, 14 times by Newsday, 13 times by the New York Daily News, and 12 times by the New York Post. His strategy is to appear at a likely news event and offer short statements to reporters. Although he always gives his real name, he has admitted to making things up to get into the paper.

And Packer has been interviewed many times since 2004.  Among bloggers who scorn lazy journalism, spotting and ridiculing a Packer interview is almost a sport.  Have reporters never heard of Google, Yahoo, or even Nexis?

What would you ask Greg Packer, given the opportunity?

I have actually heard a cop say that.  It means, "I walked through the door."  The cop was my client (I defend them in civil suits from time to time).  Fortunately we were just preparing for his deposition, so I was able to prevent him from actually testifying in this pseudo-military Alpha-Bravo-Charliespeak.

I think that the cop tradition of speaking in this fashion, sorry, talking this way, comes from a mix of dealing with lawyers, an envy of the military (where this sort of jargon and four-letter-words seem to vie for supremacy), and Jack Webb.

This was brought to mind by a hilariously entertaining article by Val Van Brocklin, entitled "Cops Talk Funny, And It's Hurting Their Credibility In Court." I agree.  A few samples:

• He indicated… He said
• I have been employed by… I worked for
• I exited the patrol vehicle… I got out of the car
• I observed… I saw
• I ascertained the location of the residence… I found the house
• I proceeded to the vicinity of… I went to
• I approached the entrance… I went to the door
• The subject approached me… She came up to me
• I apprehended the perpetrator… I arrested the man
• I obtained an item that purported to be an envelope from the individual… I got the envelope from her
• I observed the subject fleeing on foot from the location… I saw him running away

I'd add that young lawyers are equally prone to this vice, and some of them never grow out of it.  Read the whole thing.

Thanks to Legal Antics for the tip, and the funny headline, "Silly Cops-big words are for lawyers" Legal Antics earns a spot on the coveted Popehat blogroll.

Personal discovery: when you rise to the point that your name is on the door of the place, it's somehow less embarrassing when you carelessly make 20 people's workspace smell like burnt popcorn.

Do you trust this man to look out for your kids?  The Deseret News trusts him with its editorial page:

Jack Thompson, a former practicing attorney who lives in Miami, Fla., is the author of "Out of Harm's Way," which recounts his efforts against the entertainment industry.

That should read:

Jack Thompson, a disbarred attorney who lives in Miami, Fla, is the author of numerous frivolous pleadings and lawsuits, including one in which he sent gay porn to a United States District Court judge.

Even Fox News has, more or less, given up on holding Thompson out as some moral paragon.  Surely the Deseret News could have chosen one of the many scolds who've yet to suffer the ultimate professional disgrace to peddle their alarmist "save the children" agenda?

It's not as though there's such a shortage of petty tyrants in this country that only Jack Thompson can write a guest editorial warning parents of the threat that movies and games pose to children.

I applaud President Obama's decision to throw former nominee for Health and Human Services Tom Daschle under the bus.  Despite protestations to the contrary by his pals in the Senate, Tom "Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter" Daschle was the rankest of hypocrites, calling for relentless enforcement of the Byzantine tax code he helped create against the less connected, but flouting those laws (and until now, escaping without penalty) in his personal life.

But Daschle cheated on a known and (to lawyers like Daschle and his wife) obvious tax requirement, to the tune of over a hundred thousand dollars.  That's big money even in high-roller circles.

For an example of the ridiculous in the extent to which Daschle (and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner) have embarrassed the new administration, consider the case of Nancy Killefer.  Ms. Killefer, nominated to serve as Chief Performance Officer, a new position for oversight of federal efficiency, also was forced to withdraw from the administration.

Her sin?  A tax lien of $946.69.  For failing to pay unemployment insurance, over a brief period, for a nanny.  (A "legal" nanny by the way).

Would Tom Daschle have been thrown under the bus for $946 and change?  I think not.

As a man, I must admit I tend to view allegations of sexism with skepticism, perhaps more than I should.  But I fully agree with Malika Saada Saar that this would never have happened to a man in Killefer's shoes.  A nanny is arguably an independent contractor (for whom one need not pay such taxes), and as for the lien, it seems Ms. Killefer didn't know about it until it was brought to her attention.

Where is the outrage?  Where is Melissa McEwan when you need her?

Last night, I came down with a nice case of food poisoning. I also saw the extraordinary film, Waltzing with Bashir. It is a documentary (mostly) where an Israeli director interviews friends and colleagues from their days in the invasion of Lebanon in the eighties. Were it simply a documentary, the film would be astonishing for it's glimpse of the banalities of war, juxtaposed with the horrors. Were it only an animated film, the images and mind blowing camera movements would be amazing. Plus, I am almost positive it is the only documentary ever to feature a 12 foot tall naked woman doing the backstroke.

As a documentary, the film has one problem (especially for US audiences). It is not interested in a factual blow by blow account of the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla. You will get the basic facts of the actions, but the movie is far more about the journey of the people interviewed. All of the accounts are real, with two of the characters voiced by actors because they did not wish to be filmed. So, put aside our almost complete ignorance of the first (?) invasion of Beirut, and fall into the wildly divergent stories of these very real soldiers. Using animation to bring the rich fantasy life of these soldiers to life is brilliant and beautiful. In particular, the author's journey (from complete mental block on the events to remembering everything) is nicely conveyed.

The animation in the film seems to move seamlessly from 2d to flash to full 3d, sometimes within the scene. There is one beautiful scene where the soldiers are wandering through an orchard, looking for militants. As they move, the camera goes from 2d flat animation to swooping out and swirling around the orchard, each tree a three dimensional wonder. My friend Dan suggested afterwards that the beauty of the animation forced one to face the horrors they conveyed. It's an interesting point, and quite true for me. Ironically in this world of action heros and advertorials, the brutal animation seems more real than any real footage (the director mentioned that the total lack of archival footage for the war is one of the reasons he decided to go in the animation direction.)

I am not generally a fan of psychotherapeutic surrealism, and this film definitely has that, from the aforementioned giant woman to a recurring mental block the author has about the events of the massacre, which involves floating in the sea as flares go off around him. It's all beautifully done, and it creates a sense of the mania these young soldiers were feeling. One character becomes convinced that he needs the heavy machine gun to survive, and wrests it from the private that is carrying it. The rich escapist fantasy life of the characters come to vivd life through the animation.

It's an arresting movie, and I recommend it to all. It really is unique. I know I have never seen anything like it, both in content and in composition. I was a little surprised at how careful the movie was to show that the rank and file soldiers were totally out of the loop, while still including scenes of innocent Palestinians getting blown away. It was an interesting tight rope (especially when the film itself references the Nuremburg defense) and one that I think the author believes, whether it is ultimately true or not. So, go see Waltzing with Bashir, and go see it in the theatre. It looked great, and the sound in particular was intense. And if all else fails, you can just wait for the giant naked woman. Something for everyone in this film! I'll end with a quote I heard a young woman say in the lobby after the film. "It was awful, but beautiful." Pretty much sums it up.