I am getting a big kick out of the World Baseball Classic. I love baseball in general, and seeing the passion these teams bring to the games is great. I have been watching as many games as I can. It's interesting to note that almost every team in the Classic has advertising on their uniforms or batting helmets. I did some research, and the only two teams definitely not wearing ads on their uniforms are those old pals the US & Cuba. I was not able to find good pictures of Panama or South Africa, but everyone else had some ads on their uniforms. The ads ranged from the strange (A big ugly yellow Best Buy patch on Puerto Rico) to the strangely appropriate (the familiar golden arches on Japan's batting helmets.) Even friend of the revolution, Venezuela has ads for a telecom company. I guess Hugo was too busy defending his players (and that is a wonderfully random story!) to notice.

So, here's to the US & Cuba (and possibly South Africa & Panama) for remaining ad free. I am always a little surprised by how sacrosanct we treat our sports teams, and how against ads we are. I mean, I'm glad that most major league sports don't let the players become billboards (except for Nike of course..) but it just seems so.. Unamerican.

Juror techno-misconduct has been in the news recently, what with a one juror twittering about a $12 million verdict (the timing of which is apparently in dispute), and another juror in the corruption trial of former Pennsylvania state senator Vincent J. Fumo apparently commenting about the trial and deliberations via his Facebook status.

I find it odd that some commentators have suggested that social media tools (or toys, if you prefer) like Twitter and Facebook pose risks of juror misconduct that are somehow new or different. I don't buy it. Jurors willing to email, twitter, text, Facebook-post, and whine-on-myspace about a case or their deliberations are jurors who twenty years ago would have been talking to their friends on the phone about it. New communication methods might lead us into banality, but they do not lead us into temptation of violating our oaths to shut up any more than old-school dinner-table conversation. The fault lies not in our technology, but in ourselves. The technology just makes it easier to detect when oathbreaking jurors are doing it. Hence I respectfully disagree with Scott Greenfield, who suggests that we may want to abandon the pretense of juror confidentiality in light of modern technology. I think that juror confidentiality and obedience was a pretense long before the modern technology; the technology just makes it harder to maintain the illusion.

In the new millennium, as we face rogue states, new and resurgent hostile superpowers, and trans-national terrorism, maintaining America's security is as important as ever. An crucial element of that security is informational, as the government struggles to protect the secrecy of the identify of informants in Pakistan, means and methods in Afghanistan, and military movements in Iraq.

All of that pales, however, next to making sure that no one knows how we bargaining to defend the integrity of Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

See, America has been negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. What's going to be in it? It's not clear, because the negotiating parties are keeping it secret. However, there are indications based on a leaked document retrieved from Canada that ACTA will require signatories to engage in some troublesome anti-piracy enforcement actions — possibly including requiring border guards to search media for illegal content:

The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that “infringes” on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.

The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.

The agreement proposes any content that may have been copied from a DVD or digital video recorder would be open for scrutiny by officials – even if the content was copied legally.

The leaked ACTA document states officials should be given the “authority to take action against infringers (i.e., authority to act without complaint by rights holders).” Anyone found with infringing content in their possession would be open to a fine. They may also have their device confiscated or destroyed, according to the four-page document.

If you think it's a pain in the ass to clear customs now, wait until you have to wait for guys who couldn't get hired by TSA to scroll through your 4,000-song playlist on your iPod. "Arrest him. I don't believe for a second that anyone would actually buy a J.Lo album."

Anyway, since our government is contemplating committing our nation to this scheme, wouldn't it would be nice to know what the terms are, so that we can communicate our concerns to our elected representatives?

That's just the way terrorists think.

In fact, the Obama administration has now continued the Bush Administration policy of keeping the content of ACTA and the negotiations secret. Why? Believe it or not, the administration is claiming that the information must be withheld to protect national security.

But now, like Bush before him, Obama is playing the national security card to hide details of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated across the globe.

The White House this week declared (.pdf) the text of the proposed treaty a "properly classified" national security secret, in rejecting a Freedom of Information Act request by Knowledge Ecology International.

Because, you know, if American citizens can find out the terms of a treaty their elected officials are negotiating to prevent them from burning a Ludacris mix CD, then the terrorists have won.

Wait, maybe I am not being fair. Maybe the negotiations of ACTA are somehow intertwined with crucial, secret military and anti-terrorism agreements — some sort of quid pro quo. Maybe the means and methods contemplated by the treaty involve new top-secret technology. Maybe there is some legitimate reason that the terms of the treaty can only be shared with the highest officials with the most extensive security clearance.

Well, the highest officials, plus every paid industry hack with a lobbyist license.

Remember yesterday's post about how the Obama administration had refused to release the details of a secret copyright treaty because doing so would compromise "national security?" Well, it turns out that there are plenty of people who are cleared to be privy to this "sensitive" document — strangely, they all seem to work for giant copyright companies!

It's an old story. This has nothing to do with national security. It has everything to do with government officials not wanting you to know that they are the cringing butt-boys of the entertainment industry, thanks largely to generous contributions.

Fortunately, just as warhead always beats bunker eventually, the internet always beats informational security. Wikileaks has what purports to be the text of the treaty, along with associated useful information. What does it show? Well . . .

It's some pretty crazy reading — among other things, ACTA will outlaw P2P (even when used to share works that are legally available, like my books), and crack down on things like region-free DVD players.

Kristen Juras, Assistant Professor at the University of Montana School of Law, has a problem with a student named Bess Davis.  Ms. Davis is not a law student, and has never audited one of Professor Juras's classes.  No, Ms. Davis is a student journalist, who has written all of five columns for the school's student paper, the Montana Kaimin.  Ms. Davis writes about sex.  That doesn't bother Professor Juras, who isn't a prude and who respects free speech.  What bothers the professor, if one believes her, is that Bess Davis's writing is unprofessional:

Since February, assistant law professor Kristen Juras has made clear to the Kaimin her opposition to senior Bess Davis’s “Bess Sex Column” by writing a letter to the editor as well as e-mailing and meeting with Kaimin editor Bill Oram. Juras said the material in the column is inappropriate for college students and reflects poorly on the university’s School of Journalism and UM itself.

“It’s embarrassingly unprofessional,” she said. “It affects my reputation as a member of the faculty.”

The column is so embarrassing to Professor Juras that she is prepared to lobby the University's Board of Regents for a policy requiring student paper columnists to have expertise in the matters on which they write, and that the paper better review material Professor Juras considers "objectionable."   Then, according to Professor Juras, her problems with the paper "will correct themselves."

In other words, though she's not a prude, and she respects free speech, Professor Juras wants the University to censor the student paper, and student columnist Bess Davis.

I'll leave aside the question of whether the content of a student paper should be produced by those who have professional expertise in anything, given that it's a student paper, written by people who by and large don't have even a bachelor's degree in English or journalism.  I'll also leave aside the question of whether, if Kristen Juras were to apply for a visiting professorship at another school, the faculty would ask her about the sex column in the student paper, as opposed to, oh I dunno, her own legal scholarship.

I'm more interested, frankly, in protecting Professor Juras's reputation, from the damage it has already suffered and will continue to suffer during this controversy.   For instance, I'm gravely concerned about Professor Juras's ignorance of First Amendment precedent such as Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S. Ct. 733, 21 L. Ed. 2d 731 (1969), which holds that speech by students in public schools may be infringed only on a showing that it will disrupt the orderly running of the school, or is indecent.  (Professor Juras does not make such a contention concerning Ms. Davis's columns.)  I'm concerned that, to the extent that what Professor Juras really seeks is to have the University censor one student, she is asking for constitutionally prohibited viewpoint discrimination under the guise of sometimes permitted content discrimination.

Moreover, and this is what really concerns me, as far as Professor Juras's reputation is concerned, I believe that any time someone writes, "I respect free speech, but…" and then goes on to ask for censorship, that person looks like an ass, a fool, and a hypocrite.

And so, in order to protect Kristen Juras's reputation, I am asking to be appointed as an independent monitor at the University of Montana School of Law, with authority over the writings and speech of assistant professors who teach property, business, and tax, and a requirement that all such writings and speech be cleared with me, beforehand, to the extent that they touch on political or legal topics outside the subjects of property, business transactions, and tax.  (Because God, I don't want to have to read that stuff.)

Since Kristen Juras, evidently, is unwilling to protect her own reputation, which is now that of a fool, someone else will have to do it.  For her own damned good.

Via Legal Blog Watch.

In the early 90s Collectible Card Games (CCGs) were all the rage, with Magic the Gathering being the most well known. I never got into the games. I was always annoyed by the collectible idea, and the fact that I needed to buy more cards to have a better deck. My brother once tried to make a deck of photocopied cards, and get people to play him (mainly to prove that Magic was all about the money, not about the fun of the game) and no one would.

So, I dodged the entire game style. I never got really involved in deck building or the strategies of which cards were superfluous. Finally, Dominion brings the gameplay of Magic to those of us who were not fans of the naked capitalism in it's marketing. It's a NCG, a non Collectible Card Game. The game has three types of cards: money cards (copper, silver, gold) used to buy other cards to put in your deck, victory point cards which are how you win the game (but serve no purpose in the game, and fill up your deck) and action cards (which allow you to do something like draw 3 cards for example.) Each card costs a certain amount of cash (paid for by using your money cards) and each card will remain in your deck for the rest of the game.

On your turn, you have one action (playing any card that says action on it) and one buy (using the money cards in your hand to buy another card.) Action cards may give you extra actions or buys or allow you to take some other action. It's the combination of these cards that gives the game its strategic depth. There are 25 types of action cards (each type having 10 cards), with 10 being used for each game. That means that in any given game there are 150 cards that are not being used, which leads to extreme replayability. The game ends when 3 of the 10 action card decks are empty or all the most expensive victory point cards have been bought.

The beauty of Dominion is how simple the game really is. You draw 5 cards, play as many as you can, buy extra cards if you are able, and then put it all in your discard pile & draw 5 more cards. Once you've run through your deck you shuffle your discard pile & start the whole thing over again. Obviously, the faster you can get through your deck, the better so cards that let you draw more cards are a big benefit, but if you don't have any extra actions, those cards better be money cards or they will be no use to you.

The cool thing about the game is the clear progression. In the beginning, you are building your deck trying to get the cards you want balancing the need for more money cards with action cards. The mid game is about fine tuning your deck and building your economic engine. The end game is a race to buy victory point cards (especially the most expensive Province cards) Throughout the game, you are faced with tough choices about adding cards. If you start building up victory point cards too early they will fill your deck with useless cards. Each card you buy reduces the chances of any other card showing up in a particular hand, but if you don't buy cards you are crippling your deck. The balance is key.

One of my favorite aspects of the game is the variable decks that the game starts with. The rules suggest some basic ideas for good combinations, but my friends have taken to playing random, where we deal out the 10 action cards we will be playing with. This forces you to adapt your strategy to the cards available, and makes sure there is no sure-fire way to win everytime (although, playing cards that give you more cards in your hand is rarely a losing strategy.) It's an interesting twist when the decks come out and there are no extra buys, or no extra actions or cards that make it hard to get more money.

A typical game of Dominion runs between 45-60 minutes, and it plays well with 2,3 or 4 players. I have been especially impressed with how well it plays 2 player. Dominion is a great game that should be in any gamers collection. It's relatively easy to learn, but has enough variables to make it impossible to master. And, as a bonus, you don't have to buy any booster packs to play!

An article last March 31, 1933, titled "Russians Hungry, But Not Starving," by Walter Duranty of the New York Times, implied that reports of a famine in the Ukraine engineered by the Soviet government were political fabrications arising from a diplomatic dispute between Great Britain and the Stalin regime.  The article stated:

In the middle of the diplomatic duel between Great Britain and the Soviet Union over the accused British engineers, there appears from a British source a big scare story in the American press about famine in the Soviet Union, with 'thousands already dead and millions menaced by death from starvation.

and went on to imply that stories of man-made famine and genocide in the Ukraine were exaggerations or false.

Since the publication of "Russians Hungry, But Not Starving," several readers have written to complain about the accuracy of the article.  After careful review, we conclude that in certain respects, the article appears to have been in error, in that it now appears that an engineered famine did take place in the Ukraine.  We further note that some Ukrainians do refer to this event as a "genocide."

However, we reject any implication that follow-up reporting from the Times on the controversy surrounding this issue should refer to previous Times reports which cast allegations of genocide into doubt, or that the Times should make some gesture of apology, such as disavowing the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Duranty for excellence in reporting on the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, we regret the error.

Alan W. Livingston, who ruined the dreams of millions of American children, died peacefully in his bed.

Unfortunately, Livingston's creation lives on.

Me, to a group of teens at the pizza place last night who were throwing things and moving the flimsy booth around and generally annoying me as I tried to have a peaceful dinner with my oldest and youngest:

"Can't you and the rest of the Dead End Kids go make your parents ashamed of you somewhere else?"

And I'm not even drinking caffeine any more. It's possible that I'm achieving curmudgeonhood ahead of schedule.

I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

David Hayter, the screenwriter of the excellent big screen adaptation of Watchmen, has written an open letter to fans that would make Ayn Rand proud. Not because it espouses the power of the free market or the rights of the privileged classes. No, because it blithely references violence against women.

Continue Reading »

Courtesy of David Neiwert at Orcinus, I read this exchange between Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck about recent shooting sprees, in which O'Reilly comes off looking . . . well, normal:

BECK: But as I’m listening to him. I’m thinking about the American people that feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like nobody’s hearing their voice. The government isn’t hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don’t listen to you on both sides. If you’re a conservative, you’re called a racist. You want to starve children.

O’REILLY: Sure.

BECK: Yada yada yada. And every time they do speak out, they’re shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?

O’REILLY: Well, look, nobody, even if they’re frustrated, is going to hurt another human being unless they’re mentally ill. I think.

BECK: I think pushed to the wall, you don’t think people get pushed to the wall?

O’REILLY: Nah, I don’t believe in this snap thing. I think that that kind of violence is inside you and it’s a personality disorder.

See, Bill O'Reilly has finally hit upon the strategy I use when I stand near much fatter people in order to look comparatively thin: he can sound reasonable by talking to someone who is a utter freak. Glenn Beck can be counted on to do things like blaming shooting sprees on political correcness, because Glenn Beck is like a Saturday Night Live routine run by an inattentive God rather than by NBC producers — mildly amusing for the first 30 seconds, but agonizing for the next 13 minutes as he drives the premise into the ground.

I continue to lack the ability to respect, or even fathom, conservative bitch-ass whining about political correctness. For people who are obsessed with telling us that you just can't say things any more, they never seem to shut the fuck up.

Every morning I drive under the Gregson Street trestle, on the way to work.  Every few weeks, I have to drive around the Gregson Street trestle, because box truck drivers do not understand the meaning of 11'8" CLEARANCE:

Youtube user YOVO68, whose name I'll not reveal, keeps a camera pointed at the Gregson Street trestle, at all times. It's not a pretty sight.

I am currently engaged in a semi civil debate on the evils of Ayn Rand. Now, you'd think email or perhaps this blog might be the logical format for this ideological smackdown. No, it's all taking place on Facebook. And not even in long form, it's comments on someone's status.

On the one hand, there is something interesting about having to limit your argument to 150 characters or so. On the other hand, it's impossible to make any real substantive argument in that time. It pretty much boils down to "Rand is bat-shit insane." (that's my argument, if you hadn't guessed) and "her prose is beautiful." (the opposing viewpoint.)

I should be happy though, because I came up with a great line about the rambling run-on sentences in Atlas Shrugged. "Who is John Galt? Not a copy editor, that's for sure."

I think next up for me is a blistering Twitter fight over the Project for the New American Century.

Over at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield has some shrewd and perceptive comments on what Madoff's plea allocution suggests the government is giving him in exchange for his early plea. Scott's key observation:

So it appears that the government, in its statement that there was no deal, is actually playing it a little fast and loose. There was a deal here, and the deal was that Madoff would waive indictment and plead to an information provided that the information did not include a conspiracy. Granted, it isn't much of a deal, but it is a deal nonetheless. It seems that the government has been less than forthright about it, perhaps redefining "deal" to suit a desire to conceal the agreement not to include conspiracy in the 11 count information.

All of this begs the next question, which is whether this plan will work. That depends entirely on the government's willingness to play ball, or continue to play ball now that the plea has been taken. There is nothing that prohibits the government from indicting Madoff co-conspirators, assuming that evidence exists that this scheme was perpetrated by someone along with Madoff. Whether Madoff can be prosecuted for the conspiracy, in addition to the charges already levied and accepted, will depend upon the nature of the conspiracy and Department of Justice policies. But indicting Madoff is unnecessary for the purpose of charging a conspiracy.

Like Scott, I haven't read anything suggesting that the government has given Madoff enforceable assurances that his family won't be prosecuted or that his entire business empire won't be pursued as part and parcel of the fraud. I doubt that the government would offer such assurances: it has little incentive to do so, and it would be politically unpalatable. That said, it's entirely possible that government lawyers have given off-the-record, wink-and-nod assurances. Experienced defense attorneys know that such assurances are unenforceable and illusory, especially in high-stakes, career-making cases. However, sometimes a client's situation is so dire that they are better than nothing.

Meanwhile, Norm Pattis and Mike at Crime & Federalism have some thoughts about the sufficiency of the punishment that Madoff faces. I disagree mildly with Mike over at his place.

Via Jonathan Turley, I encountered the elsewhere-freakish but Florida-mundane story of state senator Larcenia Bullard (D-Miami, via deep space). Bullard became agitated during a Florida legislative debate over a bestiality law. Florida does not have a current bestiality law, apparently. I'm not entirely sure, based on my familiarity with Florida, that this is a bad thing; I'm not sure that they should be excluding some of the smarter animals from their potential gene pool. (No offense, there, Marc Randazza.)

Anyway, Bullard became agitated when someone used the term "animal husbandry":

Rich's legislation would target only those who derived or helped others derive "sexual gratification" from an animal, specifying that conventional dog-judging contests and animal-husbandry practices are permissible.

That last provision tripped up Miami Democratic Sen. Larcenia Bullard.

"People are taking these animals as their husbands? What's husbandry?" she asked. Some senators stifled their laughter as Sen. Charlie Dean, an Inverness Republican, explained that husbandry is raising and caring for animals. Bullard didn't get it.

"So that maybe was the reason the lady was so upset about that monkey?" Bullard asked, referring to a Connecticut case where a woman's suburban chimpanzee went mad and was shot.

Yes, the federal government has grown increasingly law-encrusted. But bear in mind that most of the laws that govern your everyday life, determine how your children are educated, and limit how you can run your business are debated and passed by state and local politicians like Larcenia Bullard. So ask yourself — do the anarchists still seem so silly?

Edit: Cappy, a commenter over at The Agitator, points out that Bullard is the Vice-Chair of the Agricultural Committee and a former teacher. That makes this even more awesome.

We possess advanced technology, but must guard it carefully.  It must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the primitive people of Connecticut, before they are ready for contact with the Federation.

In the arrest report, which was not released until about two weeks after the incident, East Haven Officer David Cari said Manship was repeatedly told he was standing too close to police while they were investigating. Cari said Manship took an "unknown shiny silver object" from his coat pocket, which he concealed in his hands and refused to identify.

"At this time this officer felt unsafe with Manship being too close to myself and Officer Spaulding and did not know at this time what Manship was concealing with his hands," the report by Cari says.

See if you can spot the unknown shiny silver object below.  I can't.  Evidently, Officer Cari had never seen a digital videocamera before he arrested Father James Manship.

Oh sure, critics of the Prime Directive say that if the people of Connecticut get one camera, they won't understand how to use it.  That's just what they said about Sigma Iotia II.