Your Oxymoron of the day: "amateur ninja."

Your Awesome Oxymoronic Sentence of the week: "Amateur ninjas have not been especially successful in this country, so far as I can tell."

The equally fabulous context is at Lowering the Bar.

According to reports on August 21, police said they had arrested two young men dressed as ninjas and carrying a variety of ninja-type armament such as bows, knives, throwing stars, swords, and nunchuks. The men, aged 20 and 19, were detained in an area ninjas are known to frequent, on Route 46 outside of Clifton, New Jersey.

And it only gets better from there.

You know, it's a damn big world, and it ought to be a relatively simple thing to hide out in it, if you are willing to lead an uncomplicated and quiet life. Yet fugitives of both the short- and long-term variety get nabbed. Why? My theory is that the same impulses that led them to a state of fugitivity in the first place lead them to do things to call attention to themselves.

Hence, if you're a woman inclined to imprison and sexually assault a 19-year-old Mormon missionary 30 years ago, you're likely to the the sort of woman also inclined to arrange for rogue Korean scientists to clone your dog. HENCE YOUR DOWNFALL.

I hope the dog was worth it.

Christian motorcycle gang gets into a rumble.

According to the Set Free Soldiers Web site, the group members "love Jesus and love to ride hard.

"We are not your normal motorcycle club. Some say we are too good for the bad guys, and too bad for the good guys. … We try to live right in this wrong world and let our light shine wherever we may go."

Specifically, they are in trouble for shining the light out of some Hell's Angels at a bar called Blackie's By the Sea.

It's a funny old world.

Via Weird Universe.

Remember the severed feet washing up in Canada? Now there's been a sixth one.

This seems uncharacteristically discourteous of some Canadian. The littering alone is boorish. Those Timberlands are not biodegradable, sir. I presume that the Human Rights Commissions are scrambling to answer the burning question posed: are the former owners (sorry, companions) of the feet being properly accommodated in their new disabilities?

What creeps you out more — rats, or bureaucratic indifference and incompetence? Never mind, you don't need to decide — this story has both. Via our friend and commenter Dave, hear the flesh-crawling story of the Palisades Rathouse, a cautionary tale that makes you wonder if the Hamlin City Council reacted to the Pied Piper stealing all the kids by holding impotent committee meetings for a few years.

The bullet: senior citizen sisters Marjorie and Margaret Barthel feed rats in their home religiously (literally, as you will see). This causes a boom in the local rat population. Neighbors are appalled. What could be worse than teeming rats going in and out of a house, as captured by a YouTube video in the linked article? The local government's reaction to it, which ranges from it's-not-my-problem indifference to abject incompetence. For instance, consider why local authorities don't have records showing how long the Barthel sisters' rat-breeding program has been going on:

Okohira and other health inspectors, it turned out, had been to the house many times. Nobody knows how many times, because in Los Angeles County, the Vector Management Program throws away all such records after two years, says Terrance Powell, director of the department’s militaristically-named Special Operations Bureau.

“We don’t erase stuff,” Powell tells L.A. Weekly. “We just don’t have room. We throw it away. Consider this: We do more than half a million inspections a year of various types. Where do you think we would keep that kind of bulk [of] records?”

Digitally? “Well, that’s a good one. That could work,” Powell concedes.

The legal system, as you'll see, offers a bit more relief — but damned slowly, and not enough.

Taxes are for what, again?

One of the reasons that libertarians object to the Nanny State and don't want the government sticking its fingers in everything is that the overwhelming evidence is that the government sucks at most of the tasks it takes on.

In high school, an exceptional teacher used a thought exercise to demonstrate the power, and imperviousness to proof or logic, of conspiracy theories Imagine that you believe that the light in the fridge is turned on and off not by a pressure switch, but by a little man. Imagine that you believe that powerful forces throughout society are devoted to hiding that fact from you. Once you accept those two premises, nothing can shake you from your belief in the little man. Can't find the little man by moving the jar of mayo around? The little man is very good at hiding. Can't find the little man on an X-ray of the fridge? The X-ray technician is in the employ of THEM. Too cold? The little man has a coat. No scientific proof of the little man? You fool. Who do you think controls the publication of scientific studies? THEM. If you don't believe in the little man in the fridge, you are in THEIR thrall. It's a perfect philosophical construct.

I have often been reminded of this thought exercise since 9/11, as I listened to and read the arguments of the 9/11 Truthers. Last Friday I learned, to my surprise, that England had its own equivalent — it's own little man in the fridge, inspired by early-millennium paranoia and post-terrorism chaos.

Continue Reading »

Beware the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Via.

Real life is not a commercial.

According to Utah cops, Kovtun was behind the wheel last month when a car pulled up to his SUV at an intersection. After gesturing to the 22-year-old Kovtun to roll down his window, passenger Stephen Cox asked, "Excuse me, sir, do you have any Grey Poupon?" Kovtun responded, police charge, by pulling a handgun from his glove compartment, cocking the weapon, and leveling it at the prankster's auto. "Here's your Grey Poupon, roll your f***ing windows up,"

Here's some free legal advice regarding plausible defense strategies:

If you are a well-known "professional wrestler" who "fights" under the name "Rampage Jackson," and you drive a big-ass truck that has your name and picture on it, like so:

Then there is probably not much of a point in fleeing the scene on foot when you run into somebody with the truck.

They're going to figure it out.

Sit down, have a smoke, look up your probation officer's phone number. Maybe call your agent. Just chill.

And now, an update on a great story from Ezra. Max Mosley, head of the International Automobile Federation (the Formula One umbrella organization) got some bad press when he got caught on tape having what appeared to be an expensive Nazi-themed spanking party.

Mosley is now suing the News of the World for defamation, because they misconstrued a perfectly innocent German-prison-themed spanking party for a Nazi spanking party. There's a world of difference, you know. I mean there's stiff uniforms and discipline and people yelling "Schnell! Schnell!" and "verboten!", but there's no National Socialism.

Taking the witness stand at the start of a two-week High Court hearing, Mosley said he had paid $5,000 for the "party," but insisted no Nazi fantasies were involved. The News of the World said participants wore German-style uniforms and spoke in German as they acted out scenes involving prisoners and guards.

Mosley said he and the women had acted out a German prison scenario, but without any military aspect.

Why is this so sensitive to him?

The Nazi allegations are especially sensitive because Mosley is the son of the late Oswald Mosley, leader of Britain's fascist movement before World War II and a friend of Adolf Hitler.

Oh, yeah, that.

Via the consistently fabulous daily hand-picked weird news at Weird Universe, I see that Canadian hotel service beats the hell out of anything here:

Judge Irwin Lampert called the file of a man charged with three motor vehicle infractions, including operating a vehicle without proper insurance, licence and registration. The accused, who had stalled the court on previous occasions, was supposed to have a date set for trial.

When the judge called the man's name, a young woman wearing a dark blue jacket and skirt stood up in the back of the room and said she was there to represent the man. Lampert asked if she was his lawyer or, if not, how she was connected to the accused.

The woman informed the court she works at the Delta Beausejour and said the man called the front desk that morning and asked her to go to court to tell the judge he couldn't make it. Lampert asked if she knew the accused at all and she said had met him once when he was having photocopies made at the hotel.

The payoff?

"Do you have a number you can reach him at?" he asked the young woman.

"Yes, I have his number," she responded.

"Good, call him and tell him he's been deemed guilty on all counts," said the judge.

I don't think she's going to get a tip.

If, as Patrick credibly suggests, Europeans want to enact nanny-state rules that treat adults like children, it only seems sensible that they also treat children like adults. First in line to do so: Germany, where more than forty parliamentarians have proposed to reduce Germany's voting age to zero, or as our German friends would concisely put it, nullbedeutungnichtssogarwenig.

The bill, which has won the cross-party backing of some heavyweight German politicians, would wipe away decades of "exclusion" and "discrimination" against minors, according to its supporters.

Currently the voting threshold in Germany is 18, with an exception in some states, where 16-year-olds are allowed to cast a ballot.

This could lead to some interesting family dynamics:

They proposed that parents be allowed to vote for their offspring, until such time that the children felt they were ready to cast ballots themselves.

Somebody better acquainted with German politics can tell me: is this an attempt to shift power from groups with more kids (such as, on average, immigrants) away from groups with fewer kids (such as, on average, the educated)?

Via Lowering the bar.

Gizmodo reports on some new Wii remotes that would not be legal in the 11th circuit, if you catch my drift.

You probably don't, because that's ridiculously obscure. They're dildos. They're Wii-controlling dildos. There, now you don't have to click on the link for the very mildly NSFW picture.

Via Hit and Run, I see that the Flint, Michigan Police Department is enacting a bold new policy initiative:

Yep, FPD doesn't want to see your boxers. It's shameful.

"Some people call it a fad," Dicks told the Free Press this week while patrolling the streets of Flint. "But I believe it's a national nuisance. It is indecent and thus it is indecent exposure, which has been on the books for years."

On June 27, the chief issued a departmental memorandum telling officers: "This immoral self expression goes beyond freedom of expression."

Let nobody say that Chief Dicks is leaving your ass in anyone else's hands. He wants to fight the war on crack personally:

On Monday, a Free Press reporter and videographer rode with the chief as he confronted teens sporting the sag look. He issued verbal warnings to several people and said the style also gives police probable cause to search those wearing no-rise jeans.

Whoops! I think I might have passed up something significant. Let's read that sentence again.

He issued verbal warnings to several people and said the style also gives police probable cause to search those wearing no-rise jeans.

Yep. The Flint PD position is that if you are wearing sagged pants, they can search you.

It's not, as Hit and Run points out, like they have anything else to do.

Ed Darrell at the inimitable Millard Fillmore's Bathtub warns us of a horrific legal development: the Wedgie Killer had his conviction overturned!

The Utah Supreme Court today threw out the manslaughter conviction of Erik Kurtis Low, who killed a Park City man after the victim gave him a “wedgie.”

As Heinlein says, an armed society is a polite society.

In completely unrelated news, I realized a couple of months ago late in my son's t-ball season that one of his coaches was the guy who used to bully me in 3rd and 4th grade, in part by tweaking my then proportionally freakish ears. I wasn't armed back then. I am now. But really, living well is the best revenge.