suboptimal information

Ambiguous Fox News Headline Of The Day

“Maryland Woman Fatally Shot Attacking Husband, Police Say” read the headline.

The story is here, but that’s besides the point. The headline is the interesting part.

While technically grammatically correct:
[noun] (verb) {object}
[[adjective]noun] ((adverb)verb) {{adjective}object}
[[Maryland] Woman] ((Fatally) Shot) {{Attacking} Husband}

Most people put into this the media hysteria driven bias that women are shot by their husbands in domestic violence and end up twisting this to conform with the usual headline form:
{object}(verb)/why/
Such as: {drug dealer}(killed)/in police chase/
Or: {terrorist}(shot)/trying to detonate bomb/
And parse the headline as:
{object}(verb)/why/
{Maryland Woman}(Fatally Shot)/Attacking Husband/

Continue reading Ambiguous Fox News Headline Of The Day…

DC v. Heller

While I’m glad that SCOTUS ruled that the second amendment protects an individual right, as do most of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, I feel the need to contribute to the ‘nets comments en masse.

First, it was a pleasure to read in the majority opinion the comparison of the occurance of “the People” with other instances of individual rights clauses elsewhere in the Constitution.   It was also nice to see the court make a distinction between regulation and prohibition - that effective prohibition under the guise of regulation that rejects all applications is also contrary to the constitution.

Now the aftermath Continue reading DC v. Heller…

New Phone

New phone. I got myself a Palm Centro (on the deathstar - AT&T) after a coworker replaced his aging/ancient PalmIIIxe with a Centro (Sprint). While he didn’t get a data plan, I was able to get enough of a feel of the device’s interface & formfactor to know that this would have all of the smartphone features I’ve wanted since losing my old OmniSky sevice (to the passing of old telecom tech into the depths of history) - namely a qwerty keyboard that had a good physical feel while still being compact.

The Centro is a good middle ground between a sub-qwerty crackberry keyboard, the wider units like the treo and blackjack, and the thin keyboard sliders from HTC and Helio.

Nice to see a decent SCOTUS decision

In Brendlin v. California it was nice to see SCOTUS kick back a decision in favor of the expansion of Fourth Amendment protections, for a change.

Despite recent decisions limiting bill of rights protections such as Morse v. Frederick (first amendment - limiting free speech for minors, so long as they stay in school) and Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada(fourth and fifth amendments - ruling that arrest for refusal to identify is reasonable and that forced self identification is not forced testimony), in Brendlin the court ruled that all parties in a stopped vehicle are, by the reasonable behavior of the average person, perceived to be seized and that no reasonable person would believe that stopped as such they have the completely clear an unfettered permission to depart and therefore are under Fourth Amendment protections.

Continue reading Nice to see a decent SCOTUS decision…

Whatever happened to liberty?

Genarlow Wilson has been in prison under a mandatory sentence of 10 years for a “crime” that, because of his case and the unreasonable sentence he received, had its law rewritten down to a misdemeanor by the Georgia state legislature.  But they botched it - they didn’t make the legislative change retroactive and haven’t gotten off their asses to fix that mistake either. Continue reading Whatever happened to liberty?…

Should it be legal to discriminate against honor killer families?

Honor killings are often carried out against family members perceived or suspected of having brought shame onto the family, usually by a sibling or previous generation relative.

While most certainly illegal, it should be fair in a big picture point of view to discriminate against the same class of shamed people if they or their kin carry out an honor killing. I may not care that some dude’s sister married a person of a lesser caste, but if his mother and brothers killed her over it, maybe I don’t want to risk giving him a job or renting him an apartmenet. Who knows what the risks are - I could be out a large investment in training if he’s later arrested for conspiracy in the original honor killing or involvement in some other honor killing of some other family member.

Continue reading Should it be legal to discriminate against honor killer families?…

The absurdity of an over-abundance of caution

Allen Lee is told to write anything, without consideration of appropriate or even inappropriate censorship, as part of a creative writing assignment. For his troubles he’s arrested for two counts of disturbing the peace, effectively expelled (the action taken isn’t expulsion, but the result is the same - he’s no longer going to that school, it’s a disciplinary action, and against his will), and has been released from his chosen future - the United States Marine Corps.

What would people - parents of students - do if the teacher had given them an assignment under the pretext of writing in a thought crime society where every possible thought crime contrary to the interests of the the greater good is prosecuted. What would they have done if the teacher instructed the students to write a paper under this premise and insisted that they not identify themselves, gave every student a copy of every essay, and then told them all that they would get a failing grade on the assignment unless they found a plausible neo-conservative, ultra fundamentalist, or otherwise extremist reason for prosecuting the writer of every essay.

Continue reading The absurdity of an over-abundance of caution…

I may have to try this on my busted Roomba

My roomba lost a fight with a protest my cat made in the corner. The roomba now only goes backwards. I may have to try this fix for the roomba circle dance.

I think I want to build an RC car

I want to build a radio controlled car, or rather a truck, for an interesting robotics experiment. Self contained digital video recorders and wireless video cameras have progressed to the point that individually, their use on RC cars is relatively common as evidenced by a robust collection of bumper-view, hood-view, and zip-tied-to-the-roof view videos of RC cars tooling around in houses, parking lots, race tracks, dirt tracks, and populated streets complete with real vehicle traffic.

The questions this presents:

Continue reading I think I want to build an RC car…

And today, March 30th 2007, Macs….

Macs…

Continue reading And today, March 30th 2007, Macs…….