Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

More On Those New “Bad Driver” Fines in Virginia

Road Rage – washingtonpost.com
But the genesis of the new policy contributes to doubts about whether these penalties were shaped purely to fit the crimes. Republicans in the General Assembly refused in doctrinaire fashion to raise taxes this year to pay for desperately needed road maintenance and improvement. Instead they scrounged for other revenue sources, including these new fees. This history renders the fees open to the criticism that they are calibrated to raise money rather than to deter bad driving.

Who cares.

Who cares???

We need the extra money to fix the roads and I don’t care whether the fines deter bad driving — though I hope they will. If all these fines do is punish people for driving like jackasses then I say GOOD.

It’s not all that complicated, people.

1. Don’t drive if you don’t have a license to do so.

2. Don’t speed. The new fine will only apply to people driving 20 or more miles per hour over the limit. I don’t care how good a driver a person thinks they are, the simple reality is that, unless you’re a professional race car driver, YOU AREN’T THAT GOOD A DRIVER. People who drive that fast are a danger to everyone else on the road and I’m completely in favor of them being punished for doing that.

Obviously, people who drive that recklessly don’t give a shit about other people. Maybe, at least, they’ll care enough about their bank accounts to slow down.

The Kingdom of Hartongia

The Kingdom of Hartongia is a small, environmentally stunning nation, renowned for its compulsory vegetarianism. Its compassionate, cynical population of 18 million are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

Compassionate yet cynical? At first I thought the two must be mutually exclusive but, the more I think about it, it’s a pretty good description.

I’m sure you must be wondering. This is from a description of “my” country as it exists online at NationStates.

Yet Another Bear Dies Unnecessarily

Freakonomics Blog » What’s It Cost to Kill a Bear?
1. A suburban Atlanta man named Chris Everhart, a former Marine who now works as a technician for AT&T, took his three sons on their first camping trip.

2. As the four Everharts were roasting marshmallows, a bear started sniffing around their food cooler. The youngest boy, 6-year-old Logan, picked up a shovel and went after the bear.

1. Since this event apparently occurred in Georgia, the bear in question would have been a black bear. Black bears are well known to be essentially timid.

2. The picture Stephen Dubner has posted on the Freaknomics web site to accompany this post is of a grizzly bear — not a black bear. Grizzly bears are quite different from black bears.

3. If I had a 6-year-old kid who picked up a shovel and threatened a bear with it, that kid would be lucky if I didn’t smack him with a heavy piece of wood. Alright… kidding, kidding. You have to read the entire post on Freakonomics to get what I’m talking about here.

4. Black bears don’t growl. They just don’t. They may make a low-pitched whining noise when they’re frightened (as, it turns out, this particular black bear had good reason to be), but they don’t growl — not like the bear-killer in this story claims this bear did.

5. According to the news story, people in the area had reported seeing a bear with three cubs. The bear this dickweed killed was a large female. So, it’s entirely likely that he not only killed this one bear but also three young cubs who were reliant on her for care.

The bear in this story didn’t deserve to be killed and, had the people (who stupidly hadn’t kept their food covered up) known even a little about black bears, they might have had enough sense to realize that, very likely, all they would have had to do to scare the bear away was to shout at it.

So. Another black bear killed by another stupid asshole.

I hate people.

I So Need This

And not the one with just 4 gigs of memory, either. I need the one with 8 gigs. I won’t need the most expensive plan from AT&T because I don’t actually talk on the phone very much. (The AT&T plans feature unlimited data connection regardless of how many “talk minutes” you buy. Bargain!) You can find out where to buy one for me here.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

A Less-Than-Banner Ruling – washingtonpost.com
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority: “The ‘special characteristics of the school environment’ . . . and the governmental interest in stopping student drug abuse — reflected in the policies of Congress and myriad school boards, including [that of Juneau-Douglas High School] — allow schools to restrict student expression that they reasonably regard as promoting illegal drug use.”

I suspect most adults will agree that it’s best if high school students aren’t using illegal drugs. There’s a problem here, though. In a free society people need a means by which to protest laws that they find unjust. And, while I’m not into bong hits myself, I’m one of the many people who believe the whole “war on drugs” is absurd and a huge waste of money. How could I (or, if I had them, my children) protest what I think is a bad law if I’m not able to unfurl my banner?

Now, let’s be real: the student who put up the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner across from the high school in Juneau, Alaska, was very likely not trying to make a political statement about the “war on drugs”. More likely than not, he just thought he was being funny.

Much depends upon whether this student could reasonably have been presumed to be under the supervision of the principal at the time. When a parent drops their kid off at school, they are giving school officials tacit permission to act in their stead as dispensers of discipline. My understanding is that this particular student hadn’t, in fact, shown up at school on that morning and only appeared at this town event later in the day to unfurl his banner. It’s not unreasonable to assume that the principal had no idea the kid hadn’t been in school, though. In that case, it’s also not unreasonable that the principal would tear down the banner as a “proxy parent” supervising students on a special event outside the school. (Consider, if the students had been on a field trip to a museum 50 miles from the school, wouldn’t most of us agree that it would be appropriate for the chaperone/principal to remove the same banner if it had been unfurled outside the museum?)

The Supreme Court is completely missing the point in my opinion. All this talk about whether the subject of the banner is protected speech really unnecessarily inflates this thing. What if the banner had read “Pray for Peace” or “Stop Abortion” or “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Choice”??

The real question is whether the principal could have reasonably assumed that he was acting in his role as “proxy parent” when he tore down the banner.

I’ve gone back and forth on this thing and, in my final analysis, I find that the principal DID have the right to tear down the banner — but not for the reasons given in the Supreme Court decision. It’s got nothing to do with the subject of the banner. It’s got everything to do with whether the principal had the right to discipline the student for what he (the principal) could reasonably have believed was bad behavior during a school-supervised outing.

Great Waffle Irons Of The 21st Century

About a week ago I happened to catch an episode of Alton Brown’s Good Eats show where he was talking about waffles. Now, I’m not usually a person who enjoys sweet foods all that much — especially in the morning — but I do have a weak spot for waffles. Good waffles. And let me explain what I’m talking about when I write “good waffles”. I’m talking about a waffle that’s slightly crisp on the outside and a bit softer on the inside. I’m talking about a waffle without a lot of sugar in it. A waffle with deep pockets for holding little pools of butter and syrup. Or maybe strawberry jam. I’m NOT talking about something covered in whipped cream.

Blech. Blech blech blech. Too sweet! Blech!

Well, anyway, so Alton Brown (actually, his assistant) gave a little run-down of all the things you should look for in a waffler and the one he was using — that had all the great features — was the VillaWare V2002 UNO Round Belgian Waffler. That’s it, right up there.

I’m afraid I was caught at a vulnerable moment.

Within minutes of the television show ending, I went online and ordered one from amazon.com.

In my defense, it’s absolutely indisputable that my old waffle iron was a piece of crap that made really substandard waffles and seemed to take forever to do so. It’s also true that you can make lots of healthy kinds of waffles. Really. And I’m going to be making a bunch of those in the future. Honest.

This afternoon I tried out my new UNO waffler and, there’s no denying it. This is one really great waffle iron! It’s quite heavy and solidly made. It heats up super-fast and cooks the waffles quickly. It beeps when the waffles are done — so you don’t have to stand over the waffler waiting for the little light to turn on…er…or off? I could never remember. Which is probably part of why I always had such a hard time making good waffles. This thing just beeps at you — there’s no guesswork.

The waffles themselves turned out great! It’s a Belgian style waffler, so the pockets are quite deep. There are 7 done-ness settings. I used 6 or 7 on my waffles today. I can’t imagine what a person would want to cook at a lower setting… there must be some other kinds of recipes that need a lower heat.

I really like this waffle iron! So, I was registering the thing with the VillaWare people and I flipped it over to get the serial number and what should I see but…

“Made in China”

Sigh.

New Fine For Bad Drivers In Virginia

Hefty Fees In Store for Misbehaving Va. Drivers – washingtonpost.com
Attention Virginians: The cost of bad driving is about to go up. Way up.

Say you are driving 78 mph on the Capital Beltway and a state trooper tickets you for “reckless driving — speeding 20 mph over.” You will probably be fined $200 by the judge. But then you will receive a new, additional $1,050 fine from the Old Dominion, payable in three convenient installments. So convenient that you must pay the first one immediately, at the courthouse.

Hurray! What a great law! Now if they’d only make it illegal to drive while talking on the phone — and slap a HUGE fine on people who do it! That would really make my day!

Defense attorneys say the new fees will unfairly burden the poor because they will not be able to pay them, will lose their licenses and possibly their jobs, and then will face tickets for unlicensed driving, which would lead to jail time.

“Unfairly burden the poor”? What complete bullshit. That would only be true if the poor were forced to break the traffic laws more frequently because of some income-related factor. Poor people have as much opportunity to obey the law as do rich people. The fines will, of course, be more of a burden for a poor person — but it’s not an unfair burden. Just because a person’s poor, doesn’t mean he’s somehow less guilty of having broken the law. No, for the same infraction it should be the same fine — for everyone.

I think this is a good law but I’m afraid it won’t affect the way many people drive. There apparently just aren’t enough cops around to arrest all the bad drivers.

Anonymous Asshole

A commenter on my recent post about Dick Cheney directed my attention to this great service provided by The Sphincter Factory. You just provide them with the name and address of someone who’s a real asshole and they’ll send them…er…an “asshole”! If I thought Cheney would actually GET the asshole, I’d have them send him one in a heartbeat. Alas, I’m sure he has people who filter his mail pretty thoroughly.

The only thing I can think of that would make this great service even better is if they’d let you include a personalized message explaining in detail exactly WHY you think the person is an asshole. Of course, if you wanted to retain your anonymity, you’d need to be a little careful about how much detail you went into, but… it could be way big fun!

The Creepiest Man In America

Cheney Defiant on Classified Material – washingtonpost.com
“He’s saying he’s above the law,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which released a series of correspondence yesterday outlining the situation. “It just seems to me this is arrogant and shows bad judgment.”

It seems to me that pretty much defines the entire Bush administration: “arrogant and shows bad judgment.”

[Archives oversight director,] Leonard then wrote Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in January asking him to render a legal ruling on whether the vice president is violating the order. Gonzales has not replied.

Heh, yeah… well. He’s been busy.

Leonard may have angered Cheney’s office with his persistence.

Hint for Leonard: Don’t agree to go hunting with Cheney. Seriously, I don’t give a rat’s ass whether Cheney’s been “angered”. Is HATE too strong a word to describe what I feel towards Cheney, Bush, and their merry band of ASSHOLES???

Okay, calm down Rebecca… Calm down.

Cheney and his ilk so regularly spit on our Constitution and on the laws our representatives (that’s you and me, folks!) pass to ensure that EVERYONE in the government has oversight — you can no longer even call the Vice President a “public servant” without also including some sardonic laughter. He’s pursuing his own agenda here, people, and it’s got NOTHING to do with what’s good for our country.

Condi Does Double-Speak

Rice Orders That Diplomatic Jobs in Iraq Be Filled First – washingtonpost.com
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered this week that U.S. diplomatic positions in Iraq must be filled before any other State Department openings in Washington or overseas are made available, raising the possibility that soon the agency will be forced to order its employees to serve in Iraq.

“It is my fervent hope that we will continue to see sufficient numbers of Foreign Service and Civil Service employees volunteering for Iraq service, but we must be prepared to meet our requirements in any eventuality,” Rice said in a message to employees.

Wait a minute.

“…continue to see” [emphasis added] implies that they ARE currently seeing sufficient numbers of Foreign Service blah-blah-blah. But Rice just ordered that positions in Iraq will be filled before any other positions — which would only have happened if there WEREN’T suffiicient numbers of blah-blah-blah.

This sounds an awful lot like the same sort of thinking that’s produced the claim that there is no civil war in Iraq.

Sigh. My brain hurts.