What a moron

Janet Lee, a collage freshman, is suing the Philly police department after spending 3 weeks locked up in their jail. What did she do? She was found boarding a flight from Philly to LA with condoms full of a white substance in her luggage. The police field test said the power was cocaine.

Turns out it was flour. A follow up lab test proved it, so charges were dropped and she was released.

She claims that whole "flour packed condoms" in her luggage was a practical joke that her college dorm mates came up with as an exam stress releiver. She claims she was going to squeeze them to relieve stress.

Well Janet. That was really, really stupid. Almost as stupid as what you are doing now... suing the police in federal court for pain and suffering, financial loss and emotional distress.

I really it hope this goes to trial and you get your ass handed to you on a platter.

The Grocery Game

I read about a good idea to help families safe money by reducing their grocery bills. The Grocery Game is a website that matches coupons and deals against what you need to buy.

It is subscription based. You can get a trial subscroption for $1 and try it out. It should more than pay for itself on the first trip.

I wished this service had existed back when I was married and trying to get my wife to keep the grocery expenses at or under budget. I can see where this service would be very handy for families with multiple mouths to feed.

Starbucks... on the cheap

Frappuccino	Doubleshot

I have to confess that one of my vices is Starbucks Frappuccinos. I can drink those like water. However, I am also a cheap bastard. The manager of the local Starbucks taught me a little trick that allows me to get my daily Frap and caffeine fix for cheap.

What I do is buy a Frap in the bottle for $1.25. It contains 9.5 ounces of the stuff. Then I buy the 6.5oz can of Starbucks Doubleshot. Then I get a cup of ice, which is free.

Back at work, I pour 1/3 of the Frappuccino with 1/3 of the Doubleshot into the cup of ice. That give you a nice full drink. Later in the day I do it again with one 1/3 more, and then the last third in the afternoon.

So I get Starbucks quality caffeine fix, my favorite drink, and get to stay awake for less than $3 a day!

My Starbucks Theory

I have a theory as to how Starbucks manages to be everywhere. I've floated the idea to friends of mine, and they look at me like I am insane. I would love to hear your feedback.

I think that Starbucks gets sweet real estate deals. I think they pay from nothing to a heavily discounted price for the leases on their stores. That is how they are able to afford to install so many stores in so many prime locations, and still be able to be profitable without having to franchise.

I figured this out back in 2001 when I was working in Culver City. Off the I-405, there was a new high-end shopping mall being built called the Howard Hughes Center. The first shop to open at the mall was Starbucks, and they did well selling coffees to the construction workers finishing up the rest of the mall.

Besides opening 6 months before the rest of the mall stores were open, the Starbucks store also grabbed the best spot in the mall... front and center at the main entrance.

I was thinking about how they managed to do this, and it dawned on me that the answer was simple. The developer give it to them.

So why would a developer and/or a retail property owner decide to give away their premium location for a coffee shop? Why would they not try to get as much money as possible from every square foot of space they own? Isn't that what capitalism is all about? Efficiency?

The answer is simple. They need Starbucks more than Starbucks needs them. They want the cach'e of a recognized and respected coffee chain to draw paying customers to the rest of their property, which in turns allows them to market their property to other merchants.

This is not a new idea. It is called a "Loss Leader". Large store chains do this all the time. Grocery store chains and Best Buy has made an art of it. The merchant selects an item to sell at cost, or even less than cost (a loss), in order to get customers in the door. They hope to make up for the loss by being able to entice the customer to buy other items while there.

So why can't the idea of a Loss Leader also be applied to retail real estate? If I owned a shopping center, I would be thrilled to have a Starbucks in my center. It gives the center respectability, and makes my center a "destination" for people to relax and shop. They will hang around a little while longer, which give the other stores an opportunity to sell. It increases the frequency of customer visits as they stop by for their daily coffee fix.

The key to this success, and the reason Starbucks has never franchised, is consistancy. They took McDonald's main idea, consistant product and brand recognition, and applied it to high-end coffee. Customers, and property owners, are comfortable with Starbucks. People know what they are getting.

If this is true, then I have to congratulate Starbucks for their genius. Can you image back in 1985 if you put this idea on paper as your thesis for your MBA? Yes Professor... I am proposing that I open a chain a coffee stores in the best spots all over the country that sells coffee at $4 a cup and doesn't have to pay rent. They would have flunked you!

My 7x7

Bookworm tagged me. Damn it! Here is my 7X7... or at least the start of it. I will need a couple of days to think about some of these items.

1. Seven things to do before I die
2. Seven things I cannot do
3. Seven things that attract me to (...)
4. Seven things I say most often
5. Seven books (or series) that I love
6. Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would if I had time)
7. Seven people I want to join in, too.

Seven things to do before I die

• Visit the Antartic and step foot on the actual continent... not just ice.
• Visit Machi Picchu.
• Get a tattoo.
• Drop acid.
• Sail around Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego islands.
  

Seven things I cannot do

• Cook!
• Become the principal staff photographer for Playboy (they keep rejecting my resume!).
  
• Get a tattoo.
• Raise a plant.
• Save money.
• Tell my dad how much I appreciate all he did for me, and for everyone.
  

Seven things that attract me to (...)

my ex-wife Claire:

• Her dark and wicked sense of humor.
• Her love of books.
• That fact that she understood me, or at least better than anyone ever has.
• Her love of misfits and animals.
• Her beautiful, soft, long, chestnut hair.
• Her voice and speech... so clear and perfect and articulate.
• How she should curl up next to me and let me stoke her hair while we watched movies on TV.
  

Seven things I say most often

• "I've never felt better since I've given up hope"
• "Lets go get a coffee"
• "Let me tell you how I feel about....(whatever the subject)"
• "Is dinner ready yet?

Seven books (or series) that I love

• You Got Nothing Coming
• Fear & Lothing in Las Vegas
  
• Less Than Zero
• Calvin & Hobbes
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Gispy Moth Circles The World
  

Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would if I had time)

• Das Boot (original in German with subtitles)
  
• Fightclub
• Dumb & Dumber
• How To Get Ahead In Advertisting
• Dr. Strangelove
  

Seven people I want to join in, too.

• My brother Tom
• Egyptian SandMonkey
• The Religious Policeman

Money earning idea

I met a woman yesterday who works for herself. She is a professional visitation monitor. She gets paid to chaperone fathers during their visitations with their children. She said she earns $45 a hour, and most visits last 2-6 hours.

Her housemate, a UCLA student, also does this for work. It allows her flexible work hours so she can attend college. She can also read during the work.

To get this job, she had to pay $400 and attend a one week training class. Then they pay a small annual membership fee to their professional organization that maintains a register of members. Customers who are under court order to have supervised visits call the organization to find a local monitor who is available.

She said during work they often end up at fast food places, shopping, pizza parlors, and other places that dads will take their kids for a visit. Often the dad's girlfriend will come along and she ends up chatting with the girlfriend the whole time.

Wow. Sure beats working at McDonalds for $6/hour.

More on the "Intelligent Design" case in Dover, PA

I mentioned yesterday at how pleased and impressed I was with Judge Jones' decision in the Dover PA legal case against teaching "I.D" in science class. As mentioned, his 139 page ruling is a masterpiece. It cuts through all the retoric and uses clear logic and reason to rip ID to shreds. Not only did Jones simply rule against ID, but he did America a great service by utterly destroying the unsound and flawed foundations of the "ID" movement.

This setback for creationist is like Napolian's defeat at Waterloo. This case was going to be THE case for the religous right. They decided that little Dover, PA is where they were going to take their stand and force ID upon America. They lost, and they lost spectacularly. Under the harsh and cold light of legal and logic analysis, their cause showed its true colors. It was nothing but a faith based creationism rehashed and unable to stand up to the same tests that define science. This case will prove to be their high-water mark.

Now that they have failed, it is time to start assigning the blame to scapegoats. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, the backers of ID are pointing fingers and trying to distance themselves as far from this fisco as possible. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum has decided to cut his ties with the Ann Arbor. Michigan based Thomas More Law Center.

You too can help punish those who try to force their religious beliefs on the rest of us, especially through decieit. I'll give you a couple of facts that you may not know about this.

The Dover PA school board who voted to implement ID was encouraged to do this by the Thomas More Law Center. The center promised to defend any school board that implemented ID. Dover PA was simply the first case to make it this far.

The Tomas More Law Center was founded and is run by Richard Thompson. He used to be the Oakland County, Michigan District Attorney. He was driven out of public office because he used it to advance faith based causes, often loosing, and wasting massive amounts of tax dollars and scarce public resource on "moral" cases.

So his strong convictions to his faith overwhelm his judgement as a D.A. to the point where he can not separate his duties to the greater public and the state and US consitutions from those of his faith. Fine. Oakland Country had to pay the price for his mistakes. They canned him and moved on. He is out of public office and is now a private attorney.

Mr. Thompson is backed financially by Tom Monagham, the multi-millionare founder of Domino's Pizza. Mr. Monahham is well known as a devout Catholic and funding anti-abortion causes.

So. The next time you order a Domino's Pizza, you are supporting these idiots who want to reduce American into a Tablian-style dark ages of the Christian religious right.

Sesame Street on the web

I was having lunch with a coworker yesterday that has a 4 year old girl at home. He was telling how proficent on the computer she has become. He said that she spends hours and hours on the Sesame Street website. I didn't know that Sesame Street even had a web site, especially one for kids. But I think it is a great idea.

Unlike the TV show, computers are interactive. The child can respond to the characters, make decisions, make mistakes, and learn from them. They get rewarded for learning, exploring, and trying things again and again until they learn it and move on to more exciting things. He told me that his daughter can already read, and type.

He said that he also lets her visit the Disney for Kids web site. He trusts them and Sesame Street to not introduce virusus on his home computer, or link the kid to places where he doesn't want them to go. He has installed a firewall on his computer that only allows his daughter to go to this two web sites.

I think this is a brilliant use of tax dollars! God knows the government wastes much more on worthless pork projects than they throw at Children's Television Workshop (the producers of Sesame Street).

Teens on the Internet

Being a 42 year old man with no kids of my own, I am blissfully unaware of some of the things that teenage kids are up to. Since growing up before the Internet, I am also unaware of the some of the problems and threats that the Internet has introduced to teenagers.

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First. This one is scary. Here is an article in the New York Times profiling a teenage boy who discovered that he could get money with his bedroom computer and an inexpensive web cam by allowing pediphile pervs to watch him. It is a very interesting read because it illustrates how the child-porn industry has changed. It in past, it was assumed that the children where manipulated or forced into the performances. But now, the kids are taking the initiative and selling themselves.

There is still the agent of this crime... the adult(s) that manipulates the child into this. But these ease in which a child or teen can, by themselves, produce, distribute, and profit from their exploitation is mindblowing.

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Second: How much do you know about IM? IM is "Internet Messaging". It is similar to texting messages back and forth between cell phones. Every teenager I've ever met IM's friends all the time. I suppose that this can be compared to the teenage girl who used to tie up the telephone for hours on end chatting endlessly to her girlfriends. But IM is different. It allows the scale of the communications to grow enormously. They are not just talking to one person at a time. Instead, it can be dozens, all over the world.

I recently helped a friend of mine prep her old laptop for use by her mother. My friend has a teenage daughter who used to use this laptop. I purged all of the unneeded software, removed tons of viruses and spyware, and fix a lot of problems. The I installed MS Messenger, Microsoft's IM product. I plugged the laptop into the internet and within seconds I was being bombarded with IM messages from strangers.

From the content, it seemed like most of the messengers where other teenage boys. When I failed to respond to their IM's, or I did not respond right, they got weird and starting asking me of I was so-and-so, the teenager daughter of my friend.

So I appears that when I installed IM, it registered itself as the teenager's profile from when she had installed and used MS Messenger before. So to these boys, it appears like she was online.

Anyhow... I found it quit disturbing. I also noticed that when I went over to their house to pick up the computer, the teenager was working online with MS Messenger on the new laptop. Whenever I or her mom would walk into the office, the daughter would quickly minimize the IM screen. Obviously she did not want us "adults" to see what was being written.

It just wrote it off as typical teenager paranoia and privacy demands. Still, if it were my kid, it would bug me.

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Third, and last: File Sharing and the dangers to the home PC. I was talking to my sister the other day and the subject of the home computer came up. My sister mentioned that the family computer had died thanks to a very nasty virus that her teenager daughter had introduced. My sister told me that the computer had become unusable before it totally died. Viruses had taken over the browser, forcing user to porn sites, gambling sites, etc, etc. Millions of pop-ups were showing up. There was spyware everywhere.

The cause of these problems on their family PC was their teenager daughter's habit of downloading any file-sharing program that struck her fancy. In her reckless attempts at getting and sharing the latest songs, she failed to take even the simplest precautions to prevent the infection of the computer by rouge software.

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Conclusion: The conclusion to me is that parents that allow their children unlimited and unsupervised access to the Internet are risking no only their computer systems, but their children as well. I think some simple precautions should be in order.
(1) Remove modems and WiFi NICs from the child's computer. The only way they should be able to get online is by plugging into the family's broadband router.
(2) Put the router, and better yet, the computer, into a centralized family office. This will force all online activity to be performed in an area that can be supervised, versus hiding in their bedrooms.
(3) Webcam? Unless the kid can provide some compelling reason as to why they need one, then they don't get one. Keep in mind that there are other ways they get images online... such as using their mobile phone camera and transferring them to their computer.
(4) Restrict online hours. You need to password protect the router and have it only one for certain times. Access outside of those time are on as ass-needed basis and have to be explicitly permitted.

I don't think parents need to be paranoid. Common sense will go a long way. The computer and online access should be controlled just like television and gaming. The parents have to control the quantity and quality of access to all these things.

"Intelligent Design" - Called for what is really is.

Wow!!! I am so happy today. The judge who presided over the Dover, PA case where creationism tried to force "Intelligent Design" into the biology classes called a spade a spade. I am so impressed. The wording he used was so..... right and well written. He totally called it.

If it looks, walks, talks, and quacks like a duck. Then it is a duck.

What a refreshing breath of common sense and sanity. I have yet to read a more articulate and more well reasoned argument on the matter. It puts all doubts to bed. He even anticipated how the pro-ID people would react and called them on it.

What I really like is that he had the courage to say the truth.... that this was an attempt by the religious right to force their religious beliefs into the schools. And he said that the attempts by religious advocates to dress their creationist beliefs as "science" was a farce.

Yea!!!!!!!

Oops!

On the way to work last week in Perth I saw this new house being built. I can't believe that the owner, architect, and builder decided to put the garage right in front of the telephone pole! Hellooooo!

Cool knife holder

"

I saw this totally cool knife holder in a store in Perth before I left for the US. Isn't it so wicked?!?

CBS '60 Minutes' Program "Rendition Revisited"

I happened to have the TV on in the hotel last night while I was working on the computer. The show featured a story titled "'Rendition' Revisited" which interviewed a German named Kalid al-Masri who claims he was kidnapped and held by the CIA for 18 months and included being sent to Afghanistan for torture. Apparently the CIA nabbed him because he has the same name as a wanted terrorist suspect, and they got the wrong man.

I have a couple of thoughts on the story. First off, I think they guy is lying. I think parts of what he said are true, but he is not telling the whole story. He was arrested in Macedonian on New Year's Eve 2003. Masri, an unemployed father of five living in Ulm, Germany. He claims to have gone by bus to Macedonia to blow off steam after a spat with his wife.

Right there my BS detectors went off. I am surprised that the 60-minutes reporter didn't call him on this. That sure sounds like suspectious behavior to me. No wonder the Macedonian authorities stopped him.

What kind of man leaves his wife alone with no money and 5 young children to go to another country on New Years Eve "to blow off steam"? I don't buy it. He was there for some other reason, and he isn't saying what. What is he hiding?

Either that, or he is shooting for "Worst Dad and Husband of the Year" award.

Second. There are going to be mistakes like this made on the war-on-terror. It was simply a matter of time. So I have an idea that will help the CIA and the US Government get blamed for these boo-boos.

Dress up as extraterrestrial aliens!

If they have a target to kidnap, they should dress up like aliens and decorate their CIA airplane like the inside of a space ship. They need to make sure they give their subject lots of anal probes to make it seem legitimate.

Then if they make a mistake and grab the wrong guy, then they can dump him in a field in the middle of no-where. When he goes home and tells his friends, family, and authorities what happened, they will think he is coo-coo and ignore him. I mean when is the last time you put faith into someone who claimed they were abducted by aliens and given an anal probe?

World War III

President Bush and Rumsfeld are sitting in a bar. A guy walks in and asks the barman, "Isn't that Bush and Rumsfeld sitting over there?"

The bartender says, "Yep, that's them."

So the guy walks over and says, "Wow, this is a real honor! What are you guys doing in here?"

Bush says, "We're planning WW III."

And the guy says, "Really? What's going to happen?"

Bush says, "Well, we're going to kill 140 million Muslims and one blonde with big tits."

The guy exclaimed, "A blonde with big tits? Why kill a blonde with big tits?"

Bush turns to Rumsfeld and says, "See, I told you no one CARES about the 140 million Muslims."

Hat tip: Thanks Andrew!

Parade Magazine

Yesterday I was able to sit back and read the LA Times from cover to cover. In the Sunday edition, they include a little national fluff magazine called "Parade". This magazine has always been really light on content. It seems to be geared to a 3rd grade reading level, like USA Today.

This Sunday the feature article in Parade was "The Best & The Worst Of Everything". It was a roundup of news from 2005. I busted a gut laughing when I read one entry titled "Best Team Effort". It was about a team of 47 surfers who rode a giant surfboard in Australia. The article said "... A crowd of 5,000 people gathered near Canberra to watch the riders conquer the 40-foot-long, 10-foot wide board..."

Man I cracked up. Canberra?!? Canberra is the capital of Australia, and is NO WHERE NEAR THE OCEAN. It is an inland city in the mountains between Sydney and Melbourne. That is like saying "Surfers had fun at the Denver, Colorado beach".

Obviously, the editorial integrity of Parade magazine in regards to checking basic facts is non-existent. And they wonder why people don't read newspapers any more.

LAX

I've just spent the last day and half at an airport by LAX recovering from my flight over from Perth. It feels so good to be back in California. It is colder here than I thought it would be. I had to wear a jacket last night.

I don't have a car, so I have been walking, taking buses, or taxis.

I am staying on one of the large hotels on Century Blvd between the I-405 and the airport. I discovered quite by accident that the Manhattan Beach Merchants Association runs a free shuttle service between the Century Blvd hotels and the Manhattan Beach shopping areas. It is a cute little tram that runs every 30 minutes. It is free, and the driver only asks for tips. So I caught the shuttle over to Manhattan Beach and had dinner. What a great little service! There is nothing around the hotels, except a couple of fast food outlets and a nudie club.

The shuttle is called The Ocean Express. Click here for a brochure. If you find yourself with a long layover at LAX, then take this shuttle to downtown Manhattan Beach and have a blast!

I had to catch a taxi this morning since I had all my luggage with me. I went down to the lobby , and as I was walking out the door of the hotel with my one bag, this doorman rushes up to me and starts to try to grab my bag out of my hand. I refused and told him I could handle it.

The doorman seemed quite upset. Now I'm a big guy, 6-3, 210 pounds, and strong. I am carrying one bag that is not too heavy or large. I don't need help. And most important, I didn't WANT help. And I sure as hell didn't want to have to pay someone $2 to carry my bag 5 feet.

I told the doorman I needed a cab. He called and one minute later a cab pulled up. As I was getting seated, the doorman leaned in and demanded the driver give him a $3 "tip". The driver told the doorman to go to hell.

The driver turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He is from Ethiopia and moved to LA 15 years ago. He told me that the demand from the doorman for $3 was illegal. He said that cab drivers could not survive if they had to pay $3 to someone every time they picked up a fare. He was mad as hell. He showed me a letter from the City of Los Angeles Taxi regulation department informing the drivers that demands for "tips" from hotel staff is illegal and they should refuse to pay.

I agree. This is BS. The doorman didn't do a damn thing for anyone. He is just being greedy. That $3 is going to be paid by the passenger somewhere along the line. So I called the hotel manager and registered a complaint about the doorman's demands. I also wrote a quick letter to the taxi board and the hotel. I hope that asshole gets fired.

Home for the Holidays

Just to update everyone. I am going home to The States for the holidays. I am headed for Tucson to see mom. I will also try to get up to Santa Barbara for New Years. I am flying to Los Angeles tonight, so I will be traveling for a few days. I will hope to post some updates next week.

Enron CEO "I'm a victim of terror"

Oh man. What a looser. Kenneth Lay, the CEO of Enron, yesterday claimed he was the victim of a wave of terror. Cry me a river. I saw this short article in the LA Times.

Former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth L. Lay said Tuesday that he was the victim of a "wave of terror" by prosecutors and blamed his former chief financial officer for the energy company's spectacular downfall.

In a preview of his defense at his criminal trial next month, Lay, in a speech to a Houston group, said he was only to blame for trusting Andrew S. Fastow, Enron's finance chief, who has pleaded guilty to charges and will be the government's key witness against Lay and co-defendants.

"We did trust Andy Fastow, and sadly, tragically, that trust turned out to be misplaced," Lay said.

So in other words, you are saying it is all Fastow's fault. Hey Ken... you hired Fastow. You were his boss. The buck stops at YOUR desk. It was YOUR signature on the shareholder's reports. Be a man instead of a snivelling worm.

Lay, former Chief Executive Jeffrey K. Skilling and former Chief Accounting Officer Richard A. Causey will face criminal trial in January for charges brought in the aftermath of the collapse of the energy trader.

Lay also took aim at the Department of Justice's Enron Task Force, which he said launched a special investigation against him even before there was evidence of any crimes.

And that is an excuse? Are you saying that because the DOJ was sniffing around, you felt it was ok to execute a massive fraud? What kind of f**ked up logic is that?

"In this trial, apparently unlike most criminal defense cases, defendants are trying to get the truth in, and the prosecutors, the Enron Task Force, are trying to keep it out," he said.

But if you aren't at fault because it was all the doing of your evil underling Fastow, then what "truth" is there to hide? I don't get it.

Lay called on former Enron employees to help him in presenting the truth about Enron. "Whether it will continue to be submerged by a wave of terror by the Enron Task Force will be determined by former Enron employees."

Oh yea Mr. Lay Call on your former employees for help. They are going to come streaming to your defence. Especially after you fucked them out of their jobs and retirement in order to line your own pockets. Perhaps you better be more afraid they aren't going to show up and pump some bullets into your worthless spine.

"Wave of terror"?!?! What is that? Now you think that you are the US military forces battling the insurgency in Iraq? What an insult. Perhaps the USAF will accidently-on-purpose drop a smart bomb on your house for soiling their good name.

Enron filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001 after the company's use of off-balance-sheet accounts to hide tens of billions of dollars in debt was revealed.

The company emerged from bankruptcy protection late last year and is disposing of its remaining assets to pay back creditors, who are expected to receive only a tiny fraction of what they are owed.

Lay faces seven charges for conspiracy and fraud.

He will face a separate trial in which he is accused of illegally using bank loans to buy Enron stock.

And yes. I am glad that you are terrorfied, as you claim. But I think you are lying. You will know terror when you spend the rest of the worthless life locked up in prison with hardend cons that have more integrity in their pinky than you have in your whole body. Lets see how long you last tossing out crap like that.

Another stillborn idea - they just don't get it.

Today, MTV and Microsoft announced a joint venture called URGE to sell downloadable music and videos over the internet. They want to compete with Apple's iTunes and other smaller online music sellers such as the new Napster and Rhapsody.

They were not big on details, such as prices. However, it is known that it will not work with the Apple iPods, or on Apple Macintosh computers.

This has got to be the stupidest idea I have ever heard. This will go over like a lead balloon. They probably couldn't give their product away. It just go to show how absolutely clueless the music industry still is. The vast majority of users out there have iPods. iTunes works seamlessly with the iPod players. They iTunes store is vast, cheap, and easy to use.

So how on earth does MTV plan to get people to give up their iPod's and iTunes and go to them? They are whistling in the dark.

I think part of the reason for this dumbass decision is the fact that Apple refuses to raise the prices for music on iTunes store above 99 cents a song. Some of the music labels are bitching and moaning loudly about how Apple gets to set the price and refuses to allow the music labels to "maximize" their profit levels by doubling and tripling the prices.

They are hoping the MTV's "shine" will dazzle the consumers enough to stop using the brains. They hope they won't notice that (a) their product costs 2 to 3 times as much, and (b) doesn't work on your iPod.

I think I am going to go into business selling lame-ass stupid ideas to the music industry. They seem to be dumping their money into black holes in a desperate attempt to avoid reality and turn back the clock to 1980 when they called all the shots.

It is very simple. If you don't offer a product that is affordable and easy to use, then your customers are just going to bypass you and get it from other stores, or pirated sources.

The Sydney Beach Riots

I suppose many of you outside of Australia have heard about the rioting going on at a beach in Sydney over the last couple of days. I have read some of the media coverage in the US, Asian, and European newspapers. I've noticed that most of them have it all wrong and are totally misinterpreting the events. Even the Aussie media is screwing it up.

First. The riots have nothing to do with religion. It is the culmination of weeks of harassment between gangs at one Sydney area beach. There has been a Lebanese gang trying to strong arm their way into control of the beach. What started this is an incident last week when two volunteer lifeguards were attacked and nearly killed by this gang when they attempted to intervene and rescue a woman bather who was being harassed by the gang.

That attack on the lifeguards is what has set this off. The locals feel that this gang, who happen to be of Lebanese descent, not because of it, crossed the line when attacking an Australian icon of the volunteer life saver. That is like burning the American flag in the US. Lifeguards are highly revered and respected here. Attacking one like a pack of wild dogs to prevent him from doing his duty was too much.

The "problem" in the eyes of the Australians is that going to the beach, having a barbie, a cold beer, and relaxing in the sand and surf is a God given right and an institution. Everyone is welcome. Every looks out for each other. Everyone feels safe.

The Sydney beach where this is happening is the one where the train line ends. It is the quickest and easiest way to the beach from the Southwest suburbs.

In recent years a new element has been coming down to this beach. They are the young men from Sydney's southwestern suburbs. Most are of Lebanese descent. Others are Iraqi, Pakistani, Palestinian, and other Arabs. But instead of enjoying the beach and water, they hang around in large groups looking to pick fights, perv on girls in bikinis, and harass women. A lot of people no longer feel safe there.

The problem is not that this gang just sits there and stares. They openly call women in bikinis who walk by "Aussie whores" and threaten to rape them. If any "white" man walks by alone, they challenge him to a fight. This is not rumor either. I've met a lot of people from Sydney who have horror stories of their run ins with the Lebanese gangs over there. They have bad reputation as trouble makers. And to make matters worse, they seem to take a lot of pride in that fact.

This one gang in particular seems to have decided to start flexing their muscles at this beach. They seem to be intent on terrorizing the locals into leaving. This has been in the local news for a number of weeks now. As mentioned earlier, they almost killed two volunteer lifeguards who told them to leave a woman along.

Last night, gangs of young Lebanese men were driving over town in wolf packs armed with baseball bats, iron bars, guns, etc., going on rampages. The cops were chasing cars full of them at dangerous and reckless speeds. The gangs cars would come together and they would all get out and start attacking anyone they could see and wrecking cars and buildings.

Now here is where I see the press has been getting it wrong. They mention all these attacks, but they fail to mention who was attacking. They try to make it sounds like there are gangs of angry white Aussies doing this. Just the opposite is true, but the press doesn't want to say that. That would be considered un-P.C.

So instead they make it sound like there are a bunch of hardworking, law abiding, and innocent Lebanese immigrants just doing their own thing when they are randomly attacked by roving gangs of skin heads.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The problem is not all Lebanese. Most Aussies know this. It is a problem with violent gangs of young men between the age of 13 and 25. It is not religion either. These same gangs do lots of drugs, crime, rape, extortion, smuggling, and fraud. Those Arabs who are religious don't hang out with these hoodlums in their community.

Ocean View Real Estate - Cheap!

I read on the news today that a Chinese real estate company was shut by the government for "profiteering and lunacy". Lunacy?

The land they were selling features magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean.... all of it. The whole ocean. Sometimes you can see the whole Atlantic Ocean too. The property features no noisy neighbors, and it is dirt cheap too.

They were selling plots of the land on the Moon.

A company in China is defending its rights to sell real estate on the moon after authorities shut the scheme down on charges of profiteering and lunacy.

Beijing Lunar Village Aeronautics Science and Technology Co. has sued commercial authorities for suspending its licence to sell land on the moon only days after it commenced business.

The company's chief executive argued that no law existed in China prohibiting the selling of land on the moon.

The company had sold 49 acres of lunar land to 34 buyers within three days of opening late this year.

News reports stated that an amount slightly less than 300 yuan, or $US37, was the cost of one acre of lunar land before trading was halted.

The company in question is the China agent of the U.S.-based Lunar Embassy, an extra-terrestrial real estate firm that aims to exploit a reported loophole in a 1967 international moon treaty-ruling.

So who was stupid enough to buy one?

I picked a bad day to give up Prozac

Rigoberto Alpizar

I read about the guy in Miami who was shot dead by police at the airport after he went nuts and ran around claiming he had a bomb. Boy. He sure picked a bad place and time to go off his meds. Doing it on public transportation is not it.

We were talking about this at work today. I couldn't help but wonder what the future holds for air travel. Perhaps people on mental meds will be denied access. Perhaps you will need a note from your shrink to fly.

I was thinking what might work is a big sign at the end of the walkway before you board the plane the says "DID YOU BRING YOUR MEDS TODAY?". Better yet... perhaps the airlines themselves can start handing out meds to the passenger.

"Good morning sir. Thank you for flying with us. Here is a cup of coffee, a bag of peanuts, and a bag of Prozac."

Maybe we will get to the point when as a condition of flying, we have to have our arms and legs locked to the seat so that we can do nothing but sit there.

I detect that there might be a trend here. So far, two Latin American men have been shot and killed by police in mistaken belief that they were preparing to detonate bombs on public transport. Remember the Brazilan guy in London a few months ago? Turns out he was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and reacted in the wrong way. The report is that this guy claimed to have a bomb, altough other witnesses claim they never heard him say this.

Free PC virus scans

My ISP sent me a list of some free online based virus scanners for your PC. For those who can't afford a subscription to Norton Anti-Virus, or other decent malware protection programs.

On my list of recommended free Windows software, I have AVG as an acceptable and free anti-virus program. I want to add the following services to that list.

• Symantec Security Check [These guys make Norton Anti-virus!!!]
• BitDefender [Can only use with MS Internet Explorer because of ActiveX]
• Trend Micro Housecall
• Panda Software Activescan

So add this to your periodic PC maintenance schedule.

Time-Warner to fund a Nevada brothel?

Madam Heidi Fleiss

Time-Warner is the largest media company in the world. They are a giant conglomerate which owns CNN, Time Magazine, Warner-Brothers movie studio, America-On-Line, HBO, and other companies. I'd bet Richard Parsons, the CEO of Time-Warner, doesn't even know that they are funding the startup of another small company.

Yup. They soon might be able to add "brothel" to their investment portfolio. How?

Richard Parsons CEO of Time Warner

Time-Warner owns HBO. HBO has signed a deal with busted Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. They get to film her getting her new brothel, Heidi's Stud Farm, off the ground in Nevada. It is interesting how this six-figure advance seems to be Heidi's seed money.

" And she just landed a six-figure deal with HBO to let a film crew document the brothel's birth. "

It is also interesting how Newsweek, Time Magazine's arch-rival, ran this story. I wonder if Time would dare connect the dots?

For the record, I have nothing against what Ms. Fleiss wants to do. Nor do I have any problem with Time Warner investing in it. It is legal in Nevada. They aren't breaking any laws.

But... I suspect that some moralist, relgious right, nuts will have a serious problem with it. Perhaps they might even boycott HBO and Bugs Bunny.

Finally... A use for beer guts!

Ladies! Finally the perfect Christmas gift for the beer loving man in your life. Someone has finally figured out a good use for beer guts. It is a product called "The Beerbelly". They have developed a removable beer gut that is really a beer bladder in disguise!

Why, you ask?

Because with Beerbelly under your shirt, a can walk right into ball games, movie theaters, and boring classes with their own stash of cold, cheap beer. No more paying $8 for a pint of bad beer at the concession stand. You just fill it up at home with your favorite beverage, strap it on, and suck away on the plastic feeding tube.

Now all they need to do is create the fake pregnancy kit for women who want to do the same. Who is gonna mess with a pregnant lady?

All I want for Xmas...

Wow. The perfect gift for those parents who want their children to become disgruntled airline screeners. Playmobil has put together the "Airport Security Checkin" set.

Blogger Daniel J. Solove ordered one for himself. Things didn't go well. Read what happened!

Playmobil also sells a police station with removable bars on the jail cell so the dangerous prisoners can escape.

Panexa - The wonder drug

Thanks mom! She tipped me off to this new wonder drug, Panexa, brought to us from the good folks at the Merd Pharmeceutical Group. I plan to see my doctor next week and get some.

Check it out. It could be the solution to your problems!

Where do the old hookers go?

John Scott of the University of New England (in Australia, not the US), examined prostitution in rural areas of New South Wales state. He found the sex industry has flourished in rural towns, with many prostitutes making regular visits. Prostitutes as old as 70 continue to work in rural Australia, pushed out of the cities due to strong competition from younger and more attractive sex workers.

Read the rest here...

Don Larsen

It dawned on me today. One thing I miss about living in the US is having men, especially older men, call me "Don Larsen". Whenever they do that, I know instantly that they are a baseball fan. Aussies do not know anything about baseball, except that it has been reported as being extremely boring. So they do not know who Don Larsen is.

I suppose my Uncle Don gets it more than I do, seeing that he has the same first name, and his last name is only different by one letter ("son" versus "sen").

When this mistake happens, it always opens up a great coversation, which I've always liked.

For Aussies reading this, Don Larsen is the only baseball pitcher in history to have pitched a perfect game in the World Series, which he di on October 8, 1956 during game 5 of the World Series.

Life at sea

Growing up on a bare-bones sailboat, I certainly remember life at sea. True, there was little space, no privacy, electricity, refrigeration, television, movies, fast-food, and all the other "benefits" of growing up in modern America. But I would not trade it for the world. My mom and dad were a bit ahead of their time, dropping out of the American rat race to live a simpler life.

The baby boomers have redefined everything that they have encountered. They are living longer, and much more active lives that they previous generations. Even the concept of retirement has been turned upside down.

Leave it to the babyboomers to redefine what my mom and dad did... dropping out and live a life at sea. The LA Times today had an article about the upcoming residential cruise line industry. The idea is that rather than spending your golden years taking ocean cruises, just buy yourself a cabin on a cruise ship and move aboard. Then spend your life cruising the world. It is a floating condo on water.

But, unlike us minimalist Larsons, these companies want to sell first-class, all luxury residences. It is certainly appealing. But I can't imagine that it will actually work. What comes to my mind is the vacation time-share industry. That industry sounds good on paper, but in reality is frightenly full of problems and fraud.

I did enjoy browsing the company web sites. Wow. They sure look nice. But I wonder how they will look in 10 years? Will their owners get bored? Will the service and ship go to hell in a hand-basket? What happens if a cabin owner sells their unit to a family of goat-herding gypsies?

Seriously. If you wanna take a small break and visit fantasy land of luxury and leisure, check out their web sites. Dreams are free.

• The Magellan
• The Orphalese
• The World
• The Four Seasons

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Turkey Eating Gone Too Far:
Tiny little Sonya Thomas, world champion competitive eater, won the Turkey Eating Content in New York by wolfing down over 4 pounds of roast turkey in 12 minutes. I mentioned Sonya before last July 4th when she won the Johnsonville Brat-Eating World Championship in Wisconsin. She calls herself "The Black Widow" and has her own web site with photos and her world eating records.

And yes, she is STILL single. She is looking for a man with a really, really big... fridge.

---

The Big Stove Top Stuffing In The Sky:

Ruth Siems, the inventor of Stove Top Stuffing recently died at age 74. She will be stuffed, baked at 1200 degrees, and then stuffed into an urn in her funeral at her hometown in Indiana.

---

When Thanksgiving Parades Balloons Go Bad:
I love parades. But sometimes, parades go bad! Two little girls were injured at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York when the M&M balloon attacked a lamp post, when in turn lost the fight and attacked the two little girls by falling on them. As a public service and protect small children everywhere, I have decided to publish a "Field Guide To M&M Balloonss" so you can tell the good from the bad.

The Different Types of M&M Balloons
BAD	GOOD

So I need to add to my list of parades to avoid from the first post:

Now parents. If you want to your kids to live past their 18th birthday, it is a good idea to avoid parades put on by (a) militant terrorist groups that feature live weapons built and manned by untrained idiots, (b) angry drunken college fraternities, (c) Feature "bad" M&M Balloons.

Bunny Rapist

Keep your bunnies away from this man!

It looks like the Sydney Bunny Rapist is going to get away with his violent rampage last August when 17 dead bunnies and 1 guinea pig were found raped and dead on the street outside of his office.

I reported this back in October after charges were brought against him. Today the DPP (The Aussie equivilent of a DA) dropped all bestiality charges against him.

PROSECUTORS have dropped a charge of bestiality against a Sydney financier who is accused of aggravated cruelty against rabbits and a guinea pig. Brendan Francis McMahon was arrested in August and charged with one count of bestiality, 18 counts of aggravated animal cruelty and two counts of possessing cannabis.

The 37-year-old from Tamarama, in Sydney's east, is accused of the mutilation deaths of 17 rabbits and one guinea pig. The dead or dying animals were found in and around his York Street office between July and early August this year, police documents previously tendered to the court allege.

Mr McMahon had also been accused of committing an act of bestiality against one rabbit in the early hours of August 1. But when he appeared in Downing Centre Local Court today, prosecutor Laurie Gray withdrew the bestiality charge against Mr McMahon. No explanation for the withdrawal was given to the court. Deputy Chief Magistrate Graeme Henson continued Mr McMahon's bail.

He will face the same court on December 16 for a hearing to determine whether he was mentally unwell at the time of the alleged offences.

Mr McMahon's lawyer, Douglas Marr, had previously told a court his client had been suffering serious mental health problems brought on by the use of the illegal amphetamine ice.

Mr.McMahon. Please study the following chart carefully. Can you spot the difference? Perhaps you can't.

	or
Jessica Rabbit		A Real Rabbit

US President Hoover's time in Western Australia

Pres. Herbert Hoover

I found out yesterday that United States president Herbert Hoover used to live in Western Australia. In 1897, at the age 23, after graduating from Stanford University with a degree in geology, he took a job as a mining engineer for Bewick, Moreing and Company of London. He was sent to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia to develop the company's gold mines there.

Here is a excellent article of Hoover's time in Western Australia from the Stanford University's Alumni Magazine. Hoover was well respected and admired here. He proved to be very successfully and made himself rich. You can now stay in the house that Hoover had built in Leonora because it is now restored as a B&B.

Hoover did do one thing that changed Australia forever. Hoover was unimpressed with the local Australian workers. They were causing labor troubles. So he decided to only hire Europeans, Italians in particular, to work the mines. That is how the first wave of Italian immigrants ended up in Perth, to be followed by a larger wave after WWII.

The Italian and Greek mark on Australia and Perth is significant. They brought with them their customs, and best of all, their cusine. Every Italian-Aussie that I've met is very proud of their contribution to Australia. They feel they brought a little class and culture here.

So in the words of Johnny Carson, "I did not know that."

Hollywood wakes up and smells the coffee

BitTorrent

Wow! I have to give it to the film industry for doing something right, for a change. Hollywood has recognized that the Internet, digital films, and file sharing are here to stay. So they have decided to embrace it and figure out a way to work with it.

How The Music Industry Failed:
Compare this to the music industry. To this day they can't get it right. They are so stuck in their ways that they refuse to wake up to the reality that the world has moved on. Customers no longer want to pay $20 for a CD that contains mostly crap music, problematic and cumbersome Digital Rights Management systems, and rampaging lawyers suing the bejesus out of little old ladies.

Take for example Sony Music's latest fiasco, which I mentioned in a previous post. Today it came out that they are being sued by the Texas Attorney General for their nasty little XPC software that they snuck into new music disks. Rather than embrace technology, they are doing everything they can to make their customers suffer.

It took Apple Computer Company to show the music industry how to sell music on the web, and make money, with the Apple iTunes Store. Apple sells many times more music per month than all the other "stores" combined. They proved the people are willing to pay for music, at the right price. If you make your product too expensive and difficult to use, then your customers are going to look to alternatives, or not even bother.

The music industry still doesn't get it. They are raving mad that they can't demand that Apple raise the prices of music. They are still withholding the music of popular artists in a futile attempt to launch their own over-priced and over-regulated Internet sales site. In the meantime, their customers flock in droves to iTunes and to free pirated copies of songs.

We have been through this before:
Before the music industry found itself in the mess that it is in, the PC software industry went through the whole pirate-paranoia phase. Back in the 1980's when PC's fist became popular, copies of popular software were everywhere. The software industry fought back. They started installing copy-protection schemes on their product, which started an arms-race with the pirates. Every trick that the software companies would come out with would be defeated within days, if not hours, by hackers.

By the late 1980's it got so bad that copy-protection systems were seriously impacting the functionality of their products. Some vendors went as far as requiring users to buy a "dongle", a piece of hardware that you attached to your PC to authenticate yourself. The copy-protection schemes were hurting the paying customers, but doing nothing to stop the pirated versions.

Then something amazing happened. The software companies gave up. They realized that their paying customers didn't want to deal with cumbersome protection systems. Given a choice, the customer would buy the simpler product that didn't make them jump to hoops to prove they were legit. They just wanted it to work.

And the software industry realized that someone who is going to get a pirated version will do so anyhow. They were not loosing customers because of pirates because they never had the customer to begin with. Putting locks on their products was not going to turn a pirate into a paying customer. Nor was not putting locks on the product going to turn a paying customer into a pirate.

So they stopped wasting time and money on elaborate copy protection schemes and instead focused their efforts on building better products, that paying customers were willing to pay for. They focused their customer service and support to their paying customers, and let the pirates do what they are going to do anyhow.

The companies that gave up and moved on, such as Microsoft, survived, and now are highly profitable industry leaders. Other companies that were industry leaders at the time couldn't come to grips with reality and are now gone. In particular, Ashton-Tate owned the early word-processing industry, until they gave it to Microsoft by focusing on pirates rather than their product. Same for Borland, a leading developer of database and compiler software. They too gave up the lead to Microsoft by spending too much effort copy-protecting their product.

Hollywood is learning!:
Now the movie industry has been watching all of this with keen interest. They know that it simply a matter of time before the technology gets the point where pirated copies of movies can be distributed over the internet with the same ease as music.

Now they could take the same approach as the music industry and fight it tooth and nail. They could hire an army of lawyers to bombard the public with lawsuits, like the music industry has done. They could start sneaking in nasty software in their product, like Sony has done. They could cling to their old pricing system and ways, despite the fact that the customers don't want it.

Yesterday, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) announced that they have struck a deal with 30 year old Bram Cohen, the developer of BitTorrent. Read about it here.

Hollywood's worst nightmare:
For those who do not know, BitTorrent is the peer-to-peer technology developed by Coehn that allows people to share files across the Internet in an extremely efficient manner, and without a centralized server. Unlike the first generation of massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing, Napster, BitTorrent is not centralized. The industry shut down Napster by suing the hell out of it. With BitTorrent, it is everywhere, and no where. Trying to sue it to death it like punching at fog. Also, unlike Napster, BitTorrent uses a swarming approach to file sharing. People who share music and videos online only have to share a small part of their file. BitTorrent collects the file from all over the Internet in small pieces and assembles it on your machine.

How Stuff Works has an excellent tutorial on how BitTorrent works so you can understand how it is so efficient.

In a nutshell, BitTorrent is the movie industry's worst nightmare come true. An untraceable and extremely efficient method to distribute large files across the Internet. So rather than try to beat them, they will join them. Using BitTorrent technology, Hollywood can distribute their films to end users for pennies. Better something than nothing!

The idolization of blandness

Here in Australia they have a television program named 'Australian Idol'. It is identical to the larger 'American Idol' TV program in the United States. The idea is that wannabe pop-stars compete in a series of competitions in front a panel of judges until only one person is left and crowned 'Idol'. The winner then wins a recording contract, and gets to produce an album.

I've never watched American Idol. But I have heard the buzz about it and it seems to be very popular. I also don't watch the Australian Idol here, except when it is on in the background because my housemate Robin watches it.

Last night on TV, the sponsoring television network tied up their channel for 4 hours with the final contest, held at the Sydney Opera House, in front of what looked like thousands of screaming fans. They crowned a winner and gushed all over her like she had won the Nobel Prize for curing cancer or something.

That is all good and fine. But I could not help but notice how the whole 'Idol' machine produces and celebrates singers who are... well, bland. Their sound and image is so over-produced and over-manufactured. They all look, and more importately, sound alike. They have the "safe" bubble-gum sound.

I'm not saying that they don't have any talent. They can sing. But big deal! If I want to hire someone to do Madonna covers for a wedding receiption, they would be perfect.

When I listen to them, I can't help but wonder how some of the most talented musical artists out there would fare when judged by such standards. Think of Bob Dylan's voice. They would have laughed him off the stage. Johnny Cash, Ricki Lee Jones, Lenard Cohen, James Brown, Neil Young, Joe Cocker, Janice Joplin, Chris Christofferson, Ray Charles, and countless others. They have beautiful, unique, and instantly recognizable voices.

What I can not comprehend is where did all those people in the crowd come from? Why do they bother to waste their time screaming for some a glorified cover-band lead singer? They all sound alike, and sing sappy bubble-gum songs written by other, so called, professionals.

Maybe I'm just too old to understand. I've think that I've always been that way. In high-school, I was the only one who preferred listing to blues over the top-40 crap all my classmates preferred.

Air Force Air Show

B-1B Lancer

On Sunday I went up to Peirce Air Force Base for an airshow. It was very impressive. In addition to the RAAF aircraft, the Singapore Airforce also flew down some jet fighters and a tanker.

The best of the show was the USAF B1-B Lancer supersonic long-ranger bomber flown in from Guam for the show. What a beautiful and stunning aircraft! It is, without a doubt, one of the most awesome and fearsome flying can of whoop-ass on the planet. The B1-B was a static display, which meant that you walk around it. Some people got to go inside. I was not so priveledged. I spoke to the crew that was there. They are with the 37th Bomber Squadron out of Ellsworth AFB, Black Hills, South Dakota. Their B1-B had the nose art "The Uninvited" of a tiger ripping through the hull.

I was pretty damn hot out there on the tarmac. And the flies were terrible! I am thankful that a few million of them got sucked into jet engines and roasted to death.

Guardians for profit - More Thoughts

I was thinking about my post yesterday about conservators and their industry. I read read what I wrote this morning. I have the following points to add.

(1) I wish to clarify my point so that I do not hurt any of my family's feelings. In the post, I mention that the only alternative to public or professional conservators is family. In my particular case, I am blessed with a family I trust. My writing where meant not for me personally, but for the average reader who may not be as lucky as me.

However, I do mean it when I claim that I do not wish to be a burdon on anyone, especially my family. I do wish to be a burdon on any insurance company that I contract with for long-term disability.

(2) I worked for a bank for 12 years. The bank had a large and highly respected trust divison, and whom I got to know many of the staff and managers personally. I have nothing but praise for them. They were always extremely professional and diligant.

In addition to working for the bank, my ex-wife was a benefitiary of one the trusts that the bank managed. So I also got to see how it worked from the client side. As I mentioned before, I was deeply impressed with their work.

The bank's trust department is regulated by state and federal laws. In addition, they go to great lengths to be objective and prudent with the assets placed in the trust. The work they do is strikingly similar to the jobs of a conservator. The trust officers would have to take care of the day-to-day needs of the benefitiaries. They keep excellent records. They have strict rules and conflict of intrest guidelines. They are obligated by law to be fudiciary prudent.

Thinking about this, I came to two conclusions. One is that your best bet is to have a professional trust company be your conservator. Second, why do judges not appoint trust companies to do this job when they are asked to give control of someone's life to a total stranger? They do it now.

Their should be no middle ground. If the courts can't find a trust that wants to take the client (probablly cause they have little or assets), then the state needs to have a trust department that works in the exact same way that catches all the other clients.

Guardians for profit

Last week the Los Angeles Times published an excellent special series on the issue of conservators for elderly adults who no have the ability to manage their own affairs.

It is quite a long read, but well worth it. The articles focus on some of the worst abuse of the system that they found. The theft and incompetence they uncovered will make your blood boil.

For those who don't want to read it, the report is about the conservator industry. These are people or agencies who are appointed responsibility for persons who are unable to take care of their own affairs. The article points out some of flaws with the system as currently implemented in California, and Los Angeles County. Problems are things like:

• The ease in which a total stranger can be appointed a conservator.
• The extreme difficulty of removing a conservator.
• The lack of regulation, oversight, and licensing of conservators.
• The looting and theft of their charges' assets by conservators.
• The abuse and neglect of charges by conservators.
• The failure of judges to monitor the conservators they appoint.
• The complete failure of the LA County public conservator.

What I found scary was the ease in which anyone can call themselves a conservator, find an old person with assets, and then ask a judge to appoint them as a conservator based on nothing but their own word. Once granted, the conservator can then do whatever they want with the person's assets, without any supervision, or consequence for abuse. For example, selling the charge's home for far less than market value to themselves or to a family member.

The system sound horrific. Anyone reading would want to take steps to prevent themselves to falling victim should they become infirmed. The article does not go into what people can do to protect themselves. Nor do the articles discuss alternatives.

The two alternatives are, (a) do nothing and allow the elderly to take care of themselves. (b) Have the family take care of this. Obviously, alternative (a) is not acceptable. Some people do get to the point where they are incapable of taking care of themselves. They will die without help. So, the only realistic option is conserveship.

Is there not an unwritten pact between the generations that when you become too old to take care of your affairs, that you will be able to trust your family. Apparently not. For every case of abuse by the for-profit conservators in the article, there are even more abuse by family members. I suspect that of the percentage of "bad apples" in the for-profit industry were compared to the "bad apples" of abuse by family, the for-profits might seem like a safer bet.

I can think of many examples of elderly people being striped of their ability to manage their own affairs by their own children who seem to more keen on preserving their inheritance than the interests of their own parent(s). A recent example this year within my own extended family (Aunt Louise), illustrates how bad this can be.

It is all a bit depressing to me. You can't trust strangers motivated by profit. You might not be able to trust your own family. What are you suppose to do?

Good thing I am poor. No one will benefit from my demise. That will keep the wolf from the door!

On the other hand, I refuse to be a burden on someone else. I don't want that kind of life. So the only question is if I will get the point where I can no longer take of myself, will I be able to recognize it? And if I do, will I be able to do something about it? Will the last thing I own be a gun and two rounds (in case on misses). I've always reckoned that if I knew I was on my last days, I would disappear, and die on my own terms, in my own way.

I see the makings of good novel of film here. What if there was a secret insurance company, or a sect, that guaranteed that if you become infirmed, they would have a hit-man take you out? It could be triggered by a test they administer every year or so. If you fail, they shoot you. Then you would not have to deal with greedy family or conservators. It would be a self-destruct contract.

MIT says "Tin-Foil Hats Don't Work"

I read on the net today that tin-hoil hats do not work. In fact, the MIT study demonstrates that some models of tin-foils hats actually amplify the signals that they are designed to shield the wearer from!

Read it here!

'Glow in the dark' pork chops

Here in Australia, the New South Wales Food Authority today told the public not to worry after a Sydney resident reported glow-in-the-dark pork chops in their fridge. The authority claims that the organism that causes the luministic glow is harmless, but you should probably NOT eat the glowing meat.

Well no shit, Sherlock...

I can see it now... Wife to husband at dinner:

"Honey! They had a sale on pork chops at the supermarket today. They have a new brand called 'Chernobal Farms'. And look at the money we can save on dinner candles!"

Sony went too far this time

In another example of the music industry's sheer arrogance, Sony was slammed by the Homeland Security Office for their latest little trick they tried to pull on the public.

Sony Music secretly started hiding software on their music CD's called XCP. The problem with this is that the program installs itself in your computer without your knowledge. It buries itself deep within the operating system using a method called "rootkit".

Once embedded into your computer, this little program prevents you from copying the music to MP3 (so you can download it to your iPod). It also tracks what music you play and reports it to Sony. All of this without your knowledge or consent.

In addition, this little program can be exploited by hackers and viruses to allow access to your computer without your knowledge.

" It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. "

If you attempt to remove this little program, you will find that there is no way to do it. If you are very technically savvy and dig it out, you will probably find that it renders your CD ROM drive useless.

If I recall, writing a piece of software that installs itself without your knowledge or consent for the express purpose of restricting your computer system is illegal. That is what viruses do. Sony claims it is not a virus. But this program walks, talks, and quacks like a virus. I'd say it is a virus.

So does Microsoft and the Office of Homeland Security. Today, Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security, said

"It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days."

This comment was aimed squarely at Sony.

Microsoft and all of the major anti-virus vendors are putting out fixes that will disable Sony's evil little gift to the world. Sony has agreed to stop putting XCP on their disks.... for now.

In praise of mobile phone cameras

My V3 Razr

Even though I work in IT and deal with software and complex computer systems all day long, I am not a gadget freak. I do not own the latest and greatest version of anything. I don't even wear a watch. I own a small, old fashion CRT television with rabbit ears. No satellite, cable, or anything. My only computer is a 3 year old laptop that doesn't even have any games on it. I don't own a camera, an iPod, a radio, or really anything.

The only "nerdy" gadget I own is a 3 year old simple Palm Pilot PDA which I use for the basic functions: contacts, appointments, and information archive. No Wifi crap. No games. No email. No internet everywhere. I frankly couldn't care less. I just need help remembering names, phone numbers, and appointments.

A few months ago I needed to get a new mobile phone. When shopping around, I quickly discovered that most of the phone models offered these days come with a digital camera. My feeling about cameras on phones is that it is a waste of space, money, and battery power. I simply want a phone that works well, is easy to use, and is small. If I want to take pictures, I'll buy me a digital camera that does the job right. I'm not going to bother with some half-ass excuse for a camera jammed into a cell phone.

Then I found a phone that I fell in love with. The Motorola V3 Razr. I liked it because it is small, flat, and strong. It fits perfectly in my back pocket. It is quad-band, so I can use it anywhere in the world. And the thing I liked about it most. The keys are big, easy to use, and easy to read. It also has a nice big bright screen too. It was everything I was looking for.

Telstra Mobile had a sale, so I bought one. I also noticed that it comes with a camera. "I'll never use that" .... so I thought.

The ads for phones with cameras and mobile services project an image of using the camera to capture all the fun you are having at bars, parties, the beach, dating, etc. And then using the mobile service to send these images to your friends to make them envious of your glamorous life. Who cares if that photo cost you $2 to send? It will make them green with envy!

Guess what I use my phone's camera for? I use it to remember where I parked my car.

Sexy, no?

Being a 42 year old divorced male working too hard, I don't have a glamorous life. My life is far more mundane, with my day to day struggles of keeping up with my workload, home, health, and commitments to friends and family. What the hell is there to take pictures of?

You know the saying... "A picture is worth a thousand words"? I got to thinking about the camera in my phone, and I realized that it makes a perfect notepad. So now whenever I see something that I want need to remember later, I simply take a picture of it.

For example, like where I left my car.

I also find it very handy to take pictures of phone numbers, business names, or addresses that I need later. When I am reading the newspaper or a magazine at my coffee shop and I see an article or ad that I'm interested in, I take a picture of it.

I also find it handy for automobile and handyman work. Before I take something apart, I take photos of it so I can remember EXACTLY how it looks assembled, or where a part goes. It really helps when you are putting an engine together and end up with an extra part or bolt that you don't remember where it went.

When working on the house, I find it easy to take pictures of what I need, or are working on, then reviewing it when I get to the hardware store. I keeps me from forgetting to buy things, or trying to describe something to a clueless clerk.

So there you go. I've discovered, to my complete amazement, that I enjoy having the camera function on my phone. But I'm sure that Motorola and Telstra will be seriously disappointed in my reasons. Perhaps they can create an ad campaign for us middle age boomers showing a frazzled mom using her phone camera to remember where she left her car at the mega-mall parking lot. Not sexy... but practical.

Spider causes freeway pile up in Perth

Huntsman Spider

Yesterday, I heard that a spider caused a pile up on the freeway here in Perth. A woman was driving on the freeway and lowered her sun visor to block the sun in her eyes. A Huntsman spider fell out and landed on her. She freaked, lost control of her car, and crashed.

I also heard that a large, burly man was one of the first to come over to her to offer assistance. When he heard what happened, he ran away. He must have been afraid of spiders.

I don't blame her. I'd freak too if a Huntsman landed on my head or lap while I was driving.

Huntsman spiders are ugly critters. I mentioned them in my blog back in 2001 when I first moved to Australia. They can be quite large, the body the size of a golf ball, and when their long legs spread full out, about the size of a small dinner plate. Most that I've seen and captured are about the size of my palm. And they are fast. Amazingly fast. I've never seen a spider that can move as fast as a Huntsman can.

They are harmless by Australian standards. They are poisonous. It won't kill you, but you will surely remember it. Unlike Redbacks (an Aussie version of a Black Widow), and Funnel-Web Spiders (very poisonous!) which will chase and attack you if you get near them, Huntsman spiders are pretty docile.

Speaking of spiders and cars. My little Ford has become the happy mobile home for an ever growing family of Redback spiders. You can tell there is a Redback because of the distinctive web they weave. It is a mess, like candy floss. It looks like they were drunk when they wove it.

For the last six months, a Redback has taken up residence in the right hand mirror. I've tried washing him out with the hose, but he is still there. I've never actually seen him. He hides deep inside the mirror housing. But every morning I have to clear his web off the mirror. So I know he is still there.

A couple of months ago I noticed that another redback moved in under the rear fender. There is a Redback web under the spare tire. Tried the hose again. No luck.

Yesterday I noticed that another cousin of the Redbacks moved into the other mirror on the left side of the car.

I really want to roll all down the windows and air the car out from time to time. But I am afraid that a family of spiders will crawl in overnight and take up residence inside. Then with my luck, I will get bit by a Redback while driving on the Freeway.

Well. I guess I will have to get my car fumigated. These little arachnoids aren't helping me pay for fuel, so NO MORE FREE RIDES!

Why aren't these thugs being charged?

Last week the Australian police busted a terror ring in Syndey and Melbourne. When the police took the suspects to court in Melbourne for arraignment, the press was outside to cover the event. So was a group of "supporters" of the suspects. These "supporters" were upset that their friends had been busted, so they took out their anger by attacking the press that was there.

The attack was all caught on video and broadcast through the nation. These 20 something thugs attacking, punching, and kicking a camera man outside the court. They didn't even attempt to hide their faces or their actions. They just brutally attacked an innocent man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I waited to find out what would happen to these thugs. I never heard anything about it since then.

I found out today what happened. NOTHING. Not a damn thing! No charges have been filed by the police or prosecutors.

They have it all on video tape. It happened in broad daylight infront of the police. It was broadcast on national television. The camera man was seriously hurt. Yet, no charges are being pressed.

Now it gets worse. It turns out these thugs in the warehouse of Wooloworths, a large Aussie grocery store chain. Their co-workers recognized the thugs and are refusing to work with them. They found out that the thugs had called in sick that Monday, but were seen later beating the shit out a camera man. But, Woolworths has threathened the jobs of the co-workers who are afraid of these thugs.

Read about it here!

What your gasoline dollars are paying for

Every time I fill up my fuel tank on my car, I get angry knowing that some of the money I'm paying is ended up supporting the sponsors of Saudi Arabian religious zealots.

Saturday, a Saudi Arabian high school chemistry teacher was sentenced to 3 years in prison and 750 lashes in public. His crime? Mocking Islam.

It turns out that he was sued for this "crime" by some students of his that had failed an exam. Back in 2004 he had made the mistake of asking the students of the school to examine the claims of the Saudi extremists who have been blowing up buildings and killing people. He asked the students to ponder if these nuts represent true Islam.

The Islamic teachers at the same school took offense at his questions. The told him that no matter what these people did, they were Muslim, and therefore could not be criticized. That is right. You can be a savage mass murderer of innocent women and children. But as long as you are Muslim, it is wrong to have other Muslims doubt your intentions.

So the Islamic Sudies teachers pushed the failing students to sue him for Mocking Islam.

Read about it here: Arab News, and The Religious Policeman.

I'm no tree hugging hippie. But please think about this the next time you go out to buy a car.

Insurance Companies are evil!

The husband of one of my co-workers died about 1 month ago. They have children at home. Then her mother died two weeks later. My co-worker has been devastated.

She has not been back to work yet. But I heard today that she is being given a hard time trying to get the insurance company that carried her husband's life insurance policy to pay up. So far, they have not.

When she called them up so start the claims process on his life insurance policy, they refused to speak to her. They claimed that their privacy policy only allows them to speak to the policy holder.

Uh... the policy holder is DEAD bozos! It is a life insurance policy. You are NEVER going to get a policy holder to call you to file a claim on a life insurance contract.

That didn't matter. They company refused to bend their policy. Finally she got a hold of a manager who accepted that she might have a claim. It took 3 days to get this far.

Now they are throwing other monkey wrenches into the works. They now refuse to pay a claim unless she gets his will "validated" by the Western Australian Supreme Court. WTF? What about the designated benefitiary on the policy (HIS OWN WIFE!). Not good enough. They claim that someone might come along later and claim they were due some of the insurance money and sue the insurance company.

Have you ever heard of such hogwash?

So now she has to pay $500 to start the processes of getting her husband's will "validated" by the courts. God knows how long that will take.

It gets worse. Now they company is insisting that she sign a waiver that will allow them to get all his Medicare records. They seem to be on a fishing expedition to find some clue that he might have been sick years ago when they took the policy out. Never mind that they are married, had children, and covering the risk of his death was a prudent thing to do.

In the last month, she has had to pay for 2 funerals, and she has not been able to work. They haven't even sent her any money at all to help her. Not even $10k to get her through.

This just pisses me off. They really need state insurance regulators in Australia like we have in the US. The only body that controls insurance companies here in a worthless and toothless federal agency in Canberra.

Jesus of the week

Stumbled across this great little website featuring Jesus in all his bizarre manifestations. There are truly demented ideas of there. This is hilarious. For example, here is a picture of jesus playing football. Notice that he is not wearing a helmet. Nor is he wearing a uniform.

In fact, I think it is down right unfair for the red team to get the son of God on their team and the other side doesn't.

Of course the advantages are probablly offset by Jesus being a lousy wide receiver, on account of those holes in his hands.

The "Religion of Peace" shows its true colors

Scanning the news this weekend, I can't help but notice that the "Religion of Peace" (Islam) continues to demonstrate how totally f**ked up it has become.

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Let us start in that model of Islamic life, Pakistan: This weekend in Lahore, crowds burned down two Christian churches, a priest's house, a school dorm, and the school, because someone started a rumor that a Christian had burned a Koran. Turns out there was no Koran burned. Instead, a Muslim man was angry because he had lost money gambling with a Christian man. So to get revenge, he started the rumor.

It amazes me that Muslims get to bent out of shape and go on murderous rampages simply because someone started a rumor that someone out there doesn't like their religion.

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Egypt: In Alexandria, riotious crowds attacked a church and stabbed a nun, simply because someone started a rumor that the church was selling a DVD of a play from two years ealrier. The play about a Christian, who switched to Islam, got disillusioned, and switched back.

In Islam, you are not allowed to switch back. Doing so is punishable by death is most Islamic countries. And you thought your cell phone contract was bad!

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Indonesia: The father of one of last month's Bali suicide bombers, who walked into a Bali restaurant and blew himself up, claims that his son was "just a normal kid".

If that is normal, then you have some pretty f**ked-up kids dude.

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Indonesia (again!): Last week the Indonesian police found and killed one of JI's master bomb makers, Azahari Husin's. In his house, police found 30 bombs that he had made. It appears that he was planning for a mass bombing "party" over Christmas of Christian chuches in Java.

What a nice guy. That is the way to show those evil Indonesian Christians what you think of them.

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Indonesia (once more!): Recently, 3 teenage girls were ambushed and beheaded by local Muslim fanatics who want to start a religous war. On Tuesday, two more teenager grisl were shot in the face in the same area, for being Christian.

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Phillipines: For the last few days, the Phillipine Army has been engaged in all out warfare with al-Qaeda linked Islamic insugency rebels. 20 people have been killed in the last 3 days.

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Jordan: As you know, Iraqi suicide bombers walked into 3 hotels in Amnan and blew themselves up, killing dozens of people.

Here is the sick part. A husband and wife team of suicide bombers walked into the middle of a wedding to do this. The husband suceeded. His wife's bomb failed, and she fled.

I can't comprehend how screwed up one has to be to think that this is good. What on earth motivated her to try to kill as many innocent people as possible. Didn't it occur to her, even for a second, as she walked into the wedding reception and saw the familes, wives, children, grandparents, etc, that murdering them for no reason might be wrong.

She claims that after she tried to detonate her vest, and it failed, her husband pushed her out of the room and blew himself up. What was up with that? This is what I think. I think he rigged her vest to not blow. He knew it was not going to work. He didn't want her to come along for his journey because he was convinced that he was going to heaven and get his 72 virgins. Why in the hell would he want his wife around He was looking forward to his personal orgy in the sky.

These are really sick times, people.

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Lastly, I ran across a LA Times article that asks muslims WHY... Why are they tolorating this madness done in their name? The author asks five questions of Muslims who claim that Islam is the relgion of peace.

November 13, 2005

THE RIOTING IN France by primarily Muslim youths and the hotel bombings in Jordan are the latest events to prompt sincere questions that law-abiding Muslims need to answer for Islam's sake, as well as for the sake of worried non-Muslims.

Here are five of them:

(1) Why are you so quiet?

Since the first Israelis were targeted for death by Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up in the name of your religion and Palestinian nationalism, I have been praying to see Muslim demonstrations against these atrocities. Last week's protests in Jordan against the bombings, while welcome, were a rarity. What I have seen more often is mainstream Muslim spokesmen implicitly defending this terror on the grounds that Israel occupies Palestinian lands. We see torture and murder in the name of Allah, but we see no anti-torture and anti-murder demonstrations in the name of Allah.

There are a billion Muslims in the world. How is it possible that essentially none have demonstrated against evils perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam? This is true even of the millions of Muslims living in free Western societies. What are non-Muslims of goodwill supposed to conclude? When the Israeli government did not stop a Lebanese massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982, great crowds of Israeli Jews gathered to protest their country's moral failing. Why has there been no comparable public demonstration by Palestinians or other Muslims to morally condemn Palestinian or other Muslim-committed terror?

(2) Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?

If Israeli occupation is the reason for Muslim terror in Israel, why do no Christian Palestinians engage in terror? They are just as nationalistic and just as occupied as Muslim Palestinians.

(3) Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?

According to Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy, of the world's 47 Muslim countries, only Mali is free. Sixty percent are not free, and 38% are partly free. Muslim-majority states account for a majority of the world's "not free" states. And of the 10 "worst of the worst," seven are Islamic states. Why is this?

(4) Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?

Young girls in Indonesia were recently beheaded by Muslim murderers. Last year, Muslims — in the name of Islam — murdered hundreds of schoolchildren in Russia. While reciting Muslim prayers, Islamic terrorists take foreigners working to make Iraq free and slaughter them. Muslim daughters are murdered by their own families in the thousands in "honor killings." And the Muslim government in Iran has publicly called for the extermination of Israel.

(5) Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?

No church or synagogue is allowed in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban destroyed some of the greatest sculptures of the ancient world because they were Buddhist. Sudan's Islamic regime has murdered great numbers of Christians.

Instead of confronting these problems, too many of you deny them. Muslims call my radio show to tell me that even speaking of Muslim or Islamic terrorists is wrong. After all, they argue, Timothy McVeigh is never labeled a "Christian terrorist." As if McVeigh committed his terror as a churchgoing Christian and in the name of Christ, and as if there were Christian-based terror groups around the world.

As a member of the media for nearly 25 years, I have a long record of reaching out to Muslims. Muslim leaders have invited me to speak at major mosques. In addition, I have studied Arabic and Islam, have visited most Arab and many other Muslim countries and conducted interfaith dialogues with Muslims in the United Arab Emirates as well as in the U.S. Politically, I have supported creation of a Palestinian state and supported (mistakenly, I now believe) the Oslo accords.

Hundreds of millions of non-Muslims want honest answers to these questions, even if the only answer you offer is, "Yes, we have real problems in Islam." Such an acknowledgment is infinitely better — for you and for the world — than dismissing us as anti-Muslim.

We await your response.