Category: Issues of the Day

Guy ‘Regrets’ Selling iPhone

“According to the owners of the bar where [the prototype iPhone] had been found, he [the finder] never told anyone there that he’d found the phone. If he had, he’d have learned that the Apple engineer who’d lost it had come back to the bar on several occasions to see if it had been found yet.”

The Consumerist

I guess this finder guy skipped kindergarten or Sunday school. I remember learning way back then that you don’t just keep things you find. You try to find the owner. Or you give it to someone who will try to find the owner.

You don’t sell it to the press.

This is not a first amendment thing as some of the media has been trying to claim.

Update 12:20 PM MDT: Threat Level | Wired.com is a better source.

Oil spill approaches Louisiana coast

Late on the night of April 20th, 50 miles from the shore of Louisiana, a fire broke out aboard the Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig under lease by BP, with 126 individuals on board. After a massive explosion, all but 11 of the crew managed to escape as the rig was consumed by fire, later collapsing and sinking into the Gulf. Safeguards set in place to automatically cap the oil well in case of catastrophe did not work as expected, and now an estimated 5,000 barrels (over 200,000 gallons) of crude oil is pouring into the Gulf of Mexico every day – and could possibly continue to do so for months as complicated efforts are made to stop the leak. Collected here are several recent photos of the developing situation along Louisiana’s Gulf Shore – one with the potential to eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in scope and damage. (32 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Desert Derangement Syndrome

While the fringe that controls state government goes after the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country with a law that makes a mockery of American values, Arizona crumbles. Its state parks are orphans, left to volunteers. Its university system is being slashed and picked to death. They even considered a plan to sell the House and Senate buildings. What business will want to relocate to such a place?

Above from a piece by Timothy Egan.

Best definition of the day

“I mentioned a police state. A police state is one where any cop can pull you aside for any reason and demand papers. If you don’t have them, you’re guilty till proven innocent. The overwhelming majority of those ‘reasonably suspected’ of being illegal immigrants will be Mexican. What we have here, regardless of how it came about (and I agree the Feds have a terrible record in policing the Southern border), this is a police state directed at a minority, innocent and guilty. That’s the reality.”

Andrew Sullivan

Best line of the day, so far (and it’s 9PM)

“I’m glad I’ve already seen the Grand Canyon.

“Because I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into.”

Linda Greenhouse, New York Times

It’s a column you should read.

Best lines of the day

Timothy Egan has some things to add about the Roethlisberger business, including this:

What, exactly does it take for Nike to dump a jock? Dog-fighting will do it. After Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick pleaded guilty to running a felony dog-fighting ring, Nike took action. “We consider any cruelty to animals inhumane and unacceptable,” the company said at the time.

But cruelty to women is O.K. I don’t know how else to read the company’s inconsistent stand. Here is a guy who treats women like garbage, yet a company that boasts of having humane corporate values uses him as their front man. Ditto Tiger Woods. Same with Kobe Bryant after a rape allegation, a case that was later dropped.

When airplanes meet ash clouds

Salon’s “Ask the Pilot” has some interesting information. A sample:

I’ve been asked why flights headed beyond Europe simply cannot overfly the cloud, since it reportedly tops out at around 35,000 feet, well below the ceilings of most commercial planes. One problem here is that a flight always must be able to descend to 10,000 feet in the event of a pressurization failure. This is true even when flying over high mountains; there is always an escape route that will allow for descent in a relatively short amount of time.

Another question I’m getting is why, flying between the U.S. and Europe, planes cannot circumvent the cloud by taking a southerly track across the ocean? The problem with this is mostly one of fuel capacity. Such a routing would be a lot longer in terms of miles, meaning longer flight times and probable payload restrictions. The reason commercial planes trace a northerly route between the U.S. and Europe, passing along the Canadian Maritimes, Newfoundland, and the U.K., is because that’s the shortest distance — a so-called great circle route. Going straight across the ocean between, say, New York and Rome, is considerably longer.

It’s always fascinating (to me at least) to get a piece of string and a globe and stretch the string the shortest distance between two points. Round objects are funny that way.

Byron update

Byron remains stranded in London. Among other arrangements he is booked on a flight from Madrid to Miami on FRIDAY (one week after his scheduled return).

If he can get train tickets, it’s 2½ hours from London to Paris, then just 13½ hours more from Paris to Madrid.

(Watch out for the pickpockets in Madrid, Byron. I lost $180 worth of pesetas there once.)

Every Mode but Silly Walks

Tanya mentioned the $5,100 cab fare in a comment. The New York times has the story. The report begins:

LONDON — For the man who worked at the Ministry of Silly Walks, travel chaos across the Continent was only a modest hurdle.

John Cleese, who starred in the high-stepping sketch for Monty Python, was stranded in Oslo on Friday after appearing on a television talk show. With flights grounded by the volcanic ash over northern Europe, Mr. Cleese found another way home to London: He caught a cab.

The Supremes

Timothy Egan suggests we need a little diversity on the Supreme Court. He begins:

At last count, there were about 200 law schools in the United States accredited by the American Bar Association, but apparently only two of them — Harvard and Yale — can be a path to serving on the highest court in the land.

It was surprising enough to see that with the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court will not have a single Protestant among its black-robed elite. But equally jaw-dropping was the fact that without Stevens, every member of the court has attended Harvard or Yale law school.

Income Tax

An income tax was first collected during the Civil War from 1862 to 1872. During the administration of President Grover Cleveland, the federal government again levied an income tax, enacted by Congress in 1894. However, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional the following year. Supporters of an income tax were forced then to embark on the lengthy process of amending the Constitution. Not until the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913 was Congress given the power “to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census of enumeration.”

Library of Congress

Arguing that the income tax is unconstitutional, as some do, is simply ignorance. It’s in an amendment, just like freedom of speech, right to bear arms and women’s suffrage.

The single mother’s manifesto

My god, I do love this woman.

J.K. Rowling writes about the British election. An excerpt:

Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say “it’s not the money, it’s the message”. When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron’s only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is “get married, and we’ll give you £150”, he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation.

How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life’s necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3am? Half a billion pounds, to send a message — would it not be more cost-effective, more personal, to send all the lower-income married people flowers?

Go read it all. It’s time well spent.

Thanks to Avelino for the link.

Best line of the day

“There’s just nothing quite like watching a major world religion screw up on a level rarely seen outside the banking industry.”

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Slate

She continues:

“So hats off the Catholic Church, which keeps trotting out grumpy old men to say terrible things on a pretty constant basis these days.”

Ms. Williams has details of the latest attempt to dig the hole even deeper.

Something to think about line of the day

“And what about all the progressives who screamed for years about the Bush administration’s tyrannical treatment of Jose Padilla?  Bush merely imprisoned Padilla for years without a trial.  If that’s a vicious, tyrannical assault on the Constitution — and it was — what should they be saying about the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s assassination of American citizens without any due process?”

Glenn Greenwald

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post reported today that President Obama has authorized “the targeted killing of an American citizen.”

As Greenwald notes, “No due process is accorded. No charges or trials are necessary. No evidence is offered, nor any opportunity for him to deny these accusations (which he has done vehemently through his family). None of that.”