perfidy

Go look. People died so that you could read this. Well, only in a very indirect sense. But it's good stuff.

This message from the Minister of Minor Perfidy: Thank you for your cooperation

From the Washington Post

A federal judge Wednesday ordered online auction house eBay to pay $29.5 million to a Virginia inventor who accused the company of stealing his ideas.

But U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Friedman said he would not require the Internet giant to stop using the disputed features in the case, saying lawyers for plaintiff Thomas Woolston failed to show that he would suffer irreparable harm if the court did not issue an injunction.

A Norfolk federal jury decided in May that eBay willfully infringed on Woolston's patents, which presented a way for people to purchase items over the Internet for a fixed price. The jury said that eBay's "Buy It Now" option, which allows auction surfers to do the same thing, infringed on Woolston's patent.

Friedman's ruling is less than the $35 million that the jury recommended at the end of a five-week trial. Because the jury found the violation was willful, the judge could have tripled the jury's award.

It's hard to say which is less able to cope with the effects of technology on society: the law, or the judges that apply it so foolishly.

Because it is.

The last chronological buffer between me and 30 years old has worn down to nothing. Next year at this time, I will turn in my hipster ticket, my punk-rock credentials, and my Funk Express Card and settle down to a dull if pleasant life as a thirtysomething.

But until then I'm still 29, and

You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub
Look mami I got the X if you into taking drugs
I'm into having sex, I ain't into making love
So come give me a hug if you into getting rubbed

I am now reading, for the first time, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? On page 20 of my edition, I read this:

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, and the dead machines which hadn't worked in all the time Isadore had lived there. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it - the silence - meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears, but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came, it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not reign back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.

Damn. 

[Update]: I originally posted this back in May. When the archives were being moved over, the date didn't get set right. But, it's still true today.

" I have always thought that the criminalization of homosexual acts was both foolish, and inhumane, and un-Christian. I am no longer so sure. Perhaps our grandfathers were wiser than us. Perhaps there are some things that we, the normal majority, SHOULD, deliberately and consciously, disapprove and marginalize."

Dumbass.

An article on CNN.com suggests that Germany's employment woes might be entirely their own dang fault.

"Germany's education system, like its economy, was once considered the pride of Europe. Worries about the stagnating economy have recently preoccupied Germans, and now they are realizing their schools are also in trouble. . . .

The real wake-up call came last year when an international test of 15-year-olds ranked Germany 21st out of 32 leading industrialized nations in reading, mathematics and science. . . .

[T]ypically, German pupils are home by early afternoon -- after three hours of classes in elementary school and less than five hours at middle and high schools. . . .

Ultimately, the problems in Germany's education system translate to young people poorly prepared for the job market, while companies complain they can't find qualified graduates.
Despite more than 11 percent unemployment, Germany has to attract highly trained immigrant workers to fill an estimated 100,000 high-tech jobs.

What the heck is going on over there? I don't mean to bash on Germany-- I love the nation, its people, its cars and beer-- but I'm just a little surprised that so much is going wrong in a nation that was until recently a powerhouse. (Of course, some of this may well be regional, as NDR pointed out yesterday in the comments. But still...)

Under a recent decision by the Supreme Court, the Office of Homeland Security is detaining all legal immigrants with convictions for crimes in their past. No problem?

Riiiight.

The Boston Globe today profiles 22-year old Edna Borges, a resident of the US since age 2, who was busted for shoplifting clothing back in her teenage years. She is now a responsible mother of two, with a job. She is also a prisoner.

Edna Borges thought it would take just a few minutes to check in with officials at the Bureau of Homeland Security last Friday, as she has been doing voluntarily every three months. Instead, Borges ended the day in a Bristol County jail, separated from her 10-day-old infant daughter and 2-year-old son, with no idea when she might be released. . . .

Immigration officials said Borges was detained because of a recent US Supreme Court ruling that mandates the jailing of immigrants facing deportation because they have committed crimes. The ruling affects immigrants even if they have already served a sentence and are considered to pose no threat. It stems from a California case involving South Korean native Hyung Joon Kim and is expected to affect about 15,000 immigrants a year.

''The law says mandatory detention,'' said Amy Otten, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Homeland Security. ''Anyone who falls under the Kim decision has to be detained.''

Borges, who is scheduled for a hearing before an immigration judge this morning, got her first glimpse of her two children on Wednesday through closed circuit television in a courtroom, said her lawyer, Susan Church of the law firm Salsberg and Schneider.

Borges, who was born in Portugal to a Cape Verdean family, was facing deportation because of a 1999 shoplifting conviction, for which she has served six months probation. Borges was 17 when she shoplifted the clothing on two occasions, Church said. In one incident, the clothes were worth less than $150. In the other, the items were worth more than $150, the lawyer said.

I'm so glad the Office of Homeland Security is on the case! Otherwise this hardened menace would be stalking the streets of Dorchester, raising children, working, and going to church! Kudos to the Office of Homeland Security for helping to keep our country safe from working mothers with wild teenage pasts.

Buncha craven, pencil-headed morons.

I started this post as a comment to Ross' statements in the comments to Pythagosaurus' "You Think We Got It Bad? or, Ambling into Mediocrity" post of yesterday. It got a little long, so here it is:

Ross, your anti-Americanism seems to have taken over your brain. While the United States is not home to two-dozen languages and cultures, it is home to a melange of hundreds of languages and cultures. The diversity of this country is remarkable, in landscape, traditions, music, food and unique turns of phrase that can be found in the small nooks and crannies.

I agree with Pythagosaurus completely on the cultural issues - there is diversity, albeit within a larger American cultural frame. One of the reasons for this is that America is not an ethnic culture, one that grew up out of one people sharing history, language, and the rest. America is different; in that there is an American culture that anyone can join simply by accepting a (very) few core ideals. And then, they are part of the history of America, share its culture, while retaining many aspects of their own. And the rest of us benefit from this as well. Even you could Ross, though you are a Canadian.

So you think traveling within the United States is going from one Walmart to another? I think you need to twist the little knob on your head. Sure, there are Walmarts and the chain restaurants. Americans appreciate efficiency. But there are also the little diners, with the old guys at the lunch counter smoking Pall Malls and trying to decide how much of an asshole the local mayor is. There are festivals, fairs, monuments to civil war veterans, local historical societies running museums devoted to the story of pumpkin horticulture in a three county area. 

There are Ethiopian restaurants in Columbus. Vast numbers of ethnic restaurants everywhere. Sporting events, bitter rivalries, local beers, roadside attractions like the world's largest ball of string, just because some weirdo thought it'd be a good idea. The beautiful and the strange, the ugly and the wonderful, and more scenic landscapes than you can imagine. If many people don't see the value of hopping on a plane and ending up in Trondheim it's because you can hop on a plane in Indianapolis and end up in New York, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Miami, New Orleans or Chicago with equal ease, rent an apartment and get a job. You have been able to do that in the United States for over two hundred years, and it is nice that the Europeans have finally caught up.

For all that you are claiming that the United States has suddenly rushed to set up a fascist state to ensure its security from strange and disturbing Europeans, even the Patriot Act doesn't even come close. Johno and I have criticized it here, and we have not been arrested. Nor are we likely to. Despite the clear threat from Middle Eastern men between the ages of 20 and 40 hiding in our midst to prepare attacks on innocent civilians, how did we react? Vast expulsions, internment camps, beatings and lynchings? I don't remember that happening. Our president, in the wake of the most horrific attack we have ever experienced encouraged everyone to be nice to Arabs. And everyone agreed.

The EU is making a deliberate set of choices when it comes to personal freedom. And I fear that they are the wrong choices. Unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels make regulations that affect almost 300 million people. Those people have no choice in selecting those bureaucrats. And those regulations decide whether you can form a business, publish a paper, what you say on the internet, and ten thousand other things. And there is no equivalent in the EU constitution of the Bill of Rights. The list of rights in the proposed EU constitution lists the rights of government, not of people. There is little real difference between personal freedom and freedom from regulation. The relationship between government and people is one that Americans appreciate more than anyone else. We argue about it constantly, and reprove our representatives when they overstep the bounds that we have set. We do not complacently accept dictates from elites. (At least, not all of us.)

The relative strengths of the European and American economy are related to this freedom. The more that the EU superstate layers the European economy in regulation, the more protectionist it gets, the weaker they will be. Chronic unemployment has been a feature of European economic life for decades. That we have unemployment now, in a recession, is unremarkable. The policies of Japan and Europe have kept them in the doldrums for well over a decade, during a period that America and to a lesser extent Britain were experiencing unprecedented growth and prosperity. This recession will end, likely soon by all indications. But where will Europe go? We prosper because we are free.

Ross, I resisted saying this in the last comment I made, but: if American sucks so completely; if we are a nation of provincial rubes who can't understand the wonders that the rest of the world has to offer; and have lost and forgotten freedom of expression and are busily setting up a police state; why are you living in Northern Virginia, and having this argument with two Americans on their website? And I don't mean this facetiously, in an "America, love it or leave it!" way. You are often hyper critical of America, which is your right. Obviously something compelled you to leave the country of your birth to come here. If America is as bad as you say, what are the reasons you came here?

Now this, this is effing crazy.

This is just sad, and I'm sorry to do this, but from Ananova comes this reason why bureaucracy is not efficent as government.

German penises 'too small for EU condoms' Germany has demanded a rethink on EU guidelines on condom size after finding its average penis did not measure up.

Doctors around Essen were ordered by the government's health department to check out the average size suggested by Brussels.

They reported the EU has overestimated the size of the average penis by almost 20% and insist other countries will discover the same.

Urologist Gunther Hagler, head of the team compiling the research, said: "By checking hundreds of patients we found German penises were too small for standard EU condoms.

(I like the bit about insisting "other countries will discover the same." Even though it's a fair point, it comes off a little bit sheepish.)

Why is the EU in the business of setting condom size-standards?