The Ultraviolet Garden

War is now a permanent export of the USA. So are the attendant war crimes.

And anyone who thinks US security interests are being improved by those ghastly facts on the ground is a damned fool. —jk

Read more here.

…a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell—mouths mercy, and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules and foregiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him! —Twain, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger

The house feels empty as hell without Lucky. We’ll always remember her sweetness. She came with her own sound effects. Sometimes she sounded like General Cornrow Wallace! She’d roll up on you like that.

Ptttttttdddddddddrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

That’s when she felt playful.

*sigh*

Onward.

I’ve been piddling around with wordpress themes. I’m using “LightWord” now.

I modified it slightly. I’m actually quite satisfied with it. It meets all of my requirements now. I still don’t understand why so many ppl place the comment section in the byline area.

In this case the theme didn’t even have a byline; it was easy enough to add.

I’ve also added a “like/dislike” plugin but only the comments are showing the rating. I need to figure out how to make it work on posts. If you use wordpress, maybe you’ll find these useful:

Like/Dislike Comment Rating worked for me.

Like/Dislike Post Rating didn’t work for me. I’ll figure it out eventually. Probably something minor.

I never know which plugins I’ll end up keeping. Usually I just play with things, if they are useful they’ll be kept. I liked “The Wall” plugin, but since it had to keep refreshing to load the most recent wall items it made my logs practically useless.

Although a simple filter would fix that problem. I’m just too lazy to do that. Maybe later.

Right now I’m working on the RWA Scale (see “Altemeyer’s Authoritarians“). I can’t use his questions. But if I come up with my own questions it should be fine. Check out his book if you haven’t. (It’s free. Also he prefers that ppl be introduced to his RWA Scale via the book. In this way, they learn that it may—or may not—be useful for individuals; it’s more geared toward getting average trends in groups of persons.)

When he asked me to remove the RWA survey, of course I complied. Nothing to do with copyright it’s just general courtesy. But, as his own survey predicted in my case, I have my own opinion on this.

Given that, do I even really need to take the survey myself? (Of course, I did. I scored very low, obviously.)

I’m also interested in doing an equivalent of the Social Dominance Scale as well. I can’t use his exact questions, but again you can’t copyright an idea, only the expression of it. And as long as I’m not using his questions, I should be okay. I’ve actually got a good idea about this but we’ll see. What I’d like to do is use actual things authoritarians or their followers have said—quotations, in other words—as the items on the survey. Looking at many of these, I could easily come up with quotations from “The Georges”. (Of the Bush persuasion, of course.)

There’s not exactly a shortage of folks who are quotable in this respect.

Have a good day all.

This is a very old scanner model. They’re not made anymore but a few folks out there still have their old Sportcats. I had this model in the ’90s:

The frustrating thing was that I had to call Uniden up and ask for the IF because it wasn’t printed in the manual! Can you believe that shit? The woman on the phone had no clue what I was talking about. I asked her to excuse herself and put someone on who knows what an intermediate frequency is, and to then give that information TO ME.

Finally a guy came on who knew what an IF was but he had a hard time finding the IF on this model. He finally found it and gave it to me, but I lost it. It was yrs ago, after all.

But recently I needed it again.

I wasn’t able to find this information on the ‘net. Anywhere. Therefore, I figured it out for myself and offer the info here for others. You ready? Here goes.

And the Intermediate Frequency for the scanner models SC150B (black) and SC150Y (yellow) is…

(drumroll…)

21.6MHz

That’s twenty-one point six megahertz.

Good luck navigating the reverberations every 21.6 megahertz! I understand, now, why double and triple conversion is a good thing. Glad we got a new model, now we use both.

I still think the signals they’ve recently made illegal for us to hear (signals that were perfectly legal in the 90s) should belong to whomever has the receiver to pick it up.

Provided, of course, that they keep printing and including warnings on any products (like baby monitors and wireless phones) that DO broadcast, no matter how weakly the signal. This way the user becomes responsible for not revealing personal information (like credit card numbers) on their cordless phones.

And everyone should know that their baby monitor broadcasts a signal. Do you want strangers in your ‘hood listening to your baby’s bedroom? Creepy! So just be aware. Nobody can do that job but you. RYFMP (Read Your Fucking Manuals, People).

Wouldn’t you rather be responsible and more “aware” of the world around you? Rather than having a Nanny State, as Ron Paul put it recently?

What was it Twain said about censorship? Oh yeah:

Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it. —Mark Twain

Abusive cops are costing already cash-strapped cities across the U.S. millions of dollars in settlements, but civil rights activists and attorneys warn that the payouts will continue unless the criminal justice system begins to prosecute its out-of-control officers.

Rafael Perez, a member of the CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) Gang Unit, testified as a police informant that he and other officers often falsely accused and framed gang members for crimes.

In Chicago the mayor has put city employees on unpaid leave to help fill a budget shortfall. But a little over a year ago, Chicago officials agreed to pay $19.8 million to four men who suffered police torture under then-commander Jon Burge. Some $30 million has been spent to settle assorted lawsuits connected with the case, which stretches back to abuses during the 1980s and 1990s.

The $30 million payout doesn’t count millions of dollars spent defending Burge after he was fired by the police department in 1993…

Current budget problems might cause taxpayers to take a look at how their money is spent, but in Chicago $18 million was paid to the family of LaTanya Haggerty, a black woman shot to death by police in 1999. In 1995, a New York Times editorial noted that in the “cash-starved” Big Apple, brutality settlements and court judgments cost the city $87 million over five years.

See entire article at Frost Illustrated.

Highlights from part 2:

Haddad said that in a 2004 lawsuit he filed in Oakland, the police chief acknowledged a longstanding pattern of improper strip searches of people on the street. After four years, his firm uncovered some 40 victims of the strip searches. In 2008, although a federal judge ruled that the policies were unconstitutional, the city has not revised the policy and continues to use it.

…it takes at least $50,000 to even bring a civil rights lawsuit alleging police brutality. Such cases are difficult to win because police officers are protected by the principle of qualified immunity…

…police officers have strong police unions that put a great deal of pressure on police chiefs, district attorneys and whoever they feel is a threat to cops who step out of line…

Click here for Part 2 in its entirety.

I’m still collecting info on the Oscar Grant case:

Did a cop affair spark the murder of Oscar Grant?

Burris, attorney for Oscar Grant’s family, thinks maybe.

Burris’ complaint, aside from alleging the affair, contends that this female officer “got in the face of the young men and repeatedly pointed her Taser at them, threatening to tase them in the face”.

Later in the article Burris says he will provide their names if asked.

Well. We already have one of their names: Anthony/Tony “Punchy” Pirone. We know this because in his defense he stated he was trying to protect a female coworker. That’s what Punchy Pirone’s lawyer, Bill Rapoport, is using as Punchy’s defense. In that defense, Rapoport claimed that the female in question was Pirone’s partner.

(If you saw the footage you’d know that there’s no way this is factual. But the claim itself does reveal what Burris called “misplaced chivalry”. I prefer to think of it as the histrionics of a puerile idiot.)

Anyway. So—get the name of Pirone’s female partner and we know her name, too. Her name should be known: after all, she also contributed to this unnecessary murder.

Hope you two weren’t married to other ppl. You know. Wouldn’t want your lives to be ruined over such blasé events in your lives such as terrorizing and murdering citizens.

“Punchy Pirone”…

Great post about cop mobster Tony (AKA “Punchy”) Pirone. Kudos, Packratt. Also what a great moniker. That’s what I’m going to call him from now on.

SF Examiner published some interesting observations:

BART’s initial probe into the fatal shooting New Year’s Day of an unarmed passenger by a transit agency police officer is under fire after recently released footage of the incident shows another officer punching the Hayward father in the head prior to the shooting. That’s after BART announced it had completed its internal investigation into the death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III and police Chief Gary Gee said only the shooter, former Officer Johannes Mehserle, was being investigated and that the other officers involved had followed proper police procedure.

Well now. Isn’t that interesting.

And, Gary Gee gets named their “Dim Bulb of the Week”:

What: Chief Gee was already under fire for the botched BART Police investigation of former officer Johannes Mehserle’s fatal shooting of an unarmed 22-year-old passenger, which sparked destructive riots across Oakland. Now Gee has cluelessly sent a memo on his own letterhead instructing rank-and-file officers how to send money, food, books and letters to Mehserle at Santa Rita Jail where he is being held on murder charges.

Why: This latest tin-eared episode surfaced at the same time as a previously unseen cell-phone video showing a second BART officer apparently hitting an unresisting Oscar Grant III just before the shooting — contradicting the BART internal report that all other officers at the scene behaved professionally.

Fallout: Attorney John Burris, representing the dead man’s family in a $25 million claim against BART, said Grant’s mother was “appalled” by the memo. She has every right to be.

Meanwhile, Punchy Pirone’s lawyer Bill Rapoport is so desperate that he’s actually going to argue that Punchy was provoked. And that Punchy was trying to protect his partner, a female officer.

It is contrary to our own eyes. Several men, including Oscar Grant, were seated with their backs against the wall, surrounded by cops. Out of the blue, and for no apparent reason, Punchy Pirone can be seen marching into the frame from the lefthand side. He’s pointing at a seated Oscar Grant. You can clearly see Punchy directing speech, seemingly toward Oscar Grant, along with the pointing.

You can clearly see Oscar responding to what might have been an order. After all, if you were seated on your ass, with your back to the wall, surrounded by cops… and a big, burly cop comes aggressively toward you, pointing at you and directing his speech at you… you’d probably stand up as well. Maybe you were told to stand up. Or maybe you were standing up to try to be polite, a trained social reflex: officer addresses you, you sit up straight and comply with orders.

See, once Punchy Pirone arrives in the immediate area (which had been controlled before his immediate presence), he physically assaults Oscar Grant and is screaming at him.

Watch the video again. Closely.

How any sane person can say that it was necessary for anyone’s safety, that Punchy Pirone walk up onto a controlled scene, and assault someone? Turning it, ultimately, into a murder scene?

As Oscar was seated, surrounded by officers, he could not have been assaulting Punchy’s female partner. It is scientifically impossible. How can you do both at the same time? Unless we’re talking about theoretical quantum physics or something, where… in this universe Punchy Pirone will be rolling up on and then punching and screaming at an unarmed man sitting on the floor, but in another universe Punchy Pirone will be walking up to Oscar to give him a bouquet of roses and ask for his hand in marriage—and yet in another universe Punchy Pirone will be wearing a tutu and spinning ’round and ’round in a lovely pirouette. And so on.

It’s not possible. We’ve seen the videos. We know. We cannot unknow, after having seen it with our own eyes.

Amazon Unbox takes away your privacy and every conceivable consumer right you have, and then tells you that the goods you buy from them don’t belong to you… —Cory Doctorow

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/15/amazon-unbox-to-cust.html

Give a man a reputation as an early riser and that man can sleep till noon. —Mark Twain

Mother Teresa, AKA Hell’s Angel or The Ghoul of Calcutta:

The Catholic version of Ed Gein.

I wonder if she masturbated.

Our troubles arise not so much from ignorance as from knowing so much that is not so. —Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne)

ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and — as importantly — to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They’re allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.

They’re not protecting “sources.” The people who fed them the bentonite story aren’t “sources.” They’re fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds. That is why this is one of the most extreme journalistic scandals that exists, and it deserves a lot more debate and attention than it has received thus far. —Glenn Greenwald

The same Government lab where the anthrax came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.

Thanks to jk for alerting me to this article, you can find some of his sites (Brina Blue, Tarotica and The Guillotine) linked in the blogroll on the right. It’s been said of truth, that it will set you free, but first it will piss you off. jk’s out there pissing ppl off. Which, most of the time, that’s a sign that you should probably go read him.