Ordinary Nothing

The police, both here and in many (most? all?) other countries in the world, provide a short “emergency” phone number. The idea being that it will be easy to remember, work from all phones in all locations, and be fast to dial in case of a real emergency.

The police here in Israel also has such a number, 100.

Except, it would seem, sometimes they just don’t bother answering it.

Last Sunday (28 September 2008) I went with a friend to a restaurant in the Tel-Aviv north harbour area. On the way back to the car (around 22:45) we noticed a large group of kids around two bonfires which they started along the beach^[1]. About 5 meters from there stands a large sign with warnings about prohibited activities, and starting fires is explicitly listed there.

Normally I wouldn’t exactly mind, but those kids were loud and annoying; and those fires were quite large, with one of them burning really close to nearby plants. Plus, I was in a, ahem, fitting mood. So I decided to do my civic duty, and call the police to report the fires and the kids.

I dialled 100 on my cellphone. And waited. One ring, two ring, three rings, four rings, nothing. At this point most automatic answering machines would assume nobody’s answering, and pick up. But this is an a police centre that should be manned non-stop around the clock, so I guess they don’t have answering machines^[2]. I waited a bit more (1-2 rings) and still nothing. I was very surprised, and hang up.

My friend was also amazed that nobody picked up the phone. So he tried calling them himself, from his own cellphone. He waited for 13 rings. Nothing. Nobody answered.

Nobody tried to call us back to follow up later on, asking if there’s a problem and why we called the emergency police number. None of our cellphone numbers are blocked, so they could have seen these calls on their incoming call logs (if they bother keeping them).

Good things that it, while being something that should be reported to the police, wasn’t really an emergency.

1. well, technically along the bank of the Yarkon river, which connects to the sea at this area.[back]
2. And, when operating properly, they really shouldn’t need them, I agree.[back]

Last night I saw two cases of cars stuck by the side of the road, and in both cases the drivers behaved very oddly. Well, the second behaved oddly, the first was just a stupid idiot.

Right at the top

Let’s start with the second case. It involved a single car standing on the road’s shoulder. When I came closer I saw something large on the car’s roof. When I came closer I saw that it was the driver, just standing on the car.

I may be mistaken. It was night, and I was going over at about 100km/h (~62mph).

But if I’m wrong then it just means that, instead of a person standing on the car’s roof, there was a dressed mannequin standing on the car’s roof. I hardly think it’s better. Or that someone who would place a mannequin on the roof of their car is somehow less odd than someone who would stand on the roof of their car themselves.

Playing chicken

The first case involved a group of three cars standing on the shoulder of the road. Two of them first, very close by, and one about 80-100 meters down the road. None of them seemed crashed, or banged, so there probably wasn’t an accident, and I’m not sure why they stopped.

Now, I’ll take a little aside, and get back to the story in a few paragraphs. A while ago^[1] they passed a law here requiring people to carry light-reflecting vests in their cars, and to wear them whenever leaving the car^[2].

Personally I thought the law was silly. After all, if you stop the car because of some problem (usually an accident, or a mechanical problem that you want to check) you’ll stay near the car. Meaning that we’re not talking about passing drivers missing a lone standing person, but are rather concerned about a passing driver missing an entire car at the side. That’s… difficult. A driver will only fail to notice a whole car if they’re sleeping, or drunk, and in none of these cases wearing a light-reflecting vest will help. Actually, there aren’t any cases^[3] where a person in a light-reflecting vest, standing right next to a car, will be more visible than the car.

And a driver that sees a car on the side should, and would, expect people to be standing next to it, and so will pay attention, and keep a little distance.

There is, however, one case where wearing this vest isn’t just the law, but is also a good idea. The case where the person, on the side of a fast road, not only gets out of the car, but gets away from the car. Once a person is walking near the road by themselves, they’re hard to see.

Which takes us back to the story.

The guy driving the third car, 80-100 meters away, was walking slowly towards the two first cars.

And, despite the fact that the shoulder was wide enough to fit an entire car, he didn’t walk on the shoulder. He walked on the actual road, on the lane where cars were driving, near the edge of the shoulder.

And he did so without wearing the vest. At night.

I think quite a lot of people almost ran him over. And frankly, he would have deserved it. They, however, wouldn’t have, so it’s a good thing nothing happened (Probably. I did pass him while he was only half-way there, not all the way over)

1. One year? Two? It wasn’t exciting enough for me to remember the exact date[back]
2. When it’s not properly parked, but rather stopped on the roadside. Of course if you park your car normally, and go out on a sidewalk, you don’t need the vest.[back]
3. I mean real-world cases. If someone intentionally tries to camouflage their car then it can be done.[back]

Say you were sentenced to 30 months in prison for forgery. And say you think it’s the prosecutor’s fault (Because, after all, it can’t really be something you did, right?). What would you do?

That’s right, you’d try to get the prosecutor assassinated, to punish him for not being able to show on trial that you’re not really a dangerous criminal. Makes perfect sense.

Then you need to pick the right hitman. It’s complex. There are, for example, some things you may want to void:

1. Your first choice of a hitman should not be the judge that tried you. Judges make terrible assassins. And they often refuse these jobs. Go figure.
2. If you do want to hire the judge to be your assassin, make sure to offer enough money to make this a real offer. For example, a district court judge in Texas would probably expect much more than $5,000^[1].
3. If you do offer the judge the small money, and he turns you down, your next best option is not the lawyer who was your defense attorney during the trial. Lawyers are bad assassins as well. And your defense attorney knows what a slimeball you really are, even if he lied and said nice things about you during the trial.
4. If you do try for the defense attorney, at least offer him more money then you offered the judge. You should already know that’s not enough money by now. Defense attorneys often don’t earn that much less than judges. Not necessarily even the lousy ones.
5. Oh, and stick to your target. Don’t change your mind and ask him to actually kill the judge. Yes, it was very rude of the judge to turn down your offer. But killing a judge would cost extra. And besides, the prosecutor is still out there, right?
6. When you make all these offers, don’t write them on paper with your own handwriting. Don’t touch that paper with your fingers to add your fingerprints to it. Those things are, like, proof, you know? It can get you a much longer jail time than those forgery charges.

All very sensible and sound advice.

Someone didn’t get the memo. Probably didn’t get a lot of working braincells either.

Galveston County District Court Judge David Garner said Connelly, 34, of Santa Fe, was among those defendants who “think outside the box” for allegedly writing a letter offering him $5,000 to kill former prosecutor Donnie Quintanilla, now in private practice in Galveston.

Connelly wrote a second letter to his defense attorney, Houston lawyer Jonathan Cox, offering him $5,000 to kill Garner, special prison prosecutor Alice Gregg said.

He will get the jailtime, though. And hey, maybe the next judge would be more cooperative, who knows?

1. That’s not even a single month’s salary[back]

The last ones left a few months ago. This starts to feel like a recurring theme, the companies in nearby buildings are stationary, but the people trying to get the upper floors in our own building never stick for long.

The last ones were quiet, and we had little interaction with them. But the newcomers give a first impression that remind me more of the ones we had before.

They came around with the landlord, as he was showing them around the place. And no, I’m not sure what reason is there to show someone around after they already closed the deal. Presumably they got to see what they’re renting before that.

They were quite an odd looking pair (even number of odd people is a lousy pun, isn’t it?).

My boss asked the one that seemed in charge what business are they in.

Stocks.

Informative, and highly descriptive. So my boss asked for a few more details, trying to understand just what will we be getting.

Oh, you know, all sorts of stuff. Like, err, toys. Or computers. Stocks. All sorts of stuff.

So my boss further asked if they’re just using the space for storage, or will there be an office there. And if they’re importing merchandise, or doing something else?

The guys said that he’ll be there personally in an office as well. And that’s it’s not an import business, it’s “stocks”. Consisting of “Toys, all sorts of stuff, computers, whatever”.

The exact word he used, all this time, was “stockim”, with the “im” being a Hebrew suffix for plural, like the “s” in English. Normally when a Hebrew word exists people use it. Such a form of the English noun with a Hebrew suffix is only used when the word is one for which there isn’t yet a Hebrew word, or it’s a very uncommon word.

Stocks, if it’s not obvious, is a word for which there are a few perfectly suitable, and well used, Hebrew equivalents. So even if it wasn’t clear from the guy’s demeanour and attitude, it was obvious he wasn’t exactly talking about moving regular stocks, but usings “stocks” as a codeword for something else…

Oh, well, at least this time they didn’t get parking rights, so we won’t have to share the limited parking lot of the building. Still, looks like we’re going to have some good high-quality legal company again.

An Islamic group in Indonesia decided to aggressively object the publication of a local Playboy Magazine edition.

Two policemen were injured Wednesday when about 100 demonstrators, most of them Islam Defenders Front (FPI) members, attacked the Playboy Indonesia editorial office in South Jakarta.

Protesters pelted the building with rocks, shattering windows and panicking the tenants.

A very violent reaction. And while 100 aren’t that large a group in general, it’s a very large group if they’re all actually taking part in the riot and not just standing and looking.

There are legitimate ways to object to things you don’t like, but this sort of violence isn’t one of them. If they think there are legal issues, and they claim they do, then they should have used the courts. If they object to the content they should avoid buying the magazine, and encourage others to do the same.

The demonstrators earlier visited National Police Headquarters to complain about the publication of the magazine. They made a bonfire of about 100 copies of the magazine.

Burning about a 100 copies of the magazine is also not the way. And not only because book (and by extension magazine) burning is bad in general. It’s also because in order to create a bonfire of a 100 magazine they had to first purchase those 100 magazines.

This happened before the riot. So these weren’t copied found in the offices by someone breaking in.

Buying the magazine is a good way to encourage publication. It’s demand. Playboy doesn’t care if people read the magazine, or burn it. They earn the same amount of money either way. And either way they can claim the buyers think it’s hot (OK, lousy pun there, sorry).

Plus, imagine how this looks like in the organization’s expense account. Going over the general ledger of an Islamic organization and finding a purchase order for 100 Playboy magazines is bound to make some accountant giggle.

Imagine that, since it’s related to the organization’s goal, they ask the Indonesian equivalent of the IRS for a tax refund…

The Independent Journalists Association (AJI) condemned the attack. AJI secretary-general Abdul Manan said

…

“According to press regulations, the FPI could face a maximum Rp 500 million fine,” he said.

500 million Indonesian Rupiahs are a little less than $53,000. On the one hand it seems like a small amount of money compared to the damage described. On the other hand in local terms it may be quite a lot, I’m really not sure.

I’m also not sure why someone from a journalistic association is a reliable source in determining the maximum fine the organization may receive for the damages they caused. Even if the lawsuit for damages will be done by the AJI, and not directly by Playboy Indonesia, or the country (remember, policemen were hurt), their lawyer should make these kinds of comments, and preferably base them on what they request in the lawsuit. This, however, just seems pulled out of nowhere.

And just how seriously do these guys take it? Was that just a one-time riot because people got in a frenzy? Well, no, it’s more serious to them than that, according to their leader:

“If the magazine continues to be distributed, the FPI is ready to go to war,” he said

Of course, saying war when you’re an organization, rather than a country, carries a different meaning.

Still, it’s a shame that people can actually consider going to what they consider war for a purpose as important and crucial as preventing publication of a magazine.

Chief editor of Playboy Indonesia Erwin Arnada said

…

“Playboy Indonesia is in full compliance with Indonesian law and does not, and will not, contain any nude photography. We have also …

What was that? Playboy Indonesia magazine will not contain any nude photography? Hmm…

I never actually opened an issue of Playboy, but aren’t these things supposed to kind of be about… nude photography? Isn’t that like the whole point?

Or is this supposed to be the version where people finally, finally, actually mean it when they say they only read it for the articles?

Having laws against being drunk while driving is pretty common, happens in a lot of countries, and is something I see as perfectly fine and correct.

But in Texas they take further, too much further, I think. Now it seems they’re arresting people for being drunk while drinking inside bars.

It doesn’t matter if they don’t plan on getting out of the pub until much later when they’re sober. Or if they intend to go out and walk, not drive. Or if they really won’t do anything bad while drunk.

No, being drunk is the offence. Not doing anything problematical because of being drunk.

Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.

This is Marvellous. Most people who get drunk do not hurt each other. Someone getting overly drunk and hurting someone, while getting much more publicity than someone being drunk and going to sleep (not exactly a news event, is it?) is rare. And the most common way this does happen is by people driving drunk. Something which people are mostly aware of, and can choose not to do, even while intoxicated.

So if someone wants to go to a bar to drink, either to try and drown some big sorrow (doesn’t work, but people still try), celebrate something, or just have a fun evening which includes drinks, this is now dangerous to do in Texas. Anyone getting drunk, without doing anything wrong, without harming anyone, without even thinking about driving, can get arrested.

This is not going to be good for the bars, I bet. Most bar patrons don’t plan in advance to get totally drunk, just to have a drink or a few, but I guess most aren’t entirely and completely sure they won’t drink a little more than planned. And now it’s dangerous. They drink to much, they can get arrested for it. Getting into a bat to have a couple of drinks now carries risks. Bye bye bars, hello coffee shops and restaurants.

And I can’t help but wonder about the next step. They’re arresting drunk people because they may do things. Things which they’re not doing, didn’t do, and don’t plan on doing. But because they’re theoretically capable of them, they get arrested. How is arresting drunk people, because they may drive, different from arresting angry people because they may decide to hit someone? Or arresting people who carry firearms because they may decide to shoot someone?

If you want to go and arrest people before the do something dangerous, well, you might as well just hit the streets and arrest every single person you see. Some of them are going to do dangerous stuff. Why take the risk, when it’s obvious they’re capable of it?

Anyone not bed-ridden should be arrested, and the sooner the better. Everyone will be much safer that way.

I never gotten really drunk in my life, but right now I’m very happy that I don’t live anywhere near Texas…

There’s this guy called Chaym Hecht who sometimes gets on the air with a series about some big problem in the country, and proceed to throw lots of hype and possible-nonsense about what he considers to be a terrific solution that will end the problem.

Personally I never watched any of these shows, and there are enough people making noise out there that I didn’t find any reason to give him more attention than I give the rest.

Today, however, I received a forwarded email from a friend, regarding another project of his. The big problem this time is crime, or more specifically the high rates of property crimes, and the potentially insufficient enforcement.

The email contained a link to the show’s site (Hebrew only, sorry), hosted under the site of the television network which broadcasts his show. Something which one would expect will give some credence to what is said there. Sure, people sometimes get their facts a little wrong, but a reputable television network won’t put pages full of outright lies, hype, and misinformation, right? Well, wrong.

I was actually amazed by how much nonsense they managed to stick into so little text. And that’s what is supposed to convince people to support his idea. They even have a petition page there, allegedly going to the ministers of justice and internal security, and to the law committee in the Knesset. So what’s on the site is supposed to be enough for people to be able to declare that they agree and support the suggested legislation.

Now, my problem isn’t exactly with the proposed legislation. That is, I don’t support that law he’s suggesting, but that’s not why I’m writing this post. People have a right to suggest law I don’t support. What they shouldn’t do is present background and supportive facts which are not true and not factual.

The law he suggests is presented as being similar to the Three Strikes law in the US, where judges should be lenient on a first offence, strict on a second, and have a mandatory large jail time for a third offence. And it shows some info about the law in the US, which is supposed to convince us it will be a good idea to do the same here.

Except that much of the information presented is false. And that the laws, while similar on the outline of escalation for three offences, are different in their most important characteristics.

The main page tells us that the proposed legislation could reduce crime rates by 50 percent. This value is taken from another paragraph on the page, telling us that after two years from when the Three Strikes law was accepted in the US the crime rates there dropped by 50 percent.

A second page is then provided with some background information about the origins of the law in the US. That page discusses… California. No mention of the fact that Washington approved such a law first. It only talks about California. And tells it like it was enacted there first. Not critical, but not exactly true.

I just mentioned it to get the dates, for that two years reference. Because that page mentioned it being enacted in California in 1993, and mentions President Clinton making it a US Law in 1995.

It’s not clear if we should expect a 50% reduction in crime rate in California between 1993 to 1995, or between 1995 to 1997. Let’s look at both, and try to find out.

First, here’s a site dedicated to supporting the Three Strikes law in California. We can expect them to be biased, but we can expect them to be biased in favour of the law. That is, showing the highest possible improvement, the highest possible reduction in crime rates. And what do they say on their front page (emphasis mine)?

California’s crime rate is down 32.7% versus a 13.0% drop for the rest of the nation! New York state added 34,000 police to achieve an even greater reduction than California – 33.4% in the 6 major categories.

32.7% is a very nice figure. It’s not 50% however. Not even close. And, as they themselves note, the law enforcement is important, but it’s the investment in enforcing the law, not merely having a Three Strikes law. Put more cops, you get lower crime rates.

They even post nice comparisons, over the five years from 1993 to 1998, showing countries with the Three Strikes laws, and without. And you can see for example Connecticut, with the law, getting a 18.6% reduction, while Arkansas, without this law, getting a 21.3% reduction. Doesn’t say that the law isn’t helping, but it does say that the law can certainly not account for the entire reduction, maybe not even for most of it.

And still no mention of that 50% figure. And if two of these years would have had such a drastic improvement, they would have been mentioned. If they can have a page in 2006 showing the five years until 1998, then I’m sure they could have just as well shown two years, if those had a much more impressive crime reduction number. Remember, this site is really pro the law.

But let’s not trust them to be biased, let’s check more facts, for the exact years we want. Let’s check the year-by-year crime rate statistics provided by the FBI through the Disaster Center.

Anyone notices a two year period there in which the drop was at 50% ? I don’t see it either.

Never mind the number, there’s a much more obvious way to see the lack of such a big jump. The Office of the Attorney General of California has a few charts with information about crime in the state. Like this lovely graph, showing crime rates over all the relevant years, with a separation between violent crimes and property crimes. What does this graph show? It very clearly show that property crime rates started to drop before 1993, although violent crimes seem to change at about that year. It also shows that the drop is for less than 50%, and that there weren’t any two years there with a much higher rate than the others around them.

Or, to put it bluntly, that 50% figure is an outright myth. Where did they take the figure? I don’t know, but I have two options. One is that they just made it up, since it sounds impressive. The other is that it has something to do with this Attorney General statement, from 2002, on the drop in crime rates in California in the 1990’s:

Between 1991 and 2000, California’s overall crime rate plummeted 50 percent. The homicide rate fell 47 percent. California’s crime rate made history in 1999 with the largest one-year drop ever, 14.9 percent. During the decade of the 1990s, California’s violent crime rate declined at almost twice the rate of the rest of the United States.

Except that it talks about the entire decade, not any specific two years. And mentioned the largest drop to be in 1999, surely quite a few years after California, and other states, enacted the Three Strikes law. And it mentions that the crime rate drop there is the lowest in the US, while California is far from being the only state with the Three Strikes law. That petition site of Mr. Hecht mentioned 24 other states, implying they all saw similar crime drop rates… Guess what? They didn’t. Not a one.

That statement says some more, though:

There is considerable debate among criminologists about which strategies were most effective in the 1990s. Some point to helping at-risk youth, getting guns out of the hands of criminals and tougher sentencing laws. Others point to more police on the streets, community policing and the abatement of the “crack epidemic.” Still others point to the economy, after-school programs and other prevention programs.

Anyone else missing the line there saying that the drop was mostly due to the Three Strikes law? It’s there under “tougher sentencing”, I imagine. Doesn’t seem to be the focal point from this, though.

OK, change of subject. That show site has another page, giving some statistics about the crime rates in Israel. Some is taken from the police, stating that there’s a an attempt at thefts, roberry, break-ins, etc, every 44 seconds. And such rates for murders, rapes, and drug trafficking and usage. That serves to illustrate that there’s a problem, so fine. Though I doubt very much we’re worse off than some US states with a Three Strikes law.

But then they go on to list, on the same page, results from a survey they did on the show. 68% of Israeli citizens have had a break-in, or had their car stolen, apparently. Notice, this is not according to the police, this is according to the survey. Guess what? People who didn’t have any such problems are less likely to want to participate in such a survey.

Also, according to this survey, 69.6% protect their houses against burglaries. I assume this includes putting locks on the doors, and installing an alarm system. If so, it sounds to me like it’s way too low, and should be much much higher. Even in areas where crime is extremely rare it’s still good sense to keep your house, and your possessions, secure.

Another fascinating bit from this survey, only 9% believe that the police is capable of handling property crimes. Not sure what handling means, but that numbers seems… practically meaningless. Lack of faith in the police is nothing new. And is usually true even when the police operates spectacularly. Still, I’m willing to accept most people don’t have much faith in the police. Fine. Why is that relevant? Guess who will have to track down the people committing the crimes if a Three Strikes law will be enacted? Right, the police. Guess who will have to keep track of how many times they were charged with the crimes? Right again, the police.

As far as I could see the proposed law does not include replacing the police, or even restructuring the police. If anything, it only deals with the idea that judges are too lenient with people who they find guilty of repeatedly committing property crimes. The law doesn’t deal with actually tracking and arresting them, nor does it deal with the ones not found guilty (For lack of evidence, or other reasons).

93.9% of the people asked do not agree to a condition where thieves deserves compensations when they are hurt during their “job”. Is that terribly irrelevant, or am I missing something here? This is a much bigger problem in the US than here. Any real cases like that here are extremely rare. And, most importantly, this has nothing to do with the Three Strikes issue, or with generally the crime condition in Israel. At all.

And last, 87.6% believe that thieves should be incarcerated for a long duration. No mention how long is long. And are we only talking about someone entering your house, taking all the electronics, jewels, and silverware, and then trashing the place? Because in the way this is written, that also applies to someone who swipes a money bill you leave on a counter in a bar unattended.

All in all, lots of survey info which is not relevant, and not really informative. The only purpose it serves, especially under a heading of “Crime Status in Israel”, is to aggravate people, and make them annoyed. Because annoyed people will be more inclined to think that yes, there’s a problem, and this solution of making sure the guilty will be punished is good. Except that, as I said, it doesn’t say anything about the actual crime conditions, or about the effectiveness of the suggested law.

Mob inflammation techniques, pure and simple.

OK, having gotten through the measly background, the adrenaline pumping techniques, and the false factoids on how good the concept is, there’s the page detailing the exact suggestion. Though “detailing”, and “exact”, may be too strong to refer to the the four very short paragraphs. And yet, this is all there is, and what people are expected to sign a petition saying they want to become law. Nearly as good as saying “I trust Mr. Hecht, just ask him what the law should be, and don’t bother me with specifics”.

The page starts with the claim that the system is focused on property crimes, because these crimes are the crime base in Israel (No, I’m not sure what crime base is supposed to mean either, it’s not like anyone wanting to commit a violent crime has to commit some property crimes to build it on). And as an example of how more common they are (Personally, if violent crimes were more common than property crimes, I’d be really worried) we are told that in 2004 property crimes were 64% of the crimes in Israel.

Remember that nice graph from the Office of the Attorney General of California? Go take a second look. Or, if you don’t trust your ability to get ratios from graphs, go check the data tables. Now, did you get the impression that in California there are, or were when the Three Strikes law was enacted, more violent crimes than property crimes? No, I don’t see it either. I see a ratio much bigger than 64%, actually.

So we want to base the law on their law, but change it to deal with property crimes and not violent crimes, because we have a bigger problem with property crime than they had? That’s what the site is saying. But it’s obviously not true, and a complete non-sequitur. If simple property crimes don’t seem like a good call for this law to people having such a law for years, why would that be enough for us to think it’s a good idea here?

The second paragraph deals with the suggestion for first offence. During the first offence judges will be required to consider all the extenuating circumstances when sentencing. Though of course they will still be allowed to jail the accused for the maximum 5 years allowed under the law. Then the paragraph goes on to present the condition as it is today. It being that only 6% of property felons are sentenced to jail.

That 6% is presented as too small, and a problem. But the new suggestion claims to only change the current law by forcing the judge to consider all extenuating circumstances. So, if only 6% are jailed now, it can be expected that less than 6% will be jailed there. It is the idea behind the law, that since second and third offences are harsh, first offence will be easier for someone with an excuse. But sticking this 6% problem there is exactly counter to the point. He’s presenting it as a problem, together with a suggestion which will make this particular alleged problem worse.

And there’s no mention of what exactly does the statistic refer to. Big crimes, small crimes, attempts at theft and burglary or only the real things? It doesn’t even say if those 6% are from the people convicted as guilty, or only of people accused.

The third paragraph deal with second offence. For a second offence there will be a mandatory four months jail time, no probation. Currently, it says, only 11% are sentenced to jail.

This is not detailed enough. Some things deserve jail time, some don’t. Some more, some less. This is why judges have discretion. And the Third Strike law, while intended to reduce this discretion for third offences, isn’t supposed to do it for a second offence without any ability to reconsider. This suggestion, as is, doesn’t even treat cases where the required jail time would be longer than four months. Four months for everything, and that’s that. The end. I do assume they allow a judge to set longer sentences, if not shorter, and if not any other sort of rehabilitation techniques, but it doesn’t say it. So again, the petition is to support a law which is either flawed, or with details the supporters don’t know.

The fourth, and last, paragraph deals with third offences. Anyone convicted in a third offence will be sentenced to three years in jail. And there are a bunch of exclamation marks there, tucked up to help put people in the right mood.

All in all, not very inspiring, unless you got here already mad enough not to think about what you’re reading.

And all this, the push for a Third Strike legislation for property crimes, when California, for example, is considering making their own law even more lenient for non-violent offences, is very out of place.

California, the state that launched a national get-tough-on-crime movement with its “three strikes, you’re out” measure in 1994, is poised to reconsider whether to ease the stiffest provision of its landmark law: locking up third-time offenders for the rest of their lives.

Two ballot initiatives – both led by Los Angeles area prosecutors – are aiming to put more flexibility in the three-strikes law, in a bid to address concerns that it is imprisoning too many nonviolent criminals at too great a cost to taxpayers. The measures would come before California voters in November if they qualify for the ballot.

The Americans, living with this law for years, aren’t all in agreement whether it’s good or not. They publish studies, some supporting this side, some the other. Certainly the idea has benefits, but it also has its drawbacks. Anything like that needs to be considered carefully, not driven forth by populism.

The suggestion for this law is similar to the Three Strikes law in that it has escalating conditions for the first three offences. But here the similarity ends. It targets different areas of crimes, for different reasons. Any attempt to justify this one on the basis of that one is unfounded.

All that, of course, is pretty meaningless. Because, you see, on-line petitions are meaningless anyway. They don’t do anything, they don’t achieve anything, and nobody who is the target of one takes them seriously. They’re too easy to falsify, too hard to verify, and too hard to know how to judge. So the chances of our Ministers, or Knesset committees, deciding to pay attention to one are slim at best. Less than that, even.

All it serves is to allow Mr. Hecht to say in the future that he had a brilliant solution to drastically reduce our property crime rate (Oh, go check that graph again. Did you notice that property crime rates in California started climbing after 1999? Without anybody cancelling the Three Strikes law?), and nobody did anything about it.

There’s an old joke, saying that it’s a pity that all the people who really know how to run a country are too busy cutting people’s hair, serving them drinks, and driving them around. I think we need to add running television shows to the list, maybe.

A suggestion that has merit would not be presented using hype, hyperbole, and false information. These things do not indicate an idea that can survive because it’s good. Nor does it indicate that the one coming forth with the idea really thinks it’s a good one.

On the same article regarding the guy being jailed for denying the Holocaust there were some responses. One of which, from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, I find totally objectionable:

The verdict was welcomed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which also highlighted the issue of freedom of speech.

“While Irving’s rants would not have led to legal action in the United States, it is important that we recognize and respect Austria’s commitment to fighting Holocaust denial, the most odious form of hatred, as part of its historic responsibility to its Nazi past,” the center’s associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said in a statement.

First, countries don’t have responsibilities to their past. They have responsibilities to their present, and should have responsibilities for their future. Nothing Austria will do today will ever change its Nazi past (inventing a time machine and going to kill baby Hitler excluded). It will only have an effect on how the country looks today, and will look in the future. And throwing people in jail for thinking something contrary to current doctrine, even if I believe that doctrine to be absolutely correct, doesn’t seem responsible to me.

More importantly, there are much more odious forms of hatred than Holocaust denial. Killing people, for one. Saying otherwise is greatly belittling every other sort of hate crime in the world. Against Jews, or otherwise. There’s plenty of hate to go around, unfortunately.

The audacity of this Rabbi Abraham Cooper to claim that nothing worse can be done than denying the Holocaust is something I find much more objectionable than someone denying the Holocaust. The latter I can define as an idiot and be done with it. Rabbi Abraham is Worse. Listen Rabbi, when someone murders a Jew for being a filthy Jew, or burns a synagogue, do you find yourself saying “oh, well, at least they didn’t deny the Holocaust?”. Because that’s what you apparently just said.

Heck, one of the reasons for founding Israel was to prevent such events as the Holocaust from happening again. But here we hear that doing similar things is not as bad as denying they happened in the past. So maybe we should just close shop, because we already have Austria guarding that particular front?

But don’t worry, Rabbi. Even though you’re saying far worse things, I don’t think you deserve to go to jail either. You just deserve some contempt and disdain.

An Austrian court sentenced a man to three years in jail, for denying the holocaust existed. Or, as the case may be, for trying to grossly misrepresent the events that occurred as something not even close in scope to what actually happened.

The historical evidence seems pretty overwhelming, so it never ceases to surprise me how some people can choose to ignore so much of it just because of their own personal views. Of course, my own opinion isn’t without bias, me being a Jew (though a secular one) and living in Israel. But still, I do believe that the evidence clearly shows that most of what we believe happened during the holocaust really did happen.

Therefore I do most sincerely believe that this guy, David Irving, is an idiot.

What strikes me as being too much, though, is throwing him in jail for it. Yes, the guy believes in quite a load of… manure. On the personal front I’d probably hate him, and it would very probably be mutual. None of that should be something worth being jailed for, though.

Many people believe in all sorts of totally wild nonsense, much of it extremely easier to prove wrong than it is to prove the holocaust happened (hint: That’s quite easy to prove), and yet nobody throws them in jail for it. Usually they’re not even thrown in asylums.

Many other people (though a large overlap probably exist) believe in all sorts of really offensive stuff, and yet they don’t get thrown in jail for it either.

So why this particular stupid belief, and even the attempt to propagate it in public, should be considered so much worse, is beyond me. I may personally find it more offensive than a lot of other stuff but, until the day I get to rule the world with my iron fist, that shouldn’t really count for much.

That said, the reason Austria has these laws forbidding holocaust denial is understandable. Germany and Austria suffered quite a lot of backlash over the actions of Nazi Germany under Hitler. And the Austrian governments, whether out of political expediency or actual feeling that they should carry a shame over the actions of someone who happened to get born in the same country they live in, wanted to make it obvious how badly they feel about it.

Fine. We got that. You think Hitler was really bad, and what he did was really bad. That’s alright, most of the world agree. Now get over it. Seriously.

Explaining during history lessons what went wrong, and why those views are wrong, that’s fine. Quite welcome, even. But making it illegal to hold a belief, as misguided as it may be, as long as nothing is done about it (Going out killing Jews is doing something. Merely thinking that a good Jew is a dead Jew, isn’t doing something. Not that denying the holocaust is exactly wanting Jews dead, but I think that passes the semantic point well enough), that’s misguided itself.

Yes, it would be much harder for someone with such views to rise to a position of political power where mentioning those views is illegal. That’s true. But is that worth running laws requiring what’s effectively a thought police?

There are so many other bad ideas people believe in. This one got into law because they had one such person who eventually managed to act on it on a large scale. So is that really the main worry they should keep carrying?

Historical events leave scars, and effect laws and culture for many years. The bigger the event, the deeper the scars, and the longer the effect lasts. But as some point people have to separate between laws that have a positive influence on current and future events, and laws which only hurt those and their sole benefit is making people feel better about the past trauma.

Speaking of which, I think it’s quite possible we have similar laws here in Israel. And such laws are even more understandable here than in Austria, since it’s to be expected a country of Jews will be a lot more touchy on the subject. And yet I think even here holding such a law is misguided. Not to mention silly, since those views really have no chance of catching on here.

Let the idiots rave. No need to turn them into martyrs for the few other misguided people who believe them. Heck, most racist and anti-Semitic people (assuming that’s the group the Austrian legislators worried about) don’t deny the holocaust. They may think it was a very good event, and should have gone out longer, but from there to denial the way is long. Not to mention, denying the holocaust takes away from such people the biggest example they have of how things should run.

Which is why I think holocaust deniers aren’t, and shouldn’t be, anything too exciting. Nobody much cares about them and their views, on both/all sides. There’s no much difference between them and people who want to deny other historical events, except that this one is more loaded culturally and politically.

Throwing someone like that in jail is bad on two totally different front. The first is that it simply gives the issue too much attention. Why fight over whether it’s allowed to deny the holocaust? It happened, and anyone insisting the earth is flat (Though I do admit there’s a bit more evidence for that) should be of no interest.

The second is that it’s a bad precedent for arresting people due to simple beliefs and opinions. If people think that such a law is a good idea, the distance isn’t that great until other stupid thoughts and beliefs become illegal as well. And from there it’s a slippery slope. I like my freedom of speech to much for that. To be wholly inappropriate and paraphrase, I don’t want it to end in cases of… First they came for the holocaust deniers, and I did not speak up, because I wasn’t a holocaust denier…

I’m not sure whether I really like the Hurtt Prize idea, or whether I think it’s totally appalling and the guy behind it should get thrown in jail just for the principal of it…

The chief of police in Houston has shown himself to be a total idiot, pushing forward a program to have constant video surveillance all around the city. That’s not the totally idiotic part (though it’s bad enough). The totally idiotic part was that, in response to privacy concerns, the idiot has the audacity to wonder why would people who didn’t do anything wrong need to worry…

Privacy, for anyone who isn’t capable of realizing it on their own, is important. No, really. Giving the government, police officials, your fellow neighbourhood people, or anyone else, the ability to spy on you and your actions freely, is a bad idea.

It will be misused, even if nobody plans to misuse it from the get-go. And it doesn’t help safety and security. It just helps the illusion of safety.

While adding the very non-illusionary feeling of being constantly monitored and under watch.

Bad, bad, bad idea.

Unless you’re, like chief of police Hurtt (Who to his credit isn’t the first, not the most important, of the many people around the world supporting such extensive surveillance), expecting to be the one having the power to use this, and not expecting to be the target.

So this Hurtt Prize idea is quite an apt response.

Somebody is setting up a monetary prize to be given to anyone presenting videotaped proof that chief of police Hurtt performed any sort of crime. This, obviously, with the implicit but very obvious idea that people will have to go around him all the time with cameras, watching and monitoring his every move.

Anyone doing that to me would find themselves sued very quickly for stalking. And I won’t take lightly the total ignorance of my privacy and right to personal life.

Chief of police Hurtt, however, doesn’t have any reason to complain. Obviously. Because, after all, if he isn’t doing anything wrong, what does he have to worry about?

If he would do something wrong, then that would put him in a bit of a problem, yes. It’s all the more likelier to get noticed and published. But he doesn’t need to worry and complain now, because he doesn’t actually plan on doing anything wrong, does he?

I wonder how this would develop…

Recently there have been a few stories about people suffering damage due to excessive on-line gaming. Some idiots staying in their rooms for days playing non-stop, not taking care of themselves.

These stories get headlines, because as we all know the news media is always looking for sensations, and this is the kind of news that sells. Sad, but true.

It is, however, an incredibly small and irrelevant problem. The amount of people actually getting hurt, or dying, due to excessive gaming is very small. It just seems bigger because we’re used to just a fraction of events being on the news, while in this case every single instance gets the headlines. Plenty of other addictions are far worse, and far more damaging. Heck, plenty of other addictions actually exist in more than a score of rare and isolated cases.

So what most people do is shrug in wonderment of the idiots involved, and go on with their lives ignoring this phenomenon. Because it’s obvious it’s not really a phenomenon.

The Chinese , however, apparently think otherwise, and see this as a real problem, requiring real treatment:

Online computer gamers in China will be penalized for playing their favorite game for more than three hours at a time, as part of a plan to prevent young people from becoming addicted to fighting dragons and warlords in cyberspace.

Players that spend more than three hours online at a time will lose experience points and weapons in the cyber world.

Once a player has played for more than five consecutive hours, the system cuts the ability level of that player’s character to the lowest level allowed by the game, often zero.

Players must take a two hour break before logging into the game again to avoid being penalized.

Totally and completely crazy. In order to solve a non-problem, they’re interfering with the gameplay of nearly every single playing of on-line games in the entire country. Personally I don’t play these kinds of games, but I do occasionally play some computer games, and can easily see how annoying and distracting such limitations are.

On the other hand, the Chinese authorities are limiting Internet access in various forms for quite a long time, so I guess the idea came naturally to them.

The few quotes in the article from players seem to indicate they think it’s stupid as well, and some plan to try and trick the system. Which would be a pretty natural reaction, though I do doubt if it’s as safe to do it in China as it would be here.

In Kentucky they take the war against terror seriously, and like to cover all the angles. Terrorist activities need funding. Heck, everything needs funding, and terror is no different. So one of the things to do to fight terror is to try and block their avenues of obtaining funds. And the fine people of Kentucky have started acting in earnest to stop a major gaping hole in the terror-funding blockage: Bingo games

Kentucky has been awarded a federal Homeland Security grant aimed at keeping terrorists from using charitable gaming to raise money [...] The idea is to keep terrorists from playing bingo or running a charitable game to raise large amounts of cash, Holiday said.

Because nothing spells lots and lots of free-flowing money quite like Bingo does. And if the fine people of Kentucky can see it, then it must be just a matter of time until the terrorists do to…

Sure, Bingo games are a way to make money. But it’s not such an amazingly terrific way. So yes, terrorist probably could also raise some money from Bingo games. But they can use all the other methods as well. If someone can make money out of it, so can a terrorist.

What then, you’ll go after each and every single way in which people can potentially raise money? Because if you do, then you should be aware right from the start that there’s only one thing to do. Only one method that can guarantee those nasty terrorists won’t be able to make their money. Only one sure-fire way to guarantee that those terrorist will not have any way to make a dime

Communism. If Kentucky will fully embrace communism, to the fullest, not letting anyone own any private property, then they’ll solve the problem.

The state Office of Charitable Gaming won the $36,300 grant and will use it to provide five investigators with laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement data base

I also really wonder how are they going to spend an amount of $36,300 on just five laptop computers. I know laptops are expensive, but this strikes me as rather steep… I think maybe someone there should take a look into ways for law enforcement to make money. Or better yet, ways for them to save money, instead of spending it on all this nonsense. Seriously.

It’s a very old tradition. Whenever a movie, or a TV show, had a scene involving a hurt animal, the end-credits included a message stating that no animals were hurt during the shooting of the movie. Never mind if the plot included some person actually hurting the animal, or if the scene just included some animal which was dead or wounded, this disclaimer was shown.

Personally I always found it somewhat ridiculous. It seemed quite natural to me that if a scene showed a horse slipping during a chase, and later on the horse was shot to take it out of its misery, no real horse got its legs broken and no real horse was actually shot. But apparently just because it makes sense to me doesn’t mean it makes sense to all viewers.

At least, I assume these things came about as a result of complaint by actual people who didn’t have a clue. Since getting all those complaints must have scared everyone’s legal departments, they must have felt they had to either put on those disclaimers, or put some of the complainers out of their own misery. And the second option (merit notwithstanding) was not exactly practical, or legal.

Some actually took it in good stride. I remember some TV series in the past using this as a source for jokes, claiming things like that no actual ants and flies were hurt during the filming (or maybe it was that flies were hurt, I’m not so sure). I recall once seeing a disclaimer that no actual unicorns were hurt, as well.

There was also a great joke in the computer adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island. After giving poisoned meat to a bunch of guard dogs (vicious piranha poodles, in this case. Yes, this was a crazy game), a message popped up stating that no animals were hurt during the making of the scene, and that the dogs are not dead but only sleeping. Or something to that effect, it’s been more than a few years since I played the game last.

I’ve gotten used to it, and while notifications that no animals were hurt are still appearing on movie credits, I tend to just ignore them. I assumed almost everybody else tended to just ignore them as well, and that this was just being added as lip service without anyone paying too much attention

I was wrong. Things have escalated. The simple days when some brain-dead people merely required being reassured that no animals were actually hurt are passed. After all, what’s to prevent a studio from actually killing and torturing those poor animals, and then telling everyone they didn’t? People need some protection from those conniving movie studios and lying TV execs. There has to be a way to make sure. Some supporting evidence, or maybe a third party that would monitor all scenes including animals. Someone who would give support to the claims that it’s all really faked… Right? Wrong. Err… right.

Personally, I was very very surprised to find this out. But here I was, taking a few extra seconds after this episode of House ended, and what do I see on the screen? A statement letting me know that no animal was harmed during the making of the episode (I’m not sure if they were referring to the few very quick seconds that were supposed to involve cockfights, or to the few very quick seconds showing a dead rat in a mousetrap). But this time with a twist. This is not just asserted by the studio, no.

The scenes were monitored by a third party. By no less than the American Humane Association. I think that these people have way too much time on their hands if they can do that. Seriously so. Does anyone really think it’s a good idea to spend time and money on this? To have someone monitor dead rats to make sure they’re not really rats, or not really dead? Or to have someone monitor a few chickens, to make sure they don’t get any actual chance to peck each other for a moment?

I think they, or rather whoever think these functions of them are necessary, should have some sense talked into them. Or knocked into them. Or maybe just to be put out of their misery. It would be the humane thing to do, after all. Just as long as no animals (no other animals, anyway, but let’s not go into the whole evolution issue now) are harmed in the process.

In the previous post we finished with the Japanese gardens in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, and started to head back to the car.

Along the way, us bunch of criminal came along to no less than the LAPD building. Naturally, none of us really care much about the LAPD, or their building. Could be some of them are doing a stellar job, I’m not saying anything against the LA police, just that police departments by definition are not that much of a tourist attraction, right? Generally speaking, if as a tourist you get to know the police too well, it’s a very strong indication you have a problem.

Any of you watches the TV series The Closer? If not, check it out, a really good police drama. Good scripts, except for the pilot episode that had a paper thin mystey. But it’s less a procedural, and more about the main character, Brenda, which is being excellently acted by Kyra Sedgwick. In any case, the series takes place in LA, where their made up Priority Murder investigation unit is located inside the LAPD building, and they show pictures of it sometimes on the series.

Surprisingly enough, in real life the building looks exactly like it does on the series. Amazing, eh? So, in any case, police be here. We didn’t wander inside, mind you.

And we got another fun legal experience on the way back. Actually, I can’t remember if it was in front of the LAPD building, or later on in front of the United States Court House.

Which is, regardless of whether it was there or not, a big big building. I mean, big. Scary to think how many judges, legal aids, and other people it can contain. Even if some of the space is reserved for actual courts.

It’s also very elegant. I guess they think justice should not only be done, but also should be seen. Although, of course, it’s been a long long time since law and justice referred to the exact same things. I mean, that’s what lawyers are for, right? Sometimes to keep the two as far apart as possible. OK, OK, not fair, lawyer jokes. But I’m allowed.

So what is the funny event that transpired there, you ask? When we were standing there (And thinking about it some more, this was at the LAPD building, not the court house. But hey, the court is nice, so I’ll leave the pictures and narrative here anyway) we got approached by some guy who gave each and every one of us a band/keychain. Taking a look at them, they each had printed on them, in large letters, a phone number for a bail bond company. A 1-800 number, even.

It was even more amusing for me, because we don’t really have that whole bail bond concept here. I mean, I think we must have something similar in concept, but you don’t really have those very visible companies offering those services of paying your bail money for you. It’s not a large business like it is in the states.

They put people to stand outside the big central police station, and give everyone a phone number for the company. So heck, if we’d have gotten arrested for our crimes , we’ll have an obvious source to turn to when trying to arrange bail. Ha, as if I’d ever do anything so small-scale that a sane judge would allow me to be released on bail. Dream on.

We told the guy we’re not getting arrested at the moment. And that we don’t really count on needing bail money any time soon. But he gave them anyway, saying his instructions were to give one to each and every person passing nearby. Cute.

I was originally going to go with “Half-Witted Judge” for the title, but then realized it could be interpreted as libel. After all it’s possible that Justice Kristi Gill is normally very intelligent and was just on drugs at the time, or that someone bribed her with enough money to make this a rational decision on her part. Since I don’t know, I shouldn’t go around making those half-assed assessments.

What got me so riled up is this story, about a store in Canada accidentally selling some of the new Harry Potter books a few days before the official release time. What happened was that a Supreme Court judge has ordered the people who bought the book to return it. And in addition to returning it to the publisher until the release date, they were forbidden from talking about it or even reading it.

From what I understand, someone in the store made a mistake and put the books on the shelves, a few people who saw them decided to buy them, and the mistake wasn’t caught by the clerk when they made the purchase.

The store must have had a contract on the release date with the publisher, or their supplier, and so is probably guilty of a breach of contract. Had the publisher sued the store over it, I could have easily understood a ruling in favour of the publisher.

But the buyers? They bought a book, a book which was presented on the shelves of a store, like they buy any other book. They didn’t bribe the clerk, they didn’t try to trick anyone, they just made a simple, and legal, purchase.

Had the store’s mistake been criminal, I still may have understood. If someone legally buys stolen goods, there may be justification in returning it. But it was a contractual/business issue, not a criminal issue. The store sold the books. The buyers bought the books. The books are theirs, and are their property. I may be mistaken, could be that the Canadian law sees this differently, but I don’t think that’s very likely… Can anyone correct me on this? Please?

So what right did the judge had to order the books returned? In essence the court temporarily impounded private property. And why? Because the publisher, a commercial entity, decided they only want to sell the books later, and thought this may cost them money. That sounds like very poor justification to me. Courts should intervene on legal grounds, not just because a corporation doesn’t like something.

Personally, though that’s beside the point, I’m also against the whole official release date concept. Sell the book when you have printed copies. The standard excuse, as they also wrote in this article, is that “its debut has been highly orchestrated to enable everyone — readers, reviewers, even publishers — to crack it open all at once.” The key word, the incorrect word, being “enable”. It doesn’t enable people to do anything. It limits them to. It’s a perfectly legitimate business decision, but don’t tell me it’s for the benefit of the public. It’s not, it’s for the benefit of the publisher. Still, as I said, that’s entirely beside the point here.

Now, back on track, if the publisher really thinks having those people read the book will hurt, then the publisher should sue the store for the estimated losses. Not try and get the already sold books impounded.

The ruling, with agreement from the publisher I assume, did set some compensation. When they will take the books back, they will receive autographs by the author, Mrs. Rowling. Now, this may be very exciting for a die-hard Harry Potter fan, but it isn’t necessarily ample compensation. If it were, then why involve the court? I’m sure that the publisher could have made the same offer as a private deal. They didn’t, so maybe people didn’t consider an autograph by the writer to compensate having their property impounded, for being put under secrecy, or for being forced to wait reading a book they had bought. It’s also an indication that the judge knew they didn’t do anything really wrong, or else why give compensations in any case?

Personally, I’m a very avid reader. I have over 1,500 books in my library, and read plenty of loaned books from friends, and public library books. And yet I care about the books, not the writers. Even with writers and series I really like, the books interest me a lot more. A signed book by the author may some day has financial value, and it’s really nice to get a book personally dedicated, but it doesn’t matter all that much. It may very well be it’s the same for some of those people.

Again, they didn’t even have to be great Harry Potter fans. Just interested enough to buy the book when they saw it on display in a store.

Claims they should have known it was earlier than the release date are also so much hogwash. Yes, there were plenty of publications with the date. But unless you are one of the people who bother to pre-order, who pays attention? I check what books are available when I go to the book shops. If there are specific titles I want, or parts of series to complete, I especially look for them, and if I don’t find them I may collect a bunch and order on-line. But even for the ones I really want, I hardly ever bother to check exact release dates. Most people don’t. It’s enough to know the general season, or month, that a book will be out, and knowing that it would be possible to find it later. So a few days before the release date, most people would really not pay attention. And even if they do, the clerk on the store is the authority figure here. If the store sells it, then it is obviously being sold. It’s a no-brainer tautology. Besides maybe asking the clerk a single time if it’s really for sale, there’s nothing a person should be expected to do.

The gag order is also a very troubling aspects. Telling people they’re forbidden to talk about state secrets is something understandable. Telling people not to talk about a book, isn’t. Sure, they may make some money out of it. So what? Heck, the publisher may even lose a little money out of it, but again, so what? Obviously the publisher cares. But it’s not a legal issue, and nothing that the court can use to order people to remain silent. The only reason for not talking about the book is that the publisher is worried over losses. By that same logic people should be forbidden from talking about any sort of bad experience they had with any product. All consumer protection groups and organizations should also be permanently shut down. After all, they may hurt some corporation’s bottom line.

Unless, of course, the judge thought that the content of the books is real, and some Canadian wizards need a little more time to sort out their affairs so that the rest of the people will not follow hints in the book and find out about them. This could make sense. Except, of course, that the book is urban fantasy, and doesn’t contain any actual state secrets. If it did, the person ordered to be silent would have been the author, not the people buying it a few days early.

It might have also been different had these people been actual reviewers for the publisher. Someone who receives an early copy from the publisher under an agreement that they will not blab about it in public can indeed be legitimately, and legally, expected to keep silent. But these people didn’t have any sort of such agreement with the publisher whatsoever. No signed contract, and not even a mutual understanding, a handshake, or even a half-hearted wink. The people had no interaction with the publisher at all. They just bought a book. This does not give the publisher any rights to tell them what to do with what they bought, and it’s a shame that a Supreme Court judge thinks it does.

I had a conversation about this with a Canadian friend. I was surprised that instead of being outraged the friend was amused. The amusement was from basically the same source that troubled me, that a Supreme Court judge had made a stupid ruling, which is probably illegal, over something as trivial and petty as a reading book. When I inquired if it doesn’t raise big concerns about the court system, I got a reply that in any case their whole court system is absurd, does nonsense like that all the time, and not taken too seriously, so it doesn’t really matter…

You all know the concept behind TV pilots, right? If a show idea isn’t scrapped to begin with, the crew shoots a single episode, to see how it looks like. It then goes to whoever needs to decide whether to finance and broadcast the show, so they could look it over. Then they have the difficult task of trying to guess if viewers are going to like the show, or not. And as can be easily seen by, well, simply opening up the TV, sometimes they guess right, and sometimes they guess horribly wrong. Though this is not a very good measurement, since we can’t see the shows that were never aired. So lots of false positives, which they discover, but only after they already invested lots of money in the show.

And that doesn’t solve the problem of false negatives. The decision makers may scrap a show even if that show, had it been aired, would have gotten a big enough audience to justify production.

But since there is no way to know whether viewers like the show before it’s being broadcasted on TV, that’s a moot point. Can’t be done. Right? Well… wrong.

Someone leaked the pilot episode of the show Global Frequency, that the WB network discarded and decided not to produce. The pilot received plenty of reviews, mostly good, by people claiming (There are some copyright issues after all) that they didn’t really see it, but that’s what they would have thought had they seen it…

The number of people who downloaded it isn’t huge, but it’s quite large. Certainly matching the number of people downloading plenty of very popular show which are airing. The way WB sees it, this is a violation of their copyright. The way I see it, they just stumbled on one of the best ways ever to evaluate a pilot, and should embrace the opportunity.

Yes, the show is their property, and releasing it is as illegal as releasing any other TV show. Except that, copyright aside, if they’re not going to air it then there is no possible loss whatsoever to the network. They can’t even make claims about commercials, selling distribution rights, and so on. WB are not going to do anything at all with that pilot episode, except keep it locked someplace. So if someone sees it, WB incur no losses. It’s not like a personal journal, that they may have a legitimate reason to keep out of the public. It doesn’t do anything for them if it’s not produced. Which places them in a winning position, since they can either make nothing with it, as they already plan on doing, or manage to make money out of it, which is bound to be an improvement

Now they can (though that’s not likely) come to their senses, change their minds, and air it. They already know that they will have viewers, and that there are plenty of people who like the show. And this huge public exposure test didn’t cost them a dime, people volunteered. This would mean that the pilot distribution will cause whatever damages the downloading of other TV series may do (a lot less, if at all, than what the TV networks claim, but that’s a different topic), but that is surely offsetted by the fact that they wouldn’t have made anything at all without it.

I do hope that someone will realize the point, someplace. And that new pilots will be placed by the networks themselves for public evaluation. It doesn’t cost them, and gives them better approximation of viewers than the guesses of the relevant people working for them.

True, that’s not perfect. The viewer pool in that way is biased towards people who have some computer knowledge. But that changes very rapidly, and many people who are completely computer illiterate already know how to download files if they want to. Plus, even if the bias was strong, it would only mean that a small viewership isn’t indicative, but a large one would still mean plenty of potential viewers.

As a final note, had I actually done something like downloading that pilot and watching it, which I of course would never imagine doing, I’d have probably said that it was pretty good. Very idiotic, but then again it is derived from a comic series. The story of the pilot, and the premises they lay for the series, are, allegedly, full of holes and make little sense. But it still would have been lots of fun to watch, and would have provided good entertainment. They also left plenty of open threads on the larger plot elements, so it could improve. Probably not enough for me to shell money on getting the DVD, but enough to warrant the time of watching it on TV.

Local government in the US can legally seize people’s houses and businesses, in order to promote other private economic development of the land.

Yes, that precisely mean that they can take and raze houses in order to allow a mall, or a hotel, to be built, even if the property owners don’t want to sell:

The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex.

As a result, cities have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes to generate tax revenue.

I guess all those American action movies, of home-owners refusing to sell, and greedy land developers trying to scare them off the property using force, are now a thing of the past. All it takes is explaining to some city officials that the new development may bring money, and those home-owners won’t have a legal right to say they like to keep their houses… How lovely.

On the other hand, this would teach a lesson to those nasty people who buy real estate just because they think the area may be worth money sometime. Instead of negotiating with them for compensation that matches the land value, developers could get the local authorities to kick them off. Good riddance, eh?

Hmm… I wonder if we have similar laws here. That could be real useful in handling the current ill-conceived and badly planned disengagement plan. Instead of getting the people there away for the stated reasons, the government can say it wants to build many malls, bulldoze the houses over to make room, and then give the work and franchise to Palestinian contractors…

The invitation, that the Rav-Chen cinema wrote they’ll send me, finally arrived. Together with a printed copy of the same reply they attached to their answer email

Not too surprisingly, that double invitation to the cinema has a few limitations:

• Only valid on Sunday through Wednesday (For those of you that have Sunday as a part of the weekend, this is like Mon-Thu)
• Not valid during holidays, or holiday eves
• Not valid for movies on the first two weeks they are shown

Which together basically say just one thing, that it’s valid in all cases where they are absolutely sure the cinema will have spare empty seats, so it will not cost them anything to have me there.

Not that I’m in a position to complain, considering I didn’t really suffer any damage, so the compensation at all is nice. But it is somewhat irking, to get a “gift” that bothers to emphasise so much how little it was worth. The invitation paper also have the look of something torn from a big notebook, with plenty of prepared forms (They even come numbered, though I do think having a 9000+ number does not mean they actually sent more than nine thousand of those), with a blank space to pen in the name, and an area to mark with a pen whether it’s a single, or double, invitation. I guess they send enough of those to justify the design work.

Funny, considering they still didn’t finish to design a much simpler form that can be used to list camera deposits…

Anyway, the time limit on the thing is for about one month. Which isn’t a lot, given the rate in which I see movies. Still, given the cost I’m sure I’ll manage to find something.

Now I just want to see that they really do improve their act, and make the whole procedure more professional. That’s basically what I wanted, and what they partially said they’ll do

One thing that I did see, before a movie I went to a few days ago, is that they showed a warning. The warning stated that anyone caught inside the cinema with a camera will be considered to be making a copy of the film, and so the camera will be impounded. I’d really want to see them explain to a judge in court how a turned-off stills camera was being used to film the movie, and what gave them the right to steal impound it.

According to reports we here in Israel have a big problem of violence among youth and teenagers. Ministers and Knesset members are talking about having zero tolerance for teen violence, and rush ahead to make new laws and regulations that would make us all safer. So far so good, teen violence bad, safer good.

Except some of these do not seem like zero tolerance. Having zero tolerance towards X means that you will not accept X in any form, will not forgive X, and will not take X lightly. For example, having zero tolerance towards arson would mean that people caught trying to light up fires will be punished to the full extent of the law, and the law could be changed to be harsh. But it would not normally mean that people who buy fuel will be also prosecuted, just because fuel can be used to start fires. Nobody would accept that, since fuel has other uses, and it’s legal to own fuel. Having fuel does not an arson make. If the police would be allowed to search people for fuel, and arrest people who have fuel, that would not be zero tolerance for arson, but maybe a crazy negative tolerance.

And in some aspects this is exactly what is going on now on the teen violence issue. Case in point – Knives.

Owning a knife is legal. There are plenty of things you can do with a knife. Many of them involve cutting things, and there are certainly a lot of things which it is perfectly normal, legal, and even desirable to cut.

This did not stop anyone from suggesting a law which would allow police to search teenagers for knives (yes, a body search. And just because someone is a teen, since I can’t believe there are other external indications for knife carrying. I think they need better cause to search someone for drugs, or guns). And to arrest them automatically if they are found with a knife on them, no discussion, no extenuating circumstances.

If this was about guns, I could at least understand. Guns really don’t have much uses in a city beyond shooting people, regardless of whether it’s self defence intended or not. Carrying a gun currently requires a license, and carrying a gun without a license is a felony. But I don’t think anyone out there is issuing knife licenses.

Heck, I’ve been carrying a knife myself for most of my life. A nice Victorinox swiss-army-knife sort of thing, which has all sorts of good stuff, like a screwdriver, pliers, and, yes, a knife. And you know what? The knife is useful. Cutting packages, strings, papers, all sorts of things. Many people carry similar tools by Victorinox, Leathermans, and other. Or maybe just utility knives, those are knives too.

Knives have many uses, besides stabbing people. Even for teenagers. The idea that being caught carrying a knife can get someone in jail is preposterous.

And why? Because some of those violent incidents involved these teens stabbing or slashing people. Fine, that’s bad. But they could do similar damage with their hands, so should all teens go handcuffed? They can stab someone, or poke their eyes, with a pen. So should any teenager caught carrying a pen, or pencil, be thrown into jail? And do you have any idea how many different ways are there to wound, and kill, people using a belt and belt-buckle? Let’s forbid teens from carrying belts as well. Anyone who wants to use violence will use it, whether they have a knife or not.

Plus, if some crazy angry teen would have jumped at me to attack me, carrying a legal crowbar, I’d have been very happy to have a knife.

Actually, personal story, I practically did. This was on a several-days school trip. Some of the more, er, active pupils decide that night was a wonderful time to have fun. So they picked doors of other pupils as they were asleep and poured all sorts of nasty things on them and into their clothes. They tried to enter through the windows, whether they were left open or not, in a similar way.

When I stood inside the window and told one of them to go away and not bother me that night, he took a large solid branch, and tried hitting me through the window several times. Just to make me move away, so he could throw stuff in. I nearly got my head bashed twice, and luckily was fast enough to avoid it, until I caught the branch and shoved it back.

To put it in context, there were several broken windows on several rooms by the next morning. The teachers didn’t care much, because we were just kids having fun.

Same thing when some broke the door to my room, and started throwing sand, sugar, and other stuff inside. A few kids decided to enter and pour stuff into our bags, and that while I was standing right there telling them to go away. When I pushed them out by force, they came at me in a group to hit me. so I took out a knife, and waved it about a little. That stopped them. They went away. Kids aren’t used to fighting, so they figured if they come at me in a group, I’m the only one who will get hurt. When they saw the knife, they realized they can get hurt. Frankly, they would have gotten seriously hurt without it, since I wasn’t taking being punched as a joke.

Ten minutes later there was a teacher there, finally. Why? To yell at me, and impound my dangerous weapon of mass destruction. Evil, wicked, violent me. I explained to the teacher the reasons I had for waving the knife, but she wasn’t convinced. I told her I’m keeping the knife. She argued, I didn’t budge, and she went away.

Nobody else bothered us that night, I was the crazy guy didn’t take the treatment quietly, as fun. Under the new proposed laws I see these days, I should have been arrested and thrown in jail. As it happened, nothing at all was done to me, since everyone was aware of the problem even if they didn’t want to talk about it. I’m happy I had that knife, or I’d have been forced to actually hurt people, instead of simply scaring them off. The knife prevented violence. And I really think I didn’t deserve to be arrested for that.

Oh, and just to clarify, that wasn’t my pocket knife. That was a butter knife, with a dull edge, of the kind you normally use to spread something on a bread. I didn’t trust the school to provide proper eating utensils, so I brought my own fork, spoon, and knife. Yes, a mundane butter knife. So after that riot, I don’t want to hear anyone telling me that the law will be only about certain kinds of knife. Those they include can still have other uses, and those they exclude can be used for violence, or perceived as being dangerous, just as well. The only sane options are all, or nothing. And the only sane options of these is not to disallow knives.

[UPDATE: The free invitation arrived]

A few weeks ago I went to see a movie with a friend, and carried on me my digital camera. Which resulted in a little unpleasantness. I sent an email to the company (Rav-Hen) running that cinema:

A few days ago I went to see a movie, in the Rav-Hen Dizengoff cinema. I had with me a new digital camera, inside a small holster on my belt. This was the first time I ever arrived to a movie carrying a camera with me.

The security guard saw the holster, asked if I have a camera inside it, and when I gave a positive response he informed me that it is not allowed to take a camera into the cinema, and I will need to deposit it with security.

I tried to explain to the guard that this is not a video camera, so I could not use it to make a pirate copy of the movie even if I wanted to, but to no avail. When I asked him what is the problem with carrying cameras, and why are they not allowed, he was unable to answer me, and only said it’s policy, and that he doesn’t understand it either.

Worse, when giving the camera I was not provided with any official deposit form. I was asked for my name, and was given a simple hand-written note on a piece of entirely common note paper, having my name and the word Camera written on it by the women inside the security room.

Had my friend not been there earlier, and saw people giving those paper notes and getting cameras back, I would have made a scene, since it looked entirely unofficial, and made me seriously doubt that I’ll see the camera again. If I wave a simple handwritten paper and claim it’s a deposit receipt, in most places I would fully expect to be told that’s nonsense.

In this case it ended well, I gave back the note, and got back my camera, but the entire experience left me mystified, and was very unprofessional. In addition, no verification of either my personal details or the camera details was done. Anyone standing in the vicinity when I deposited the camera could have easily written their own note, hand it over, and get my camera. The current procedure is entirely open to abuse.

Due to that I wanted to ask you:

1. Why are simple (non-video) cameras not allowed inside the cinema?
2. Why are the security guards are in charge of it? It’s not a security issue, and making other things a part of their duty hurts security.
3. If this is indeed official procedure, why do you not issue proper forms, and trust on simple and sloppy hand-written notes?
4. Why aren’t any checks done to better identify the identity of the people depositing, and withdrawing, the cameras? And that they are getting the right camera?
5. Why are the people in charge of implementing the policy not informed as to the reasons for it?

Thank you for a reply, and for any better explanation about the reasons for this policy, and these procedures, that you could supply.

A couple of weeks passed, nothing happened. I decided to try this one more time, this time sending the message in Hebrew. Could be that they’re used to getting email in Hebrew, and so this one got ignored, or even discarded by some automatic filter.

I sent them what was effectively a translation of the above message, with some few styling changes. And this time, though it took them about a week, they did answer. The reply was in Hebrew, but this is a quick and rough translation:

We confirm receiving your complaint, and this our reply:

Company policy of the Rav-Hen network forbids inserting cameras from all kinds into the cinema halls, in the intention of preventing any sort of photography of the shown film, due to copyright issues. The policy apply to all kinds of photographic equipment, since our people do not have the expertise to observe the different functionality of each camera.

The enforcement of this guideline is increasing these days, mostly due to the problem of piratical distribution of cinematic movies in various ways, which usually start through cinema visitors who film the movie while it is projected, using cameras of different kinds.

Since these guidelines are new, and the scope of the phenomenon is still relatively small, the network did not yet determine the bureaucratic procedure for applying them in the cinemas.

In any case, in these days the final format for forms which will be transferred to the cinema managers, and will replace the currently existing temporary method, is being finalized.

We see very gravely the fact that the cinema staff was unaware of the meaning of the procedures, and following your complaint to us the procedure will be explained again.

They also said that they added to the message a double invitation for a movie in any of the network cinemas (under several limitations which will be printed on the invitation, and which they advise me to pay attention to). This was of course not actually attached to the message, but rather a note there asked me to provide them with a mailing address to send it to. Considering that while it was annoying, the event didn’t technically hurt the viewing of the movie, this is nice of them.

How did this reply answer my actual questions?

1. Simple cameras are not allowed because their people, who do not understand anything about cameras (them being security guards), can’t tell if the cameras are problematical or not. This is actually fair. I suppose that it is quite possible to have video cameras that look small and harmless, and the technology just gets better and smaller. So erring on the side of caution is understandable. Still, I do doubt that a running film, on its third or fourth week of being shown, and after there are already numerous versions available either to download or to purchase piratically, is really a high risk. Even with a video camera, nobody would have a reason to try and shoot the film.
2. No reply as to why the security guards are doing it. And no response about this hurting security. I’m not sure if that’s because they don’t want to talk about it, or that they see it as a non-issue. Bad either way. And has something to do with the lack of professionalism on this angle, since that’s not the field that the security people has to deal with, or understand something about. I assume the real reason has to do with, of course, money. That being that the security guards are already there, and get paid anyway.
3. The procedure seemed haphazard because it was. They decided they don’t want cameras, sent out the instruction to not allow cameras, and only then started to plan how they actually want to do it. Considering that the problem wasn’t critical (as they say themselves), there wasn’t any extreme urgency, so they could have waited until they could do it properly. It has been about a month since the time the incident occurred, so even if I had the luck to stumble on the very first day of implementation, that’s still a whole month for setting a procedure while they already passed the instructions. This is a long time to run blind and without protocol.
4. Taking the camera back is probably under the same category, so I hope this would improve as well once they implement proper procedures. I take it that not too many camera thefts has occurred in the meantime, or I’d have probably heard about it by now.
5. The security guards apparently were supposed to be able to tell me that they have to take the camera because they can’t tell if the camera was a video camera or not. This despite the fact (oh, don’t bother anyone with facts) that the security guard appeared quite aware that the camera was not a video camera, and seemed to even recognize the model.

Still, all’s well that ends well, and this ended well enough. I did get the camera back at the time. They did reply. And they are aware of at least some of the problems, and intend to make the procedure more solid. In the meantime, if for some odd reason I’ll ever go to the cinema with the camera on me, I’ll just put it in my pants’ pocket instead, so nobody will notice it and have any problem (yes, it is that small, my wrongly suspected to be video-camera). Either that, or I’ll try and do it properly, just to see how are they handling it now.

Nobody much cares about the proper way to write the term spam, and the actual relation between all those pesky spam messages and the food SPAM. Except of course for SPAM maker Hormel, which after a few lawsuits gave up and also decided to take it easier, requesting only that SPAM will be capitalized appropriately. Those pesky messages should be referred to in lower-case – spam, and their food in upper-case – SPAM.

And like I said, nobody pays too much attention, with people mostly writing it in whichever way strikes their fancy.

Today I noticed a blog post, about some unrelated joke, in which the author mentioned both kinds of spam/SPAM. He decided to be nice and civilized, which is very nice considering that like I said nobody much bothers these days, and to take the extra step of writing them differently.

And then went straight ahead to capitalize them all wrong, with SPAM (food) written as spam, and spam (messages) written as SPAM.

I’d have left a comment, but there is only so much you can do with blogs that require registration in order to leave one, and don’t even provide an email address.

Another fine piece of educational legislature. A bill that recently passed in California makes schools use only books which are 200 pages long or less. Longer study books are now forbidden.

Also, the bill:

Encourages the use of technology and multimedia materials to create higher interest and more up-to-date information from varied sources.

It does that by requiring that the new and shortened books will include references to Internet resources on the subject. So the pupils could go look for more information on their own. Providing fixed links to specific references on all specific subjects must seem much better to the bill drafters than just adding general lessons on how to use the Internet and search for reliable information.

This is all absurd, of course. Yes, some study books are much longer than they need to be. But not all. Dealing with the issue should be done individually, by whatever authority is in charge of study books quality and selection. But just telling everyone to cut stuff until they get to 200 pages is so arbitrary that it’s bound to be ineffective. If all that matters is length, students will get a shorter version, but not necessarily a more coherent and orderly one. Cutting is easy, properly summarizing is hard.

And while the Internet contains many good sources, having a printed book link to Internet pages is silly. The Internet also contains bad info. And Internet pages are constantly changing, and changeable. When a book is printed you know exactly what’s in it. But a page you link to can change, or just go away. So this will make official study books become obsolete and inaccurate in the same rate web pages are. Worse, the publishers of a book have no control over the content of external Internet sites, so asking them to print a permanent reference is too much.

Unless book publishers are expected to put up their own sites, for each book, putting on each site the material that was cut from the book. This practically ensures that cutting the books down won’t do any good, since they will all just crop material, and have the book point to the site. The books won’t become better, they will remain the same except that parts of them will become less accessible.

One more point, to show how well thought-of this bill is:

FISCAL EFFECT : None, according to Legislative Counsel.

Sure. Making many study-book publishers edit and cut their books, publish new versions of everything, and have people scrutinizing web sites, will cost nothing. Because it won’t cost the publishers any money, so they will obviously not need to raise the prices of books. They will also not be tempted to just take one book and make it a series of several smaller books, and so nobody will need to pay for the purchase of more books. And the wide changes will also not force pupils to buy all these new books since the often used versions they’re using will not become obsolete and they could go on using them.

Yes, there are many problems with textbooks. Yes, many are unclear. Yes, many are old fashioned. Yes, many are uninteresting. But merely forcing everyone to make the books shorter will not solve any of that, and will just create new problems.

Of course, it’s always possible the people proposing the bill are ones who always had a hard time reading any long and complex texts. And since they turned out so well and fine without it (look, they’re even capable of coming up with such amazing education bills), it made perfect sense to them to let others benefit from the same joys of not having a working and educated brain.

Via Techdirt.

Doesn’t matter why it crossed the road. The law doesn’t concern itself with reasons. Just as long as the chicken will recieve a fine for crossing the road, all is well.

Luckily, after some delibration a judge threw away the fine.

Not because it’s bloody silly, mind you, but because the judge was convinced that this specific chicken was domesticated, and not just livestock. If it was livestock, the 54$ fine would have stood. At these rates, I think letting a chicken cross the road probably costs a whole of a lot more than a whole chicken.

Maybe a better answer to the Why did the chicken cross the road? question would be because it chose to exercise its legal road-crossing right…

Via Letters of Marque.

As the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, and the evacuation of Gush Katif, approaches, more and more protesters among the settlers are taking protest actions which are illegal. The stated intent is to show that they are strong, and can interrupt the lives of everyone else if the evacuation will go on. This isn’t about drawing attention to the problem, since public awareness is very high already. And the public discourse on the issue, whether one agrees to or not, has been going on for a long time, and is practically concluded.

That these people do not agree with the government decision is legitimate. Not everyone has to agree. This is why we have a democracy. As much as it is often not a very impressive one, and as badly as it may work, our democratic procedure do give people a way to express their opinions through voting. Elective government and all that. And the government has made the final decision to evacuate, and that’s pretty much that. There are proper channels for protest, by demonstrations, and by attempts to try and sway public opinion over the media. They did that, it didn’t work, the majority of the population is officially and overwhelmingly in favour, and this is what will happen. It happens all the time, on myriad subjects, and always some people agree more, and some less.

But they are not keeping a civil discourse, and accepting the final outcome. If people don’t agree with the decisions of the government, they can try to change the decision by voting on the next election (Which in this case may seem impossible since it’s not a reversible decision, but they had this option on the last election), they can grumble but live with it (which many people, myself included, do all the time with laws and decisions we don’t like. This is what democratic compromise means), or they can leave the country. Barring that, one can try and make a revolution to throw away the oppressive regime, but we’re not exactly living under an oppressive regime, and there is certainly not nearly enough unrest in the public to even come close. All to say, they should live with it.

Instead they go with force and scare tactics. A few hundreds of people went and blocked major roads and highways. Creating traffic jams, and generally pissing everyone off. Those that the police caught got arrested, but the police is dealing with it badly. Many teenagers were involved, and got arrested. Some of them where left there by their proud (no sarcasm here, unfortunately) parents who didn’t come to bail them out.

Some of them refuse to identify themselves, which is a point I don’t get. How can the police fail to identify them? Nowadays, with a wealth of available private information and personal records, they really should be able to. Maybe not immediately, but certainly after a couple of weeks. By the same logic and treatment, anyone who get arrested can refuse to provide their details, and the police will never be able to get them tried, or properly process them. There has to be a procedure for that, and in this case why isn’t it used?

And the way that the police, or government are handling this, is all wrong. They are giving them special treatment over any other criminals, and not just by providing a special lock-up.

Many of the arrested kids where at the time needing to take their Bagrut exams (state issued examination by the Department of Education, supposed to grade people after finishing high school, and is a requirement for university admission), for example, which of course could not be done without them identifying themselves. So after formal declarations that they will not be able to take the exams anonymously (how could they possibly?! Who will get the grade?! Why did this take a special announcement by the Education Minister?) some of the kids agreed to divulge their details so that they will be allowed to take the exams. And they were examined in the holding cells. This is another very special treatment, since a similar kid who for example would have burned a table at school and kicked a teacher, because he got a bad grade for example, would have also been arrested, but not allowed to take the exam in prison. This is practically unheard of, I think, to provide arrested criminals special opportunity to take the Bagrut exams. If they committed a crime, and have the misfortune of being in jail, they should take the next exam date, just like everyone else who misses it.

Instead, they are put in comfortable cells with a bunch of their friends, and are allowed to have fun. Some deterrent, is it? This works so great as a deterrent, that other protesters are doing other annoying and illegal stuff, not caring if they’ll get arrested. Worse, sometime they don’t. I was recently talking with a co-worker who said she passed next to the courthouse in Tel-Aviv, and a bunch of 15-20 girls where there making a lot of sound with loud whistles, giving headache to everyone around, and seriously disturbing the peace. And 10 cops stood there, just looking at them. Now, I know that there are laws against things like disturbing the peace at public places, so why did all that excessive police manpower just observed, and not arrest those girls?

According to that same co-worker of mine, this is because they are not afraid of getting arrested, they don’t see it as a punishment, and so there is nothing that can be done to them. So first, the arrest conditions may need to be slightly less cosy and fun. Second, this should not, and cannot, be a criteria. What if instead of whistling, or blocking roads, people will come with crowbars and start breaking store fronts in commercial districts, or private houses? Would they be politely ignored because they don’t mind getting arrested? To take it to an overly-large extreme, should you let a murdered go free if he’s a fanatic who likes spending time in jail?

They claim that blocking roads isn’t such a big crime. Certainly they will be (or pretend to be) appalled by the comparison to breaking houses and trashing stores. But the comparison isn’t off at all. If you block a large road, you cost a lot of money. Starting with the relatively minor extra gas and car wear of the people standing, which isn’t so minor on a big road. But also with the time lost. Time is money. People had things to do with that time, which most (all?) of them prefer to do, and need to do, more than standing in a traffic jam. So they didn’t do something, which was more productive to them, or more productive in general. Right there is a substantial economic damage to blocking roads. Sure, most individuals aren’t as badly hurt as a store owner coming to find he lost his entire stock to vandalism (unless maybe someone was held in an ambulance along the way? Rare, but happens sometime, and you can’t know in advance), but the overall damage is larger, since it effect a lot more people directly, and a lot more indirectly.

Taking this thought further, this is plain terrorism. Sure, they don’t try to explicitly kill anyone. But they do try to mess up people’s lives, and to cause property damage. Let’s say it’s like the nice terrorist who will actually call and tell everyone they need to evacuate the building, before triggering the explosives they planted. Heck, some of the leaders of these protesters explicitly said, on public media, that they do that so people will know there will be a price to pay if they are evacuated, that they could cause a lot more damage, and that they won’t hesitate to. It’s a textbook example of terrorism, and it’s criminal and illegal even if it wasn’t.

And today on the newspaper I saw that a rabbi said that blocking roads for the anti-disengagement cause is like saving lives, it has to be done, and people should do it. This is certain to make religious people who follow that rabbi seriously consider doing so. Which mean that the rabbi has explicitly told people to break the law. Yet I didn’t read that anyone tried to arrest him for that. If I went and told people to go to malls and break the stores’ windows, and people were listening to me, I’d get arrested, and rightfully so. Why isn’t he? If what he’s doing is legal (Not that I can see how, but I’m not the authority) it’s for the judge to decide at the trial, not the police. Special, and preferential, treatment again.

Overall, as you can probably guess by this rambling, I’m pissed off by these protesters, and by the treatment they’re getting. There was a decision, the issue is no longer open, it’s done, closed, finished. They fought with the tools they can use, and they lost. Happens to everyone in any democratic society all the time. They should live with it, and be done with it. Not start to break the law, and try to reign terror. They should grow up, and act like responsible people instead of little criminal kids.

And this isn’t a political view caused by me not agreeing with them. Suppose the decision was the reverse, and there was no evacuation. These people are not unlike potential protesters who would have decided that the evacuation is necessary, and they have to force people to do it. So they could have maybe blocked the roads into the settlements, reasoning that without any supply and trade they will have to abandon them. Maybe they would enter the settlements, and burn down houses of settlers there. After all once all the houses are burned, they’ll have to leave. Sounds far-fetched? Maybe, but it’s the exact same sort of the behaviour, with nearly the exact same reasons. And if that happened, I would object just as much about these people. I would object as much about anyone using these tactics and methods here, regardless of their cause and what I think about it. But the settlers who do these protests now? They think what they’re doing is right, but they’ll surely object the same tactics if used by those imaginary protesters in this imaginary case. Even if those imaginary protesters are trying in full earnest, like the real ones say they are, to save the country.

A special committee has recently served the Minister of the Interior with its recommendations on ways to prevent violence in bars and clubs. The committee members come from the Ministries of the Interior, Justice, Education, Welfare, and Transportation, from local authorities, and from the Police. I read the article on the highlights (The full article is in Hebrew. there’s a much shorter version in English, which sadly lacks almost all of the interesting bits) of their recommendations, and overall I’m not impressed.

Bars/pubs and clubs will not be allowed to sell alcoholic drinks after 3AM. This is in order to “dissipate the effect of alcohol on those late for the ball“. Whatever that may mean in this content. I don’t recall any study pointing that alcohol has a stronger effect if imbibed after 3AM. Maybe they know something I don’t. The way I see it, even if most of the violence cases occur later than that, people will just get the same amount of alcohol sooner. Worse, since there’s a deadline, they will get it at a higher concentration as it comes near, since they know they won’t be able to order another drink later.

Club owner will be forced to install CCTV systems, and put someone to monitor it. So it will be easier for them to notice if… something… was going on. So there will be a cost for the clubs to install the surveillance cameras, and to hire people to monitor them. And since most of these places aren’t very large, it will still not provide a much better observation than simply putting someone inside the club to watch using their own eyes. Like, here’s a new thought, having the bartenders pay a little attention and call security if they see a problem. This won’t do much to help, but will raise costs which will of course fall on the customers. Not to mention that people tend to feel a lot less comfortable when they know they’re being photographed, and maybe recorded on film. Having fun, and being self concious, don’t quite go together, so this will cost the clubs plenty of customers

Those same CCTV cameras are to be placed on the entrance to the toilets. Which is supposed to help, how? Is the person observing it supposed to memorize everyone who comes in, and get worried if they stay there too long? Do they really want to bust in every time someone is having number two? No. So it won’t help. Unless they want to put the cameras inside the bathroom, since the claim on the article is that some of the violence occurs there. And this is going to be such a huge success, once people find out that the bathroom is on tape. Right.

Separate bathrooms for men and women. I don’t quite get it, since many people already have those. Some places do have some sort of a single entry/waiting chamber leading to both, but the costs of rebuilding this, or rebuilding totally different facilities for the places which don’t have these, are prohibitive. And I assume the problem they think they have (Doesn’t sound like violence, per se, but more as using the opportunity for the sake of not having people make-out over there. Something which is outside their mandate) is caused by people of different genders willingly going in together. Having different bathrooms wouldn’t stop it in that case.

Forming a group of paid cops/detectives/security-guards who will patrol in the area of the clubs, paid for by a toll the municipality will charge from the clubs. So in addition to their own security, bar owners will need to pay to people who generally patrol the street and supposedly provide security for the entire area? That’s very nice for other business and private homes nearby, I think. Not so nice for the bar owners. Or for their customers who will have to pay for it. Mostly, the problem is that those who will pay will not have any control or guidance over the actions of these rent-a-cops, they just pay the bill, and someone else will give the orders. This is never good. Hey, if having more people patrolling the neighbourhood is a good thing that customers are willing to pay for, then make such decisions public, and let the business compete by publishing how seriously they take it. Let the customers decide if they want to pay for it. But don’t put another tax on these businesses without them having anything to say about it.

Modifying the law forbidding selection, to allow selectors to prevent entry to people who may “endanger the public safety”. It was deemed unfair, prejudicial, or whatever, to allow pubs to put employees outside who will decide that they don’t want some people as customers. I don’t really get it, since it’s their business, and being far from monopolies they should certainly have the right to refuse customers, but that’s the way it is. So now they want to allow this practice, but only for people that they think are dangerous. This is far worse than either having no selection, or having full selection. First, the costs issue again, since this is in fact just a job of another trained security guard, that the bar will need to pay, but who will not provide the value that a proper selector does. Second, people who will be denied entry will raise the exact same complaints they did before. Instead of being told that they don’t look cool enough (or whatever the criteria may be) they will be told that they’re dangerous. This will certainly raise again all the ethnic discrimination issues, just as before. But people will be even more offended, because instead of just being told they don’t fit in with the rest of the crowd, they will be told they’re dangerous. This is very insulting if you don’t see yourself as dangerous, and could actually encourage violence if you really are dangerous.

Classify laughing gas as a dangerous drug. Yes, they want to change the law defining dangerous drugs to also include laughing gas. Why? Because they discovered that sometime criminal elements tend to sell laughing gas outside clubs. And this is supposed to be relevant how exactly? Making something a controlled and legally dangerous substance, just because some criminals sometime sell it near areas where sometime there is violence, strikes me as an enormous overkill and out of all proportions. As well as totally outside the scope of what those drug laws are supposed to deal with. Not everything sold by criminals is a dangerous drugs, and being sold by criminals is certainly not a reason to do classify anything as such.

People with criminal history will not be allowed to own, or be partners in, a club or bar. On the surface, this could make sense, since these people may be more likely to allow criminal activity in the premise. Is this criminal activity directly related to the violence, though? Or just people being drunk and stupid? Because most of the article implies that it’s the latter (after all, this committee was formed to deal with violence, not a crime problem with a side-effect of violence). And so this is outside their mandate again. Not only that, but officially serving prison time is supposed to be the punishment, and people who are released are supposed to be given the option to reform. And this is an explicit discrimination against ex-cons.

I saw another version of the article, on a print paper, which also mentioned something about placing cops who will measure the breath alcohol levels of people leaving bars and pubs. Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, since being drunk is legal. So unless someone parked right in front of the bar, and they stop them from entering the car (All of which is nice, but again totally outside their mandate on the violence issue), this doesn’t help. The exception being if they want to put a cop who will follow every single drunk person leaving the bar on foot, to make sure they don’t drive, or get involved in violent acts, until they sober up a bit. That’s totally unrealistic, and is also not legal, so that can’t be it as well. For now I just prefer to believe that this particular tidbit may have been a mistake of the paper I read, but given the other recommendations above I’m afraid I’m not so sure.

That same printed article also mentioned showing educational films about the dangers of violence in those clubs. The popularity of which is bound to skyrocket the amount of people who will actually go there to have fun.

Overall, like I said, I’m not impressed. Or rather, I am impressed, by how badly done this is. And they intend to turn everything into laws and regulations during the next three months…

A Petty Officer in the US Navy refused to ship to Iraq, was tried for missing his deployment, and was now convicted.

The prosecution asked for nine months in the brig. The sentence was:

…had his pay cut and was sentenced to confinement to his base and hard labor.

… reduced Paredes’ pay to the level of a basic recruit and ordered him to spend two months restricted to his Navy base with three months of hard labor.

Not a light punishment. I’m not sure what “hard labor” means exactly, but it’s hard labour, it can’t be that comfortable. Plus, having his pay cut means a reduction in rank, in this case all the way to basic recruit. From the starting position of a Petty Officer, it’s already a noticeable drop. It doesn’t look good on anyone’s record, and is a serious blow if he was ever considering a military career.

Which IMNSHO makes the following statement by his lawyer very odd:

“This is … a stunning blow to the prosecutors who asked for nine months in the brig,” he said. “It’s a huge affirmation of every sailor and military personnel’s rights to speak out and follow their consciences.”

Let me get this straight. His client was found guilty, lost his rank, lost his pay level, and has to serve several months of hard labour, and it’s the prosecutors who suffered a stunning blow? Hmm…

Yes, it could have been much worse. He could have been sentenced to a longer duration, jail time, and have been discharged. But just because he didn’t get the maximum penalties assigned in the law, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t punished, or that he was justified and vindicated. I’m pretty sure what he got was also not exactly the lightest punishment allowed under the UCMJ for the charge.

In the recent year my company started to sell a certain system worldwide. One of the systems went to a rather large company, L, which can also act as a reseller for our system as part of their own production line. And which also intended to also use if for presentation purposes, in exhibitions and the likes, as part of their product lines and solutions. L asked for a discount price, and due to the fact that we were trying to push the system, and the fact that this would also provide publicity for our own system, my boss decided this would be a good investment, and gave them a nice discount.

Fast forward to last week. My boss met with the head of a different company, G, who was also interested in purchasing such a system. And started the discussion by asking for the same price we gave L. When my boss asked what price he was talking about, the guy from G pulled out a printed copy of the email that my boss sent in the past to L’s representative.

My boss explained to the person from G that the price cut there was an investment, and that now we are also not so avid to push the system, since it’s not so new and we have sales. And that due to that we cannot sell him a system at such a low price (which is break-even, or even a loss for us. I’m not entirely familiar with the cost analysis, but it would in any case not allow us to make any profit from the sale).

The bigger problem was that the email was a private one. As a rule, individual price quotations are not something which companies are supposed to pass along to other companies. Not as a general rule, and certainly not when it is clearly specified that this is a one-time offer and is a special discount under special circumstances, as that email did specify. So G should never have seen that email.

My boss called the guy from L, to complain, and asked him why did he give the owner of G this message. The guy from L was stunned, claiming that he never did passed along that email…

As it turns out, the G boss was visiting L’s headquarters for business, a short while ago. And for some time they left him alone in the office, going to check for some data. And he used that time to open their file cabinets, browse through folders, and photocopy documents. Which included a printed copy of that email.

This was a senior of a rather large international company, during business meetings with another large international company… Lesson learned: Do not leave anyone in an office unattended, no matter how respectable he may seem.

Needless to say, he won’t be getting that discount.

Texas. Happily married couple, and two young kids. Then the model citizen of a father get arrested for sexual assault. This is a problem for them, since they don’t want to break the family apart (your husband gets arrested for sexual assault, to which he admits, and you want to preserve the family so much?! Why?!), and it’s hard to stay together when some of you are in jail, right?

So what do you do? Fake the husband’s death. The husband signed a plea, and was allowed to stay on probation out of jail. Meanwhile the wife:

spent weeks surfing the Internet, gathering information for a bizarre and grisly plot of deception. She learned how to burn a human body beyond recognition. She sought clues on ways to deceive arson investigators, and took meticulous steps to create a new identity for her husband.

The husband didn’t report to the probation officer, got jail time, and just before he was supposed to report to jail, there was a terrible car accident, leaving his body charred beyond recognition. Oh, and he had life insurance for $110,000.

Except that the body burned too perfectly, the temperature required to ruin a body so much was higher than what the rest of the car sustained. Just the area of the driver’s seat got so hot. For some reason investigators did not realize from this that he suffered from spontaneous human combustion, and that this was the cause of the accident. They in fact were even petty enough to comment on how there were no skid marks, and whine about traces of lighter fluid. Mean spirited people, aren’t they?

In the meantime, the wife, after a few months, found a new boyfriend. Which surprisingly enough looked exactly like her dead husband, only with different hair colour. I guess this was just her type, of course, since the husband was dead. Or at least that what they expected everyone to believe. The kids bought it (well, being 1 and 4 years old, they have an excuse) and so did the neighbours (Who would have thought? The sexual assault guy was not a very friendly neighbour and nobody knew him well. What a shock).

So many problems with that imperfectly executed plan, that it was bound to get discovered. And it did. At least the wife was nice, and just used the body of an old and poor women, so nobody would be offended. She’s quite a sweetheart when you get to know her, really:

Investigators said Molly Daniels told them the body was taken from a cemetery a few miles away. The body was an 81-year-old woman who had died in 2003 and was buried in an area used for people who can’t afford a burial plot or have little or no family.

”We felt because she was older; there would not be much family impact, if any,” Molly Daniels testified.

Now the only open question is whether they wanted to commit insurance fraud, or whether the fact that they didn’t leave to someplace else proves they just wanted to keep the family together. The way I see it, even if they wanted to preserve the family, it was bloody idiotic to stay in the same place, where people may still recognize the husband (I know eyeglasses worked perfectly for Clark Kent, but just dying the hair? Please…) . And if they were stupid enough for that, then they surely could have been stupid enough to stay if they were just after the money…

In any case, those are obviously weeks of on-line research that went down the drain. Just in case we need another proof that the wife isn’t that great a thinker. Or the husband either, since obviously he head a few weeks to hear about the details of the plan before it went into action.

Via The Legal Reader.

If people make a performance which requires practice, careful choreography, and special costumes, that’s art, right? Apparently in Oslo they think so too, which is why a Judge decided that striptease is art.

Here’s a nice quote by one of the strippers artists:

“Ninety percent of the guests here tell me that what I’m doing is art.”

Sure it’s art, baby. Now please shake them for me once more, then go and see if in addition to tax exemption you can perhaps also require state funding. After all, I’m sure things like theatres, galleries, and museums get funding, so why not other art forms?

There are so many wrong things in this story, that I don’t know quite where to begin. A man accused of murder is being granted a new trial, after it being discovered that at the time of the original trial his lawyer was using cocaine.

Let’s start with a simple quote from the article:

The judge wrote that defendant Robert Sagasta’s new attorney proved that Gallego’s “impaired mental and physical condition during trial due to his use of cocaine resulted in deficient representation.”

It’s practically a classical lawyer joke right there. This lawyer was using cocaine, had an impaired mental and physical condition, causing him to provide deficient representation, and yet nobody at the time noticed. Guess the behaviour on a light drug like cocaine isn’t enough for someone to notice they’re not dealing with a regular lawyer.

More so, the original trial took place in 2000. The new lawyer started with the appeal proceedings in 2004. So for several years nobody thought to check into the behaviour of the defence attorney, probably because it wasn’t that suspicious. Nice.

Another great quote:

“I’ve always prided myself on giving 110 percent to my clients. That was a stressful time in my life, and it’s history,” Gallego said. “I’ve never been healthier mentally, physically and emotionally, and I’m thankful that I had the mental fortitude to tell the judge what I told him out of respect for the system and my client.”

First of all, always be wary of people giving more than 100 percent. Always. Because, quite frankly, nobody can possibly ever give more than 100 percent. If they claim they do, they are either lying, or are exceedingly bad at math and simple logic.

Second, good to know that he still thinks that even during the time he admits to being very distracted (family issues, it seems), and admits to have been doing a really bad job, he was still giving 110 percent.

Third, this whole fortitude in coming forth to confess to the judge thing? Which does sound admirable… This was done years after the fact, with a potentially innocent man sitting for quite some time in jail, and only after being prompted (strongly?) by the new lawyer. Plus, he came forth and told about the family problems, but neglected to mention the cocaine angle. This only came out later.

via The Legal Reader.