Weirdness
-
Keeping us safe
This is something to bear in mind as recent events have brought gun control back onto the discussion list
Phony fax gives prisoner almost 2 weeks of freedom
Officials released a prisoner from a state facility after receiving a phony fax that ordered the man be freed, and didn’t catch the mistake for nearly two weeks.Timothy Rouse, 19, is charged with beating an elderly western Kentucky man and was at the Kentucky Correctional & Psychiatric Center in La Grange for a mental evaluation. He was released from that facility on April 6 after officials received the fake court order.
It contained grammatical errors, was not typed on letterhead and was faxed from a local grocery store. The fax falsely claimed that the Kentucky Supreme Court “demanded” Rouse be released.
…
Prison officials did not notice that the fax came from a grocery store because policies did not require checking the source of a faxed order, said Greg Taylor, the LaGrange facility’s director.“It’s not part of a routine check, but certainly, in hindsight, that would perhaps have caused somebody to ask a question,” he said. He added that misspellings on orders are common.
The most damning part I suppose is that misspellings on Supreme Court “demands” are common.
Even if strict gun control is theoretically possible and desirable, it’s got to be administered by someone. And guess who that someone is going to be?
-
An odd mention
Matt Yglesias asks “How many moody loners are there” in this episode of Blogging Heads.
-
The old round up
- Digital Camera crop factors
- 20 things not to do when starting a business – I stayed away from most of them
- More solar power
- via Marginal Revolution –
The public’s opinion of past wars improves as a new war approaches. Thus, after Vietnam most people thought the war was a mistake and this held true for decades until the beginning of the Iraq war when the opinion of war in Vietnam suddenly improved! Even more dramatically, a majority of people thought that World War I was a mistake until World War II approached when the percentage thinking it was a good war doubled.
- The worst school murders actually happened in 1927, though it did not involve shootings. It’s a horrifying story.
-
Best headline of the year so far
From the Grand Rapids Press: Snow won’t dampen global-warming rallies
-
Friday round up
- Crime Crews
- Where the Fortune 50 CEOs went to college – appearances by Georgia State and Georgia Tech, surprisingly little Ivy League.
- Government menstrual forms, really, to quote
Women officers must write down their “detailed menstrual history and history of LMP [last menstrual period] including date of last confinement [maternity leave],” the form says.
I like the use of the term “confinement” for maternity leave.
- Solar Power – I was wondering why companies like this didn’t already exist. Essentially they install (and own) solar panels on top of your house, and you buy it from them them at the rate you’re paying the power company. I met them yesterday at the Home Show at the World Congress Center. A good idea.
-
Quick Tuesday rapid fire
- Prominent 30s fascist sympathizer was actually black! Favorite quote: “One could perform whiteness to some degree, and that is precisely what Dennis did”
- The best author’s site ever
- Real Estate Photography – As I’m doing some light house hunting at the moment, I can definitely say that most online real estate listings are horrible.
- Chet Richards interview
-
Tuesday round up
- Popular mechanics and 100 mpg cars
- Couple Fights for Baby ‘Metallica’ Name
In Sweden, parents must get the names of their children approved by the tax authority, which is in charge of the population registry and issues personal identification numbers, similar to Social Security numbers in the United States.
- Billy Joe Shaver seems to have shot someone.
-
Quck roundup
- An interesting look at the military aspects of social networking.
- Underwater windmills
- How we would fight China
- The metaweb/FreeBase
- Evidently February was cold
- Blurb has dropped their prices.
- Strangest suicide attempt, ever
Two Georgia men survived a gruesome suicide attempt Friday after cutting their own arms off with a saw, reported Atlanta’s Journal Constitution.
The 40 and 41-year-old men managed to remove three of their four arms, cutting them about six inches above their wrists, Atlanta Police Major Lane Hagin told the Journal.
- Baby steps to a better editorial, it’s easier to see why this one is so wrong.
- The 20 best comic book weapons.
- It’s odd seeing this already existing – I stumbled across this C.S. Lewis quote yesterday “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ which is the general gist my future novel The Comedian.
-
Back up
I’m back from being without the internet all day, oh how I missed it. To celebrate, check out the Frank Zappa statue in Vilnius Lithuania. (via Coming Anarchy)
-
Beat this for raw weirdness
’12-year-old’ is 29-year-old sex offender
Stiffler and Robert James Snow, 43, “were very upset when the detectives told them they had been having a sexual relationship with a 29-year-old man and not a pre-teen boy,” Quayle said.
I think the next step is raining frogs. We live in a very strange world. I’m going to put on my tin foil hat now.