Anonymity 101

From a Yahoo! News story: “WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Canadian model has won a landmark case in a New York court after Google was forced to disclose the online identity of a blogger who anonymously posted derogatory comments about the Vogue cover girl. Justice Joan Madden of the New York State Supreme Court ordered the Web giant on Monday to hand over identifying information about the person who created the blog a year ago using Google's blogger program.” This is nice. I think that if you are going to attack or accuse someone, never do it anonymously – only cowards do that. Please.

Inquisitor General

From a Yahoo! News story: “WASHINGTON – IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman says Swiss banking giant UBS will give his agency the details of 4,450 client accounts suspected of holding undeclared assets. The deal to end a contentious international lawsuit between U.S. tax collectors and Swiss bankers was announced Wednesday morning. Shulman said in prepared remarks that the deal will give the IRS thousands of long-sought account names and is expected to provide even more UBS clients who voluntarily disclose their financial details to the agency. The two sides told a federal judge last week they had reached a tentative agreement, but the details were not released until Wednesday.” The most important detail here is the word “suspected.” This is like the Spanish Inquisition. Jews were burned at the stake (after they were tortured into confessing) when they were “suspected” of being fake converts. Their property was confiscated, then the informers shared (with the church) in the confiscated loot. What a nice setup. How many fortunes were made in this way? Hundreds – maybe thousands. All because someone came under suspicion. Nothing more was needed. Sort of like the Salem witch trials, no? Please.

Extradition

From a Yahoo! News story: “MADRID, – A Spanish court has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay, a lawyer in the case said Saturday. Human rights lawyers brought the case before leading anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon, who agreed to send it on to prosecutors to decide whether it had merit, Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers who brought the charges, told The Associated Press.” One question: Why not pursue Bush and Cheney as well? The Spaniards wholeheartedly sanctioned the Inquisition for more than a century and now they are getting faint hearted at water boarding? Please. Stop this self-serving hypocrisy.

Church and State again

Well, now the saga between the pope and the newly re-instated bishop and the Jewish council in Israel has escalated to include the German government. Whatever happened to separation of Church and State? The pope has even asked the wayward bishop (in Argentina) to recant, which I'm sure he won't do. This will get dicey for sure, though the Vatican is very good at diplomacy. (See post of January 28 - Bishops and Rabbis)

Privacy

From a news story on the net: I had not heard about this wild idea: "PORTLAND, Ore. – Oregon is among a growing number of states exploring ways to tax drivers based on the number of miles they drive instead of how much gas they use, even going so far as to install GPS monitoring devices in 300 vehicles. The idea first emerged nearly 10 years ago as Oregon lawmakers worried that fuel-efficient cars such as gas-electric hybrids could pose a threat to road upkeep, which is paid for largely with gasoline taxes." Raising gas taxes is just too simple a way out of this dilemma. Everyone knows that cars cause most of the world's pollution. The real reason behind this lame idea must be to reduce the number of cars. Maybe soon, we'll hear someone say that people over a certain age shouldn't drive at all. The words "monitoring devices" scares the unholy sweat out of me.

Jobs

I don't remember where I picked this quote from, but it really makes no difference.

By Jason Simpkins and William Patalon III: "U.S. consumers are already losing their jobs at an accelerating rate. The same thing is now set to happen to their credit lines. But with so many Americans already losing their main source of income – their jobs – at an ever-spiraling rate, will an economy that derives two-thirds of its power from consumer spending end up mired in its worst funk in decades because those same consumers are now losing their charge accounts?" Some people don't like working all that much anyway, so why complain? For some reassurance, look at the lady's hemline - it's a little high, so that means there's nothing to worry about - things will turn out ok. At least there's unemployment compensation. Things could be bleaker - you could be burning at the stake for voicing your opinion, no? Relax and take a walk in the park. That's what I'm gonna do.

Public execution

Wikipedia knows everything. That's where I found the following: "Robert Damiens, who was mentally unstable, had been a servant of members of the Parlement of Paris where he had heard much criticism of the king (Louis XV). This, combined with the violent pamphlets and general discontent with the king, convinced him that he had to murder him in order to save France. Other sources say that he did not want to kill the king, but merely to give him a warning and thus force him to change his behavior. In any case, it was the first attempt at regicide in France since the murder of King Henry IV in 1610.
Tried by the Parlement of Paris, Damiens was executed on 28 March 1757, following the procedure applied to regicides: after numerous tortures, Damiens was carried to the plaza in the cold afternoon of that day. There, he was first tortured with red-hot pincers; his hand, holding the knife used in the attempted murder, was burnt using sulphur; molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. Horses were then harnessed to his arms and legs for his dismemberment. Damiens's joints would not break; after some hours, representatives of the Parliament ordered the executioner and his aides to cut Damiens's joints. Damiens was then dismembered, to the applause of the crowd. His trunk, apparently still living, was then burnt at the stake. There was an immense crowd to watch the spectacle, which nobody had witnessed in 147 years. Balconies in buildings above the Place de Grève were rented to women of the aristocracy for the exorbitant price of 100 pounds per balcony (approx. $775 in 2008 US dollars). This tale of Damiens' brutal execution, recounted in the opening pages of some well-known book, has been disputed by numerous historians." I wasn’t there, but I believe the story. Historians, like economists, don’t know anything. Pretty soon, they'll be telling us the Spanish Inquisition never happened. There was money to be made in public executions, especially if they were gory and strange and gruesome. Poor Damiens, he lived in the wrong epoch. Today, he would have been judged not guilty by reason of insanity. He would have enjoyed a life of leisure in some sanatorium, watching cable TV, reading the latest books, the finest magazines and newspapers, and eating plenty of healthy food.