OHP dash cam footage released.

Below are a few things I’d like to point out about this video.

It was initially reported that the OHP told the EMT to “watch his rear view mirrors.” In this clip one can see that the OHP does not stay far enough behind the ambulance for them to see him in the rear views and he only stays behind the ambulance for a few seconds.

The OHP spends 18, eighteen, seconds at the scene he was called to. When he leaves the scene, you can hear his engine as he guns it to chase down the ambulance.

The trooper is informed IMMEDIATELY that the ambulance is carrying a patient to the hospital. The OHP had initially said that no one told him that there was a patient in the back and that as soon as he found out there was a patient, he let the ambulace head on. Only after 2ish minutes does the OHP actually open the door to check for a patient and then continues to delay its progress.

At one point a family member of the lady in the back asks the trooper to let them be on their way, to which the trooper responds, “you’d be on your way 5 minutes ago if ya’ll didn’t come out here” (I paraphrase a bit)”

The only thing the trooper keeps harping on is that “no one talks to a state trooper like that, I don’t care who you are.” Which, I think, is the real reason for this travesty. One trooper couldn’t put his ego in check enough to let an ambulance, on an emergency call, continue to the hospital because he felt someone had called him out on his smallness. That is to say, because the trooper felt that he had been disrespected, he was justified in keeping an ambulance from getting to the hospital.

A few things about the popo.

I can not count how many times I have seen a law enforcement official turn on his lights to speed through a red light, only to turn them off and continue on his way at a normal speed. This occurrence is so frequent that even if only 10% are non-emergency, that would put this at 1-3 times a month. That is 1-3 times a month that I, one person, witness.

I have never seen an ambulance or a firetruck do this. Never in my 16 years of driving.

My car once broke down on state highway 51 (circa 1998). I was on the shoulder of the road. A law enforcement officer pulled over on the shoulder in front of me, backed up to my car and got out. He told me that I needed to move my car off the shoulder. I told him that it was broke and needed a jump. I held up my jumper cables. He looked at them, then at me and said, good, you get this off the shoulder and that if he came back and I was still there, he’d give me a citation. He then continued on his way.

I was sitting outside of the Macaroni Grill at 71st and Memorial. I was on a bench that faced the street with my restaurant pager in my pocket waiting with some friends for a table. I took out my pouch of Top and proceeded to roll a cigarette. We heard a squeel of tires on the road as a car slammed on its brakes that was heading past the restaurant. The car REVERSED on the road and turned into the restaurant parking lot. The car squeeled to a stop again, this time right in front of the bench I was sitting on. An angry man jumped out of the car and yelled “what are you doing?” As he was looking at me I said “rolling a cigarette” and gestured at the yellow Top pouch sitting on my lap. He looked at it and YELLED “You’re lucky. I’m an off duty police officer.” He got back into his car and sped off. I was not lucky. I wasn’t high, I was not holding, I hadn’t been close to pot in years. This officer thought it was ok slam on his brakes, REVERSE down a major thoroughfare, all to check on what I was rolling.

This incident is further proof that popo have to much power. There was a study done about celebrities and how they get such inflated egos. I paraphrase the theory now. The theory starts, how does a celeb get to the point where if they are walking down the street and a lady has a heart attack and at the same time the celeb stubs their toe, all of the celebs’ entourage will coddle the celeb and ignore the lady having the heart attack. The theory goes that if this kind of thing happens enough, the celebs start buying into the idea that they are uber-important. That their feelings, emotions, thoughts, etc., are more important that those of anyone else. Repetition is the key to learning, oui?

So it goes with the popo. They start to believe in their own power, their own superiority.

UPDATE: Of God & Justice

New-

  In January (2009) the $500,000 top prize in Alaska’s statewide lottery, which benefits the organization Standing Together Against Rape, for victims of sexual assault, was won by Alec Ahsoak, 53, who has been convicted twice of sex offenses. Link to the article.

Originally posted 8 July 2008-

  This story, a sex offender wins a multi-million dollar lottery ($57 million), reaffirms my beliefs. This other sex offender also won, but he only got $10 million. Link to the video.

  On a different note, I saw a CNA look directly at a poster for “Definitely, Maybe” and for “Cloverfield ” and was unable to read the words. She asked instead for “difficult maybe” and “covergirl.” At least humanity’s best is looking after our weak and infirmed.

If I Had All the Time In the World

There is a great source of political information at opensecrets.org.  This site will tell one who/what/which, individuals, companies/corporations and PACs gave money to individual politicians, political causes or parties.  One can enter one’s zip code and get a list of local politicians and where they got their money from.  One may also look up any politician one desires and find out where their contributions came from.  The same is true of corporations, one may put in a corporation and find out where they are putting their money.

If I had all the time in the world, and unlimited resources, I’d build a digital collection that would do the same for the bail out cash.  That is, where it is going and what that organization is doing with the money.  Later it would show how much money is being/has been repaid.

I would also build an earmark or pork belly digital collection.  One could look up which politician added which earmarks, how many they’ve added, how many their state, city, etc, has received, how many have they proposed, etc.

One could also build the same type of collection for bills introduced, anti-gay bills, pro-life bills, anti civil liberty bills, etc.  I think these tools would be invaluable in the voting process.  This might prove to be especially true for younger voters.  They are typically under represented in the turnout of elections and they are more tech savvy, and more likely to get their news online, than older voters who are more likely to get their information from news papers, TV, books, etc.

I now arrive at a point of consternation.  One’s dollar votes.  Take for example the recent boycott by pro gay marriage Californians of organizations that donated to the anti gay marriage cause.  I am astounded that this is controversial.

The argument has been made, by Chomsky, Watts and others, that one’s dollar votes are really all the American public has left.  By ‘public’ I mean those of us that make less than a million or so a year.  Politicians, including Obama, probably – we’ll see (and I hope I’m wrong), are loyal to their donors.  Businesses donate to get favourable legislation passed.  If one chooses to give one’s commerce to a business that donates to a politician who votes pro-life (for example), that business has more money to donate.  If a large, informed, group of consumers choose to ‘give’ their money to businesses that donate to pro-choice politicians, that cause would get more money and the other side would get less.  This seems like an idea that free market proponents could get behind, let the market dictate.

We, the public, control the vote.  We, the public again, also control where our money goes.  If there was a place to go to see, more closely and easily, what businesses were doing with our money, we could make our dollar votes count for more.

This doesn’t just go for business donations, CEO’s and other officers who make their money from our commerce give HUGE sums to politicians.  We can aim that money.  If we give them less revenue, they can not spend as much on politicians.

So, digital collections could be a force for change, or status quo, but a force nonetheless, simply by existing.  One only needs to build it.  Also, one needs to promote this.  Thinking of all the news stories and controversy that arose when a group of people started making their dollar votes heard, this is a collection that is bound to get a lot of free press, just by existing.

It feels kind of weird to have seen knowledge about what businesses, and those who run them, do with ‘our’ money, be so controversial.  It feels the same as when religious right type groups call for boycotts of movies, Harry P. comes to mind, because they didn’t like its message vs a religious right type group that calls to ban the release of a movie or TV stations existence.  The phrase “if you don’t like don’t go/watch/buy it,” comes to mind.  A boycott is consistent with that idea, a ban is not.  Boycotts do not take away someone’s right to buy whatever one wants.  A ban does.  A ban, carried to its logical conclusion, end is fascism.  A ban is a group forcing something on another group of people.  A boycott is choosing not to spend one’s money somewhere, there is nothing forced on anybody.  Choice vs force.

Why are GM, Ford & Chrysler moving away from production of SUV’s?  It is not because they are selling like flapjacks but the CEO’s decided that it would be better for the planet if they made a fleet that emitted less CO2.  It is because people stopped buying them.  That logic is true across the board for businesses.  Even if some company wanted to make a green fleet of cars, if they didn’t sell, they’d be fiscally forced to stop production.

I guess they bottom line is this, since our money is being used to political ends anyway, it would be great if there was a place where consumers could go for quick and easy (Herr Zipf would have my back on this) information about what their money was supporting, they could have a say, an informed say, about what that money spent, said for them.

Paying attention.

  My item the 9th, the Urban Dictionary, is a cool site.  I think it is important in the context of information repositories because of its irreverence, its shock value.  If we accept that the ‘build it & they will come’ ethos is bunk, then we must figure out ways to expose repositories to people.  If the repository is intended for use by the general public, or a part of the GP, a subculture, then one has to find ways to reach them.  In addition, once one has reached the intended population, one must convince them to actually go to and use the repository. 

  I am against appealing to the lowest common denominator so hard.  I am against hype-marketing hard as well.  I think this is because the products that use these things are trying to promote the worst things, unhealthy food, horrible movies, detrimental things in general.  So, might it be ok to rub up against those two forms of promotion if one’s product is ‘good?’  Might it be ok to intentionally place controversial or irreverent items in the collection to get some promo?  Assuming, of course, that the contovo/irrev item(s)  ‘legitimately’ belong in the collection.  That is to say, puting pictures of the FBI’s corpse garden in a repository for books made into films would not be ‘legit.’  Though, putting those pictures in a collection about genocide would be acceptable, even though the FBI’s corpse garden has nothing to do with genocide.

  So, mightent one have to do things one finds distasteful if one wants to get one’s IR known and used by the people who it is created for?  I think maybe one must.  But then again, I am very suspicious of ‘best sellers’ or movies that are ‘top grossing.’  That isn’t to say that I do not like any, I do.  But, when a favourite band or author has an album/book that comes out and goes platinum/best seller, I suspect that they have lost their artistic/creative integrity, that they have sold out, when before I had wondered why their albums/books didn’t sell more copies b/c they were so good.  While I wish for the artists I like to do well, I am immediately suspicious of them when they do.  I think a little of that struggle exists in many IR creators.  They want the IR to be used by people and to be popular but, only by the population it is intended for, only by those who deserve the IR, not the unwashed masses. 

  I guess what I’m saying is that, perhaps we need to come down off our high horse/ivory tower and let the thing be used.  Used by anyone, deserving or un.

I must have been sleeping.

  Seriously, this is the second piece of news that I should have known about some time ago but, for some reason or tother, I have not heard about until now.  The Times has printed an article (on September 7th)claiming that Kim Jong-il is dead and has been using body doubles to keep things going.  Read the article here.

 

  How did I not hear about this until now?  Apparently this story has been circulating since Oct 2nd.  Hustler, Larry Flint’s magazine, is producing a “Nailin’ Palin” XXX video.  OMG that is funny.

 

  I need to pull my head out of my sassafras.

What is Africa then, a state?

  From this article,

“In a string of damaging briefings, it was claimed that Mrs Palin had spent ‘tens of thousands’ more on her clothes than budgeted for, that she once met McCain aides dressed in nothing but a towel and that she did not know Africa was a continent.”

War of the Worlds original broadcast turns 70 tonight.

  Oh general public, how much more discerning and critical though hast become.

Article with link to original broadcast.

Initial rumblings in, $20 billion in bonus pay.

  Update, AIG burns through $123 billion in a month, with no idea where it went.  Read.

 

  This article is the first of what I am sure will be many more stories of corporate bailout bonuses paid for by us, the taxpaying US citizens who, on average, make less money in a lifetime than one ’set aside’ amount.  Since this is one of the 1st reports, the 1st I have seen, I’m sure the subsequent figures will only get bigger.  I guess $20 billion isn’t so bad, we have pledged $800 billion (more but who’s counting?).  It’s kind of like losing a penny in your drawer of hundreds.  And I’m the Jew (self-description, not hate mongering) looking for the damn thing and bitching at you for losing it. 

  I guess we should actually be grateful that the current administration is so down for the upward redistribution of wealth instead of that evil kind Obama is talking about which would shamefully, evilishly and communisticallyish redistribute wealth from the top down.  Ludacris. 

  We should actually be beating and jailing the poor for getting us into this mess in the first place, not just taking their money and rewarding the hard working captains of commerce that heroically fought for America’s best interests, that shackled themselves to an ethical, moral foundation in a truly Kierkegaardian fashion, despite the temptation being thrown at them by the poor.  You damn poor people, take it wretched scalawags, ye loose strumpets and jackanapes.  See the ruin you have wrought on the rich and be loathed.

  Here is one of my favourite lines from the article:

     “Critical producers and critical managers will be retained with the same bonus they had last year,” said Robert Sloan, head of U.S. financial-services recruiting at Egon Zehnder International, a New York-based executive-search firm. “The others will see sharp cuts.”

  I sure hope it’s the workaday jerks, the Joe Sixpacks and soccer moms that got us into this mess that they mean but, ‘the others.’  Let’s see some hourly wages get reduced, that would serve them right,  damn evil doers.  Cause without these bonuses, that are going to the the ‘critical’ producers and managers, who, due to their salaries, make up the 10% of America’s top earners.  These bonuses could potentially save 100% of the home foreclosures on multimilliondollar houses.  What a shame it would be to lose all that African and Brazilian hardwood flooring and minimalist furnishing.

What’s zee problem?

  Item the Eighth under My 10 Items, is about the z-axis and how third dimensional capabilities in visual interaction with teh internets could potentially revolutionize not just the way we see data and the way data interactions are structured but would necessitate such things as new mouse design and different keyboards.  While the applications for gaming and movies are obvious and visceral, the z-axis also holds great potential for digital collections. 

  The 3rd dimension, the z-axis, has been around in visual representations for a long time.  Its application has been limited.  Mostly by cost and technology but, as terabytes and ever faster processing speed have become almost passé, the application of the 3rd dimension to visual data interactions becomes more feasible and likely. 

  The z-axial application could be a revolutionary application or tool for the visual data interaction we all have with digital collections.  The z-axis, fore and aft, could be a citation stream.  As one moves forward one would go through the articles cited by the original article and aft would be articles that have cited the original article.  This is just my initial thought on the z-axis.  I am positive some industrial types could think of better ways to use the z-axis but, this seems handy to me so I include it here.  This could also be used for links, with fore and aft, one could go to pages that link to the original page and the other way round.

  For websites this could be used for similarity chases.  Say one is on Amazon looking to purchase a new CD or mp3 download, fore could be a search through other retail sites that list your item as well, aft could be scrolling through Stereogum, Pitchfork, Allmusic, etc., for reviews and cross listings in the vein of “if you like this, you may also like” style.  Again, I’m sure there are better applications but, I include this here only for an example of how it could be used.  There could even be a “hard fore” and a “hard aft, ” excuse the implicit puns.  Soft movement could be through the current site, hard could be the situation I just described.  This could be made true of current “<-” and “->” buttons.  A soft ”<-/->” click would move you through the original page’s page history while a hard “<-/->” could redesignate an original page or move you through the browser history of one of the other fore/aft pages history.  So, if one starts on Amazon, moves forward to Stereogum and then clicks a few links there, the soft “<-/->” would move you through Amazon level’s browser history.  A hard “<-/->” would move you through your current level’s browser history.  I hope this is convoluted enough.

  This is very new and is just starting to be discussed and mulled over.  I see the z-axis as inevitable.  It will become part of the way we interact with data, maybe not until we are all old and enfeebled but, it will happen.  Thinking about its uses and applications is fun as it makes me wish that this system was already in place.

I Believe The Children Mirror Our Future.

  Obama wins in Scholastic’s election poll, read the article here.  Some of the awesomeness of this article includes; this poll has mirrored the real election results all but twice since 1940.  The kids voted for Dewey over Truman in ’48 and Nixon over JFK in ’60.  Also, there is this, the kids voted for Gee-Dub in 2000.  So depending on how you viewed that election, the kids’ votes didn’t predict the actual vote or, you are batshit insane.  The popular vote that year elected Gore, the Supreme Court appointed Gee-Dub.  So, I’d say the kids were right all but thrice since 1940, still a very good record. 

  One could read this Scholastic history in a number of interesting ways.  One of those being, democracy is doomed to failure.  If the foundation/cornerstone of a good democracy is an informed public, then the fact that a children’s vote has mirrored the actual vote all but thrice since 1940 means that Joe Sixpack and soccer/hockey mom are as informed, have the same capacity for reason, the same guile and insight as children.  Or perhaps something else could explain the very close relationship.  Perhaps both populations are getting their information from the same places, rather place, rather the exact same place- the TV.  If both populations saw the same commercials and saw the same news clips, and that was the extent of their information outlets, that would help toward an explanation of why these two votes mirror each other so closely. 

  I have for a long time believed, and have read many convincing arguments (No Logo, Manufacturing Consent, The Corporation, etc.),  that the media panders to the lowest common denominator.  That would be a 5th – 7th grade level, which is the average intelligence level of the American population.  That children don’t want to be challenged by their information sources is understandable, that adults who choose to vote also don’t, is not.  That an adult who chooses to vote, can stop at the TV’s level of information and be satisfied and contented with the information they have, enough so that they feel they can make an informed decision and vote, is not ok.  With that in mind, it just seems unlikely that if adults got their information from sources other than TV, the outcomes of both populations would be so closely related. 

    Go ahead, think that this means that kids vote how their parents do, that the biggest influence on a kids vote is how their parents vote.  I don’t buy it.  This vote encompasses children from k-12, more than enough of a population of people who would rebel against their parents.  It would also not explain Dewey or Nixon.  No I think the reason is where the populations are getting their information from.