Nobody's Business

Patio Haters

From London to Cape Town and from Washington DC to Lisbon, I've dined al fresco in slightly nippy weather thanks to the wonderful invention that is the patio heater.

Members of the European Parliament, a body that is always at the ready to squeeze the pleasure out of the lives of its 350 million constituents, want to ban the devices in an attempt to maim two birds with one stone: global warming, and smoking.

[Patio heaters] give a vital boost to trade at pubs, cafes and restaurants by enabling customers to sit outside in cool weather. They have become particularly important to pubs since the smoking ban prevented customers smoking inside pubs. Industry experts say a ban on outdoor heaters could cost the pub and catering trade £250 million a year in lost business.

Euro MPs are today due to vote on a resolution calling on the European Commission to set a timetable for abolishing goods with low energy-efficiency ratings, with outdoor patio heaters specifically mentioned.

A United Nations climate-change scientist called bullshit on the supposed environmental impact of patio heaters, however, pointing out that

It would take an equivalent of more than five patio heaters to produce as much CO2 as one TV on stand-by mode does in a year.

Well, Europe's political classes could go after families with more than one TV next, I suppose. Or after citizens who use their outdoor grill in excess of once a month. Or they could ban night-time sports matches, which require blazing lights. And hey, those eternal flames on the tombs of various Unknown Soldier-monuments all over Europe are pretty wasteful too, you know. There ought to be extensive rules and laws for all of that, don't you think?

Just to show that I'm not averse to helping the environment, I can think of one exercise in shameful profligacy that'd be easy to eliminate with just a little political will. It's the European Parliament's own wholly unnecessary monthly schlep between Brussels and Strasbourg, which, in terms of carbon-dioxide production, is the annual equivalent of 150,000 transatlantic flights.

Soon You'll Need a License to Breathe

I'd love to auction off some state inspectors on eBay, but I don't think anyone would bid. What on earth would you do with the waste of space that these bureaucrats are?

Via Radley:

The state of Pennsylvania has shut down the eBay business of Mary Jo Pletz, who started the endeavor so she could earn money at home while caring for daughter, who had developed a brain tumor. Not content with merely running her out of business, state officials are also prosecuting her. One inspector who visited her home threatened that they were "drawing a line in the sand."

Her crime? Selling goods on the Internet without an "auctioneer’s license."

You might think there's more to this saga, that surely you're not getting the whole story — but really, that appears to be it. I suppose that according to the state of Pennsylvania, 99.999% of people who have ever sold anything through eBay or another online auction site are lawbreakers.

Let me come clean right here: since 1999, when I joined eBay, I've violated the state's law over a hundred times. I'm lucky, because at a $1,000 fine per infraction, I owe only a little over $100,000. Mary Jo Pletz (who says she paid income taxes on whatever she made, by the way), auctioned off an estimated 10,000 toys, videos, sports memorabilia, tools, infant clothes, and other items on eBay. So potentially, her fine could run to $10 million.

Taxing Thirst

Though it's unlikely she'll ever admit it, Malory Shaughnessy, a Maine-based crusader against substance abuse who wants to raise alcohol taxes, is in a twelve-step program.

I don't mean to imply that she is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Rather, based on her dour editorial in the Bangor Daily News, I'd say she is incurably ravenous for tax increase after tax increase (times twelve and maybe more). Little steps, each time, and yet by the time she's done, we'll probably be looking at a six-pack of Bud that costs the equivalent of a nice Lafite Rothschild.

Like scores of other nannies, Shaughnessy wants to have it both ways. She says she only favors a little price hike, just pennies per bottle, no big deal; but then, a few paragraphs later, we learn that the increase is dramatic enough that it should stop a chunk of the population from over-imbibing, and that the extra tax will produce massive piles of money that the state can use to further combat drinking. Obviously, those statements can't both be true.

Apart from the fibbing and the obfuscation, the problem with people like Shaughnessy is, they don't ever stop. We've seen it with smoking bans: every time smokers gave in just a little in hopes of buying peace, the various groups of self-appointed vice-fighters yo-yo'd back around in mere months with new demands for bans, and new tax proposals. It'll be no different with the forces of temperance and teetotalism.

Incidentally, the word temperance connotes restraint. Well, hey, how about a little restraint from the other side? How about just leaving people alone? I see no credible self-control at all in the tireless promoters of drug and alcohol crackdowns. And what's more, I predict that within a generation or two, the New New Puritans will argue that just as there supposedly are no safe levels of tobacco smoke, alcohol isn't truly safe in any quantity either.

Scoff if you want. You can drink to my foresight in 15 or 20 years; just be prepared to pay through the nose.

An Extra Eye Focuses on Cops and Suspects

A couple of years ago, after I'd immersed myself in the Corey Maye travesty for a bit, I made the case for SWAT teams equipping their members with helmet-mounted video cameras. The footage would show, almost always beyond any reasonable doubt, whether a shooting or other violence that could occur during a raid was justified, no matter which side initiated it. Video and audio taken automatically at the scene, of the entire police operation, would shield the innocent and inculpate the guilty, whether they're suspects or officers.

I just learned of a complementary product that I hope will be standard police equipment in a few short years, and not just for SWAT teams. It's a pistolcam —€” a small camera designed to be affixed to the barrel of an officer's service gun.

PistolCam, with its patented Auto-On technology, will automatically provide video/audio documentation of a perpetrator'€™s hostile actions. Using state of the art MPEG4 digital imaging technology, PistolCam will record up to 60 minutes of VGA digital video and sound at a full 30 frames per second.

The benefits to police departments are plenty seductive:

No longer will police officers be at the mercy of fallible and all too often hostile eyewitness testimony. ... Mini USB port provides instant downloads, allowing for distribution of video/photo documentation to aid in apprehension of fleeing suspects. Security software aids in evidence chain documentation. ... Whether providing superior situational awareness with the integrated ultra bright illuminator, superior targeting with the on-board laser sighting system, or liability protection from baseless litigation, PistolCam will provide the latest in crime-fighting technology.

Just as important is the benefit to civilians: much-improved law-enforcement accountability, meaning fewer thin-blue-line perjuries; and fewer cops going around like power-mad frat boys, acting out with impunity.

I can think of more than a few instances where a PistolCam would've prevented deaths, or would've at least made it clear which side was the culpable aggressor in a deadly firefight.

Police departments have been enjoying some pretty nice windfalls of late, what with loosely written asset-forfeiture laws leading to (often questionable) property seizures; and with the Department of Homeland Security doling out fortunes for new law-enforcement equipment. SWAT teams are now habitually getting outfitted with Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, flashbang grenades, ballistic shields, and other fancy gear, up to and including grenade launchers and military tanks.

By comparison, finding money for helmet cams and pistol cams ought to be a cinch.

The police department of Newburgh, NY was the first to bite the bullet, so to speak. More will follow.

Pistolcams, shoulder cams, helmet cams, dashboard cams —€” I say, bring 'em on. I'm no fan of the surveillance society, but this particular aspect of it (while not without downsides) looks a lot more like a blessing than a curse.

The Bad Seed

Political prisoners in China can be as young as two months old.

A Death Threat Against 'To the People'

As a rule, I don't respond to blog comments except in their original thread (and even then, not that often). But once every year or so, there's a disturbing one that merits a new post. One memorable such communication once came from a lady named Pam Futerer who, in response to a quickie essay of mine, fantasized about crushing my dick in a vise and cutting off my balls. Ah, good times.

Anyway, this time around, the honor goes to someone called Matt Vollmer, who only took a year and a half to respond to a Nobody's Business riff about the litigiousness of various dumbasses. For his comment, click on the link and scroll down until you see his name in blue.

One case I mentioned in my post — a post that got Mr. Vollmer so riled he demands my apology on behalf of one of the victims — was that of two young women in Florida who discovered the flammability of high-proof alcohol when they visited a nightclub where a fellow patron set fire to a stream of rum. Both women sustained serious burns. Pretty awful.

But here's my problem. They didn't sue the firebug. Rather, they filed suit against Bacardi because, they allege, the distiller's product is "defective" and "dangerous."

It's like getting stabbed and, instead of pressing charges against the assailant, suing the manufacturer of the knife. It's like finding grandma face-down in eight inches of water and suing the maker of the tub because the thing has a stopper.

Alcohol that ignites may be dangerous, but it isn't defective. It dutifully does what it's done for untold thousands of years, and anyone who has ever eaten crêpes suzettes, or banana foster, or any other flambéed food, knows this perfectly well.

Mr. Vollmer accuses me of "picking on burn victims to get [my] social networking fix." It's an odious charge. I obviously don't make light of people with severe burns — it's a horrendous injury that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. No, what I have a problem with are the craven opportunists who file lawsuits that don't seek justice but a big payout. More to the point, I detest the sundry exploiters of our legal system who give the truly culpable (such as the firestarter in the nightclub) a free pass, while going after a party that clearly has no culpability but does have deep pockets.

And no, that moneygrubbing perversion doesn't become less objectionable as the accuser's physical state is more pitiable (though I'm sure there are swarms of trial lawyers prepared to argue otherwise).

Unlike the hostility displayed by Ms. Futerer against my poor family jewels, Matt Vollmer didn't threaten me with castration, or even with a shotglass of flaming calvados.

He apparently saved the death threat for another blog, To The People, that, in an admittedly prick-ish and intemperate fashion, had also criticized the Florida litigants. Less than half an hour after Matt Vollmer posted his demand for an apology on Nobody's Business, a commenter named Matt (no full name given) threatened bodily harm against To the People's bloggers, confirming that his note was a "death threat" and closing with "be warned you motherfucker." Click on this link and then read the fourth comment.

Remember, both the Nobody's Business post and the one at To the People had lain dormant for 18 months. Is it the same Matt? You'd be forgiven for assuming so. But would anyone really be so muttonheadedly reckless as to leave an e-mail address in one location (you don't see it, but as this site's administrator, I do, along with commenters' IP adresses) and then issue an [ahem] anonymous death threat minutes later at the next site visited? It seems so.

In Matt Vollmer's world, anyone who deplores the vomitous and misguided behavior of a gold digger is way out of line just because said gold digger happens to be injured; but it's OK for him to promise to kill people whose views on gold-digging don't jibe with his own.

I don't think he gets just how repulsive and rationally bankrupt that is — not to mention that it's, you know, a crime.

War on Hand Sanitizer: No Surrender!

Some cops are dumb as posts. Like this guy. The county prosecutor appears to be a little soft in the head, too, for filing charges in the first place.

Denton County [Texas] prosecutors decided Friday to wash their hands of a case against a Lewisville middle school student accused of trying to get high by sniffing his teacher's hand sanitizer. Three days after filing delinquency charges against the youth, prosecutors did a turnaround and decided that the common cleaning gel is not an abusive inhalant under the Texas Health and Safety Code.     

"It's not a crime. Hand sanitizer does not fall within that statute," said Jamie Beck, first assistant districtattorney in Denton County. "The police agency brought it up mistakenly thinking it was."...

Mr. Ortiz said the family's ordeal began Oct. 19, when his son picked up a bottle of hand sanitizer from the desk of his fifth-period reading teacher at Killian Middle School in Lewisville. He rubbed the gel on his hands and smelled it. In the view of school officials, the boy "inhaled heavily," according to Mr. Ortiz, who said his son sniffed the cleanser "because it smelled good."

The youth was sent to the principal's office, and the Lewisville police officer assigned to the school began investigating. "The event happened at the campus," said Dean Tackett, a spokesman for the Lewisville Independent School District. "But once the police took it over, it was a police investigation. They decide if there are charges and what kind of charges."

The other thing that's amazing here is a common denominator in too many of these news stories: the phrase "police officer assigned to the school."

Why are there cops in middle schools to begin with? And if we think it's a good idea to replace the hall monitors of yore with uniformed, armed crimefighters, how about at least restricting the officers' activities to shooting the next Dylan Klebold cleanly between the eyes?

It's easy to see what leads to the incredibly stupid law-enforcement excesses of a case like that of the hand-sanitizer bandit: boredom.

Not the kid's. The cop's.

The tedium of being assigned to a school with a preponderance of reasonably well-behaved kids must be mindboggling. Then, when something — any petty thing — does happen, the officer is likely to throw himself into the situation like a parched bedouin would jump into a puddle in the desert. It's lucky that we haven't yet seen a case of a cop breaking up a cafeteria food fight by emptying his gun into some dastardly 14-year-old pudding-throwers. Give it time, I guess.

Schools are for kids and for teachers. Putting officers with handcuffs and guns in their midst is a solution in search of a problem.

Kick them out.

The Death of Irony

Here's a post that won't die. Getting all these e-mails and comments from people who wouldn't know satire if it hit them on the ass with a concrete paddle used to amuse me. Now the dingbats are actually beginning to frighten me.

I've heard of people with iron deficiencies, but it seems that this country has a bigger problem with widespread shortfalls of irony.

Excellent Question

Newscaster: "Mr. O'Leary, how can we in the news media do a better job of focusing on bullshit and really hounding candidates on these petty issues?"
O'Leary, encouragingly: "You're doing a great job as it is."

Sometimes, only jesters dare speak the truth.

Uneasy Notes on (East) Germany

I belatedly saw The Lives of Others on DVD a few weeks ago, the bone-chilling European drama about an East German Stasi officer who spies on a playwright. From the nuanced script to the top-shelf acting and the understated soundtrack, it's one terrific movie.

The new issue of Wired has an article that reads almost as a companion piece. It's an account of how German computer scientists are using advanced scanning and pattern-recognition technologies to literally piece the deliberately shredded and torn Stasi files back together, page by page (East German operatives, in the weeks before the Berlin Wall fell, hand-ripped the incriminating files after the motors in the electric office shredders overheated and gave out).

Due in part to the film, droves of East Germans are demanding to see their Stasi files; each month brings 6,000 to 8,000 new requests.

The Germans use a special word for learning to cope with and overcome the past (perhaps because they have so much of it): Vergangenheitsbewältigung. That's what those old, restored files are for — a chance to confront historical demons before they become spectral and unreal.

The Wired piece is a good read overall, but one detail stood out for me, one of those seemingly inconsequential trifles that you instantly know you'll never forget. It involves a former dissident named Ulrike Poppe, who was under Stasi surveillance for 15 years.

For months, it turned out, an agent was assigned to steal her baby stroller and covertly let the air out of her bicycle tires when she went grocery shopping with her two toddlers. "If I had told anyone at the time that the Stasi was giving me flat tires, they would have laughed at me," she says. "It was a way to discredit people, make them seem crazy. I doubted my own sanity sometimes."

The effects of this method are like the whiff of a fiendish stench so fleeting that it vanishes before it quite impresses itself upon your senses. The strategy is childish, pranksterish, almost innocent on one level, ruthless and monstrously cruel on another. And, I'm sure, quite effective. There were reasons why East Germany, along with then fellow communist police state Hungary, had the highest suicide rate in the world, and this sort of ethereal, state-ordered wretchedness must have been a solid contributor.

By the way, in excess of five million East Germans were the subject of their own Stasi file, about one third of the entire population. More than 90,000 domestic spies and bureaucrats worked for the Stasi at any one time in order to collect, interpret, and maintain that torrent of data, aided by some 200,000 informers, including university professors and bishops.

Read it all, and you'll know a helluva lot more than the average German high schooler, it seems:

In a survey of Berlin high school students, only half agreed that [the former East Germany] was a dictatorship. Two-thirds didn't know who built the Berlin Wall.

That's a sobering stat, and evidence of an evidently schizoid society in which those over 40 or 50 have a heavy need for Vergangenheitsbewältigung, and those under 20 have no earthly idea what that even means, or why the hell the desire exists in the first place.