The Yates Abomination [culture]

Andrea Yates, the monster who drowned her entire brood of small children in her bathtub a few years ago, was given a new trial on appeal. Why? According to the AP:

Prosecutors have said they plan to once again call Dr. Park Dietz, the psychiatrist who testified at Yates' first trial that one episode of "Law & Order" depicting a woman who drowned her kids in a bathtub and was acquitted by reason of insanity aired before the Yates children died.

But no such episode existed, and the mistake caused an appeals court to overturn Yates' conviction.

This is amazing. Her conviction was overturned because a witness was mistaken about a television show?

Why does it much matter? There are two major issues in the case: first, did Yates kill her children (she did, and no one disputes it); second, was she ill at the time or not?

How could the existence or non-existence of aTV show episode be that important?

The New Sebring

So what happened to Chrysler? They used to be all about style, since they had terrible quality due to putting cost cutting above all else. Now that Daimler has apparently hammered some quality into Chrysler, they seem to be pumping out ugly-mobiles.

First, they dropped the Jeep Compass on us. Bleh.

Then, the Imperial, "I can't believe it's not a Rolls!".

Now, the new Sebring, which looks to me like an over-inflated (overfed?) Crossfire. Other comments I have seen compare it to a crossbreed between a Crossfire and a Saturn Ion.

The hood has rake lines, the headlights look Korean-angry, the sides look busy, and the rear looks like any generic Asian family sedan's. I like GM's G6 (taught, sport) and Ford's Fusion (angular, edgy, clean) much better. Chrysler is bucking the cleaner, simpler trend here and moving more towards Kia faux-luxury.

The Miami 7 [Politics]

Maybe a little "domestic spying" isn't such a bad thing, after all?

I am sure the ACLU will step up to defend these poor, spied-upon fellows, who obviously had their civil rights trampled by the racist, xenophobic FBI. I'm sure Louis Farrakhan will explain to us that this is anti-Muslim, anti-Black entrapment, and that these peaceful fellows never meant to blow up the Sears Tower.

Big Milk [Politics]

As you may have heard, a group called Center for Science in the Public Interest is going after KFC for cooking chicken in trans-fats (partially hyrdogenated oils), and is also attacking Starbucks for selling high-fat coffee drinks.

I sent the following email to CSPI.

CSPI,

I think that you should target the U.S. dairy industry. Big Milk keeps pushing the idea that "milk does a body good", when in fact, humans are not really meant to be consuming milk after infancy. At least, government regulations, labelling, and perhaps excise taxes should be used to discourage the consumption of high fat milk products.

I also find their advertising worrisome. By using cute stories ("Raymond Burr") and professional athletes with milk mustaches, Big Milk is brainwashing kids into thinking that milk is good for them. Milk advertising should be sharply curtailed.

Big Milk is also a huge recipient of corporate welfare, and it is well known that the excessive flatulence generated by cows contributes thousands of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas, into our atmosphere.

Someone needs to stand up lt the Lactose peddlers, and I think that CSPI is just the right crew for the job.

--"AutoProphet"

English Mazda Commercial

Mazda2 commercial from England, I think. Typical girl-outsmarts-rude-guys plotline, but unexpected method (I thought she was going to do the sideways drift into the spot trick).

Paypal's Hoplophobia [Guns]

I heard recently that PayPal was "anti-gun". I went to their site and checked out their policies, and sure enough, they have absorbed eBay's over-broad rules:

FIREARM PARTS AND ACCESSORIES
You may not use PayPal to purchase or sell any firearm receivers or frames, components and parts of receivers and frames, or "cut" or "80%" receivers. PayPal also does not permit assault weapon-related parts and accessories, firearm silencers, and kits designed to convert a firearm to have automatic firing capability. This includes the sale of any parts or accessories prohibited for sale by the National Firearms Act or other federal or state law, including items related to short-barreled shotguns or short-barreled rifles, fully automatic weapons, large-capacity magazines, multi-burst trigger activators and camouflaging firearm containers.

For more information about the National Firearms Act (NFA) and its requirements, please refer to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms website.

AMMUNITION
You may not use PayPal to buy or sell high-capacity magazines (those which hold more than 10 rounds), ammunition with propellant (e.g., gunpowder), or blank ammunition. The term "ammunition" means ammunition or cartridge cases, primers, bullets, or propellant powder designed for use in any firearm.

The reason for the tight rules is obvious: PayPal and eBay are trying to stay in the good graces of the liberal state such as Illinois and California, which have very tight rules about "assault weapons" (ugly guns) and "high capacity magazines" (>10 rounds).

There are stories floating around on the web about people whose PayPal accounts were summarily closed after they had a transaction where certain keywords relating to firearms had appeared.

I myself have used PayPal to buy firearm related stuff on eBay and other sites; I guess I will have to be more careful.

More Domain Sleuthing...

I previously fooled around and found some interesting domain names which were reserved by Ford, such as "www.lincolnmarke.com".

For fun, I did some searching on various combination of "bold moves".

www.boldmove.com is for sale.
www.boldmoves.com, .net are the sites of a relationship coach, whatever that is.
www.fordsboldmove.com and www.fordboldmoves.com are unregistered.
www.myboldmoves.com is unregistered.

But www.myboldmove.com is a placeholder.

Doing a Whois search on www.myboldmoves.com, I found that it is registered to JWT.com. Going to JWT.com, you see that it is the web site of an advertising agency. Click through to their list of clients and you see that Ford is one of their customers.

I would guess that Ford is going to unveil a "Bold Moves" themed web site at www.myboldmove.com.

What is going to be there, I have no idea. Maybe they will let you pick three letter alphanumeric names for future Lincoln models? Arm wrestle Kermit the Frog? Decorate gay wedding cakes?

(Ok, so this is not exactly the find of the century. I'm not in the mood to post anything that requires much work, and I know that there are a few people out there who may be interested.)