Fumesucker

Fumesucker's Journal

July 9, 2012

Joe the Printer gets air time on NPR.. Again..

Without of course NPR bothering to identify Joe the Printer's Koch-supported NFIB ties.. Again.

NPR, a wholly owned subsidiary of the 1%..

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/08/156458470/raising-minimum-wage-a-help-or-harm

Joe Olivo owns a small printing press in New Jersey that employs 47 people. Olivo tells Raz that a higher minimum wage basically raises the whole wage scale and would force him to make cuts.

"What happens is the employee who's been here for 3 years and has more experience than a person making an entry-level wage, they will rightfully want more for their seniority," Olivo says. "So what it does to me as a business owner, by pushing up wage scale, it increases my expenses."

Olivo says that means he either has to increase revenues — difficult in the current economy — or he must find ways to cut expenses: cutting employees, not hiring new employees or bring in new technology to decrease the number of employees he needs.

"So it really hurts my current employees and it also prevents me from bringing on new ones," he says.

July 2, 2012

Results of my first and most likely last alert..

What I find most ironic is that all the jurors but one evidently agreed with me..

At Sun Jul 1, 2012, 08:41 PM you sent an alert on the following post:

That is poor people logic
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=887449

REASON FOR ALERT:

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate. (See <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=aboutus#communitystandards" target="_blank">Community Standards</a>.)

YOUR COMMENTS:

I read this as a broad brush attack on the poor, asserting that all poor people are flawed in the same ways.

The single defining characteristic of poor people is that they have little or no money, to imply otherwise is bigotry.

JURY RESULTS

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Sun Jul 1, 2012, 08:47 PM, and voted 3-3 to LEAVE IT ALONE.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: It is wrong headed and ignorant, but I don't think it breaks the rules. I hope the rest of the thread gives him hell for it.
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: post is not really ok, but makes a point that some people believe to be true and really does need to be discussed as to why
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT and said: Unnecessary broad-brush attack on a group of people
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT and said: I agree with the reasoning of the person who sent the alert.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: Insulting, wrongheaded and arrogant but not against TOS. Best to answer this one rather than hide it.
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT and said: It's a broad brush attack.

Thank you.

June 27, 2012

Life is like a box of chocolates..

http://xkcd.com/1013/

June 24, 2012

Insight from TBogg's commentariat..

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/06/22/rhode-island-blows-save-schilling-takes-loss/

Poster Crosstimbers at #28 nails it..

On almost every occasion, when I listen to what the ultra-conservatives or libertarians are complaining about, and let it stew and simmer down to it’s essence, it is that their freedom to dupe, cheat, destroy their fellow citizens is limited by government. Their concept of a nation is something like a fenced off Serengeti for social Darwinism. They squeal when they discover that they are just one of the wildebeests.

June 22, 2012

So there you sit with a bomb in your head..

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/05/aint-gonna-let-nobody-turn-them-round.html

So there you sit with a bomb in your head.

It's a bomb which will detonate if you ever admit -- even for a moment, even to yourself -- that the Evil Libruls have ever been right about anything.

If detonated, this bomb will not only annihilate your identity, your ideals and your faith...not only destroy your standing in the community, the esteem of your friends, the respect of your spouse and children and, potentially, your livelihood...but it will also utterly humiliate you.

Should that bomb ever go off you would be forced to admit that you have gotten really, really important things terribly wrong for the last 10...20...30...40 years.

Read the rest of the piece at the link, it's really quite good .

June 21, 2012

Mandatory helmet wearing in cars would save many more lives than on motorcycles or bicycles..

2010 motorcycle deaths in the USA.. 3,615
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motorcycle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

2010 bicycle deaths in the USA.. 618
http://www.bicyclinginfo.org/facts/crash-facts.cfm

2010 automobile deaths in the USA.. 32,885 - 3,615 = 29,270
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

Assume for the sake of argument that half of all motorcycle/bicycle deaths in the US would be saved by a mandatory helmet law, that comes to a little over two thousand.. I think that estimate is a bit high myself..

Now assume that only ten percent of car crash victims would be saved by a mandatory auto helmet law, a number I think is at least fairly reasonable, over three thousand lives would have been saved in America during 2010.

If mandatory helmet laws make sense for bicycles and motorcycles (and by no means am I saying they don't) then those same laws make even more sense for automobiles in which far more Americans are killed and injured each year.

June 1, 2012

Portable computer; laptop, netbook, what have you for bicycle touring?

I'm planning on taking a two month or so bicycle tour in the fall and I'd like to stay connected online while I ride around the country. At the moment I only have a desktop so I will need to get some sort of portable computer.

In order of priority I will need reliable, lightweight, as big a screen as possible (it will be my entertainment while I'm tented up if it's raining; ebooks, videos, music), good battery longevity, compact size, largish hard drive for pictures and vids (I guess I could carry an external USB drive though).

I'd prefer Windows if at all possible and of course price is of some concern, I'd like to get something in the $200 - $250 range. Used isn't a problem, I was thinking of possibly some kind of used Apple laptop running Windows but my knowledge of that is just about nil..

Any suggestions, thoughts?

May 31, 2012

Jury foreman: Dr acquitted on leaving the scene after killing skateboarder because he "panicked"..

http://www.wgrz.com/news/article/169951/1/Corasanti-Jury-Foreman-Speaks-Out

... Nixon says they were not convinced with how the blood was drawn from the doctor. That test showed Dr. Corasanti's blood alcohol content was .10 five hours after the crash. He said the jury questioned whether the blood sample could have been contaminated, and added the Corasanti defense team did a "great job."

Nixon also said the jury did not convict Dr. Corasanti on the charge of leaving the scene of a fatal accident, not because they questioned whether he left the scene, but they feel he panicked.

Ultimately, Nixon said the jury felt defense effectively "poked holes" in the prosecutions case against Dr. Corasanti, but said prosecutors had a good case.

When asked about the victim of the accident, Alix Rice, he said "we had to put some of the fault on Alix." That statement was based on testimony from a defense accident reconstruction expert that questioned whether Alix was riding her longboard on the road or in the fog lane.

May 29, 2012

SoftBank Pantone 5 107SH hands-on: radiation detection comes to Android

http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/29/3049388/softbank-pantone-5-107sh-hands-on-radiation-detection

SoftBank's Pantone 5 107SH will make headlines in the global press for one reason and one reason only — it's the first phone in the world to come with a built-in radiation detector — but it'd be a big deal in Japan even without that headline feature. Indeed, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son introduced the Pantone 5 onstage today without even letting the audience know what that color-matched button was for, and showed off a new commercial that makes no mention of the functionality at all. The carrier's colorful range of Pantone phones has long been a hit in its home market, and a first smartphone entry for the series running Android 4.0 is almost guaranteed to make a splash.

The Pantone 5 is a fairly middling device on paper, with an 3.7-inch 854 x 480 LCD, a 4-megapixel camera, and a 1.4GHz processor, along with the obligatory 1seg TV tuner, waterproofing, and infrared data port. While it's a fairly unimpressive 12mm thick, it feels well-built and the design is very much in line with the pleasingly chunky nature of other Pantone phones. You can take your pick from eight colors, with the purple and teal being particularly fetching. As for software, by default it's running the same Sharp skin that we saw on KDDI's Aquos Phone Serie. We still can't say we're fans of the iOS-style approach to Android 4.0, but it does at least look a little more attractive on a smaller screen.

May 28, 2012

David Weber, absolute proof that very smart people can buy into wingnut bullshit..

I just finished Weber's "Shadow of Saganami" on the Baen free library, I was on chapter 39 and really getting into it, Weber was giving a terrifically sophisticated analysis of the various political entities involved in his story when from out of nowhere he dropped this amazing turd into the punchbowl.

http://www.baenebooks.com/10.1125/Baen/0743488520/0743488520.htm?blurb

"I think they believe that since the Star Kingdom requires its citizens to pay taxes before they're allowed to vote, they'll be able to control the situation. That the Manticoran system's set up to give the Star Kingdom's upper class control of the electorate while maintaining the fiction that the lower classes have any real political power," Van Dort said, and Terekhov barked a sharp laugh.
"That's because they don't understand how high a percentage of our people do pay taxes. Or maybe they think our tax codes are as complicated and buggered up as theirs are as a way to chisel people out of the franchise."
"Not all of our tax codes are that bad," Van Dort protested.
"Oh, please, Bernardus!" Terekhov shook his head in disgust. "Oh, I'll grant you Rembrandt isn't quite as bad as the others, but I've taken a look at the rat's nest of tax provisions some of you people have out here. I've seen hyper-space astrogation problems that were simpler! No wonder nobody knows what the hell is going on. But the Star Kingdom's personal tax provisions are a lot simpler—I filled out my entire tax return in less than ten minutes, on a single-page e-form, last year, even with the emergency war taxes. And all the Star Kingdom requires to vote is that a citizen pay at least one cent more in taxes than he receives in government transfer payments and subsidies.

Totally ruined my suspension of disbelief, it took me about three chapters to get back into the story again, thankfully I didn't see any more really obvious wingturds so I managed to get through the rest of the book without pounding my keyboard into scrap..

Anyone who can believe that a provision to keep anyone not paying net taxes from voting will not eventually be used by the upper classes to disenfranchise the lower ones is just deluded.

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