Link Dumpling

Time to divest another glop of internet sites, articles and assorted detritus, flotsam, jetsam and other internet stuff. Use caution when using the links below, they have been proven to eat up gobs of time and will cause you to indiscriminately forward all kinds of info-knowledge of questionable use to the recipient.

First, I promised some friends last weekend that I would supply this first link. They were discussing the "renaissance" that is taking place in Detroit. OK, some were and others were mostly engaged in ridicule of this the 97th revitalization of Detroit in the last 46 years. My only comment was and will remain: "It's Detroit!" Here is the link I mentioned: Job Gain/Job Loss

Next my good friend and co-author Amy Calistri has suddenly revitalized her blog with content that is more and more not poker and more of the actual world everyone else lives in. Sometimes you lead by example, other times you just keep whining the same old refrain.

The good Dr. Pauly has once again shocked the poker community by demonstrating his grasp of things well beyond the world of flushes and straights. The truly insightful post from the good doctor on Paul Cezanne, the world's first tournament reporter.

I was hiking during the entire bubble boy incident last week, so when I eventually heard of it I assumed it was a remake of the John Travolta movie. Then I was gone for the weekend, so I missed the anti-balloon boy daddy "news" and internet furor. When all is said and done, I don't really care but my opinion on the entire non-incident was soundly captured by Otis writing on this blog Rapid Eye Reality. Although I was absent, it still is not my fault, how about you?

If you think you are a nerd, or perhaps you feel your increased computer time is beginning to sap your humanity and replace it with nanotechnology or at least plot lines from old episodes of Star Trek (the original version not the Next Generation or Voyager but maybe Enterprise but... oh shit, I've been infected!)

Sorry. My point up there was that about once I week I go and read Wil Wheaton's blog, if for no other reason than to demonstrate to myself that I am still human and not actually linked to this laptop by cyber-filamention or mind meld. Wil's writing reminds me that there are actually interesting humans who speak about technology and the techno-nerd sub-culture in ways that leave me completely baffled and greatly relieved.

Finally, my culturally subversive video of the week and one that every one should see but particularly young women between the ages of 3 and 83. Watch to the end, it gets even more creepy at the very last.

---

graphic credit: archive

Wandering the InterWebs

Today's adventure began with the word paraphernalia. I tend to spell it wrong because I pronounce it wrong, it's that pesky third syllable. Well anyways I wondered about the uses of the term that do not have the word "drug" in front of them. This query led to several webpages and before you know it I am on the U. S. Department of Justice website, where I find this culturally interesting information.

Drug paraphernalia is any legitimate equipment, product, or material that is modified for making, using, or concealing illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine. Drug paraphernalia generally falls into two categories:

• User-specific products
  
• Dealer-specific products
  

User-specific products are marketed to drug users to assist them in taking or concealing illegal drugs. These products include certain pipes, smoking masks, bongs, cocaine freebase kits, marijuana grow kits, roach clips, and items such as hollowed out cosmetic cases or fake pagers used to conceal illegal drugs.
Dealer-specific products are used by drug traffickers for preparing illegal drugs for distribution at the street level. Items such as scales, vials, and baggies fall into this category. Drug paraphernalia does not include any items traditionally used with tobacco, like pipes and rolling papers.
Under the Federal Drug Paraphernalia Statute, which is part of the Controlled Substances Act, it is illegal to possess, sell, transport, import, or export drug paraphernalia as defined. The law gives specific guidance on determining what constitutes drug paraphernalia. Many states have also enacted their own laws prohibiting drug paraphernalia.
With the rise of the drug culture in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, the country began to see the appearance of “head shops,” which were stores that sold a wide range of drug paraphernalia. While some of the paraphernalia was crude and home-made, much was being commercially manufactured to cater to a fast-growing market. Enterprising individuals even sold items openly in the street, until anti-paraphernalia laws in the 1980s eventually ended such blatant sales. Today, law enforcement faces another challenge. With the advent of the Internet, criminals have greatly expanded their illicit sales to a worldwide market for drug paraphernalia. For example, in a recent law enforcement effort, Operation Pipedreams, the 18 companies targeted accounted for more than a quarter of a billion dollars in retail drug paraphernalia sales annually. Typically, such illicit businesses operate retail stores as well as websites posing as retailers of legitimate tobacco accessories when in reality the products are intended for the illegal drug trade.
Drug paraphernalia is often marketed specifically to youth—with colorful logos, celebrity pictures, and designs like smiley faces on the products—the items are meant to look harmless and belie the dangers of taking controlled substances. Other paraphernalia like magic markers can conceal pipes, and small, hand-painted blown glass items look more like pretty trinkets than pipes or stash containers. Parents need to be aware that these kinds of products often conceal drug use.

Another click, still on the DoJ website, I found this:

If you visit our site to read or download information, we collect and store the following information about your visit:

- The name of the Internet domain and the IP address from which you access our site;

- The type of browser and operating system used to access our site;

- The date and time you access our site;

- The Internet address of the Web site from which you linked directly to our site; and

- The pages you visit and the information you request.

This information is primarily collected for statistical analysis and technical improvements to the site. This government computer system uses software programs to create summary statistics, which may be used for such purposes as assessing what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas. In certain circumstances, however, we may take additional steps to identify you based on this information and we may share this information, including your identity, with other government agencies.

A final click locates this information:

The Department of Justice is pleased to participate on open, un-moderated forums offered by commercial social networks sites in order to increase government transparency, promote public participation and encourage collaboration with the Department.

We currently maintain official Department of Justice accounts on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter.

Today's information is provided by Keeping Your Head in All the Games for your personal edification and is therefore provided without political commentary or paranoia. Those are your responsibility as a citizen of a democracy or other form of government depending on where you are reading this post. KYHiAtG does not collect information on its readers. OK, we do but we are not going to tell you what we get or how we are going to use it.

---

photo credit: archives

Another Recycling

A few months back I recycled an old post that I thought had some current relevance. Today I am at it again, this time with a rant from early last year on the subject of rational thought and the death penalty. An oxymoron in the making. Here is today's recyclementation:

I was listening to NPR the other day in the car. I am not, like some of my friends, addicted to National Public Radio. I do, however, listen to it in the car rather than the noize on most other stations. So here was this NPR "news" piece covering a hearing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The case involved whether or not the current methods of lethal injection to administer justice in capital punishment cases was cruel and inhuman. Why? Well because according to some, who have studied this; the current three drug cocktail may not be as painless as the single drug administration of a strong barbiturate.

Now there was some political silliness and political stupidity on both sides of the case but what I was struck by was the questioning by the various Justices of the court. One in particular caught my attention as the very essence of legal system, as practiced today, in the United States. The attorney advocate for changing the lethal injection to a single drug had made the case that this procedure would insure a painless death; he had further made the point, supported by medical testimony, that the current three drug cocktail could leave some patients paralyzed but able to feel their slow, agonizing death by suffocation.

A Justice asked the attorney where in the Constitution he found the stipulation that the death penalty must be administered in the least painful manner possible. No really, I am not making this up nor extrapolating the question. The justice asked where in the constitution was it written that the death penalty should be administered in the least painful manner. FYI, the constitution does not mention the death penalty, nor any other criminal sentence. In fact, the constitution does not deal with such matters leaving them to the courts and justice system that it established.

Just sit with that a moment.

There in the allegedly hallowed halls of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, a member of that Court actually wanted to know, if the revered Founding Fathers, gathered to write the Constitution of the newly freed country of the United States of America; whether these delegates had considered that 220+ years in the future that perhaps their descendants would need written guidance in order to be civilized enough to kill a shackled person in the most humane manner available.

But, of course, that is not what the esteemed Justice meant. What he meant was that he only is able to make judicial rulings based on what is actually written in the Constitution. Since the delegates never addressed the actually manner of murder by which their descendants would put people to death than, in fact, beheading them as is done in many countries around the world would be perfectly constitutional according to this Justice. Stoning is condoned in the bible, but do you bring your own stones? BYOS.

Now once again--who are the Barbarians? and why do they wear those black robes?

And why does judicial rationality taken to an absurd extreme tend to sound so much like simple stupidity?