Category Archives: General

General

Two bits of news…

Let’s start with the weird news…

Woman Drives Around With 15 Foot Tree Stuck in Her Car’s Grille Like It’s NBD

If this story proves anything at all, it is that when you’re driving drunk you’re capable of some pretty seriously stupid things.  Check out these pictures of the stop and be amazed at the size of the tree (not just 15 feet tall, but also quite wide!)…

and,,,

Here’s the video of her actually being stopped…

Wow.

Alright, getting serious now:

Erin Andrews Awarded $55 Million in Peeping Tom Lawsuit

For those who don’t know who Erin Andrews is, she was (at that time) an ESPN reporter who, while in a Marriott Hotel in Nashville, was stalked by a man named Michael Barrett who eventually filmed her nude while in her room.  Mr. Barrett allegedly got Ms. Andrews’ room number from the Hotel (I don’t know the details of how this was accomplished) then rented the room beside hers.  When Ms. Andrews was out of the room, Mr. Barrett altered her room’s peephole so that when she was in the room he could put his phone’s camera on it and film her while she thought she was alone and in the privacy of her room.

This voyeur film was subsequently posted on the internet and is still out there for anyone to see.  Mr. Barrett was eventually arrested and served 30 months in jail for stalking.

Ms. Andrews pursued a civil lawsuit against both Mr. Barrett and the Marriott Hotel for $75 million and, as the article above notes, the jury awarded her $55 million.  The judgment was that her stalker was 51% culpable in the filming while the Hotel was 49% culpable.  Thus, Mr. Barrett owes Ms. Andrews $28 million while the Marriott Hotel owes her $26 million.

And I couldn’t disagree with at least part of the judgment more.

Now, before you start sending death threats and curses my way, let me state the following:

What was done to Ms. Andrews was unforgivable and her stalker is a lowlife scum.  Frankly, he should have served much more time in jail than he did and I totally agree with the monetary judgment in the civil suit rendered against him.  Had this happened to my daughter, I might well be the one in jail…for killing the bastard for what he did.

Having said all that, I don’t get why the Marriott Hotel was found culpable in this civil suit…at least to the degree it was.

Please understand, I’m not defending the Hotel for what it did during the trial.  Frankly, I think the Hotel’s defense attorney did the Hotel no favors when it implied Ms. Andrews’ career was boosted by this invasion of her privacy.  Worse still was the news that the Hotel owner was caught with a group of friends watching the Erin Andrews footage while eating out.  Jeeze Louize…how stupid -and creepy- can you be?!

Further, I would grant you that  someone at the Hotel exercised poor judgment in telling Ms. Andrews’ stalker her room number (if indeed this happened…I read somewhere that Mr. Barrett used a clever deception involving caller ID to get that information but I could be wrong).  I’m also unclear as to how Mr. Barrett wound up getting the room next to Ms. Andrews.  If he simply walked up to the reception and asked for room X when he checked in and they gave the room to him, how was the Hotel to know he wanted this room for the purpose of spying on her?

So I return to my original point: Why was the Marriott Hotel found so culpable in an act committed by someone else?

Let’s assume the worst: The clerk at the Hotel was stupid enough to tell a complete stranger which room Ms. Andrews was in.  Not only is doing this stupid, it is also dangerous.  Imagine if Mr. Barrett was mentally deranged and sexually attacked and/or killed Ms. Andrews!

As grim as that thought is, telling someone who is staying in a room is stupid and potentially dangerous BUT it is not against the law.

Further, let’s assume this theoretical Hotel Clerk was, after telling this man Ms. Andrews’ room number, even stupider still and was asked if the room beside Ms. Andrews was available and our stupid, stupid clerk rented it to the stalker.

Again, we’re talking some really stupid actions but again, they are nothing more than that.  There is no reason our stupid clerk would think Mr. Barrett is some kind of deranged stalker.  There is no reason to believe s/he knew what Mr. Barrett was up to.  Indeed, I can’t recall reading any story like this, where a stalker figures out the room of a celebrity and subsequently films them through the peephole, happening before.

So how was the Marriott Hotel -the enterprise versus the clerk(s) who gave Mr. Barrett this information- to know this was the stalker’s intention?  And, truly, are they then 49% liable for his actions?  Mr. Barrett has no affiliation with the Hotel and they most certainly stood to gain absolutely nothing -and now have lost $26 million- from what HE did.

To repeat: The actions of Mr. Barrett were not only criminal, but they were also disgusting, invasive, and he absolutely should be made to pay for them.  I feel for Ms. Andrews and hate what she went through.

But I just can’t see the Hotel being culpable -at least to that degree- for the actions of this sick, pathetic individual.

General

On politics…

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As Al Pacino said in The Godfather Part III:

Seriously, how could I not comment on the fact that in last night’s Republican Debate…

Donald Trump Defends Size of his Penis

Seriously?  Apparently so…

I fear for this country…I seriously do.

As Woody Allen said, Eighty Percent of Success is showing up.

At this point, it appears we have what looks to be -barring any unforeseen circumstance- a Hillary Clinton versus Donald “The Duck” Trump race and the simple fact that he’s there (see Woody Allen’s quote, re-read Woody Allen’s quote, be Woody Allen’s quote) scares the living crap out of me.

Anything can happen once the race is down to one Democratic and one Republican candidate and that’s reason enough to fear for this country’s future.

There are those that have welcomed Donald Trump and his possible formal nomination to being the Republican Presidential Candidate.  These people are certain his candidacy will be such a flame-out and the Republicans will suffer such loses that they might finally wake up and throw the extremists from their party.

I can’t help but re-read that Woody Allen quote and shake my head.

I hope they’re right.  I hope the Republicans finally, finally realize they’ve gone too far and, further, I hope this election proves such a paddling to them that they have no choice but to reject the extremists.

I really hope so.

General

New Amazon gadgets…

They are intriguing, to say the least, and one wonders if indeed, as Will Oremus asks in the below article presented on Slate, these new gadgets from Amazon are indeed part of a plot…

Amazon’s Ingenious Plot to Take Over Your Living Room

I like what I see regarding these gadgets even as I can’t help but point to what I posted just yesterday regarding cheap Smartwatches that just happen to be sending wearers’ information out to China (you can read the article by clicking here).

In that post, I wrote about how much of our personal information winds up in other’s hands and how they, including Amazon, may use these bits and pieces of information to develop and target you for other products.

If you buy any of these (admittedly cool looking) new Amazon gadgets, how much do you want to bet your personal information, whether you buy certain things through these gadgets or listen to certain music on them, winds up transmitted to Amazon?

And how much do you want to bet Amazon then sharpens their view on you as a consumer and, when you do head to their webpage, they offer you an astonishing amount of things you just may want to buy based on your usage of one of these gadgets?

It’s hard to remember but Amazon started as an internet seller of used books.

How the mighty have grown!

General

Because you had to know (part…oh I forget)

Given the current political landscape and the hellish thought that one Donald “Duck” Trump might just win the Presidency of the United States, Kate Knibbs offers the following sober(ish) article for Gawker:

How To Move To Canada If Trump Wins, By A Person Who Moved To Canada When Bush Won

Got this particular cat in the proverbial bag! 😉

General

About those smartwatches…

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This article, written by Darren Pauli for The Register, reports on the fact that some very cheap smartwatches send out information to an “unknown” Chinese IP address:

Chinese Backdoor Found In Popular $17 Ebay Sold Smartwatch

When I was younger (get off my lawn!) and professors in English class talked about the frightening scenario presented in George Orwell’s 1984, little did we -or Mr. Orwell!- know just how much technology would create “stealth” means in which people/corporations could glean information on people.

The information transmitted via these Smartwatches to China can’t help but have you wonder what exactly that information is.

But it goes beyond that, doesn’t it?

I’m not embarrassed to say I really like Amazon.com.  To begin, it offers me a great venue to sell my books and I couldn’t be happier for that alone.  Of course, it does a lot more.  It allows me to purchase music and books, movies and all manner of materials which are sometimes hard to come by (the other day, for example, I ordered -of all things- a Tim Horton’s French Vanilla powdered coffee as the one I bought in Canada ran out and I wanted more).

Having said that, I’m all too aware that Amazon has amassed considerable information on me and uses that to try to push other products I may buy my way.  When I go to Amazon’s homepage, there are several listings for things I might be interested in.  Many of them I am indeed interested in and may purchase, but even more eerie is to see listings of things I already own but had not purchased through Amazon (ie, they didn’t know I already had them)…which means Amazon’s algorithms regarding my shopping patterns are eerily on target.

I also love Costco but just know they too have a damn good idea of my shopping patterns as everything I buy I pay while presenting my Costco membership card.  In the flick of a button they can pull up all the things I’ve bought and create a nice profile of not only the things I’m interested in but of the things everyone who shops at my local Costco are interested in.  This information surely allows them to buy certain products with at least a theoretical assurance people in my area will likely buy them.

And that cell phone you carry?  The one that essentially records where you are at every moment of the day?  Don’t tell me that information wouldn’t be interesting to marketers as well!

Don’t forget video game makers and banks and car dealers and…smartwatch makers.

For good or ill, we live in a world where personal information is highly -even aggressively- sought by companies and, quite often, is all too easily gleaned from your own movements and habits.

If he were alive today, what indeed would George Orwell think?

General

Yet a little more on those self-driving cars…

A couple of days ago news was made that a Google self-driving car got into an accident with a bus…and the Google car was at fault (you can read an article concerning this crash here).

Rather than note how incredible it is that Google self-driving cars have been in operation (on a limited area basis) for years now and have driven, according to Google’s latest monthly self-driving report (you can read the February 2016 PDF report here), some 1,452,177 miles autonomously and this is appears to be the first actual accident caused by a Google self-driving car.  It was a minor fender bender yet already some are questioning the future of self-driving vehicles.

People such as Samuel Anthony English who offers the following essay for Slate…

The Trollable Self-Driving Car

I can’t argue all his points but I think he makes one critical mistake in his essay: He assumes that in the future there will be a mix of self-driving cars and human driving cars and I believe we will very quickly move into a world where the self-driving vehicles will rule the roads and there will be fewer and fewer and, eventually, no cars being driven exclusively by people.

The fact is the accident caused by the Google car involved the vehicle not anticipating what the other (human) driver was about to do.  While the programmers at Google no doubt will offer fixes to their self-driving software I have little doubt that future driverless cars vs. human driver car crashes are possible…some of which will be the fault of the Google car.

But if all vehicles are automated I equally suspect they’ll also be able to “interact” with each other to some degree so any situation where a car can move -or allow another to go ahead- will be dealt with and no accident can or will occur.

I strongly believe that when given a choice, people will accept the freedom of a self-driving car versus the drudgery of driving oneself to and from your destinations.

If as I suspect will happen, then the amount of cars with actual human drivers in them will diminish and, perhaps, one day even disappear.

In which case a crash like the one above will probably no longer be an issue.

General

Enough with the Politics!

Ok, maybe not quite yet.  On this “Super Tuesday”, I found this fascinating article by William Saletan which, in my opinion, presents probably the clearest description yet of the strange (to my eyes anyway) anti-Obamaism going on in the Republican Party and why it may have helped in the creation of a Donald Trump, “serious” candidate:

Ross Douthat says Obama Created Trump.  That’s Nuts.

A great article and, again, one that I feel goes a long way in explaining the strange (to many pundits) rise of Donald Trump.

One element I believe was lacking from the article was this: Say what you will but Donald Trump -and there are plenty of negatives to say about him- he nonetheless has a fiery energy about him that none of the other Republican candidates are able to match.  Understand, I’m not advocating Donald Trump for President (indeed, should he become president I fear for this country), but let’s face facts here: As childish, bigoted, and churlish as he is, he’s run laps around many of the other candidates in terms of energy and fevered emotion.

He took down Jeb! Bush without breaking a sweat and now Marco Rubio appears to be trying to fight Trump on his own level…a big mistake.

The way it looks from here and now, it appears we’ll have a Trump vs. Hillary Clinton race (barring any unforeseen events).  What’s most curious and coincidental about this whole election is that as “good” as Mr. Trump has been within this Republican nomination process, arguably he’s faced his absolute roughest times against strong women (whether journalists or candidates) and wouldn’t you know it, if he does become the Republican Presidential Candidate, who might he go up against?

A very strong woman.

If that’s the case, then my prediction is that Hillary Clinton will become the first female President of the United States.

But we’ve still got a long way to go…

General

Once more into the breach…

I’ve noted before I don’t like to talk politics.  Often, no good comes of it.  Those who disagree will disagree, those who agree will agree and lines will be drawn…

This election cycle feels so different from others, though.  There is so much anger that’s been fostered for so very long and for so very little, IMHO.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m most certainly a liberal in most of my ideology, so those who are conservative will likely discount everything I have to say from this point onwards.

Unlike many others, I’ve had the opportunity to see first hand most (not all) political systems.  I was born in a Soviet era communist country and my parents fled this.  We landed in a European socialist style country.  We then moved to what was a right winger’s “wet dream” of a country (very few regulations, almost no taxes, and a strong Catholic leaning), before moving permanently to the U.S., which I’ve felt works because it tended to find middle ground between politics and policy.

Of the systems I’ve seen first hand, clearly the worst was the communist style country, at least when it was that (With the fall of the Soviet Union, it gained its independence).  The second worst, easily, is the right wing “wet dream” country.  While its nice to not have to pay taxes to any great degree, it is most troublesome to experience: Large numbers of beggars (many of whom are nothing more than children) on the street.  Wild dogs running wild (no taxes=no animal services).  Shitty roads (no taxes=very little public works).  Military often used for police (no taxes=very little public works).  Spotty fire service (did I mention no taxes=very little public works?!).

Yet that seems to be where a sizable contingent of the conservative thought process wants to take us.

And the election of Barack Obama (twice!) has fanned flames of hatred that, at least to me, are hard to understand.

Especially given the fact that not all that long ago -and as I’ve mentioned several times before- Barack Obama would have been looked upon as a moderate Republican.

Which brings me back to this election cycle.  One of the previous Republican candidates, Lindsey Graham, appeared at a roast yesterday and made some “humorous” comments regarding politics and his own party:

Lindsey Graham Jokes About How To Get Away With Murdering Ted Cruz

I’ve always felt the problem with Mr. Graham, and the reason he didn’t get anywhere near the nomination for president, was that he was too bland and didn’t appear to have much of a spine.

In this roast, however, he let almost all hang out.  Not only did he jokingly state “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” but he also noted his party had gone “batshit crazy”.

While I believe joking about murdering someone, even someone you may not like at all, is in questionable taste, I agree with him regarding the later statement.

However, Mr. Graham, like all the other Republicans in his party who may feel the same as it now appears -of all people- Donald Trump might just be the Republican Presidential Candidate, bear great responsibility for the mess they’re in.

I suspect people are tired of the constant bickering and one-upsmanship many in the Republican party have engaged in in the recent past and this may be in part why Donald Trump looks to be on the verge of getting the nomination while “establishment” Republicans are having so much trouble doing the same.

Recently, when Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia passed away, was it really necessary for the Majority Leader of the Senate Mitch McConnell to, less than an hour after the official announcement of Scalia’s passing was made, to publicly state that as far as he and his fellow Republicans in the Senate were concerned President Barack Obama had no say in choosing his successor?

Considering Mr. Obama has almost a full year left of his term in office (11 months at that point) and was elected to do exactly that (ie pick Supreme Court judges which the Senate then has to approve), the statement appeared both absurd and, frankly, nasty.  At that point and, indeed, even now, Mr. Obama has yet to nominate anyone to the bench and McConnell’s already stating this person will have no chance at all?

I know there will be those who say “well, if the shoe were on the other foot…” and, you know what?, you’re probably right.

Yet I don’t see the Democratic party doing something this…out there.

Lindsey Graham wonders why his party is acting so “batshit crazy”…maybe they’re finally reaping what they’ve sown.

General

The value of Rehab Centers

I know the following topic is really far off the beaten path of the stuff I usually write/blog about, but this article by Brian Palmer for Slate.com really fascinated me:

The Oscar-Nominated Amy Winehouse Film’s Useful Lesson About Rehab

Neither I nor anyone (that I’m aware of!) in my immediate family is a drug/alcohol abuser.  Certainly none of them have struck me as needing to go in for some kind of rehab.

However, following reading the above article I have to admit to being surprised by the author’s conclusions regarding the validity -and truly, lack thereof- of Rehab Centers.

In my past life I studied and earned a degree in Psychology and one of the things that bothered me about the profession was that some of the theories regarding psychological treatment lacked rigorous scientific proof of its validity when used on clients.

Everyone knows of the “Freudian”-type clinician who sees symbolic elements to people’s actions.  This is an intriguing concept but Freudian analysis/treatment -if memory serves- haven’t proved to be particularly effective to people suffering from various psychological ailments.

In fact -again, if memory serves- behavioral techniques have proven to be the most effective in curbing bad behaviors.  In these cases, clients are “rewarded” for doing good while “punished” (this doesn’t mean they are physically harmed!) or given a “negative reinforcement” for doing bad.

The idea is that the individual will pursue the rewards and mitigate/eliminate the punishment/negative reinforcement.

While the field of Psychology, to its credit, has pursued a more scientific/result oriented basis for treatment, I’m rather surprised that the same may not be the case with Rehab Centers and this saddens me all the more.

People who decide they need to clean their lives up should walk into a Rehab Center, any Rehab Center, thinking the people there will help them in the long and at times painful process of cleaning themselves up.

But if, in the end, we’re dealing with something that doesn’t have that scientific backing and results, then how many of these poor people are simply throwing their money away on treatment that, at best, is only theoretically good?

And what of those, like Amy Winehouse, who went to Rehab according to the article not once but twice, yet still wound up dying because of their addictions?  It is easy to blame the addict and say “they should have stuck with the rehab”, but if they went to it and it did nothing to curb their vice, could we also not at least to some degree point the finger at the rehab centers as well?

I know, I know…heavy stuff.

I’ll do better next time.

General

What was your favorite Jeb! moment?

Years from now when a dissection of the 2016 election is made, people will have to look hard at the complete flameout that was Jeb! Bush’s now-aborted campaign.

I’ve seen some truly inept campaigns in my life (Dukakis and Mondale are two that immediately come to mind) but Jeb! Bush’s campaign has to be some kind of high water mark for a campaign that started so strong and fell on its proverbial face so quickly afterwards.

Amassing an astounding 100+ million dollar war chest even before he formally announced his candidacy (he did this to avoid campaign finance laws) many thought Jeb! Bush’s representation of the Republican Party in the 2016 Presidential race was a foregone conclusion.

But from the very beginning he faced -and was unable to surmount- the wicked tongue of one Donald Trump.  If nothing else, Mr. Trump can pat himself on the back for totally destroying Jeb! Bush’s chances from the start.

Now that his campaign is no more and in “honor” of Jeb!’s astounding failure, the folks at Gawker.com asked their readers to provided commentary on the following:

What Was Your Favorite Jeb! Moment?

What was mine?

I have to go back to the whole “exclamation point” idea.  You know, putting an exclamation after the word “Jeb”.  ie Jeb!

Stephen Colbert, among others, had a field day with that…

Someone (maybe it was also Colbert?) said something to the effect that they didn’t like broccoli and that by putting an exclamation point after it (Broccoli!) didn’t make it any more appetizing.

And so it goes.

So long Jeb!…I can’t say I’ll miss you.