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Category Archives: Diary
Race to the Checkout Line
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Competition really can make everything better. Consider this article by Greg Beato:
Unless you're comfortably wealthy, pathologically thin, or both, you probably go to the grocery store at least once every couple of weeks. When you go, there's one factor that most determines the your experience there, and it's not fluctuations in the price of ground coffee, the number of Ben & Jerry's flavors on hand, or how gripping the National Enquirer cover stories are that week. It's how smoothly you move through the check-out line. A country cannot be great without great grocery store baggers - their speed, courtesy, and ability to keep our spaghetti sauce from crushing our hot dog buns is crucial to maintaining public morale.
Source: www.outloudopinion.com
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Vast Dairy Conspiracy
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I find this message about rBST rather odd. I can only conclude there is a vast dairy conspiracy afoot.
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Expecting Unreal Weather
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Latest In Nanotech Lithography
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Last, a new addition to your tech lexicon: Nanotech lithography. In the latest issue of Breakthrough Technology Alert, editor Patrick Cox told his readers about the coming boom in a technology that allows us to “print” electronics on virtually anything.
“Xerox has developed a silver-based conductive ink that can be printed on everything from plastics to textiles,” Patrick notes. “The ink’s melting temperature of 140 degrees Celsius is low enough to allow printing on plastics. Instead of expensive fabrication facilities, specialized inkjet printers will be able to print circuits that could be used as part of flexible signage, radio frequency identifier tags and even novelty clothing. “Beyond logic circuits, energy storage devices will be printable as well. Two years ago, chemists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., were able to place a thin film of cellulose over a surface of carbon nanotubes. This breakthrough will enable paper and CNT-based batteries. Stanford researchers have been able to take a paper substrate and coat it with ink made of silver and carbon nanotubes to create working ‘paper batteries.’ “Paper-based batteries charge and discharge quickly, making them suitable for a wide variety of technologies. Together, these breakthroughs herald an era of ultra-cheap, easily manufactured energy storage… “New nanotech-scale manufacturing and materials technologies in the semiconductor industry are going to power a revolution in how we make electronic devices, power our homes and collect and analyze information. Right now, the vast majority of people have no idea how profound these changes are going to be.” This is just one of several technologies Patrick says are on the verge of changing the world as we know it. For the full list, look here.
Source: Agora Financial
Stuff like this is so cool. Even more cool will be the ability to fabricate electronics at home. What a brave new frontier to the information age! Imagine some day people will buy $5,000 circuit printers with custom enclosure fabrication functionality. The user will download the specs and it will spit out a shiny new gadget. The requirements will change just like computers, along the lines of Moore's Law, so you'll want to have the latest printer. The fabricated gadgets could be as simple as a flash application today, like those annoying sound boards. Or it might be a hand-held game because eventually, these printers will be capable of fabricating lights, simple displays, and so forth, I imagine. Or maybe the lights are external and the displays would use a form of e-ink technology! There will be completely practical uses for these printers, but by far, they will be used for total crap. Sounds like fun! Maybe I'll be able to print an actual working full sized flying car! I was promised flying cars, you know (E: Yes, Anthony, we know you were promised flying cars).Posted via email from Anthony Martin's Weblog
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More Suspicionless Checkpoints in Torrance
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On Saturday, December 19th, 2009 Torrance Police Department operated another suspicionless checkpoint from 8:00 pm to 3:00 am.
The location of the checkpoint was ensconced in the eastbound lanes of the 4300 block of Pacific Coast Highway. This checkpoint was ostensibly conducted in an effort to reduce the number of persons killed and/or injured due to alcohol-related collisions.
During this operation, more than 1,600 vehicles were unconstitutionally searched, 11 drivers were caught driving under the influence, 16 drivers were caught and released for driving while unlicensed or on a suspended drivers license, and 23 vehicles were seized.
Torrance PD claims their goal is to reduce those senselessly injured or killed by impaired drivers as well as insure that drivers had valid drivers licenses. It represents mission creep of the most basic sort because originally, the checkpoints were announced, all of date, time, and location. The official purpose of announcing the details was to bring awareness to the program, but I believe the purpose of announcing the details was to get the public to accept the original proposal. Over time, these announcements have become spotty and unreliable (see my previous mentions for details).
But since they got their foot in the door to conduct these unconstitutional searches without resistance, they have and will expand the purpose. I have no doubt that eventually, Torrance will have nightly checkpoints, searching for anything they want. How long it takes for them to creep up to it is difficult to say.
Police departments across the country hold, unofficially, that any action they take is legal until a court tells them it is illegal. Which means if you want to resist this on principle, you must:
- Be aware of the checkpoint activity (even if they "forget" to post it).
- Be in a vehicle traveling on the correct road that night (if you can find their position).
- Be stopped (who knows, they might wave you through if their donut-run is eminent).
- Be asked to voluntarily wave your rights protected by the 4th and 5th Amendments.
- Be prepared to be assaulted if you do not wave the rights above.
- Be prepared to have your license revoked.
- Be prepared to have your vehicle seized and impounded.
- Be prepared to spend the night in jail.
If all of the above happens, you might then have a legal tort to begin the long arduous process of getting a complaint heard by the powers that be. Even if you manage to get justice for standing up on principle, that doesn't mean the checkpoints will then stop. So you'll have to be prepared to do it all again when the time comes. How likely is it there is even one person living in or around Torrance with that kind of resources to devote to something like this? So instead, we roll over and let them do whatever they want.
Torrance PD will eventually try to take it to the wall. Citizens will not see this as for what it is. They actually believe these checkpoints make everyone safer, so they'll gladly continue to give up incremental liberty to get what they think is a little extra safety. This is what you want, right?
Posted via email from Anthony Martin's Weblog
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Lies and Propaganda
Let's say your little sweet daughter comes up to you and asks if she can have some of your Honey Mustard & Onion Pretzels Pieces. And you don't want to share for whatever reason, so you tell her they are yucky. So she decides that's good enough and stops asking for some.
Victory, right? No. That's a lie. The pretzels are in fact very yummy and you know it. Telling her the opposite of what is true is wrong and will backfire some day.
Hopefully, you will never have this happen. Or if it does happen, you will correct it. Depending on your child, it may be impossible to correct the problem for many years. Some kids remember what they've been told for a long long time.
And when that time comes, there may be some mistrust to deal with as result. If someone has been lied to for a long time, even if that lie was propagated by other means, it can be very difficult once the truth comes out.
So just don't lie in the first place. If the pretzels are yummy, tell the truth. If you don't want your kid to have the yummy pretzels because it's too late in the evening for them to eat something like that, tell them the truth. It is much easier in the long run.
By the way, in reference to the title of this article, when an individual tells an untruth, we call it a lie. When an institution or organization tells a lie, we call it propaganda.
Posted via email from Anthony Martin's Weblog
Tags: Home Front
Suspicionless Checkpoint, Addendum
Lieutenant Stephen D’anjou says that the suspicionless checkpoint (covered previously) was announced to the Daily Breeze on September 2nd. Again, I find no mention on the Daily Breeze website, so we still have an effective Internet blackout of this information.
The Lieutenant believes it was also posted on Torrance Police Department website, but he said the website program never published it. An honest mistake. I've seen first hand that this can be a common mistake in any web publishing environment. But there's something else I'd like to point out. See if you can tell the difference between the two announcements. One announcement was for the 11th, the other was for June 19th.
The information published about June 19th, 2009 listed the intersection as well as the time. But the information published about September 11th, 2009 does not list the intersection.
It's already beyond recognition of what it was originally. They're just going to keep tweaking and modifying this. If you still don't understand why this is bad, please review my previous article on the subject. Also consider an article called "Bloodsuckers in Blue" on Lew Rockewell's web site.
Posted via email from Anthony Martin's Weblog
Tags: Liberty, Local, Memory Hole, Resistance, Rule of Law, Torrance
Last Night's Suspicionless Checkpoint
Last night, I observed a suspicionless checkpoint on Artesia going eastbound toward Van Ness. All eastbound traffic was being stopped. A lot of cars were being towed.
I contacted Torrance Police Department to inquire as to why these activities were not announced ahead of time. The initial response from Lieutenant Stephen D’anjou (via Blackberry) was that the press release was sent out last week.
I believe Lieutenant D’anjou is mistaken. I checked the Torrance PD web site and no such press release was listed on their press release page. Maybe a press release was sent out but just not posted on the web page. The local paper would have gotten a copy if that's the case.
But this is not the case from what I can tell. Daily Breeze (the local newspaper in Torrance) has announcements for other such activity in the past, but not the one regarding last night. Was it announced only in hard copies of the newspaper? Is this an Internet blackout?
Yet indeed, here is a view of the actual suspicionless checkpoint from the corner of Artesia and Van Ness, looking back to the west:
This is a shot of the parking lot next to the activity:
Torrance Police Department believes the "DUI" checkpoint is a proven effective method for increased awareness of the dangers of impaired driving.
In the past, by publicizing these enforcement and education efforts, Torrance Police Department believes motorists can be deterred from drinking and driving.
Typically, funding for these kinds of operations is provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
But last night, they broke from their previous motivation and imposed the suspicionless checkpoint without even prior notice.
Whatever your belief of the effectiveness of these suspicionless checkpoint, know this. It is a violation of the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution to demand evidence of a crime without probable cause. The suspicionless checkpoint, by definition, lacks probable cause.
It is much easier to introduce an intrusive measure by watering down the most intrusive aspects. It is harder to be against suspicionless checkpoints when they are announced ahead of time. But is easy to just stop announcing them once they become commonplace.
We are no longer on our way to a police state. We live in a police state now. It's only going to get worse.
Posted via email from Anthony Martin's Weblog
Tags: Liberty, Local, Memory Hole, Resistance, Rule of Law, Torrance, Video
Awake At 5 AM
"ONE SEVEN FOUR FIVE ZERO NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE OPEN UP ... ONE SEVEN FOUR FIVE ZERO NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE OPEN UP OR YOU MAY BE SHOT!"
Those are the words we woke up to this morning at around 5:00. The sheriff, along with Torrance PD, were raiding the apartment next door to ours. There were also several non-uniformed officers involved in the raid.
"Don't stand there, you might be in the cross fire."
That was probably more scary than the original outburst. We were not sure who was being addressed, but it seemed like one officer was talking to another in the hallway, not the occupants of any apartments.
I observed a few sheriffs in body armor and military style helmet, one carrying a battering ram. There were many local police and two official vehicles in our driveway, blocking five or six cars. At some point, I overheard the officers explain to one another that they thought the accused person threw something out the window. So they proceeded to shine spotlights into our children's room while an occupant of the raided apartment told them if they were hot or cold. I also observed an officer standing on the fence, looking into the yard of the house directly behind the raid.
Then, a neighbor asked what was going on; he was conversing with the officers with spotlights out his window. The officer asked my neighbor if they needed to get a warrant for him too. The neighbor politely replied, "No thanks."
"Well that was anti-climactic."
Those are the words of a classic adrenaline junkie.
By the time I was ready to go to work. one of our neighbors was in custody, being driven away in a black, unmarked official vehicle. Have a nice day!
Posted via email from Anthony Martin's Weblog
Tags: Home Front, Terrifying
