Scored another mention in Dave Barry’s Blog. Woo-hoo!

Even with all this high-class culture.

I got a mention in Dave Barry’s blog today. Well, more like he posted what I sent him. Click here to see it.

When someone’s willing to spend $124 on this, you can bet the economy is picking up.

Or just assume people are getting dumber.

Here’s another item in the collection of things to be filed under “Duh! You’d think they’d know better by now!” It’s yet another case of an organization (it seems overwhelmingly to be school administrators) making a decision that anyone with an ounce of intelligence will realize is going to come around and bite them in the ass.

Just reading the headline of this article on CNN — “Muslim girl suspended for head scarf” — and you know the whole story: For some dopey reason (in this case it’s to prevent gang violence) a some school (in this case it’s the Ben Franklin Science Academy in Oklahoma City) is banning some piece of clothing (in this case it’s headgear) that someone has an obvious right to wear (in this case it’s her hijab or head scarf).

What do they think is going to happen?

The rest of us know how this will end up: She will be allowed to wear her scarf and the school will issue an apology for a ‘hasty decision.’ But first, of course, we have to go through all the nonsense of their defending their policy — “You treat religious items the same as you would as any other item, no better, no worse,” say the school’s attorney. “Our dress code prohibits headgear, period.” He then went on to point out that ‘a Jewish child would not be allowed to wear a yarmulke.’ (Christian kids are not affected, of course.)

To top it off, they kicked the girl out of school on Sept. 11.

In an article about Barry Manilow and Bette Midler teaming up for a tribute album (a tribute to Rosemary Clooney), we have this:

What happens when people who know diddly about science start pretending they do? This does.

Here’s the gist:
Parents in a Chicago-area school are demanding (via lawsuit, of course) that their kids’ elementary school stop using an 802.11b network (also called a WiFi network). This is a low-power wireless way to allow laptops to connect to the school’s network and the Internet.

But horror of horrors, it uses — wait for it — radio waves. And… and… and those must be dangerous! Yes! They must! Because… because we don’t understand them! Yes!

(FYI, those 802.11b connections use the same frequency as the cordless phones most of those parents have at home… and at less than 4 percent of the power.)

Snide comment based on obscure references: These parents need to raise their kids BF Skinner-like, but in Faraday cages.

Didn’t Herr Ashcroft’s Justice Department assure us that the USA PATRIOT Act would only be used to fight terrorism? That’s how I recall it. Cries (accurate cries) that it’s disgustingly un-American, a violation of privacy, and easily abused were brushed aside.

We were right. Ashcroft lied.

The government is now using the PATRIOT Act to demand notes from New York Times reporters as it tries to prosecute a hacker.

A hacker. Not a terrorist. Not even someone who was attacking government computers. (He broke into the Times system.)

So if anyone tries to tell you that the USA PATRIOT Act is about terrorism and not about violating Americans’ privacy, they’re not reading the news.

Read about the case here and here.

For a broader look at how the government is using the Act on people other than terrorists, read this.

Get this:

A company called SunComm develops a technology called “MediaMax CD-3″ that prevents CDs from being copied — using its copy protection, music companies can cut down on piracy. (SunComm is a public company.)

The recording industry likes it, and albums using MediaMax come out — Anthony Hamilton’s “Comin’ From Where I’m From,” for example.

Then a kid at Princeton figures out that all you have to do to circumvent the MediaMax protection is hold down the Shift key when you insert the CD. That’s it. He writes a paper about it and posts it on his Web site, along with an analysis of the technology.

In one fell swoop he wipes out all SunnComm’s work — pretty shoddy work if you ask me, if that’s all it takes to work around it. SunnComm claims it’s lost more than $10 million in value and is planning to sue the kid for telling people to hold down the Shift key.

I love this stuff.

* * *

Just in case the poor guy takes his paper down, here’s a copy.

* * *

This marks the third time an incredibly simple solution has wiped out a high-tech copy protection scheme.

First was DeCSS, a short piece of code (it was eventually printed on T-shirts) that cracked the copy protection on DVD disks.

Then came the revelation that Sony’s Key2Audio CD-protection technology could be circumvented with a magic marker.

And now the simple use of the Shift key. Neat.

According to an AP story (you can read it on CNN), officials in Olympia, Wash., had special ed students performing janitorial duties as part of a Work Experience Program.

That’s bad enough. But get this quote from the article:

Yikes! Speaking of education, it seems the officials there need to take Think Before You Speak 101.

Governor Schwarzenegger. What a joke.

The land of liposuction and body sculpting chooses a candidate to solve its self-inflicted problems based on “Oooh! He’s a movie star!” I’m going to enjoy watching the state fall to pieces.

Californians must simply be too stupid to realize it was their own whining, NIMBY-based attitudes that got them into the mess they’re in. (When you don’t build power plants, you don’t have electricity.)

Since 1978, when voters voted to cut their own property taxes (by passing Proposition 13), more than 50 “direct democracy” initiatives have dictated — often in excruciating detail — how the Californian legislature had to spend its money.

For example, Prop 98 (1988) forced — er, required — the state to set aside 40 percent of its general fund strictly for education.

Then in 1990, the people (make that The People) passed Prop 117, the California Wildlife Protection Act, which required that $30 million each year be spent on protecting mountain lions and other ‘rare, endangered, and threated animals — and that 10 percent of the money from tobacco taxes go toward this Habitat Conservation Fund. The rest of the money had to come from the General Fund (unless there were other environmental funds available). Oh, and making changes to this law requires a 2/3 majority of legislative votes, not a simple majority — like many of these initiatives, voters added so-called “supermajority requirements” to make sure their will be done.

In 2002, Californians passed Prop 46 (the Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund Act) that establishes a “trust fund” of $2.1 billion for housing programs. This will come from bond sales.

Do voters realize that bonds are the state’s way of borrowing money? That this money needs to be paid back? That the only way a state has of ‘earning’ money is through taxes?

At this point, something like 40 percent of the state’s spending is mandated by referendum. That means Californians have voted to buy things regardless of where the money is going to come from… and then whine when there isn’t money for other things.

Speaking of money, those dolts spent about $60 million on this silliness. If a textbook cost $25, that’s 2,400,000 textbooks that could have been bought with the same money. (And I bet the books cost much less that that for a large school district, so take that 2.4 million as a low-end number.)

It’s so appropriate for California to elect someone based on stardom rather than experience. A vacuous society uses vacuous logic to elect a vacuous governor who barely knows how to recite lines from a script.

Oh, and “recallarnold.com” has already been registered.

You have to wonder if farmers in California vote themselves crops and then wonder why they’re starving.

How can you combine the frugality of trailer-park life with the elegance of Aunt Elsie’s fine tea service? It’s easy with this beauty from the PVC Store:

(Click to go to the story itself.)

(Click to go to the story itself.)

What, you’ve never heard Leonard Nimoy singing the Hobbit Song? For shame. Click the image to see the movie (warning to modem users: it’s a 4MB file):

Yes, it’s real.