DOJ is siding with RIAA in a downloading case

Arrgh. RIAA took some single mother to court for downloading and obtained a $220,000 judgment against her. Story here. Why is my government siding with the record labels? Does not the RIAA have enough lawyers already? Why is the US Dept of Justice getting into the act? Do the Republicans have a political death wish? Surely it ain't worth the wrath of a lot of voters to curry favor with the labels?

Plastic costs more than wood

I am finishing up a home project, a wall display case/shelf for HO model trains. To make it look nice, I purchased poplar wood, nicer than plain old run-of-the-lumberyard knotty pine. Clear pine can be had, but the price is outrageous, poplar is a better deal. The poplar cost $66 for a 3 foot by 5 foot seven shelf case.
Had a good time making it. Hand cut dovetail joints, edges of the shelves shaped to an ogive pattern, hand rubbed linseed oil finish. To keep the dust out, I routed slots to accept clear plastic sliding doors.
Just picked up the plastic. Two pieces, 3 foot by 3 foot. Had the plastic shop cut them to size, 'cause I cannot fit a full sized 4 foot by 8 foot piece of plastic into the Deville. Plastic came to $67 dollars, as much as the poplar.
It looks good, and I'm still ahead. You can buy things like this but it's $300-$400 for one this size.

Gitmo rides again

The Supreme court is going to hear yet another Gitmo rights case today. Should the detainees/prisoners of war/oppressed freedom fighters have the right to clog the federal court system with appeals for out?
Used to be, armed enemies captured on the battlefield were prisoners of war, and they were stuck in POW camps until the war was over. No lawyers, no courts, no habeas corpus, no special commissions. POW's get certain rights, like mail from home, the right to refuse to divulge intelligence information (Name, rank, and serial number only), and others. We have all seen the war movies, Alec Guiness in Bridge on the River Quai, Steve Mcqueen in The Great Escape, and plenty more.
Whereas, criminal suspects in the US get Miranda rights, habeas corpus, public defenders, bail, and a chance to beat the rap by claiming illegal search and seizure.
The Gitmo detainees aren't real soldiers, so they don't even rate POW status. That's why we call 'em "detainees" rather than the more usual "prisoners". They are clearly dangerous, some small fry have been released and then later recaptured bearing arms against us in Afghanistan. Talk about two time losers.
So, why promote Gitmo detainees two jumps up, from no rights detainee, to POW, to criminal defendant? I kinda like leaving them as no rights detainees. Detainees can be interrogated at length for intelligence, which POW's cannot.

Iran is NOT building a bomb, says CIA

Good news, in fact perhaps a little bit too good to be true. Mossad says the Iranians will have a bomb year after next. CIA says no they won't. Who do I believe? Surely the intelligence service that failed to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, failed to predict 9/11, called the Iraqi bomb a slamdunk sure thing, and has worked hard to destabilize the Bush Administration has earned my trust....

Dirty Jobs, Cleaning the oven

My oven, has been happily cooking stuff for about a year, getting cruddier and cruddier as time went on. It finally got so bad as to offend even me. I'm not a real neatnik. Christ on crutch. I needed a 1/4" Spintite, pair of long nose pliers, razor blade window scraper, shop vac, mechanic's trouble light, to say nothing of the old standbys, Easy-Off, rags, Brillo, and newspapers. Took all afternoon. It's gonna have to get really cruddy before I do this again. The Eazy-OFF does awful things to your hands.
Just out of curiosity, why, after doing the outside of the range in white, can't they do the inside of the oven in white, giving you half a chance to see what you are doing while cleaning? I had to use one hand to hold the trouble light so I could see, and the other hand to wipe the brown slime of spent Easy-Off out of the oven. If the damn thing was done in white porcelain instead of dark gray, so you could see something, I could have used two hands to wipe off, and not needed the trouble light that I use working underneath cars.
Why not have a plug and socket for the bottom oven heating element? To remove said element, so I could d0 the oven floor, I had to undo a pair of sheet metal screws with the Spintite, reach both arms into the dirty oven to wrassle the brass terminal lugs off the heating element, and then go fishing for the wires which immediately buried them selves in the fiber glass insulation behind the back wall of the oven.
Granted, it's a 24 inch range, a size only purchased by builders, which means it's made as cheaply as possible. Real consumers who buy ranges, always have enough kitchen to take a 36" standard range. So all the fanciness, automatic cleaning, continuous cleaning, stuff is only available on the larger range. If you have a compact kitchen, that needs a 24" mini range, you are SOL for auto clean ovens. Back to the Easy-Off, you peasant you.
How about some clever designer doing a removable oven. Make the oven liner is a one piece steel stamping that slides clean out of the oven for cleaning. Take it outside, spray on the Easy-Off, and then take the garden hose to rinse the slime off. Is that so hard?
Women do the bulk of American oven cleaning. Does the fair sex have some secret for cleaning el cheapo ovens that they are hiding from us bachelors? Do they have the tools to pull the bottom heating element or do they just wipe around it?

Makers of Childrens movies just cannot win

Back a Christmas or two ago, Disney released The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a film version of the well loved C.S. Lewis tale, now on its second generation of readers. I read it as a child, and read it aloud to my children. Back at release time there were a few learned Grinches who complained about the Christian content of the story. According to some , it was an abhorrent violation of the establishment clause of the US constitution to have Aslan resurrected by the Deep Magic from before the dawn of time.
This Christmas, Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass is getting the same treatment from the Atlantic Monthly. Only from the other side. Pullman's tale is at best anti clerical, and treats God with little respect. The movie makers get dissed firstly for making a child's movie promoting atheism, and secondly for watering down some of Pullman's more pungent atheistic remarks.
Hollywood cannot win for losing here. Make a movie from a Christian allegorical tale and get dissed for promoting Christianity. Make a movie from a not-so-Christian tale and get dissed for promoting atheism.
As a reader of both books, the ideological/theological/allegorical elements never caught my attention. Both stories are adventure tales with likable and plausible protagonists, making for enjoyable light reads. I, and my children, enjoyed the adventures and the ideological freight sorta just passed everyone by.
For more intellectual angst I suppose we could proceed to diss Harry Potter.

Immigration Reform; Green cards for veterans

One small step for US. The attraction of America is so strong that we have non citizens enlisting in the US armed forces. Any one of these who gives honorable service to the United States ought receive at least a green card, if not actually citizenship. We owe these brave people something and legal entry to the US is the least we can do to square that debt.
In the same vein, Iraqi's and others, who serve our armed forces overseas as interpreters, informants, and as agents ought to get a fast track toward a green card.