February 14, 2013

"Border" electronics searches and seizures

Via @Pete_Brown, a Wired article about how the Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has OK’ed DHS policies that allow it to search and seize electronics for any reason in the border zone. The kicker is that DHS calls anything within 100 miles of the U.S. borders and the coastline “the border zone.” So, LA, SF, Seattle, NY … no Fourth Amendment protections for you.

The ACLU put together a map of what they call the “constitution-free zone” at http://www.aclu.org/constitution-free-zone-map. They have a fact sheet about it at http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/fact-sheet-us-constitution-free-zone.

I’ve heard other liberals say they’re not concerned about the potential for civil liberty abuses, because they trust President Obama. But there will be other presidents, and you have to ask yourself if you’re comfortable with placing this level of unchecked power into the hands of … say, President Donald Trump. No? Then the time to fix this is now, with this president.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/electronics-border-seizures/

January 26, 2013

Procyclical banks

This research suggests that financial institutions routinely buy high and sell low, and that it’s the Value at Risk (VaR) model that makes them do it.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/01/putting-finance-macro

January 17, 2013 • 3 notes

I did not know that

William Burroughs spent the 60s … as a scientologist?!? He did his utmost to get Allen Ginsberg to join, too.

Insert joke about personality tests here.

http://io9.com/5800673/william-s-burroughss-wild-ride-with-scientology

January 11, 2013

puppy cuteness alert

Adult dog teaches puppy n00b how to handle the whole going-down-stairs thing. Abundant cuteness ensues. HT @gregmitch.

http://sayitaintsoalready.com/2013/01/11/amazing-video-older-dog-teaches-puppy-how-to-go-down-stairs/

December 12, 2012

Marriage equality: it's a bear thang

December 9, 2012

Wedding bells, early-bird edition

Today’s the first day that same-sex couples can get married in Washington State. And some couple *really* wanted to get a jump on things, because my neighborhood restaurant was hosting a wedding reception …. at 7 in the morning.

November 26, 2012

My suggestion: "harsh termination techniques"

This Scott Shane article about the internal debates in the Obama administration about using drones to kill specific enemies doesn’t use the word “assassination” once. It would have been a more honest article if it had, and I can only assume that the Times goes for the more respectable-sounding “targeted killings” so as to not offend whoever is doing all the leaking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world/white-house-presses-for-drone-rule-book.html

November 20, 2012

Things I learned today

  • Javascript is Satan’s playground, but if you use jquery’s Deferred objects then it will be a little less Satan-y. Example: you want to loop through a bunch of functions that will complete asynchronously, and then do something when they’re all finished. You could nest closures within closures within closures … or just use a $.when. Thank you whoever added Deferred objects in jquery.
  • If you want to POST something not-string-like (e.g., a JS object) to Django, QueryDict wants you to do some gruesome, gruesome things before it surrenders the data. Best to JSON.stringify the not-string thing on the client side, and do a simplejson.loads on the server side to turn it back into its not-string self.

Gonna go play with my puppy now.

November 19, 2012 • The New York Times

Kristina Collins, a chiropractor in McLean, Va., said she and her husband planned to closely monitor the business income from their joint practice to avoid crossing the income threshold for higher taxes outlined by President Obama on earnings above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

Ms. Collins said she felt torn by being near the cutoff line and disappointed that federal tax policy was providing a disincentive to keep expanding a business she founded in 1998.

“If we’re really close and it’s near the end-year, maybe we’ll just close down for a while and go on vacation,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/business/investors-rush-to-beat-threat-of-higher-taxes.html

Protip for Kristina Collins of McLean, VA: many business people find it beneficial to take the time to understand marginal tax rates and its relationship to effective tax rates.

November 7, 2012

This does not appear to be an Onion article

A person can watch the same clip of Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly losing their marbles on a galactic level only so many times. Thankfully, there’s a world of third and fourth-tier conservative websites we can turn to for added amusement. Let’s look in on Eric Dondero at LibertarianRepublican.net, shall we?
[T]oday starts a new course for my life. I’ve soured on electoral politics given what happened last night. I believe now the best course of action is outright revolt. What do I mean by that?
Wow. “Outright revolt”! Not sure what he means by that, but sounds like some dark heavy shit.
Some may choose to push secession in their state legislatures. Others may choose to leave the U.S. for good (Costa Rica, Switzerland, Italy, Argentina, Hong Kong, Israel).
Secession. Self-deportation. Heavy!  (Though I’m not too sure why someone who thinks government is the problem wants to go to Italy or Hong Kong … but at least there’ll be good eats there, nom nom.)
Still others may want to personally separate themselves from the United States here in North America while still living under communist rule [—] the Glenn Beck, grab your guns, food storage, build bunkers, survivalist route.
Now we’re getting to it. Survivalism. Bunkers. Don’t tread on me, motherfucker! Life during wartime! But, Eric, what are you going to do? How are you going to react to this terrible setback for our most basic rights and liberties?
However, for me, I’m choosing another rather unique path; a personal boycott, if you will. Starting early this morning, I am going to un-friend every single individual on Facebook who voted for Obama, or I even suspect may have Democrat leanings.
Sweet Jesus, not ….Facebook un-friending!!!! But I guess Eric is super hardcore in his quest for freedom: take your Farmville updates and shove it, Communist stooge!