I saw a commercial during the morning news that was touting the website of an area car dealer.  The tagline for the commercial was “click it and pick it.” 

I wonder if they realized that this might put off some potential customers?  For me, it has a bad association with the odious Click It or Ticket campaign.  Heck, they might even have used that as the inspiration for their ad campaign.  I am sadly coming to the conclusion that many people now welcome the tender ministrations of the nanny state…

That previous post reminded me about something I’d been meaning to say about The War On Drugs™.  I haven’t said much about it lately, but I’m against the war on drugs.  Mainly, my issues have to do with misuse of state power (i.e. it’s unconstitutional unless you distort the commerce clause beyond recognition) and the erosion of our civil liberties in the name of eradicating (certain) drugs from society.  There’s also the fact that it’s a losing battle.  If we can’t keep drugs out of prisons (where the inhabitants are subject to cavity searches), what makes us think we can keep them out of society at large? 

Anyhow, none of this should be construed to mean that I think drugs are a good thing.  It wouldn’t matter to me if heroin and cocaine were available at the local drugstore.  I’m not going to go start using them because I think they’re stupid.  Heck, I don’t even drink very much anymore.  Being in a profession where clear-thinking is required, I’d be putting my whole livelyhood in jeopardy. 

At the store recently I noticed that the register required the cashier to answer whether I was over 18 when scanning the bottle of Cascade I’d picked up.  It occurred to me then that anyone who would try to huff Cascade has to be a pretty pathetic loser.

Actually, it had never occurred to me that anyone would try to huff the stuff.  I guess I’m just hopelessly disconnected from the drug culture.  Which is fine by me.

Acidman pointed out this article about an Austin police officer found passed out drunk behind the wheel of his truck.  I was going to comment on it, but his comments are broken.

While I understand his anger about the situation, especially given his experience in this area, I think he’s missing something important about the DWI laws, at least as they apply in Texas.  In order to support a charge of driving while intoxicated, someone has to be able to testify that they actually saw the person charged operating a motor vehicle.  I know that we can all, through common sense, understand that he was very likely driving drunk, but as long as no one was found that can testify to it, then they won’t be able to prove the charge in court. 

I learned this during one of the ride-alongs I went on with Keller PD.  There was a traffic accident that was caused by a driver who was obviously drunk.  When the officers got there he was standing next to his vehicle in the parking lot.  However, while not drunk, the other drivers had also been drinking and weren’t willing to get involved.  Since no one would testify to seeing him actually driving the vehicle, all they could do was write him up for public intoxication and wait for someone to come pick him up.  I know it sounds silly (since he was obviously driving), but that’s the way the law works sometimes.  Every element of the offense must be proved in court, and if no one will testify to that element, and it can’t be directly proved, then the offense can’t be charged.  The phrase “obviously” isn’t allowed in our system of laws.

I flew out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport yesterday.  My flight was supposed to depart at 12:06pm, but we were slightly over an hour late getting into the air.  Several people on my flight missed their connections at DFW.

Why did we get delayed?  President Bush was in the area and was returning to the airport from the location where he had been speaking.  All incoming and outgoing flights were stopped while he was coming in.

Somehow I don’t think the founders would have approved of the way the President has become near-royalty.  Everywhere he goes people get stepped on by his “security measures”, usually without any warning.

I’ve just returned from a business trip to Minnesota to meet my new management team.  I’m still working for the same company, but as of 7/1 I will be in a different division. 

The process through which this came about is somewhat convoluted, and I’m trying to figure out how to write something about it without revealing too much about the company or the divisions involved (my company doesn’t have a rule against blogging, but I think it best to keep them out of things where possible).

I saw a T-shirt yesterday with the following text:

You like this ass…
You want it don’t ya…
To Bad, I’m a LESBIAN!

It’s too bad that the incorrect grammar completely distracted me from the attempted message.  To is a preposition that is used to indicate direction.  What the maker of the T-shirt really intended was too, which is an adverb. 

It’s sad that someone actually went to the trouble to print this phrase on a shirt and sell it but couldn’t be arsed to get it right. 

A few years ago I read an interesting book called Drive to Survive!.  While it may seem a bit paranoid to some readers, the most important lesson of the book was to apply the concepts of situational awareness to driving.  A driver should be in condition yellow at all times.  Slipping into condition white is an invitation to get into a wreck (“I didn’t see him…”).

When I did the ridealong with KPD last Friday I rode with the sergeant in charge of the evening shift.  KPD has a big black-and-white Ford Expedition that the sergeants use.  This particular sergeant called it “The Beast,” since it was a stock unit (didn’t have the police package) and was a bit anemic in terms of acceleration and handling. 

What surprised me was that despite the fact that the thing is huge and very visible, many drivers just didn’t seem to see it or realize that it was a police vehicle.  A few drivers did, and they were immediately obvious because they would slow down to a few miles under the speed limit when they realized we were behind them.  But most would just go ahead and do whatever they were going to do anyway. 

Where I’m going with all this is that missing a giant police SUV is a good sign that the driver is in condition white and is an accident waiting to happen.

Researchers think they may have discovered a section of the brain that is integral to understanding sarcasm. 

… But some brain-damaged people can’t comprehend sarcasm, and Israeli researchers think it’s because a specific brain region has gone dark.

The region, according to the researchers, handles the task of detecting hidden meaning, a crucial component of sarcasm. If that part of the brain is out of commission, the irony doesn’t come through, the scientists report in the May issue of Neuropsychology.

“People with prefrontal brain damage suffer from difficulties in understanding other people’s mental states, and they lack empathy,” said study co-author Simone Shamay-Tsoory, a researcher at the University of Haifa. “Therefore, they can’t understand what the speaker really is talking about, and get only the literal meaning.”

While there’s still lots of room left to debate “nature” versus “nuture”, I’m fascinated by the number of things like this that are built into the brain.

Link found via Slashdot.

I wonder what size toilet would actually be required to flush a tome the size of a Qur’an (or however we’re spelling it today)? 

Perhaps some (blasphemous) research is required…