Irony

It's been exactly a year since I said it's been a year since I posted.

Ouch.

It's been an entire year since I posted. Damn. I did, at some point, mention that I'm not a writer.

It'll take more than deadly deadly bees to keep us from doing our jobs...

I hate politics. I just typed up a whole diatribe about how I feel about the state of our government right now, but deleted it because it's too damned depressing.

Orgasm.mp3?

So I read an article on Digg that discussed a concept called Brainwave Entrainment (full article here) and how it can be used to help produce certain states in the brain by using sound to stimulate specific brainwaves. The authors then gave a very practical and effective demonstration of the concept by creating a 20 minute sound file that induces an "energizing state giving you a 'caffeine' energetic boost." And like thousands of others, I downloaded the file and found that it definitely works, although I think I'll probably stick with Mountain Dew, myself.





Then, a bit later, I was reading another article (also on Digg, go figure) about the differences between orgasms in men and women. Specifically, whether female orgasms would kill men. As it turns out, the theta waves generated in a females brain are about ten times stronger than in mens. Because of this, they theorize, a male could not survive an orgasm the same strength of a females.



Whether or not this is true (they don't want to experiment with this, possibly for fear of becoming a cliché), it does bring to mind two things. One is the authenticity of that old joke "God says to Adam and Eve, 'I have two last things to offer. One is the ability to pee standing up.' Adam says 'ooh ooh me me I want that one!' and God says 'Okay, Adam. Eve, you get multiple orgasms.'"



The other, obviously, is whether it is possible to induce orgasms via sound. If one could make an mp3 or wav that would induce the same theta waves created during orgasm, would this induce an actual orgasm, would it make someone more susceptible to having an orgasm, would it just make someone want to have sex (no comment on whether it would want to make someone else have sex with some geek wearing an iPod), or what other possible effects it might have.

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Federal Appeals Court: Driving With Money is a Crime

Eighth Circuit Appeals Court ruling says police may seize cash from motorists even in the absence of any evidence that a crime has been committed.

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a "lack of significant criminal history" neither accused nor convicted of any crime.

On May 28, 2003, a Nebraska state trooper signaled Gonzolez to pull over his rented Ford Taurus on Interstate 80. The trooper intended to issue a speeding ticket, but noticed the Gonzolez's name was not on the rental contract. The trooper then proceeded to question Gonzolez -- who did not speak English well -- and search the car. The trooper found a cooler containing $124,700 in cash, which he confiscated. A trained drug sniffing dog barked at the rental car and the cash. For the police, this was all the evidence needed to establish a drug crime that allows the force to keep the seized money.

Associates of Gonzolez testified in court that they had pooled their life savings to purchase a refrigerated truck to start a produce business. Gonzolez flew on a one-way ticket to Chicago to buy a truck, but it had sold by the time he had arrived. Without a credit card of his own, he had a third-party rent one for him. Gonzolez hid the money in a cooler to keep it from being noticed and stolen. He was scared when the troopers began questioning him about it. There was no evidence disputing Gonzolez's story.

Yesterday the Eighth Circuit summarily dismissed Gonzolez's story. It overturned a lower court ruling that had found no evidence of drug activity, stating, "We respectfully disagree and reach a different conclusion... Possession of a large sum of cash is 'strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity."

Judge Donald Lay found the majority's reasoning faulty and issued a strong dissent.

"Notwithstanding the fact that claimants seemingly suspicious activities were reasoned away with plausible, and thus presumptively trustworthy, explanations which the government failed to contradict or rebut, I note that no drugs, drug paraphernalia, or drug records were recovered in connection with the seized money," Judge Lay wrote. "There is no evidence claimants were ever convicted of any drug-related crime, nor is there any indication the manner in which the currency was bundled was indicative of
drug use or distribution."

"Finally, the mere fact that the canine alerted officers to the presence of drug residue in a rental car, no doubt driven by dozens, perhaps scores, of patrons during the course of a given year, coupled with the fact that the alert came from the same location where the currency was discovered, does little to connect the money to a controlled substance offense," Judge Lay Concluded.

The full text of the ruling is available in a 36k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: US v. $124,700 (US Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit, 8/19/2006)

Hurricane season again

So the first hurricane of the season has been and gone, at least from our corner of the world. I guess the Georgia/South Carolina border is a bit wet right now, however. We fared pretty well here; lots of wind, some good surf, not much debris in the roads and the puddles weren't too bad. As long as the rest of the years storms go like this we'll be golden.

Quote

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.

Sir Alex Fraser Tytler

Finally! This will help with the personal teleporters!

Scientists Predict How to Detect a Fourth Dimension of Space

If they can prove this, it will help further research into teleportation and faster-than-light travel...