NiggyTardust!

Hancock is the programming language the loathsome AT&T uses to break the law and invade our privacy. Read all about it here.

... than usual to say.

If you're bored, maybe you could spend a little time reading the rantings of some toture enthusiasts ? Skip straight to the comments, if you can't, as I couldn't, stand the huffing and puffing of the main article.

The iPod starts this fine fall week with:

1. Throwing Muses - Los Flamingos
2. Sea And Cake - Do Now Fairly Well
3. Jennifer Nettles Band - Gravity
4. Fiona Apple - Oh Well
5. Devendra Banhart - Hey Mama Wolf
6. Yo La Tengo - Out The Window. This song rox.
7. Beck - Canceled Check
8. Buddy & Julie Miller- Wallflower
9. Colorblind James Experience - Your Time To Worry
10. Pavement - Half a Canyon

Brrrr. Chilly.

Let's Be Blunt

Good news for the forces of sanity:

Georgia’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of a young man who has been imprisoned for more than two years for having consensual oral sex with another teenager.

The court ruled 4-3 that Genarlow Wilson’s 10-year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.

Wilson’s lawyer, B.J. Bernstein, said she expected Wilson would be released Friday afternoon from the Al Burruss Correctional Training Center in Forsyth, Ga.

Of course his lawyer's name is B.J..

Got Ghosts?

Via TBogg, a somewhat popular blogger", a little bit of Fox Business chatter:

CAVUTO: Throw in a Fox News alert for you. It is being called the mother of all tax hikes. Democrats unveiling a trillion-dollar tax plan today, it includes a 4 percent surtax on people earning $150,000 a year. Now remember when a million bucks was considered rich only last year at this time? So are these tax hikes going to stop people from striving for success?

I love the idea that high taxes in the upper income brackets stops people from 'striving for success'.

As if 'success' is measured strictly by take-home pay. As if people in those upper income brackets are strictly paid in W2 wages. As if people look at the tax charts and say "well, I'm not going to put in that extra 8% effort, because I will only receive an extra 6% in pay". As if most people making $150K and up these days are doing piecework. As if salary increases smoothly and in proportion to effort expended, and isn't increased in steps, the size of which are generally unpredictable more than a couple of months from the time when scheduled pay increases happen (if they're scheduled at all). As if raises are linked only to individual effort and do not depend on overall team/division/company performance, which is affected by the market the company works in, the economy in general, the whims of customer taste, etc.. As if the worker chooses he'll get paid more for his efforts, and that decision isn't made by his employer for reasons which are often beyond the worker's control. As if salaries aren't effectively capped by job title so that no matter how hard you work at most jobs, you're never going to earn more than your supervisor.

People strive for success because people enjoy succeeding; and everybody defines "success" in their own way. I build software because I like doing it. The fact that the job pays well (and my salary keeps going up year after year) is like some kind of fantastic bonus.

This is an old Cartoon Network short that they used to show back in the day, between commercials. We'd see it when watching Space Ghost - Coast To Coast on weekend nights. Ah, the good ol days. Mrs Cleek and I have always loved the song... "...one's sodium chloride, the other's a bug..." and we still sing bits of it to each other from to time. It's been years since I've seen it, and happily, it's exactly as I remember.