Snow Removal

Instapundit linked to this article about all the flak New York Mayor Bloomberg is receiving for not plowing the streets. Reminds me of Denver's big winter storm on or about Christmas in 1982 when Mayor McNichols couldn't figure out how to plow the streets either. I was out of town for the holidays, and when I got back several days after the storm, the intersection of Colfax and Colorado Blvd was an impassable mass of rutted ice, and stayed that way for about 2 weeks. The city elections were the next May, and McNichols got a well-deserved boot. Ever since then, plowing the streets has been a priority, and they seem to do a pretty decent job.

2 Amendments

There's at least two amendments to the US Constitution floating around out there. One is the Repeal Amendment, which I've been reading about for the last two or three months. The other is the National Debt Relief Amendment which I heard about just the other day. I think both are good ideas.

Here's the way to do jury nullification

In this drug trial, they couldn't find enough unbiased people to seat a jury.

JibJab's Year in Review

Here. HT: Betsy's Page

Tech in the Library

My neighbor is volunteering at the library and has been telling me all sorts of unbelievable stories about how incompetent they are. He's putting books and dvds back on the shelves, and frequently finds stuff out of order. So I got to thinking how to make that job easier. Would it be possible to construct an rfid chip that carried the category, author, and title, and, when in the presence of objects in the same category, show a blue light? If the book was closest to 2 objects, both of which were either less than or greater than the author and title, it would show a red light, and if one of the objects was lower and the other higher, would show a green light that would indicate that the book should be shelved between the two.

With this sort of chip, you could just run the book along the shelves and find out fairly quickly where it belongs.

I don't know if this would be feasible or cost effective, but it sounds like a cool idea.

Speed Camera Lottery

Speeding gets you a ticket; under the limit enters you into a lottery, with winnings paid by the speeders.

Govt Screws Up $100 Bill Printing

According to this article, the government has screwed up the printing of the new $100 bill, which is about 10 percent of existing cash. They can't even counterfeit their own money right. Sheesh!

Jumper Cables

Here's a heartwarming story about jumper cables. HT anchoress

WikiLeaks

In the comments on this post, starting at comment #32, there's discussion by folks who are apparently familiar with Manning and related security procedures. HT neoneocon commenter rickl at 1:54am.