April 2, 2013

Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn goes global with political ambitions

Emboldened by its meteoric rise in Greece, the far-right Golden Dawn party is spreading its tentacles abroad, amid fears it is acting on its pledge to "create cells in every corner of the world". The extremist group, which forged links with British neo-Nazis when it was founded in the 1980s, has begun opening offices in Germany, Australia, Canada and the US.

The international push follows successive polls that show Golden Dawn entrenching its position as Greece's third, and fastest growing, political force. First catapulted into parliament with 18 MPs last year, the ultra-nationalists captured 11.5% support in a recent survey conducted by polling company Public Issue.

The group – whose logo resembles the swastika and whose members are prone to give Nazi salutes – has gone from strength to strength, promoting itself as the only force willing to take on the "rotten establishment". Amid rumours of backing from wealthy shipowners, it has succeeded in opening party offices across Greece.

It is also concentrating on spreading internationally, with news last month that it had opened an office in Germany and planned to set up branches in Australia. The party's spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris, said it had decided to establish cells "wherever there are Greeks".

"People have understood that Chrysi Avgi [Golden Dawn] tells the truth," he told a Greek-language paper in Melbourne. "In our immediate sights and aims is the creation of an office and local organisation in Melbourne. In fact, very soon a visit of MPs to Australia is planned."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/01/greece-golden-dawn-global-ambitions

April 1, 2013

Fla. State Trooper fired for offering lawmaker break on speeding ticket

In a rarity among modern American jurisprudence, a state highway trooper has lost his job over a traffic ticket he didn't write — and now his fight has sparked a wider dispute over who gets preferential treatment for enforcing the law on the road. Does anyone need to guess that this happened in Florida?

The tale starts last November, when Florida Highway Patrol trooper Charles Swindle stopped state Rep. Charles McBurney, R-Jacksonville, for doing 87 mph in a 70 mph zone. McBurney was driving a Toyota with a license plate identifying him as a state lawmaker; after checking with his sergeant, Swindle told McBurney "I'm cutting you a break" and cited him only for lacking proof of insurance — a $10 ticket rather than a $280 one that McBurney could have faced.

According to Florida state investigators, Swindle did the same for another driver he pulled over at the same time, telling his dispatcher “I’m going to write (McBurney) a warning and be nice; I’m going to stroke him ’cause I didn’t see his insurance card."

But the episode bothered McBurney (who denied going 87 mph) so much that he wrote to Swindle's superiors on legislature letterhead, complaining that Swindle was favoring state officials. "If those who enforce our laws fail to meet the highest ethical standards, there is erosion of that confidence," McBurney wrote. "I am concerned that as Trooper Swindle acted in such fashion to me, that he would do so to any law-abiding citizen of our state."

That letter launched an internal investigation, and two weeks ago, Swindle was fired for "conduct unbecoming a public employee." And now Swindle and his attorney have appealed his dismissal, contending the Florida Highway Patrol has an unwritten policy of letting state lawmakers off easy at traffic stops to avoid trouble come budget-writing time. The FHP denies that's the case, and has speeding tickets written to several lawmakers over the past few years to show it.

http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/trooper-fired-offering-florida-lawmaker-break-speeding-ticket-182456916.html

McBurney should eat a bag of dicks for this fuckwittery...

April 1, 2013

George Will's annual baseball quiz (his only redeeming characteristic)

EDIT: These are my own, unresearched answers, the real ones are at the link

As the unendurable monotony of the off-season ends, celebrate baseball’s return with mental calisthenics. Everyone knows it was former Atlanta Manager Dave Bristol who said, “Only trouble I ever had with chewing tobacco was that the orthodontist said my daughter was going to have to give it up because of her braces.” But do you know:

1. What pitcher in a 25-3 season had more complete games than home runs allowed?
Ron Guidry

2. What four players hit home runs in four decades?
Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Rickey Henderson, Dave Winfield

3. What three players hit home runs as teenagers and after their 40th birthdays?
Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Pete Rose

4. What two teams lost a World Series after being one strike away from winning?
Boston (86) and Cleveland (97)

5. Which National League team has won the most World Series games?
Cardinals

6. Which four players won multiple MVP awards between 1940 and 1949?
Williams, Musial, DiMaggio, Enos Slaughter

7. Since the Cy Young Award began in 1956, what player won 25 or more games three times but never won the award?
Robin Roberts

8. Which team has had the most Cy Young winners?
Giants

9. Which four National League pitchers have won two consecutive Cy Young Awards?
Gibson, Maddux, Koufax, Lincecum

10. Who received the highest percentage of Hall of Fame votes in history?
Clemente

11. What four former MVPs have won the Manager of the Year awards?
Mike Scosicia, Frank Robinson, Don Baylor, Joe Torre

12. Of the 106 switch-hitters with at least 5,000 at bats, which two hit .300 or better from both sides?
Roberto Alomar, Robin Ventura

13. What switch-hitter holds the record of hitting home runs from both sides in 13 games?
Eddie Murray

14. Which two Hall of Fame second basemen were on the woeful (66-96) 1964 Houston Colt .45s?
Joe Morgan and Dick Groat

15. Who pitched no-hitters at ages 43 and 44?
Nolan Ryan

16. What Hall of Famer participated in 12 double plays in 1929 playing right field ?
Willie Keeler

17. Who led the majors in hits in the 1980s?
Don Mattingly

18. Who has the highest stolen base success percentage (minimum 500 attempts)?
Maury Wills

19. Who holds the record for most shutouts (69) by a left-handed pitcher?
Warren Spahn

20. Who is the only reliever who had a season with more saves than baserunners allowed?
Dennis Eckersley

21. What two third basemen have hit 400 home runs while playing third base?
Eddie Matthews, Mike Schmidt

22. What was the last World Series in which a pitcher on each team pitched three complete games?
1966

23. Which two all-time leaders in sacrifice flies were teammates in their prime years?
Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill

24. What pitchers threw the most one-hitters?
Bob Feller

25. Which Minnesota Twin won batting titles in his first two full seasons?
Tony Oliva

26. Which Hall of Fame pitcher retired the side with nine pitches and nine strikes, once in each league?
Hoyt Wilhelm

27. Which two players hit more than 400 home runs and more than 150 triples?
Willie Mays, Barry Bonds

28. Who hit more than 40 home runs and batted over .400 in the same season?
Rogers Hornsby

29. Among active players with 100 or more career home runs, which two have more walks than strikeouts?
Kevin Youkilis, Evan Longoria

30. What pair of teammates hit home runs in the same game the most times?
Ruth-Gehrig

31. How many Hall of Fame pitchers did Joe DiMaggio face during his 56-game hitting streak?
11

32. Who played on the losing team while setting the record for most RBIs (12) in a seven-game World Series?
Willie McCovey, 1962

Bonus Question: What Hall of Famer said, “The Mets just had their first .500-or-better April since July of 1992”?
--What is, "Shit Ralph Kiner says!"

answers at the link
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/hey_fans_take_swing_at_these_l1jwK1IJ5WhpXOJqa7jX4K

March 29, 2013

The big question that the generation raised on porn must answer

...Porn has come under the super-revealing spotlight again in the last few weeks, with a certain EU resolution causing controversy after it was put forward by Dutch MEP Kartika Liotard on International Women’s Day. Liotard’s mention of porn came under the broader aim to "eliminate gender stereotypes in the EU", which in her resolution involved "a ban on all forms of pornography in the media’, including ‘the digital field". Predictably, there was uproar.

What constitutes "freedom" on the internet still remains to be decided. Freedoms may well have been restricted by certain ISPs choosing to block their users’ access to illegal downloading site The Pirate Bay last year, in the name of protecting "artistic freedom", or copyright. Many argue that their right to engage with an online article or a public figure on social media outlets like Twitter is restricted by blocking or by comment moderation; still others argue that the writers or celebrities themselves should have the freedom to protect themselves from possible harassment.

In the online realm, which still remains fairly unregulated, people tend to feel strongly that they should be able to access anything that’s going except in the most dire of circumstances, such as child abuse. In the case of porn, most attacked Liotard’s resolution on this basis - the majority of Huffington Post readers voted that it was "an absurd attack on liberty and freedom of expression".

Needless to say, the vaguely worded EU resolution is not out to rip the downloaded porn from your hard drive; its use of the term "the digital realm" is more likely to be because most printed newspapers and magazines are now moving online. Considering the nature of the widespread international reaction to Liotard's proposal, its adoption is unlikely - and even if it were, in all likelihood nothing practical would change...

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/03/big-question-generation-raised-porn-must-answer

March 27, 2013

James Holmes offers guilty plea to avoid death penalty

Source: USA Today

Attorneys for Denver-area theater shooting suspect James Holmes have offered to have him plead guilty and be jailed for life to avoid the death penalty, KUSA-TV is reporting.

The prosecution has not yet responded to the offer, which came in a court filing Wednesday.

"Mr. Holmes is currently willing to resolve the case to bring the proceedings to a speedy and definite conclusion," the filing reads.

The defense team said the case could end Monday if the Arapahoe County district attorney accepts the deal. Prosecutors planned to announce Monday whether they would seek the death penalty.

Holmes, 25, is charged with first-degree murder for the July 20 rampage that killed 12 moviegoers and wounded nearly 60 others at the premiere of the latest Batman film at a multiplex in Aurora.

On March 12, a judge entered a not guilty plea on Holmes' behalf but said Holmes could enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity later.

Trial is set for Aug. 5.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/27/colorado-theater-killings-guilty-plea-offer/2025809/

March 25, 2013

1969 Ford Mustang Reinvented With Computer Printer

http://www.jonathanbrand.com/images/projects/car/body/pages/body_09.htm

March 25, 2013

I Went to the Playboy Mansion (and It Was Kinda Depressing)

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to the Playboy mansion for a screening of that new Jennifer Lopez/Jason Statham movie, Parker. I don't usually go to press screenings because it's much easier to download the movie and watch it at home and not have to talk to other people, but I'd literally wanted to visit the Playboy mansion ever since I'd found out it was an option for me several seconds earlier. So I HAD to go....

http://www.vice.com/read/i-went-to-the-playboy-mansion-and-it-was-kinda-depressing

March 21, 2013

Rise of the naked female warriors

Known for its topless protesters, Femen is a worldwide movement against patriarchy. But are the activists' breasts obscuring the message?

One day last summer, Inna Shevchenko went into a forest outside Kiev, to learn how to use a chainsaw. The lumberjacks who were instructing her couldn't work out why she was so keen. "They thought I was just a crazy blonde," she says, shaking her white curls. "I was acting like: 'Oh really?'" She affects a coy, clueless demeanour. "'That's how you do it? Great!'"

The next day she went to a hilltop overlooking Kiev, and stripped to a pair of red denim shorts, worn with heavy boots, leather gloves, and a mask to protect her eyes. The Pussy Riot verdict was due that day, and in tribute to the Russian punk activists – and to mark her opposition to all religions – Inna proceeded to chop down a 13ft wooden cross that had been there since 2005. Despite her preparations, it wasn't easy. "When I started to cut it, I thought, 'it's not possible to destroy it,'" she says. But after seven minutes it fell, and she posed against the stump for invited journalists. With "Free Riot" scrawled across her bare breasts, she held out her arms to mirror the figure of Christ now lying on the ground.

Death threats arrived instantly. She says there were official calls for her arrest, and Russian TV reported that the cross was a memorial to the victims of Stalinism. Inna denies this, but Ukrainian journalists repeated the claim, and anger towards her sharpened. Men she suspected of being secret service agents immediately began milling outside her apartment, and a few days later, she was woken at 6am by the sound of her front door being kicked in. She escaped, jumping through a back window, then down from a first floor balcony, and made her way to Warsaw with $50, a mobile phone and her passport. She feared jail if she returned to Kiev, so some days later, she travelled to France, where women had expressed interest in joining Femen, the feminist group she runs with three Ukrainian friends.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/20/naked-female-warrior-femen-topless-protesters

March 20, 2013

New Yorker jailed in Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger's 1990 killing could be freed

A man put behind bars for the 1990 killing of a Brooklyn rabbi was on the verge of freedom Wednesday after prosecutors told a judge they support tossing out his conviction.

Based on its own re-investigation of the case, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office filed papers on Wednesday supporting the motion. They also told the judge they want the murder indictment dismissed, since they "no longer have sufficient evidence to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."

If the judge agrees, the 58-year-old Ranta could walk out the courtroom Thursday afternoon as a free man. His dramatic reversal of fortune was first reported Wednesday by The New York Times.

"I'd lie there in the cell at night and I think: I'm the only one in the world who knows I'm innocent," Ranta told the Times from a Buffalo prison. "I came in here as a 30-something with kids, a mother who was alive. This case killed my whole life."

The case dates to Feb. 8, 1990, when Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger, a Holocaust survivor and a leader of the tight-knit Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg, was shot in the head by a man fleeing a botched robbery.

After Ranta's arrest, Hasidic Jews surrounded the car that carried him to jail and chanted, "Death penalty!"

Ranta, a drug-addicted, unemployed printer, was convicted in May 1991 and sentenced to 37 1/2 years in prison.

But the Times, citing investigators and legal documents, said that the detectives who arrested him broke numerous rules. They kept few written records, coached a witness and took Ranta's confession under what a judge described as highly dubious circumstances. They allowed two dangerous criminals, an investigator said, to leave jail, smoke crack cocaine and visit with prostitutes in exchange for incriminating Ranta.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/new-yorker-jailed-in-rabbi-chaskel-werzberger-s-1990-killing-could-be-freed-1.510807

March 20, 2013

Foreign tech workers on a cruise ship? SeaCode was first to try

SAN FRANCISCO -- As novel as the concept sounds, Blueseed was not the first company to take "offshoring" so literally.

In 2005, a San Diego company called SeaCode proposed housing foreign software engineers on a cruise ship three miles off the California coast.

The controversial plan to bring low-cost, offshore labor so close to California shores came under fire as a "slave ship" and "sweatshop on the sea."

But Roger Green, an entrepreneur, and David Cook, a former tanker captain who had gone into technology, said they were simply trying to help American businesses.

Their idea was to give companies the benefit of the lower payscales of offshoring while doing away with some of the downsides: the time difference, the challenge of overseeing work being done so far away, concerns over the security of intellectual property in other countries and the high cost of redoing work not done properly in the first place.

"We were interested in giving American companies a level playing field to be productive and create good products at good cost," Green said. "Articles said we were trying to run slave a ship, which was totally crazy. That's not a sustainable business model. I don't know any company that would use a company like that. We planned to ship in people from all over the world, pay them a fair wage to live in a private cabin on a ship that used to be a cruise ship. That didn't seem like slave ship to us at all...."

.....Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija have come up with a new twist. They want to put foreign entrepreneurs on a cruise ship 12 miles off the coast of Northern California, within commuting distance of Silicon Valley but out of reach of restrictive U.S. immigration laws.....

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-seacode-was-first-to-try-to-put-foreign-workers-on-a-cruise-ship-20130319,0,546155.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29