Nutz My Pet Squirrel thinks he is one of the cats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqj3iAlfpNM

"i watched it like it was porn" - Jeff

Infomercial Gifs

http://www.buzzfeed.com/julianbrand/40-gifs-of-stupid-infomercial-people-6eof

100 Cats In Ikea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=vCB7RqGS684

"Let's take 100 cats, release them in Ikea, and see what happens."

Greatest thing the human race has ever done.

Massive Police Shootout in Cleveland Despite Lack of Criminals

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/massive_police.html

A November car chase ended in a "full blown-out" firefight, with glass and bullets flying, according to Cleveland police officers who described for investigators the chaotic scene at the end of the deadly 25-minute pursuit.

But when the smoky haze -- caused by rapid fire of nearly 140 bullets in less than 30 seconds -- dissipated, it soon became clear that more than a dozen officers had been firing at one another across a middle school parking lot in East Cleveland.

At the end of the scene, both unarmed -- and presumably innocent -- people in the car were dead.

Florida Man

https://twitter.com/_floridaman

"Real-life headlines about the world's worst superhero."

Don't know if you're completely right

http://pleated-jeans.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/aRKMU1.png

Blank screen if kids yell too much

http://superuser.com/questions/545329/blank-screen-if-kids-yell-too-much

My kids (4 and 5) yell a lot when playing games on our Linux box. I found an effective cure for this: I've told them that the computer doesn't like loud noises. So when they get loud, I ssh into the box and run:

chvt 3;  sleep 15;  chvt 7

This turns off the screen for 15 seconds. They get quiet, but not to the level that I would be happy with. So I need to continue this educational process, but I'm getting tired of doing this manually.

Kentucky man sentenced to attend church

http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/Kentucky-man-sentenced-to-attend-church-188915001.html

Go to jail or go to church. That was the choice for a Kentucky man arrested in a theft case.

As part of his plea deal, a judge sentenced 23-year-old James Talbot Nickell to attend Sunday services for six weeks at the First Baptist Church in Sandy Hook.

Well this is certainly interesting.  Unfortunately, all the articles are very short local news, so we don't know the details.  From the phrasing of one report it made it seem like the church agreed to not press charges if he attended church, and I'm not really sure if that would make it legal or not.

I also don't know if we'll hear anything else about it, as I don't know if anyone else could challenge it without standing.  Clearly, he won't challenge it.

In the comments on that site 90% of the people are defending the choice, since "he had a choice".  As a quick rebuttal, what if he had been convicted of armed robbery and the judge gave him the choice of 1 year in prison or 50 lashes?  Or if the judge gave him the choice of the guy paying the judge $10k on the side or go to jail?  Or if it had been a girl and the judge gave the choice of jail or sex?

Or as one of the commenters pointed out, I wonder how the people that think this is ok would feel if the choice had been between jail or attending a mosque.

A choice doesn't make it legal.  I think people are just being blinded to that by the fact that they personally feel that attending church is a positive thing.

Due Process When Everything is a Crime

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2203713

Overall, the problem stems from a dynamic in which those charged with crimes have a lot at risk, while those doing the charging have very little skin in the game.  One source of imbalance is prosecutorial immunity.  The absolute immunity of prosecutors – like the absolute immunity of judges – is a judicial invention, a species of judicial activism that gets less attention than many other less egregious examples.  Although such immunity no doubt prevents significant mischief, it also enables significant mischief by eliminating one major avenue of accountability.  Even a shift to qualified, good-­faith immunity for prosecutors would change the calculus significantly.

Another remedy might be a "loser pays" rule for criminal defense costs.  After all, when a person is charged with a crime, the defense – for which non-­indigent defendants bear the cost – is an integral part of the criminal justice process.10  For guilty defendants, one might view this cost as part of the punishment.   But for those found not guilty, it looks more like a taking:  Spend this money in the public interest, to support a public endeavor, or go to jail.  To further discipline the process, we might pro‐rate things:  Charge a defendant with 20 offenses, but convict on only one, and the prosecution must bear 95% of the defendant’s legal fees.  This would certainly discourage overcharging.

How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp

http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a-north-korean-prison-camp-3549/

“By the way,” Shin asked, “where is Pyongyang?”

Shin’s question stunned Park. He explained that Pyongyang, located about 50 miles south of Camp 14, was the capital of North Korea, the city where the country’s powerful people lived. Park said he had grown up there, studying in East Germany and the Soviet Union. After returning home, he had become chief of a taekwondo training centre. Park explained what life was like outside Camp 14. He told Shin about money, television, computers and mobile phones. He explained that the world was round.

Much of what Park talked about was difficult for Shin to understand, believe or care about. What delighted him – what he kept begging for – were stories about eating. Park described chicken, pork and beef in China, Hong Kong, Germany, England and the former Soviet Union. Intoxicated, Shin made perhaps the first free decision of his life. He chose not to snitch.