Originally posted by electricdruid at The fiasco continues

I've blacked out my LJ today in protest against the proposed new copyright protection bills that would give private entities wide ranging freedom to censor sites they don't like. So far, I've noticed that the primary supporters of these bills are the MPAA and RIAA. As far as I'm concerned, that tells you all you need to know about these bills. The LJ will remain blacked out until at least midnight tonight with this as the only public post.

I got a suspicious email claiming to be a speeding ticket issued in New York with an address to mail the fine to. This is a known scam. I figured it had to be. I haven't been driving in New York in a long time. I certainly wasn't anywhere near there on the date the ticket was allegedly issued for.  I thought people should know about this one.

A site for finding people.

Toward the beginning of January, someone posted a request for information on where to donate gently used items to poor_skills after having been treated very rudely by someone at the local Salvation Army. One of the commenters on that thread posted a lengthy explanation of why charities that take donations in kind have to be picky about what they take. Speaking for myself, I remember going with my mother as a child to our local Goodwill to make donations and seeing an astonishing amount of junk in the donation area. I'm talking about stuff that absolutely was neither usable nor salvageable.

On another front, charities that respond to emergenies like the International Red Cross have their own issues. There's a reason, well okay several reasons, that they ask for cash donations for these. This blog post from the UK Red Cross explains some of the issues. Other issues are discussed in the comments. One point that was not brought up there, but was brought up in comments on another blog that I read was that the cash donation that you make today may end up being used to respond to tomorrow's disaster. When disasters strikes, the responders don't have time to wait for donations to come in, they have to act now. That means laying in the supplies ahead of time. The UK Red Cross article mentions keeping stockpiles of emergency supplies at various points around the world ready to ship when a disaster happens nearby to cut transportation costs. That's an example of prepping in advance.

Oh, and while we're at it, while some charities do indeed spend excessive amounts on adminstrative costs, choosing who to donate to purely on that basis can cause other sorts of problems.

Just some things to think about.

Shortly after midnight on Saturday, I heard a loud bang. I mean loud enough to cause me to levitate, or at least make a good attempt. Well, nancylebov not only heard the bang, but also glass breaking. From this, we concluded that whatever made the noise was out front. After some discussion, we concluded that calling the cops was probably the indicated course of action.

Now as it turned out, I didn't call the cops, and I'm not sure if nancylebov did, but they showed up fairly quickly, so unless they were driving nearby when the bang went off, someone must have called them. The local cop shop is close, but it's not that close despite my joking that they could've heard it there.

The breaking glass turned out to the next door neighbor's front window. Apparently someone threw a large firecracker or something similar at the window. Based on the volume of the bang, I'm tempted to guess an M-80, but I really don't know. At least one neighbor (not from that house) saw someone throw something, but I'm not clear on the details.

I generally think of this area as a good neighborhood, and I've been wondering if the fact that the neighbors in question are Latinos had anything to do with the incident.

I'm a big fan of science education, but this never occurred to me as a reason to push it.

I just came across a story about the Department of Justice proposing a ban on all service animals except dogs. Anyone who needs a service animal for any reason needs to be aware of this and contact theircongresscritter, senators, and the OMB.  The DOJ is apparently not taking calls on the subject. For more information about service animals, see this article in the New York Times Magazine.

The Rules: 1) Don't talk about politics. Just don't.
2) Put up an apolitical picture. Something you like. Above the
fold.
3) Pass on these instructions.

It never occured to me that they could do that. The octopus that's pretending to be algae really looks weird. You don't have to go into space to find true aliens. They're alive and well in our oceans.

We can haz bibbul 4 2day:



Needz pikcherz of kitteh, tho.

The problem with not getting to conventions is you miss stuff like this. I didn't know you could do that with a Tesla coil.

I think this pretty much sums up why I'm not mourning him.