:: Archipelapogo ::

:: 30.6.03 ::

Pachinko!

I went to a friend of a friend's house on Friday night for a small gathering and was exposed for the first time to Pachinko. Pachinko is apparently a very popular Japanes gambling game that is somewhat of a cross between pinball, slot machines, and the old price is right game "Plinko". You play by flicking small metal balls that are purchased into the playing field where they fall through a series of pegs. If you land them in any of the special slots, you win and receive more little balls which you can then play with or cash in for 50,000,000,000 Yen. It's a pretty cool game and a lot cooler than slot machines are. You can find out more about it here and check out some pics of some old-school variety Pachinko Machines like I played here.
:: Scott [+] ::
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Reefer Madness II

I finished the book last night and wanted to amend one of my statements from my previous post about it. I spoke about some of the proposed legislature and wanted to cite some great examples of the book about some of the hipocracies in how the laws are enforced.

Schlosser talks about Gary Martin, who in 1997 was arrested in Manchester, Conn and charged with possession of pot. About twenty years earlier, Martin was beaten severly in a robbery, resulting in permanent brain damage. As a result of the beating, he endured several strokes that left his right side paralyzed. He developed circulatory problems and his left leg eventually was amputated. He began to smoke pot to relieve the "phantom pains" from his amputated leg (phantom pains are a very real and problematic condition). After being arrested for possession of less than four ounces of pot, he was evicted from his apartment at a special housing complex for disabled and elderly people. None of the doctors or nurses treating Martin were warned that he might be evicted. A reporter for the Hartford Courant stated "Kicking this guy out of his aprtment for pot was just pathetic." (pgs. 51-52)

Compare that with this:
In 1982, the year that President Reagan launched the war on drugs, the son of Chief of Staff James Baker, John C. Baker, sold a quarter of an ounce of pot to an undercover agent. Under Texas state law (where the sale took place) Baker faced a possible felony charge and prison term of two to twenty years. Instead, he was charged with a misdemeanor and fined $2,000.

In 1990, Congressman Dan Burton proposed legislation requiring the death penalty for drug dealers. Burton stated "We must educate our children about drugs and impose tough new penalites on dealers." Four years later his son was arrested transporting nearly eight pounds of pot across state lines from Texas to Indiana. While awaiting trial, Burton's son was arrested again for growing 30 pot plants in his apartment. Police also found a shotgun in his apartment. Under federal law (interstate transport makes it a Federal crime) Burton II faced a possible madatory minimum sentence of five years in prison just for the gun, plus up to three years in prison under state law for the pot. Federal charges were never filed against Burton, who wound up receiving a term of community service, probation and house arrest.

The son of Richard W. Riley, Secretary of Education under Bill Clinton, was indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to sell cocaine and marijuana. He faced maximum penalties of ten years to life in prison and a $4 million fine. He got six months of house arrest.

In September 1996, Congressman Randy Cunningham attacked Clinton for being "cavalier" with regards to illegal drug use and for appointing "soft on crime" liberal judges. Cunningham stated "We must get tough on drug dealers. Those who peddle destruction on our children must pay dearly." Four months later his son was arrested by the DEA for aiding the trasnport of 400 pounds of pot from California to Massachusetts. Upon being arrested, his son confessed to having been part of a smuggling ring that had shipped up to 30,000 pounds(!) of marijuana throughout the U.S. This is a crime that can easily be punished by a life sentence without parole. Congressman Cunningham begged the judge for mercy fighting back tears and stating, "My son has a good heart. He's never been in trouble in his life." His sun was charged with distribution of only 400 pounds of pot and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. (killer fact ahead:) "He might have received an even shorter sentence had he not tested positive for cocaine three times while out on bail.

One final story: A Connecticut federal prosecutor, Leslie C. Ohta, known as the forfeiture queen seized the house of Paul and Ruth derbacher when their 22-year-old grandson was arrested for selling marijuana. The Derbachers, both in their eighties, had owned the house for forty years and claimed to have no idea that their grandson was storing weapons and drugs in their house. Regardless, Ohta insisted on forfeiture arguing that people know what goes on in their own home. Not long after, her 18-year-old son was arrested for selling LSD from her Chevrolet Blazer. Allegedly, he also had sold pot from her home in Glastonbury. Ohta was quickly transferred out of the U.S. Attorney's forfeiture unit but neither her car nor her house were seized by the federal government.

I'm not a pro-pot advocate. I've never cared for the stuff too much although I have plenty of friends that enjoy it frequently and are able to lead normal, valuable lives. Like any drug it can be abused and have a negative impact on your life, but that doesn't mean that it should be illegal. If it were decriminalized or even legalized in the United States, it wouldn't change how I feel about the drug itself. The illegality is not even in the top five reasons I would list for not smoking it today and never smoking it with frequency in the past. If it came to a vote, though, I know how I'd vote. With a decriminalization or legalization, the abusers of pot, the court systems, and our jails and prisons would be much better off. The blatant hipocracy with the attitude of the Federal and Local governments towards the laws that are passed and the inconsistency with how they are enforced are a black eye on a legal system and government that we claim as one of the freest and fairest in the world. This should not be.
:: Scott [+] ::
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What is it about Baylor sports?

First there were those baseball players that tortured a cat, now a basketball player has been missing for a couple of weeks and is feared dead.

Patrick Dennehy, 21, a 6-foot-10, 230-pound center, has not been heard from since June 11 and was reported missing to police June 19, police have said.

Also Friday, Waco police confirmed that a 1996 Chevy Tahoe found in a strip-mall parking lot in Virginia Beach, Va., belonged to Dennehy.

"From that lead and others, potential suspects in the disappearance of Dennehy potentially include fellow Baylor basketball players," police spokesman Steve Anderson said in a news release.

"One of the potential leads that investigators have been following is that Dennehy was the victim of a homicide in the Waco area."

:: Scott [+] ::
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Ph34R M3, L4|\/|3rZ

This post certainly got some interesting comments.
:: Scott [+] ::
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More reading for you

If you've got a spare 20-30 minutes, you may be interested in reading the Dallas Observer's main story this week about the problems that the Downtown Dallas Central Library is having with some of the indigent people that hang out there during the day. It's one of the best features I've seen the Observer write in quite some time. It seems like it's kind of a Catch-22. Any thoughts? Anything similiar going on in your town?
:: Scott [+] ::
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Other stuffs

Victorian Visions of the Year 2000 -- Great stuff from this MeFi thread.

Brilliant PayPal e-mail scam that might've totally suckered me had I not received five of them in one night and if the site in question hadn't already been taken down.

Finally saw "A Mighty Wind". Extremely good. Guest's schtick still cracks me up. Next, I'm hoping to see "Capturing the Friedmans" (warning: sound involved) which looks to be absolutely amazing. As a sidenote, can we not have just one freaking normal official movie website? They've become so freaking formulaic and overdone lately. Bah!

And a big Cheers to the SCOTUS for their decision in the Lawrence v. Texas case. This country needed something positive to happen. Desperately. And it's always nice to see them dragging the Justice system of Texas kicking and screaming in the mid 20th Century.

I'm off to watch some Wallace and Gromit now.
:: Scott [+] ::
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Reefer Madness

I'm currently reading Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser (the Fast Food Nation guy). It's a good followup to a great book. Basically, Schlosser takes three segments of the black market economy in the States and breaks 'em down. The first section is, not surprisingly, about pot. There's a wealth of great information in there about the history of marijuana in the United States including the past (or, you know, passed would work too) legislature regarding it (including a law in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the 1700's requiring all citizens that owned land to grow hemp) and propsed legislature (I believe it was Newt Gingrich that proposed automatic life in prison for anyone caught trying to bring more than two ounces of pot into the country).

The second part is about illegal migrant workers in California. Schlosser sticks mostly to the strawberry fields, which apparently are the most strenuous in terms of amount of labor and effort of labor required. He gets a lot into the schemes that some of the large growers offer to non-English speaking illegals that basically amount to sharecropping and providing land and supplies at an extortionary rate. This also provides the landowners a way around laws in that they are not necessarily "employing" illegal immigrants. A lot of the information here, especially the stories of the conditions that these workers live in, won't surprise anyone familiar with the migrant workers' plight or Cesar Chavez. If you haven't read anything about these, then maybe you'll be a bit stunned. This is by far the smallest section of the book though, and probably the one that goes least in-depth. Still worth reading.

I'm working on the third section now which involves the history of porn in the United States. Schlosser mainly focuses on one man, Reuben Sturman, who followed closely in the steps of Hugh Hefner and created an "empire of smut" pushing the boundaries of obscenity laws and making it nearly impossible to be taken down. He at one time had stores and operations in every state and forty or so additional countries, using banks in Switzerland, Liberia, and Panama to launder money.

Schlosser's done a great job again. The inside sleeve of my copy says he's currently working on a new book about the American Prison System which I am highly anticipating. Reefer Madness though, just like Fast Food Nation, gets a high recommendation from yours truly.
:: Scott [+] ::
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Hi Everybody

Sorry, work's still been kicking my ass lately. I even worked my first Saturday since I started (I shouldn't complain for having to work A Saturday, but this is my blog and I'll cry if I want to). Today was the first day since I started (a year ago last Friday) that I have not even brought up an internet browser to check my e-mail. I'm averaging about 9.5 hours a day and get no overtime (salary's cool for personal budgeting purposes, but sucks when you're working 50+ hours a week). Anyways....

Just because I feel like it, I'll respond to this comment with an actual post (gasp!). Aaron writes:

I do think that there is a way to implement a fair flat tax, without people being reduced to poverty. The people who currently do not pay taxes still would not pay taxes. A lower threshold would have to be determined, based on dependants. Say for a single person it is 18K. For a family of four it is 45K (these are just numbers I am throwing out there). Above that point everyone pays the same rate (I don't know what that rate would have to be).

It's cool, Aaron, you've by all means got a right to your own opinion, but I will make a bit of a rebuttal.

I know these are just numbers that you're tossing out, and a "flat-tax rate" that balances out equally between services that the government offers (if you want some of those trimmed back, that's a whole different ball game) and not screwing those on the lower end of the scale is probably something that is nearly impossible to find. I'll take your number even higher and say for a person that makes $20k a year being the line that we hold. I net roughly $23k (about 26% of my gross income) a year, live alone, and have no pets (sadly). Dallas, if I remember correctly, has a cost of living that is about 97% of the national average. My rent is not too expensive ($556 a month for a one bedroom apartment). My car's paid off. Other than rent and utilities, my monthly costs are pretty much just internet access ($16.95 a month), car insurance, and NetFlix. Everything else is pretty much whatever I feel like. If all of the sudden I'm forced to give up any more of my salary, I'm not going to make it. Or I may make it, but I'm not going to be putting any money back into the economy and if my car gets screwed (which is somewhat likely having 77k miles) so am I.

Someone that grosses 22k a year at the same tax rate is royally screwed. And that's living in the midwest. You talk about some of the cities with a higher cost of living (the top 5 are all in New England and the San Fran Valley, with somewhere around Miami very close) then you get to the point to where those that are just above the cut-off point are much worse off than those below.

On an even more broad scale, let's say that the government decides that they do make the cutoff at an easy to use number, say, $10,000. Let's then say (again, an easy to use number) that we set the tax rate at 25%. In order to be taxed at 25% and left with a net of $10,000, you have to earn $13.333 a year. Therefore, if you make between $10,000 and $13,333 a year, you're hosed according to the government's standards. Put the numbers in more realistic standards, say the 20k and a 33% tax rate, and you wind up with everyone making between $20,001 and $30,030 getting hosed, which is probably a pretty substantial portion of the American public. How do we reconcile with those folks?
:: Scott [+] ::
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The Bush tax cut and you

The Heritage Foundation has a little calculator where you can see exactly what the Bush tax cut will do for you. For me, I'll pay $50 less in taxes. This represents 1.44% of my Total Tax and 0.15% of my total income. Holding all other things constant and just increasing my income to a lofty $150,000 I'd save $2,326 in taxes, which would be 6.31% of my total taxes and 1.55% of my total income. Bump it up to $1,000,000 and that equals a savings of $30,210 (damn close to my salary) for 8.42% of total taxes and 3.02% of total income increase. I think we can see who the tax cuts benefit, no?

:: Scott [+] ::
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Tossing you all a bone or two

Work's really busy right now, and will be for the next two or so weeks, so I haven't got time to do much on here. Here are some links to keep you entertained. More will come in the next few days, hopefully.

A Brief History of Banned Music in the United States. Search by decade or keyword. (via plep)

Gay kiss on Tony Awards. Kind of weird to see that stuff like this still causes controversy, but, you know, this is the Tonys.

From Monument to Masses to go on their first nationwide tour. Their new album is out too. I haven't heard it yet, but I'm definitely going to try to catch either the Houston or Austin show.

An interview with new Sierra Club President Larry Fahn

"We face the most environmentally hostile federal government in our nation's 227-year history," says Fahn. "The country is being run by two oilmen, and the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet are salted with representatives of corporate interests and attorneys and lobbyists for mining, timber, auto and oil companies. These interests helped propel Bush to the presidency, and now they're seeking a return on their investment."

Free On-line Typing Test. I got 69 wpm with one error. I'm sure some of you can do much better than that.

Special for Jaquandor: Darth Vader Case Mod (via Adam's sideblog)

And Finally:

If I ever see anyone wearing this shirt, I reserve the right to publicly fling trash in their general direction and mock them loudly. (via leia)

I've also tossed a permanent link on the sidebar to my new fotolog. Just so you know that it's there.
:: Scott [+] ::
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Sigh

So apparently sitemeter has decided that it wants $7 a month to list referrals. Whatever. Screw them. I signed up for eXTReMe Tracking tonight to take care of the problem. I'm keeping the SiteMeter for an overall total, but if you're concerned about losing your free referral logs, you may want to follow suit.

Scratch all that. Must've been a bug in the program. I'm keeping the extreme tracking on for now though, just in case.
:: Scott [+] ::
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Way out in the water

My mind has been a tempestuous mess of random thoughts and conversations with myself lately. This really isn't anything unusual, but I feel like I'm more aware of it lately.

Yesterday morning I found myself pulling into the train station and debating with myself about which parking space to pull into. Should I park in the one next to the tree so that I get afternoon shade and the insides of my car don't melt like a Klondike Bar in the eighth circle of hell or do I go to the one that's two spots away from a tree but 75 feet closer to the train, risking a blistery ass for a little less walking. I chose the far, safer one and made a mental note to finish off my experiment at the end of the day.

Later, I was accosted by a co-worker for being "existential" for simply pointing out that a person living in a grass hut eating ants may be very well just as happy - if not happier - than I am. It seemed to ruin his good mood, which was rather unfortunate and not my intent. I then went on a mental argument with him explaining to him telepathically that I find my viewpoint to be even more optimistic than his. Just because I have more stuff doesn't mean that my starting point on the happiness meter is intrinsically higher than some guy in the Ivory Coasts. Frankly, I take more pleasure in knowing that people all over are happy and miserable all at once. Not some "hey my life is better than a lot of peoples. This pleases me" thing. Whatever, he didn't bring it back up today and I sure as hell wasn't going to.

Then when I disboarded the train after work I began to wonder if it takes more energy to run an escalator going up than an escalator going down. I tried really hard to reason it out as I was climbing the three flights of stairs out of the train station. I'm a real fuckwit when it comes to science and engineering, so I think it's pretty fun to come up with random hypotheses that become really contrived and thought out just to ask someone with more basic scientific knowledge than a slug soaked in beer why I'm wrong. So I'm reasoning it out and look! I was right. I picked the right parking space. The other one wouldn't have given me any shade at all. Thank you, Easter Bunny! I sat on my moderately warm seat went home and kind of forgot about everything until now.
:: Scott [+] ::
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Por Fin!

I finally found what I was looking for. I stumbled upon FotoLog earlier today, checked it out, and it's perfect for me right now for my own photoblog. It's free, easy, and they host everything for you. You can check out the few pictures I've uploaded so far here. Let me know what you think, and if you decide FotoLog is for you, let me know so I can add you to my friends list.
:: Scott [+] ::
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