Rad Geek People's Daily

Rules of the Road. Daily Brickbats (2010-07-09):

In Florida, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office fired deputy Franklyn McCurrie after a patrol car he was driving struck another car, killing 14-year-old Cara Catlin. The sheriff’s office says the driver of the other car turned into oncoming traffic, but they acknowledge that McCurrie was driving 89 mph in a…

Deputy Franklin McCurrie — a police officer working for the Broward County government’s sheriff’s office — smashed into a car at 89 miles per hour and killed a 14-year-old girl named Cara Catlin in the process. He didn’t have his lights or his sirens on while he was tearing through a 40 zone at 49 miles per hour over the speed limit. In the interest of police accountability, the government sheriff’s office has taken the bold step of firing this murderer from his government job.

All Vehicles Look Alike. Daily Brickbats (2010-07-09):

JaDaimon Cole says he and his girlfriend were terrified when Dallas police ordered them out of their car at gunpoint. Sgt. Warren Mitchell described the stop as “an honest mistake.” He says an officer typed in an “N” instead of an “M” into a computer terminal when checking the license…

• Ninth Circuit Panel: Innocence, Schminnocence. We Have Rules, You Know. Radley Balko, Radley Balko: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-07-07). A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has rejected an Oregon man's petition for habeas corpus relief (PDF). This despite acknowledging that the man has established actual innocence for the crimes for which he's being imprisoned (sexual abuse and sodomy of a four-year-old). The… (Linked Wednesday 2010-07-07.)

• To serve, protect, and/or scare the hell out of. The Superfluous Man (2010-07-08). Be afraid. Be very afraid. (Linked Thursday 2010-07-08.)

• With enemies like these, who needs friends? John Markley, The Superfluous Man (2010-06-23). Paul Craig Roberts has a nice article at Counterpunch on the Left and gun control. This is something that has had me shaking my head for years. I find myself baffled by the mentality of someone who believes that: 1. The government is controlled by a malevolent cabal of greedy… (Linked Thursday 2010-07-08.)

• History of Anarchism Presentation. DarianW, DarianWorden.com (2010-06-29). At this year's Porcfest, I did a presentation at the AltExpo on the history of anarchism. I was overly ambitious with what I could fit into an hour, and really ran through some things that I would have liked to explain more. Particularly a lot of the post-WWII history was… (Linked Thursday 2010-07-08.)

• Almost Getting Away With Murder. Darian Worden, Center for a Stateless Society (2010-07-09). Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle was given a slap on the wrist for his January 1, 2009 murder of Oscar Grant. A jury found Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and not guilty of the second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter charges he faced. It is sad that the… (Linked Friday 2010-07-09.)

Walking on Sunshine. Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-07-09):

A solar-powered plane has just completed a 26-hour flight, the nighttime portion of the flight being powered by the daytime portion — with power to spare. With an average speed of 25 mph, solar-powered flight isn’t quite ready to render jet fuel obsolete; but it’s nice to see some progress…

• Stay Out of Malibu. IOZ, Who Is IOZ? (2010-06-29). Nice Liberal Arguments about banning guns are totally incoherent. Oh, oh, 10,000 people died in “gun violence” last year? Yeah, well, there were 33,000 traffic accidents. I say we ban automobiles and tear up the highways. There were almost 700,000 deaths from heart disease. I say we all subsist on… (Linked Monday 2010-07-05.)

• Breaking the Walled Garden of Childhood. David Friedman, Ideas (2010-07-05). A very long time ago, I attended a conference at which one of the other participants was the late John Holt, a prominent and unconventional writer on education. The part of his talk I still remember was his description of the Victorian ideal of the walled garden of childhood—that children… (Linked Monday 2010-07-05.)

• More Watching of the Watchers. Radley Balko, Hit & Run (2010-07-05). Last week I interviewed a law enforcement official for a forthcoming article on recording the police. In arguing that it should be illegal for citizens to record on-duty cops, this official said he couldn’t think of a single example where video taken by a citizen bystander showed a police officer… (Linked Wednesday 2010-07-07.)

• The Spiderweb Project – a citizen-owned WiFi mesh network. Sepp Hasslberger, P2P Foundation (2010-07-06). This is an announcement I found on an Italian facebook page. It is about a project in two Italian towns to construct a citizen-owned WiFi mesh network that will allow direct communication of all participants and will link into the internet at provider level. Here is a translation of the… (Linked Wednesday 2010-07-07.)