Maine legalizing switchblades for one-armed people

Maine lawmakers on Wednesday approved legalizing switchblades for people with one arm, moving close to becoming the first state to make such an exception to laws that ban use of the spring-action knives.

Backers of the measure say legalizing switchblades would eliminate a need for one-armed people to be forced to open folding knives with their teeth in emergencies.

The Bangor Daily News gives us more details:

The measure, requested by an amputee in western Maine who rides horses, received final House approval Tuesday and faces a final Senate vote before being sent to the governor. The bill limits the blades to 3 inches in length.

Paul Dumas Jr. requested the bill. Dumas says that with only one arm, he can’t react quickly enough in emergencies when he needs to cut a piece of rope. Dumas, a lawyer, says he’s tired of opening knives with his teeth and the bill would remedy that.

Maine is not alone in carrying the torch of justice. Lawmakers everywhere are making headway in the battle against our society’s most serious problems.

Why, just last week Barry Bonds’ girlfriend testified about the testicular shrinkage he allegedly experienced as a side effect of steroid use. In a federal case. Yes, let’s raise taxes to pay for bs like this.

By the way, I’m 99% sure non-spring-powered knives like the one below are legal everywhere in the states. I’ve owned a dozen of them over the years, and they’re extremely simple to open with one hand. Assuming they aren’t rusted shut.

I guess the (very modest) pullback in gold and silver on Friday was due to all the positive news we’ve had recently, not due to another CME margin hike on silver, or simply profit-taking after a huge run.

No real concern for precious-metal-longs, as the CME probably should be raising margin-reqs as prices spike. But a short-term pullback is not unexpected after such a move (note: the margin requirements do apply to both long and short positions, but I suspect the short-positions have, let’s say, superior funding options.)

So why is a vacuous splog like Planet Insane is included in Google News results, while Zero Hedge isn’t? Can’t say. But whether a site is included in Google News is an editorial decision made by Google staff.

This isn’t meant to be disrespectful to the author or site. IP has a business model that involves churning out a lot of content, cheaply, and that’s fine. It’s meant more as a critique about the editorial standards employed by Google News.

Anyone who’s visited Google Finance realizes they have some cleanup to do. Their news feeds are horrific, absolutely full of spam-blogs (splogs). Almost no stories with any real value.

This piece, not looking so bad almost two years later.

Recall the golden rule: Good news is good, but bad news is much better. Besides, there are more interesting investments out there than shorting equities. Oil, metals, some stocks (I like GOOG), and eventually – the treasury bond short (which I am already in small).

By John Lohman, via ZH.

Here are two I liked.

Ok, maybe that’s only funny if you’re raising a toddler, like moi.

Gold.

Long before they became vigilantes in the Wikileaks cyberwars, Anonymous was conducting large-scale “raids” against their enemies. In hilariously-titled Operation: Titstorm earlier this year, they took on the Australian Gov’t over net censorship. Here’s a poster from the raid:

February 2010, click to enlarge

They succeeded in briefly shutting down a few AU gov’t sites. More to their point, I believe, is that attention was drawn to the issue. All the big outlets covered the story.

One participant was quoted as saying, “No government should have the right to refuse its citizens access to information solely because they perceive it to be unwanted”. Another quipped, “The Australian government will learn that one does not mess with our porn.”

One issue raised with the censorship was its vagueness. For example, it banned films featuring small-breasted adult women who could be “confused” with minors. This message was posted to Youtube as part of Operation: Titstorm:

Hello, Prime Minister Rudd, Governor-General Bryce, and members of the Australian Parliament. We are Anonymous. Over the past several months, we have observed the actions of your government in regard to censorship of internet content in Australia.

Your ban of pornography depicting small breasted women is not only discrimination against people based on physical characteristics, but also a first step down the slippery slope of internet censorship. Your proposed implementation of mandatory ISP filtering is an outrage, and Anonymous cannot allow this to happen. If there is any foreseeable threat to our organization, it is internet censorship. Therefore, we take your actions very seriously.

We shall proceed to do everything in our power to annihilate your government’s presence on the internet.

You have nowhere to hide, because we are everywhere.

We are Anonymous.

We are legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.

Anon’s standard arsenal of tools was deployed: DDOS attacks, faxing black pages en masse, flooding email servers with junk, and running scripts to autoclick ads (advertisers then balk/walk).

Encyclopedia Dramatica has more on Operation: Titstorm here, for those interested.

Iranian Activist Support

As Wired reported in June 2009, Anonymous teamed up with Pirate Bay to offer Iranian dissidents a way to plan demonstrations and connect with the outside world. The result was Anonymous Iran, a successful information-freedom project with 22k+ users.

The site offers Iranian activists tools and advice on how to remain anonymous and avoid detection. Forums are provided for coordinating activities and communicating with the west. I would assume that  are employed in all aspects of the site.

Who are they?

Anonymous isn’t truly an organization; not in any traditional sense. They are a large, decentralized group of individuals who share common interests and web haunts. Among those commonalities are frustration with the status quo and a taste for Japanese anime.

They coordinate raids on forums like 4chan.org and ICQ chat rooms, among other venues. 4chan.org is a major hub, but I wouldn’t call it Anonymous’ home. Anonops.net was as close to an HQ as they had, but it has been shut down.

This mission statement, pulled from Google’s cache, indicates that anonops.net was, according to some, Anon’s “homepage”.

We are an anonymous, decentralized movement which fights against censorship and copywrong. This is our homepage. Please look around and/or join the discussion in our chat.

Here’s an example of forum activity before the site went down (from Google’s cache, screenshot). In a thread titled “Target Suggestions”, the following was posted:

Add your suggestions below the line: www.alvarouribevelez.com Paypal’s main site needs to be hit hard. With shopping coming up and people needing to pay for their online purchases, this will really put them at a halt and regret messing with Wikileaks and Anon.”

No idea what the reference to Alvara Uribe means. Coded message, maybe.

Whyweprotest.net, a spinoff, offers more insight on the group:

Recent developments regarding WikiLeaks and the corporate and political control of information have led to increased interest and participation in WhyWeProtest.net. We are inspired by this influx of energy and creativity. We invite all of our increasingly diverse users to collaborate with us toward real and substantive change on a widening range of issues.

Anonymous is not an organization. There are no official members, guidelines, leaders, representatives or unifying principles. Rather, Anonymous is a word that identifies the millions of people, groups, and individuals on and off of the internet who, without disclosing their identities, express diverse opinions on many topics.

As an offshoot of the larger Anonymous group, WhyWeProtest (WWP) has become the hub of the anti-Scientology movement that is often called Project Chanology. We have also initiated planning and discussion in other pro-free speech areas. Our role has been to provide a stable platform to discuss legal methods of protest and information dissemination. We take no position on other forms of civil disobedience, although from both a public relations and a technical point of view we cannot host the planning or promotion of illegal activities.

Scientology, AT&T, and other targets past

Anon’s first widely-noted raid was conducted against Scientology in 2008. It was dubbed Project Chanology (chan = 4chan.org, presumably). Video message Anon sent to Scientology.

Jeff Jacobsen has a nice writeup of the episode here. Anon’s message to Scientology:

Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation; suppression of dissent; your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who trust you, who call you leader, has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed.

Jeff Jacobsen has a nice writeup of the episode here.

Other entities they’ve tangled with include AT&T, Gene Simmons, KnowYourMeme, Hot Topic, Jessi Slaughter, and Tumblr.

A new spinoff movement has launched, as well. In Operation Leakspin, volunteers are crawling through leaked material, looking for stories others missed. Crowdjournalism is the tag line, not bad.

I suspect they will find some interesting stuff. Remember, it has primarily been journalists crawling through Wikileaks data so far. Anonymous is full of young programmers who will use their technical prowess to scour the data.

It will be interesting to watch the events unfold. Arrests have already begun, as a 16-year old Dutch boy was arrested in connection with Anon’s Mastercard attacks. Shortly after the arrest, the Dutch prosecutor’s site was hacked… Almost ashamed to admit how much I enjoy watching these events unfold. It is truly fascinating.

Further reading on Anon raids etc:

• EasyDNS helps Wikileaks, after being accused of dropping it – NY Times
• The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers – Guardian
• Information is the antidote to fear – EFF
• Gawker, Gizmodo, Lifehacker hacked – Village Voice
• Amazon UK Goes offline amid hacking attempts – Guardian
• Anonymous on Wikipedia – Wiki
• Operation: Black Rage – play-this.org
• What the hell is 4chan? – Gawker
• Is 4chan turning into internet good guys? – Gawker

Scott Adams is wise.

I’d say any viral marketing campaign that gets picked up by the BBC is a success. BeautifulPeople.com just pulled off a doozy, and the evil marketers behind this one deserve a bonus.

The site announced that due to their weight gain over the holidays, 5,000 members will be booted off the site. From the BBC piece:

‘Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded’, site founder Robert Hintze said.

The members were singled out after posting pictures of themselves that reportedly showed they had put on pounds over the holiday period.

The site allows entry to new members only if existing members vote them as sufficiently attractive to warrant it.

I’m a bit of an internet marketer myself, so I appreciate what they did there. Is it offensive to most people? Hell yes. Offensive to their target audience? Nope.

It’ll get them thousands of links and tons of traffic. Smart marketing, moral issues aside. BTW, check out the notice on the bottom of their homepage. Provocative stuff like this generates buzz.

The campaign offers a free trial to married men looking to trade in their “chunker” of a wife for a hot mistresses, a “sleeker model” as Ashley Madison CEO Noel Biderman explains in the press release:

The average person gains over 40 pounds in their first ten years of marriage which often has a crushing affect when it comes to the bedroom. And when sexual intimacy stalls in a marriage over 50% of people look elsewhere for a little jumpstart. Over four million have turned to AshleyMadison.com

Taking a page out of the Obama’s book, Ashley Madison is offering a cash incentive for those looking to temporarily trade in their Chunker for something a little sleeker. And according to Biderman, “With a new member joining every 15 seconds, we have a lot of models to choose from.

This line is the kicker though, “Let The Protests Begin“. They’d like all that free press, wouldn’t they? Am I playing into their viral-marketing ploy by writing this post? Maybe, but hold that thought a minute.

Putting aside the moral issues momentarily, think about the legions of hot young ladies supposedly trolling AM for affairs. Why the hell would these girls be on Ashley Madison? Everyone knows that a lady so inclined can get action just about anywhere: a bar, a bowling alley, at a wake. Especially the modelesque girls Biderman suggests that you trade your “Chunker” in for. So I decided to look at Ashley Madison’s demographics, specifically the male-female ratio. Screenshot from Alexa.com:

Apparently Ashleymadison.com is a sausage-fest. Alexa’s confidence in this matter is high. They’re an Amazon.com subsidiary, so I’ll assume the data is good. Quantcast.com shows a 71%/29% male-female split. If anything, that number even seems high. If a 70/30 split is right, you can bet the ladies of AM are not what you’d call great catches.

So while I did play into their viral-marketing ploy, I also highlighted some demographic issues they’d probably rather ignore. That makes this post Karma-neutral, maybe even slightly positive. And in case anyone was wondering, I heard about Cash for Chunkers on Howard Stern, not while trolling for extramarital action. I’m happily married, and yup, I’m a diehard Stern fan. Ashley Madison has been running ads on his show for years. They’ve always been in poor taste, some bad enough to get a chuckle. But this new campaign raises the bar. And indicates how desperate Sirius is for revenue.

Past AM classics include their shove-a-pencil-in-my-ear inspiring jingle, which is played around 5x/day during the Stern show. It’s one line, repeated ~15x, sung a capella by a chorus: “Ashley Madison, Find Your Lovers Here; Ashley Madison, Find Your Lovers Here; Ashley Madison — Find Your Lovers Heeeeeerreeeee“. Their faux testimonials are also cringe-worthy, like “My husband doesn’t even look at me anymore, let alone touch me”. Let’s just say it makes listening to Stern at work an awkward endeavor.