Overheard in New York

These are funny!

From OverheardinNewYork.com:

Conductor: Everybody out. This is the last stop on the Manhattan bound L train. You must use the Brooklyn bound L train and connect to the G to the A or C trains for service to Manhattan. [The train empties] Hahaha. Just kidding! Everybody back on. This train is going to Manhattan.

--Manhattan bound L train

Bunch of pretty funny stuff that, as the site name suggests, was overheard in New York.

What's your wife worth?

Pricing love--the icky kind

From Vox Day on World Net Daily:

One reason that career women are so shocked to hear of their lack of desirability to men is that their comparatively high incomes mean that they are bringing something to the marriage table, in effect a form of modern dowry. But they tend to forget that in addition to their salaries one must assess their sexual values, which can be computed thanks to data collected on average American sexual practices which state that the average sexual encounter lasts 28 minutes and Americans average 58 such encounters per year.

Therefore, the sexual value of a woman can be computed according to the formula (P*(E/60)*(N*12), wherein P = price per hour, E = length of average sexual encounter in minutes and N = number of monthly encounters. Assuming realistic maximums, this value can be expected to range between 0 and $1.67 million on an annual basis. However, if one assumes that P for the average woman is one-third the overnight rate of a pretty, but non-elite 20-year-old call girl, the sexual value of the average American woman works out to only $1,353.33 per annum.

So, the problem faced by career women, then, is that while they do bring their modern dowry to the table in the form of a salary and a health insurance package, they bring little else, and money does not buy happiness. However high their original sexual value, their time commitments and job stresses tend to reduce it, while they are at a disadvantage with regards to other relationship aspects valued by men, such as providing children, child care and various household services.

The feminists are certainly screeching like caged monkeys at mealtime from this one.

SWAT Raids Gone Bad

Prosecuting Murderers

I couldn't say it much better than Kim does: The problems of (a) criminals claiming to be SWAT or Police, and raiding homes, and (b) SWAT/Police raiding the wrong house and killing innocent people.

Because let me tell you all this: I’m also sick of reading about cops raiding the wrong address, and slapping around the wrong people.

Law enforcement cannot have it both ways: they cannot have greater power over the populace without also being more responsible for its use.

In other words, the next time the Swatties raid the wrong place and kill some poor innocent schmuck like me, I want the raid commander to be charged with first-degree murder. No cover-ups, no weasel words, no nonsense. Wrong address + dead innocent = severe punishment (and not adminstrative punishment, but criminal punishment).

If we armed citizens have to exercise extreme care with our weapons, then law enforcement needs to be held to a higher standard. That’s the beginning and the end of it—or else this whole thing is going to end badly. Hell, for some people, it’s already ended badly.

No more. Not one.

Or else the police are going to have to go back to being ordinary cops, and not some wannabe-military force, with all the risks that this would entail.

Amen. And amnesty for anyone who shoots a cop raiding the wrong home. Because ANYONE can don a "SWAT" t-shirt and yell, "Police!" as they break through the door.

**EDIT** Go to the post at Kim's, and read some of the comments, particularly these (relevant portions):

(by TheUnderdog)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have been an avid reader of this site for many months now, and it is this topic that has finally provoked me to come out of the shadows and respond.

“99.99% of police are fine, wonderful and upstanding people”

Sorry to disagree with you.

As a former police officer, I can tell you that the percentage of outstanding police officers (the kind worthy of our trust and respect) is exactly the same as the percentage of outstanding people in any other blue collar occupation. (<10%) Maybe less.

And the bell curve goes up from there. The largest percentage are average at their job, and an equally small percentage are below average.

How many outstanding construction workers have you met? How many garbage men would you trust with your life? How often would you let a car mechanic hold a gun on you?

I do not mean to degrade the men who do these jobs, but they are also blue collar (don’t need a college degree) just like cops.

You might know many cops who are all great, but that’s bacuase the good ones tend to flock together. (as do the bad ones)

21 and a GED is the only qualifications you needed to apply to the academy in my city. FBI and other special Units being the exception.

Due to the life and death nature of the job, being an “average” police officer doesn’t really cut it in my book. That means that they are as likely to deny me my rights/abuse their authority as not. (maybe through ignorance or attitude, poor training or indifference.)

The other readers who have expressed concerns about the Cops vs. Civillians attitude have it excatly right. Guys who couldn’t get respect any other way, can get it with a badge and a gun. And they do.

It is a corrupting influence even for good hearted people. I have felt the surge of power when you pull someone over, code 3. I also know that my attitude, as the arresting officer, was often THE KEY FACTOR in determining if a traffic stop would become confrontational/violent.

It is a very difficult/mentally demanding job being done by men & women who (for the most part) are not as smart, dedicated, or trained as we believe they are.

Only by holding police officers to a HIGHER standard than other citizens will we move toward a police force that might truly exist “To Protect and Serve.”

SWAT/ESU units should only be used in hostage/barricade situations where normal police operations have been TRIED ALREADY, AND FAILED.

If the beat cops/detectives are feel unsafe serving a warrant on a known drug dealer in his crack house, I would say that neighborhood has problems far beyond those that can be solved by flash-bangs and MP5’s.

Sorry, confidential informants and tips are not enough.

Perhaps if some of that federal money is diverted from assault vehicles to state of the art surveilance gear, and some time and energy is invested into collecting evidence, we might be sure when the big guns are called out, they might get the right house.

Of course that would take intelligence, restraint and patience. None of which is as rush inducing as going in weapons hot, strong through the front door.

BTW- When I left the force to go back to college, my friends who stayed behind gradually placed my outside their group. I was no longer one of them. I had become a civillian.

We had an expression back on the force, it went like this:

Put 3 of any item (guns, flashlights, coffee mugs) in a roomful of cops and what will happen?

One will get lost, one will get broken, and one will get stolen.

If the SWAT/ESU/BATF boys come to my house for a no-knock raid at 0-dark-30, I will do the same thing that the rest of you will do:

Either quickly submit… Or die. Because nobody I know sleeps in Kevlar, and there are always more of them than us.

Sorry for the length of my post. Make of it what you will.

(gandalf23)

Talking the other day to DPD officers hired as part of getting a film permit in Dallas, the subject of sobriety checkpoints came up.

They said they loved them, and not because it got drunks off the street, but because they could work the system to get overtime.

They said they’d stop John Q Public. Let’s say his record is clean, they check, no warrants, nothing on their computer. Nice car. So they check his eyes, have him follow their finger. Apparently they can get a really good feel for BAC level that way. If he passes, ie, is not drunk, they’ll ask him to step out of the car, then arrest for Public Intoxication (much much lower standard of proof), or they might not do that and just arrest for dwi.

Why?

They figure a guy with a clean record and who is not really drunk will fight it.

That means they have to show up at court, which means overtime. Overtime to drive to court, go to court, and drive back.

They both said they made a lot of money each month that way. “Most” of the folsk they arrest so that they can get more overtime “get off” so they saw it as “not a problem”.

Gah!

Ask me why I don't like, trust, or respect cops.

Liquid Bombs?

Real or Hype? I'm going with hype.

From Claire Wolfe's blog:

LIQUID BOMBS ASSEMBLED ON AIRPLANES ARE OLD NEWS.

They haven’t had much success. One went off over 12 years ago, on Philippine Airlines Flight 434. It killed an innocent businessman on his way home, and blew a hole through the cabin floor of the airplane, but did not cause the jet to crash. The alleged bomb maker was Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted of the first bombing of the World Trade Center, carried out 11 months before the airplane attack.

Mr. Yousef was reportedly dissatisfied with the performance of his bomb, which he mixed in the airplane lavatory and hid in the underseat pocket that holds the life jacket. He vowed to make the next bombs “10 times more powerful” but apparently never figured out how to do so. Getting a pint or so of chemicals onto an airplane isn’t hard, and never will be. Pouring two shampoo bottles together in the lavatory can be done discretely. Up the quantity to a gallon or two and things become a bit more obvious.

This threat has been known and discounted for well over a decade. No one can explain why the threat is suddenly more credible, even if those arrested were really planning an attack. Everyone seems to be carefully avoiding the fact that gallons of liquids in hundreds of little bottles are still placed on nearly every airplane before every flight. Food and drink loaded into airplanes isn’t screened in any meaningful way, and the screening of the workers who cater, clean, and load unchecked cargo onto airplanes is spotty at best.

The government/media complex is breathlessly assuring us that some 2 dozen Muslim citizens of the UK would surely have blown up 9 or 10 airplanes. “Thousands of lives” would have been lost. The record of PAL flight 434 suggests otherwise.


The hype is based on pretty slim evidence. We know that the police have arrested some 2 dozen suspects, but already released 2. The apparently innocent people were arrested despite the fact that the groups had been under intensive surveillance, if not fully infiltrated, for months. We are assured that the suspects will be retained the full 28 days without charges, as allowed by British law. US law as written requires speedy charges, but as practiced allows suspects to be imprisoned and tortured for years without charges or access to lawyers.

There have been no reports of finding bomb factories. The presence of “bomb making materials” in one of the searched homes is hardly surprising: a bomb might be made from hair bleach, nail polish remover, and some lemon juice. How many bleached blondes would be jailed if possessing this combination of materials was illegal?

I'm going with Vox's rule of thumb (paraphrased): If the Government's Official Story is "A", then "A" is likely not the truth.

2am Alarm

Screening out stupid people

Wow, two posts in one day.

As mentioned in the post below, the wifey and I, and the in-laws went camping at a local state park this past weekend. Everyone went to bed around 10pm. I slept outside, on the ground, as I don't like tents--ruins the fun of being in the outdoors.

'Round 2am, I awoke. Took me a couple of seconds, but I realized that someone had opened a 55-gallon drum of TrailerPark® Domestic Dispute (Now with fewer teeth!) just down the hill. It sounded like three people simultaneously venting a couple months worth of supressed rage at each other. This went on for 15-20 minutes. At 2am. In a crowded campground. At freaking 2AM.

I called the park office, as I wasn't going to try to play peacemaker, while shivering and barely awake like I was--I'm not stupid. Of course, no one answers that late at night, and the answering machine that answered doesn't record messages, it only plays a two-minute diatribe on reserving a campsite and the evils of forest fires.

Eventually, one or more of the participants got in a car and left. Silence, mostly, returned. I'm pretty sure there were kids down there while this was going on. (We drove slowly by the site the next morning, and there they were.)

At around 2:45, the drama was over. We went back to sleep.

A Camping I went...

Critiquing Others' Parenting

Went camping at a local state park, with the in-laws: The wife's sister, her husband, their four kids (all aged 8 and below) and her parents. Had a good time, generally, though the kids are a bit, shall we say, "pert", at times. I love 'em tons, and pick on them incessantly, and it's a good time. What gets me, though, is the willingness of their parents to allow them to speak disrespectfully to them (The impudent "No, Daddy!), and whine/cry to get their way or express their displeasure at a parentally issued order.

It could be that I'm far too strict about this; my not having kids and all might not lend much credential in my ability to parent. It seems to me, however, that the guy on the outside looking in might be the one most accurately able to assess the situation from a theoretical or strategic standpoint.

Am I wrong about this?

I'm of the belief (and can't wait to test the theory on Daughter #1, expected in early-mid October) that any disobedience is punishable: You do NOT disobey a parental edict. You follow the edict, without whining, negotiating, or delay; cheerfulness is ideal and possibly even mandatory. To do otherwise is disobedience and therefore unacceptable. Whining, tantrums, disrespectful attitudes: No-no's. This applies to any child old enough to understand the word "No".

I'm not mean, nor will I be abusive; either physically or verbally. I will correct, positively and gently as possible while still getting the point across, when my little angel strays. Consistent, loving discipline; applied heinie-ally if necessary, but not in anger.

And I'm fun--ask the neice and nephews (the youngest is not yet a year old). "Do it to me, jml!", is commonly heard after I hang one of them by their ankles out over some body of water, or give a horsey ride, or similar fun-ness. If one gets the priviledge of being hung upside down, they all have to--and I can't say I don't enjoy doing it.

I think I'll be a good Dad. I'm looking forward to it!

Progressive Marital Relationships

Progressive... [Chortle]

From London's Daily Mail, Nirpal Dhaliwa writes of the hierarchy of men and women in marriage, and the folly of feminism:

Women thought the last victory of equality was to make men more 'sensitive'. The bitter irony, says this male writer in a piece that will infuriate the opposite sex (including his wife Liz Jones), is women don't like wimps after all...

...

Deep down, women love men who stand up to them, who won't be pushed around. They love men who will look them in the eye and tell them to shut up when their hormonal bickering has become too much.

They love men who will draw a line in the sand and walk out on them when they've had enough. They love men who know their own minds and are man enough to stick to their guns.

I'm always telling my wife, the writer Liz Jones, to shut up. She gets into a prissy huff about it, but I know she respects me for not indulging her neuroticism. Long ago, I realised it is unhealthy for a man to embroil himself in arguments with women.

While men want an argument to make sense and have a rational conclusion, women solely want the argument itself: it's a pressure valve for their emotions, and once they get started there is no stopping them.

I have a very low boredom threshold; I can't bear having protracted discussions about where my wife and I 'are going'. Nor can I bear to listen to the gossipy, highly detailed 'He said, she said' monologues that women drift into when telling you about their day.

This is a well-written piece that should be required reading for every married (and not-yet-married) man in the Western world (most of the East has this down). The gist of it is this: Women don't want sensitive, doting, spineless yes-men as mates. This, I learned through the past five years of marriage simply by trial and error, and it's quite true--you'll both be happier if you, the Man, will grow a pair and assert your Biblical right to the head of the household. And yes, that means YOU are the BOSS--none of this teamwork excrement the psycologists like to prattle on about.

(Big fat discussion over at Vox's)