Month: July 2011

Borders Bookstores Looking to Liquidate Their Assets

Well it seems that Borders was unable to find a sucker to buy their dying business model and are looking to start liquidating their assets as soon as Friday. I’m a man who loves bookstores but feel no sympathy for Borders and really could care less that they’re going away. Borders is a classic example of a company that has failed to evolve with the changing times and thus it’s time for them to go away (unless the government gives them a bailout or some such nonsense).

In the era of e-readers less people are buying physical books because it’s inconvenient. In order to get a physical book you must either go to the book store or order it online, have a place to store it, move it around when you’re cleaning or moving, etc. With an e-book you simply tell your software to purchase and download the book and you’re reading it in less than a minute in most cases. An additional advantage is the fact that you can take your entire e-book library with you wherever you go whereas you’re limited to the number of physical books you can take due to their size and weight. The bottom line is e-books have a lot of advantages whereas physical books have few (they can still sit on your shelf so when your friends see them you can feel all superior because you read “better books.”).

Barnes and Nobel was smart and jumped onto the e-reader bandwagon pretty early. Their first and second entry into the e-reader market were not to my liking but the new Nook is an amazing piece of hardware. In addition to jumping on the e-reader bandwagon Barnes and Nobel was also smart by trying to add value to their stories in the form of coffee shops and free wireless Internet access. Although I wouldn’t say Barnes and Nobel stores are out of the woods I do believe they’re on the right track to maintaining relevance in the age of advancing technology.

Borders was fucked the second they decided to ignore the e-book market. They signed their own death warrant in the form of trying to maintain a dying business model even after it was apparent that they were facing bankruptcy. On top of that I don’t remember ever walking into a Borders and actually finding a book I was looking for. Barnes and Nobel stores usually have pretty nice science fiction and history sections whereas the I find the same sections at Borders to leave me wanting. I’d just pass this off as me having esoteric tastes but I hear the same arguments from many people I talk to who are into completely different genres.

Much like buggy whip manufactures of days gone past the days of general bookstores is going away. There is still a market for niche bookstores that maintain titles that aren’t easily found elsewhere but it’s a niche. Now the book market belongs to e-readers and online retailers. When people want to order a physical book they usually do it online nowadays because it generally saves a butt load of money (I almost always find the price for a physical book on Amazon is noticeably less than at Barnes and Noble).

So long Borders. Part of me wishes to mourn the loss of a bookstore but you never really served a need in my life. Should Barnes and Noble go away I’ll mourn as their stores have provided me with many titles but Borders never had what I wanted so there isn’t even sentimental loss in their departure from the market.

Carrying a Pocket Knife at a Minnesota School is Not a Felony

Here’s some good news for a change, the court of appeals ruled that carrying a pocket knife at school is not a felony:

Having a pocketknife at school is grounds for expulsion but the Minnesota Court of Appeals said Monday that it isn’t a felony if there’s no proof of it being used as a weapon.

The court’s ruling reversed a conviction against a teenager from Willmar, Minn., rejecting arguments by the Kandiyohi County Attorney that the teen’s dark-handled pocketknife with a 3 1/2-inch blade was a dangerous weapon, both by intended use and design.

Although I was say carrying a pocket knife isn’t even grounds for expulsion it sure as the Hell shouldn’t be a felony charge. The fact of the matter is a pocket knife is a tool which makes for a pretty shitty weapon.

When I was in high school I carried a pocket knife every day. Why? For the same reason I still carry one with me every day, it’s an extremely useful tool. I would say I whip out my pocket knife at least once a day, oftentimes multiple times a day. In high school I took a lot of shop classes and my pocket knife was immensely useful (and our shop teachers weren’t dicks so they ignored the fact that I was violating the school’s weapon policy because that pocket knife hardly qualified as a weapon anymore than a utility knife).

In all honesty I believe the pen that I carried around in high school was be a far better weapon than the blade on my pocket knife. If I were to stab somebody with my pocket knife I can see the blade closing and cutting my fingers instead of going into another person.

I’m glad to see this ruling as nobody should be nailed with a felony for being prepared. Does anybody even remember when being prepared was saw as a virtue instead of something requiring a felony charge? The fact that this kid faced a felony weapon charge at all is sickening.

Violent Crime Dropped Again in Minneapolis

Remember, if we let people carry guns there will be blood in the street as every argument turns into a gun fight. That’s what the anti-gunners would have you believe but truth be told the anti-gunners haven’t been able to point at a single case where violent crime dramatically increased after the passing of carry legislation. Heck violent crime has been steadily decreasing for a while now and I’m happy to report that the violent crime rate in Minneapolis dropped agian:

Violent crimes reported by mid-year in Minneapolis have dropped to their lowest point in a decade, and every category of crime except larceny has fallen from last year, statistics show.

While the drop in crime parallels what’s happening in cities nationwide, local leaders who gathered in north Minneapolis Monday credited better policing and a crackdown on gun-toting felons for reducing murders, aggravated assaults, rapes and robberies.

I’m not surprised that the Minneapolis governing body didn’t even mention the possibility that raising the potential cost of performing a crime in the form of more legally armed people may have contributed to this as well.

Although I won’t go so far as to claim causality between more legally armed people and a lower violent crime rate I will point out that the correlation exists. This correlation directly opposes the anti-gunners’ claim that more legally armed people will lead to an increase in violent crime rates. As this is the case there is the possibility that having more legally armed people leads to a lower violent crime rate but no possibility that having more legally armed people leads to a higher violent crime rate.

Thanks Google

It’s time again for Christopher Burg rants about stupid shit that probably only affects him and two other people on this planet.

Let’s take a minute and talk about Google Reader. I use Google Reader is the back end for my RSS readers. I’m not a huge fan of the Google Reader website, or using websites as interfaces for my data in general, but I’m a huge fan of the Reeder Really Simple Syndication (RSS) clients. The Reeder clients are the only reason I’m still using Google Reader after the latest stunt Google pulled.

I haven’t a Google Apps for Businesses account tied to christopherburg.com. Before moving things to my personal server e-mail sent to any address on the christopherburg.com domain actually went to GMail. I also had my Google Reader account tied to my Google Apps account which proved to be a big mistake. I’m not sure when this happened by Google apparently decided it would be a jolly good idea to eliminate Google Reader support for Google Apps accounts. This meant I lost my entire list of RSS feeds which is really swell considering I rely on them to get a large portion of information you read on this very site.

Needless to say this really put a monkey wrench in my writing process. For the last couple of days I’ve been getting all of my material by manually visiting news websites like a savage beast of days gone by (you know, before RSS). This has proven itself time consuming as all Hell. Manually rebuilding my RSS list was going to prove difficult because I have so many that I can’t remember every feed I had on my account.

Let me just say right now that being a data pack rat isn’t a bad idea. I never delete any data unless it’s completely irrelevant (torrent files for instance). Fortunately in this case I remembered the NetNewsWire software I used to use as my RSS client and it still maintained a local copy of my RSS feed list. All I had to do was switch the Google account it was linked to from my @christopherburg.com to my @gmail.com account and tell the client to merge my feeds with the new Google Reader account. Thankfully I haven’t really added any new feeds since I abandoned NetNewsWire for Reeder so I basically have a complete list of feeds again.

Why do you care about this? No reason really as you’re probably not concerned with the process I used to find stories to write about. But this scenario does have a couple of lessons that may be applicable to others. First, have local copies of all your data because you never know when some online service is just going to vanish. Google may not go away for a long time but their services have been known to appear and disappear unannounced. If you don’t have local copies of data on a online service and that service goes away your data goes away with it. The second lesson is being a data pack rat isn’t a bad thing; disk is cheap so why get rid of data that may be useful someday down the road?

My little crisis has been averted and now I can continue punching out stories for this site without having to manually visit a bunch of sites. I still want to give a middle finger to Google for making my RSS fees vanish like a fucking specter though. So here it is (for those who can’t actually see me right now I’m giving Google the finger)! I now return you to your regularly scheduled news.

Government Harassment Never Ends

Remember the lady who is being harassed by her city government because she is growing a garden on her own property? Well it appears as though the governing body of Oak Park isn’t done harassing her yet and are now filing new charges against the woman for having unlicensed dogs:

Oak Park has dropped its case against a woman growing vegetables in her front yard, but she’s not out of the weeds yet, the city’s prosecutor said.

Julie Bass may still have to go to court this month — over her dogs.

[…]

That citation included violations for owning two unlicensed dogs. They are not licensed, but Bass said she took the vaccine information to court in June, where an impasse was reached over language in the ordinance and Bass asked for a jury trial. Her pretrial date for the garden issue had been set for July 26.

It seems the Oak Park authority weren’t too pleased with the responses they received from people pissed off that they were trying to nail a woman for utilizing her property in a manner she saw fit. Since they couldn’t win that war they dropped the charges and decided to go after her for something different.

I’m convinced that the only reason there are so many laws on the books is so the government can nail you for something when you irritate them. In this case they couldn’t get the lady on growing a garden so they moved on different charges. They’re putting all this effort into making this woman’s life miserable simply because she refused to submit and be an obedient little slave.

It Seems The TSA Doesn’t Like the Taste of Their Own Medicine

Agents of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) love to commit acts of sexual assault against airline customers but it appears as though they don’t like it when somebody returns the favor:

But now, a Colorado woman is accused of putting her hands on a TSA agent at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix.

Court records show 61-year-old Yukari Miyamae grabbed the left breast of the female agent Thursday at the Terminal 4 checkpoint.

Police say she squeezed and twisted the agent’s breast with both hands.

Officers say Mihamae admitted to the crime.

If your job is to cop a feel on everybody trying to get on an airplane don’t be too surprised when somebody decides to return the favor. Hell I think this is something everybody should do, when the TSA agent gropes you grope them back. I would venture so far as to say not groping your TSA agent back is rather rude as they probably feel left out.

Mother Convicted of Vehicular Homicide Because Somebody Hit Her Kid With a Car

Justice has been served! A mother who dared to walk her children across a street was charged with vehicular homicide after a driver who had been drinking hit one of her children with his car. Wait, what? Seriously, what in the fuck:

A Marietta mother whose child was hit and killed by a driver who had been drinking may serve more time than the driver, according to various news reports.

Raquel Nelson, now 30, was attempting to cross an intersection of Austell Road in Marietta with her three young children when her 4-year-old son was struck by a hit-and-run driver in April 2010, according to news reports. The boy, A.J., died from his injuries.

Nelson’s 9-year-old daughter was unharmed, and Nelson and her 2-year-old daughter suffered minor injuries.

[…]

At a court hearing July 26, Nelson could be sentenced to up to 36 months in prison, said her attorney, David Savoy.

Nelson was convicted this week of homicide by vehicle in the second degree, crossing a roadway elsewhere than at a crosswalk and reckless conduct, according to a report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Additional information can be found in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Jerry L. Guy, the driver who admitted hitting the child when pleading guilty to hit-and-run, served a 6-month sentence. He was released Oct. 29, 2010, and will serve the remainder of a 5-year sentence on probation, according to Cobb court records.

[…]

Guy confessed to having consumed “a little” alcohol earlier in the day, being prescribed pain medication and being partially blind in his left eye, said David Simpson, his attorney.

In summary a mother was walking her three children across the street, one was hit by a man who was driving and had at least some alcohol, the driver spent six months in jail, and the mother is looking at 36 months. Her only crime? Walking across the street outside of a crosswalk.

Yup, because she was outside of a crosswalk (and honestly there may have been no crosswalks for miles, they’re availability is quite sporadic in many cities) she’s been convicted of vehicular homicide, a charge carrying a maximum prison sentence of 36 months, while the man who hit and killed her child only spent six months in the clink. Where the fuck is the justice in that?

I also forgot one minor detail:

Court records show that Guy was previously convicted of two-hit-and-runs on the same day, Feb. 17, 1997.

The first hit-and-run also happened on Austell Road, but when Guy fled from that scene he hit another car, seriously injuring that driver and passenger, records show.

So this isn’t the first time the driver had hit somebody and caused injury.

Maybe It’s Time to Look at Spending Cuts

“Tax the rich!” That’s a quote you often hear from people who want the government to provide them everything and also lack a basic understanding of liberty and economics. Every time there is a government deficit in this country the statists scream that we need to tax the rich. Of course they never define nor justify their definition of rich so one is usually lead to believe it means anybody who makes $1.00 more than the screaming statist.

For others the definition of rich is $250,000.00 a year which I never really understood because somebody making that money certainly isn’t rich by my definition (no fancy boat, no private jet, no mansion on beach front property, etc.). Here’s the problem, even if we enact a 100% income tax on everybody making $250,000.00 or more a year it won’t clear up the federal government’s huge deficit:

This year, Congress will spend $3.7 trillion dollars. That turns out to be about $10 billion per day. Can we prey upon the rich to cough up the money? According to IRS statistics, roughly 2 percent of U.S. households have an income of $250,000 and above. By the way, $250,000 per year hardly qualifies one as being rich. It’s not even yacht and Lear jet money. All told, households earning $250,000 and above account for 25 percent, or $1.97 trillion, of the nearly $8 trillion of total household income. If Congress imposed a 100 percent tax, taking all earnings above $250,000 per year, it would yield the princely sum of $1.4 trillion. That would keep the government running for 141 days, but there’s a problem because there are 224 more days left in the year.

Now somebody with a lack of economic sense would come out and say we should tax the corporations (on top of the “rich”). Guess what? It won’t work either:

How about corporate profits to fill the gap? Fortune 500 companies earn nearly $400 billion in profits. Since leftists think profits are little less than theft and greed, Congress might confiscate these ill-gotten gains so that they can be returned to their rightful owners. Taking corporate profits would keep the government running for another 40 days, but that along with confiscating all income above $250,000 would only get us to the end of June. Congress must search elsewhere.

Taxing the “rich” isn’t going to get us out of the mess our government has created. The only option we have is to reduce our spending and that will require politically inconvenient cuts such as military, Medicare, Medicade, and Social Security. We certainly can’t afford to implement Obama’s Health Insurance Company Enrichment Act so that will have to be tossed out as well.

We literally have no other options available to us. We can’t fix this problem with taxation which leads us to look elsewhere and the only other place to look is spending. The United States government is like an idiot teenage kid (as opposed to an intelligent one) who gets his first credit card and don’t realize that money put onto that card will have to be paid back. Eventually they get in over their heads and apply for another credit card to continue their insane spending habits instead of looking at the real problem, their spending, and correcting it.

Poor Decisions All Around

If you’re stupid enough to concoct a plan that involves arresting a suspect at a crowded theater you’re likely lacking basic cognitive functions. I’m guessing this lack of cognitive functionality is what lead to one officer shooting another while trying to apprehend a man suspected of possessing child pornography:

Two policemen are recovering after they were shot by fellow officers as they tried to arrest a man on child pornography charges outside a crowded move theatre.

The incident happened as undercover officers tried to apprehend the unarmed man in the parking lot as he left a screening of Harry Potter in Plainville, Connecticut.

First of all I’m curious why the police decided it was a swell idea to arrest a man at a crowded theater instead of at the suspect’s home. It seems to me that a parking lot full of people leaving a theater is not the best place to perform an action that may lead to gunfire. At least if a gunfight broke out at the suspect’s home the chances of innocent bystanders getting hit would be greatly reduced compared to a gunfight breaking out in a parking lot full of people. Of course that’s just my opinion and I’m sure somebody will be more than happy to say I don’t know what I’m talking about without giving a good reason why the police chose this strategy over the one I presented.

Second of all we’re constantly told that the police are the only ones responsible enough to carry firearms. Responsibility with a firearm involves knowing your target and what lies beyond it. You shouldn’t be firing your gun, especially in a parking lot full of people, without being absolutely sure of what you’re aiming at. Ignoring the four rules of firearm safety leads to incidents like this where unintended persons are harmed or killed (thankfully in this case everybody involved was harmed and not killed).

I see a complete lack of intelligence stemming from this situation. Going after a suspect in a crowded area seems like a poor tactical choice. Not being sure of your target is also a poor tactical choice. Thankfully nobody was killed in this case but that very well could have been different. A gun is a weapon and like any weapon should be treated with the utmost respect

Everybody in Minnesota Should Know the Name Willis Carrier

I would like to give a huge middle finger to Minnesota’s weather. We have a dew point that is matched only by the Amazon Jungle.

All I can say is thank Thor for Willis Carrier and his invention of air conditioning. This man should be revered for his great invention that makes living in Minnesota (and many other areas) comfortably livable. Oh, I’d also like to point out that air conditioning isn’t a product of government decree or demand but of a need Mr. Carrier ran across when he witnessed quality issues at Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company. Air conditioning, like most inventions that greatly improve the lives of millions, is a products of the free market.