Police are being told to respect Muslim tradition when it comes to domestic violence cases in Australia.

You read that right – they are being told to treat wife-beating “differently” in the event the offender is Muslim.

You know, if you reward a behavior you will get more of it. I’ll go on record and openly question the sanity of anyone who feels they must “respect the traditions” of a culture that has a long – and recent – history of misogyny and brutality. It’s not that my ancestors don’t, we all come from bloody roots. But most of us have grown past that, and I can hardly imagine saying we should treat any situation differently if the offender is Irish or Scottish. I fail to see how this is different.

No, not kidding.

A single glass of wine over dinner can send you to jail. You see, the legal limit in our fine capitol is 0.1, not 0.8 like the rest of the country.

It’s been pretty well documented that M.A.D.D. is out of control – basically, any alcohol-related offence is a perfect excuse to fire you, prosecute you, seize your car, etc.

The new prohibitionists are here, folks. As someone who would be quite happy with things going the other way, a well-funded group of zealots like MADD (what a very appropriate moniker, that) is more than a little concerning.

I’m waiting for them to come out in favor of re-instituing Blue Laws so we can’t buy Demon Rum on The Lords Day anymore. Not because they are actually devout Christians, but because it helps with their plan to make sure you can’t get a drink.

Update:

Minor typo corrections made.

Former Governor (of California) Moonbeam sticks his head out from under his rock.

Go back under the rock, Moonbeam. Really, it would be better for all of us.

The other day Level3 and another major ‘net company (Cogent, I believe) were feuding. As a result large chunks of the web disappeared.

Enter the Internet Health Report.

Ok, you won’t be able to do much about it, but at least you’ll know why the net is acting up. Well, unless you can’t get there.

For those of you who like optical illusions, check out this one..

Do note that you have to keep your eyes perfectly still for this to work.

This looks cool (teaser trailer).

Apparently it’s about one movie geek’s attempt to get to the theater to see the original Star Wars film in 1977.

Looks like they’ve thrown the whole kitchen sink in there; Planet of the Apes, 2001 A Space Odyssey, etc. The budget for the licensing rights alone told me this was no indie film, but it seems to feel like one. They’re getting better; pretty soon there will be licensing rights to license fake realism. Or something.

You can find the full website, such as it is, here.

You know, the whole “Yellow alert”, “Condition blue” stuff got old quickly.

That’s why I now subscribe to the Goopymart Danger Chart, a much more enjoyable (and sensible) danger tracking system.

You should follow it, too.

So, I upgraded my Palm Treo 650 phone to the latest Verizon ROM image, 1.04.

It was an all night process of back up (that took a LONG time), reset, upload image, run image installer, restore data, yada yada yada.

Finally it was done. I restored my data from my Palm backup utility and then did a final sync.

Part way through the syncing of the address book the Palm phone resets.

Okay. Curse, etc. Set iSync to use “Slow syncing” because, apparently, the Verizon “upgrade” has lowered my phone’s IQ into the sub-80 category.

And… no dice. It still resets. Ok, calm down. Drop the phone. Bust the screen.

AUGH.

Notice to Verizon: I put up with your crummy, behind-the-times phones. I put up with the fact that you PURPOSEFULLY broke the Bluetooth on the Treo, and you ripped out the WiFi. But this takes the cake; a vanilla install (for a Mac) and you break that. And please don’t tell me to call customer “service”, we’ve dealt with your definition of service. No thanks.

I’m cancelling this contract. I’m taking our numbers with us. I’m getting an unlocked GSM phone and going to Cingular. Bite me.

UPDATE:

Yes, yes, whine bitch moan.

I called Verizon to see what my repair options are; I’ve had crunched PDA’s before that I’ve gotten repaired. According to Verizon – as I had no insurance – I had no options. Get a new one.

All right… So, what will it cost to get out of my contract? Well, it turns out that is exactly $0, as my contract has already expired. W00T!

Regardless, Pamela did some research and found out that Palm will fix it for about $200. So, I’ll get that done and then sell the phone on eBay (they are going for about $400). After that I’ll investigate Cingular.

I’d say that I will now stop whining, but you know better.

Last Christmas Pam got me something I’d wanted for a long time: a shortwave receiver.

Growing up in rural Indiana did not afford me with a lot to do at night, and one of my joys was a shortwave receiver. I used to listen to TASS, the official Soviet News Agency. It was interesting; the news they reported (propagandized?) was so very different from what I heard here in the states.

I should have kept that radio, but I needed money and I sold it to my dad who left it on the garage bench to get dusty, rained upon, etc.

Back to the new radio: It is a Grundig FR-200 “Emergency radio”. It has AM/FM, as well as two shortwave bands (~3.2 to ~7.6 Mhz and ~9.2 to ~22.0 Mhz).

It wasn’t terribly useful in Illinois. For some reason there was a lot of electronic noise and I never could get more than a couple of stations which faded in and out terribly.

Not so here in CA; I found a plethora of stations. One of them was a broadcast from the Netherlands in English at about 6.4 Mhz, and the other was an atomic clock “time station” at about 5.2 Mhz.

I have fond memories of the time stations, and how they allowed me to set my Casio calculator watch (yes, I am a dyed-in-the-wool digital geek) so I knew – KNEW – that my watch was accurate to within a second. I was oh-so-smug about my time accuracy, oh yes.

And, Wil Wheaton contributes (via BoingBoing):

Luckily, there is another fantastic source for DPK propaganda: shortwave radio. The DPK sends out an English-language broadcast via shortwave that will blow your mind. A typical broadcast is filled with Personality Cult ramblings about how great Kim Jung Il is, bookended by some music that’s actually pretty cool. Anyone who misses the cold war propaganda of Radio Moscow will not be disappointed. Listeners in North America can tune in daily at 1500 UTC on 9335 or 11710 kHz, while Europeans can listen on 11335 or 15245 kHz. The European broadcast repeats at 1900 and 2100 UTC on the same frequencies.

I just need to set an alarm so I know when these are on. I wonder if someone makes a RadioShark for shortwave? If not then I guess it’s time to dig out the mixer…

I’ve not been to Brazil – although it seems likely I will be going there sooner or later – but I found this interesting; a referendum on making gun sales and possession illegal has failed:

More than 64 percent of voters favored keeping arms sales legal, the electoral court said with 75 percent of the expected 122 million votes counted.

I was certain that this would pass, to be perfectly honest.

More here.