Rotundus.com

These two paragraphs from Give Me Back My iPhone! about sums up my thoughts on a lot of available stuff:

I experienced the best and worst of Android—and I saw, up close, Android’s basic problem. I’d sum it up as follows. Google makes a fine mobile operating system. Some phone manufacturers make attractive, powerful Android handsets. These phones have the potential to be really wonderful machines, even as great as Apple’s flagship phone. But then, at the last second, the phone makers and the world’s cellular carriers snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They ruin the phones’ potential with unnecessary features and apps that lower the devices’ battery life, uglify their home screens, and make everything you want to do extra annoying.

... I noticed this immediately when I first turned on the Sprint-powered HTC One and Galaxy S4. When you run an iPhone for the first time, you’ve go through just a handful of steps to get up and running: choose a language, add a Wi-Fi network, and log in to your Apple account. The same is true of the Google editions of the One and S4—just a few prompts and you’re good to go. But not the carrier versions. I had to sit through more than half a dozen screens. I was pushed to sign in to several social-networking accounts. I had to create accounts with HTC or Samsung’s own services. Then, when I thought I was at last ready to start using my phone, another prompt came on the screen to let me know that Sprint was installing some software of its own. After another five minutes, my phone was finally ready to use—but when I browsed through the menus, there was a whole bunch of software that I didn’t need, including apps for Yahoo, Amazon, the NBA, a Sprint app for watching TV, and a White Pages app. Why these apps specifically? Not because Sprint believes that you’ll find them really helpful, but instead because it received a promotional fee. Congratulations on your new phone—now look at all the ads.

‘Bang! I accelerate’: Quebec mayor forced to apologize for saying how much he enjoys killing kittens with his car

"The mayor of Huntingdon, Que., Stephane Gendron, has been forced to apologize for joking about how he enthusiastically kills cats with his car — even newborns. The small-town mayor, whose other career is radio shock-jock ..."

Stranded Dave Matthews hitches ride with fan to show

"She had been a Dave Matthews fan since she was 9. And she was on her way to see him at a show in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
What she didn't count on was finding him stranded by the side of the road with his bicycle."

Today's adults 'unhealthier than their parents were'

"... despite a continuing trend of increasing life expectancy, overall, the adult population is less healthy than it used to be in the past"

Vatican offers 'time off purgatory' to followers of Pope Francis tweets

"Papal court handling pardons for sins says contrite Catholics may win 'indulgences' by following World Youth Day on Twitter"

Given the talk of women facing double standards, it seemed only fair to consider what would happen if you applied the legal standards governing male sexual conduct to women. The Don't Be That Guy posters popping up in various Canadian communities lately are pretty much all focused on a single scenario: men having sex with someone intoxicated. (I think I've seen another similar same-sex example again with a male perpetrator but it's not on that site). Given that both men and women are capable of consuming intoxicants, what happens if you flip the situation around and ask just how likely women are to initiate sex with intoxicated men? Meet Variations in College Women's Self-Reported Heterosexual Aggression which notes:

... the question concerning initiating sexual contact while a man was under the influence of alcohol or drugs (question 20) was not used in defining sexual "aggression," despite the fact that women from both samples engaged in this behavior frequently (East = 52.4%, South = 33.1%).

Does this mean that between a third and just over half of (college) women should be locked up for sexual assault of the exact sort described by these posters?

There's another thing to account for:

In cases involving intoxication, it is likely that both parties were under the influence. In the data set from the South, 30.7% of the women who answered yes to question 20 also stated that they were intoxicated with alcohol or other drugs at the time.

In the common scenario where both involved are intoxicated do you wind up with a situation akin to Schrodinger's Cat - famous for being simultaneously dead and alive - wherein both involved are simultaneously completely guilty and totally innocent? (Should they be simultaneously jailed and awarded victim compensation?)

Wearing a Badge, and a Video Camera

"Even with only half of the 54 uniformed patrol officers wearing cameras at any given time, the department over all had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study, to 3 from 24." I wonder how much the complaint rate varies year to year without the program change.

Alleged fugitive Matthew Oliver caught after commenting on his own wanted picture on Pasco Sheriff's Office Facebook page

Strangely it seems that they sent someone out to arrest him after it seems that they verified the alibi he provided on Facebook - i.e. he was in the hospital at the time of the crime. Seems silly to arrest him (at his home apparently) after verifying the alibi rather than cancelling the warrant.

N.Y. City Council to cops: Don’t describe suspect’s gender, race, age

"The union is warning that under this proposal, police would be able only to issue alerts for wanted suspects based on the color of clothing — or else face the risk of a profiling lawsuit." Somehow I don't think that this is likely to make for very effective policing. I wonder if this has something to do with NYC mayor Bloomberg's comments that "I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little." Bloomberg's justification? "Eighty seven percent of all stops last year were for blacks or latinos, who constituted 90 percent of murder suspects, according to city stats. Only nine percent of stops were for white people, who made up 7 percent of all murder suspects."

Join Wall Street. Save the world.

"Jason Trigg went into finance because he is after money — as much as he can earn. ... Why this compulsion? It’s not for fast cars or fancy houses. Trigg makes money just to give it away. His logic is simple: The more he makes, the more good he can do." Somewhat strangely to me the article highlights as motivation philosopher Peter Singer (whose name bring more to mind his advocacy of legalized infanticide).