American justice

Maybe it shouldn't, but this from the Houston Chronicle really shocks me:

Behind armed guards and locked doors — in a secret hearing of judicial privacy not even given to some 9/11 terrorists or East Coast mafia dons — Osiel Cardenas Guillen, one of the most feared drug lords in history, was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday.

Read it all here. What has happened to the concept of open trial in this country? Just because the principals want something kept secret, the public should be able to know what is happening in our courts. At least the paper put up a fuss about this. Osiel Cardenas's lawyer was Mike Ramsey, who defended Enron's Ken Lay and the nutso real estate heir Robert Durst, among other eminent accused.

Try to behave like a decent dog

In a post on the Scientific American Web site, a discussion of dog morality:

Every dog owner knows a pooch can learn the house rules—and when she breaks one, her subsequent groveling is usually ingratiating enough to ensure quick forgiveness. But few people have stopped to ask why dogs have such a keen sense of right and wrong. Chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates regularly make the news when researchers, logically looking to our closest relatives for traits similar to our own, uncover evidence of their instinct for fairness. But our work has suggested that wild canine societies may be even better analogues for early hominid groups—and when we study dogs, wolves and coyotes, we discover behaviors that hint at the roots of human morality.

Read the whole thing here.It's an interesting synthesis of things any attentive dog person has observed about the furrier packmates.

Naked guys dancing

But it's not what you would expect. Click here. It's Swedish guys dancing, dressed only with large loaves of flat bread. Go on … it's a scream.

Cranks I can get

John Paul Roberts is a vintage right-winger, but a guy I sometimes find sympathetic.

Social Security, formerly an untouchable “third rail of politics,” is now “unsustainable,” while the real unsustainables--a pre-1929 unregulated financial system and open-ended multi-trillion dollar Global War Against Terror--are the new untouchables. This transformation signals the complete capture of American democracy by an oligarchy of special interests.

Read all here. I worry about Social Security. The gummint as presently constituted seems to need the money to siphon off for big banks and the likes of Goldman Sachs. I'm finding a blurring between what constitutes right and left in the U.S. today. It was Ron Paul who proposed letting the Wall Street bankers fail and said that we should just leave Iraq.

Heroic heeler

Wife found this story about a dog saving a little girl in Arizona. We have suggested to our little blue dog that she might pursue the heroic life on some modest scale beyond trying to herd children and smaller animals. Once again, dogs prove that dogs are the best.

Austin plane crash

From an old and dear who works near the building that got hit:
'Not too close, but a little close for comfort! Not the FBI office, as earlier reported, but bldg next to it. My friend Patrick's cousin said he saw the plane flying very low and then suddenly bank into the bldg.'
And that's all I know, except what's on the TV. This story from local Austin TV station.
Later: Ahhh, now we got a likely perpetrator. Here's his catalogue of grievances. Mad as hell and wasn't going to take it any more. Apparently aiming for the IRS office.

For better Internet advertising

Guy who sends me stuff sends me this:

HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam . Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands .
Take a look at HEMA's product page - just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens.
DON'T click on any of the items in the picture, just wait.
This company has a sense of humour and a great computer programmer, who has too much time on his hands.

http://producten.hema.nl/