More evidence of the overuse of SWAT Teams in our country:

Some 20 police officers, many of them members of the city's SWAT Team decked out in full battle dress, raided 61 Liberty St. yesterday afternoon in the Washington Heights neighborhood.

The police were executing a search warrant on the house, where undercover police had made marijuana purchases in recent weeks.

They weren't expecting armed resistance, and the pot house wasn't gang-related, said Det. Sgt. Bruce Campbell. "The SWAT Team had training in the city today anyway, so we thought we'd get them out there," said Campbell.

If they weren't expecting armed resistance, then why the hell did they employ a SWAT team? "Because they were there" is an absolutely horrible reason to do it. SWAT Teams use incredibly dangerous techniques, which if it's a high risk warrant, are neccessary, but otherwise escalate the potential of harm being done to people in the area more than it's worth. You know, like blowing off testicles with flash bang grenades, or killing unarmed men who are surrendering.

Links via The Agitator.

I was reading my copy of Mountain Bike, which comes as part of my Bicycling subscription, and saw the following in a section called "Philosophical Q&A":

Don't you get tired of smashing your nuts when you fall?

Assuming your question has nothing to do with how much I like peanut butter (which I don't), I'd say absolutely not. Pulverizing one's testicles is always memorable, even if you've done it a thousand times.

Thankfully I can say that I've never fallen in such a way that I've smashed my nuts in one instant... though I've had some issues with m bike seat before. While I can say the whole thing was memorable, it's definitely not something I'd want to repeat a thousand times, especially if I wanted to have kids.

I actually worked with a guy who had an "accident" mountain biking. Going downhill on a trail, the handlebars turned 90 degrees, so that one of them went straight into his groin as he went forward. Let's just say he was hobbling around the office for a couple weeks after that. That's not something I would wish upon my worst enemy.

Tonight while I was out and about, I happened to see a Wauwatosa cop driving, with his cell phone to his ear. In fact, I often times have seen Wauwatosa cops driving around in their squad cars talking on their cell phones. Two comments on this.

First, I don't want to hear any more cops on TV talking about how talking on your cell phone while driving is a bad thing to do. If it's so bad, then you shouldn't be doing it either.

Secondly, why aren't you looking for crime? I thought one of the ideas behind driving around in your patrol cars was to look for suspicious behavior. Exactly how are you supposed to do that if you're jabbering on your phone?

Part of a new conceptual series entitled "Being Controversial Gets You Noticed".

Anyone who writes a blog and cares about getting traffic directed to it knows how hard it is. I'm often times frustrated by the lack of traffic coming my way. Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I've come to the conclusion that women have a much easier time starting blogs and getting traffic than men. The reasons for this are simple, available for everyone to see, and yet rarely acknowledged. First comes the mythology.

Some time ago, an LA Times columnist stated that the blogosphere was male dominated, and it was all the fault of men (I don't have the link anymore sadly). The top male bloggers were keeping women out of the game because they didn't prominently link to many female bloggers. It was all our fault. I believe quite strongly that the opposite is true. Female bloggers aren't as popular as male bloggers quite simply because there are fewer of them around. And in fact, the popularity of the current female bloggers is because of men.

Now for the simple reasons behind this. The first reason is that there are more male readers in the blogosphere than female readers. The second reason is that the vast majority of men in the world (and by extension the majority of blog readers) are heterosexual. There are also only so many blogs that a person can read, which makes people selective. You just can't read them all. So given a choice between reading some guy's blog, or some woman's blog, I think more guys choose a woman's blog.

I think it satisfies a voyeuristic tendency in many people. The internet is very anonymous, especially in what you choose to read. Not only that, but there is such a long standing history of pornography on the internet, that male readers naturally expect that at some point, the female bloggers they read will eventually post naked pictures of themselves on their blogs. Sure... we all claim to go to their blogs for their "fascinating opinions" and to "gain insight in the female mindset", but that's all just smoke and mirrors. Every time we click, we're really just hoping to see a little T&A. That's why anonymous female bloggers tend to be even more popular... because we figure that there's a better chance they'll divulge something dirty, since their name is not attached to it.

Men are such simple creatures aren't we?

Earlier this year, a group of scientists did a brain pattern study on people from both sides of the ideological divide, and found one thing they both have in common:

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view.

Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered.

The results were announced today.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."
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The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

So there you have it... real scientific evidence that politics is like drugs and needs to be banned! Have you ever wondered why political bloggers who say they're going to give up blogging usually come back? That's right... it's because politics is addictive! Political bloggers get a rush of pleasure when they get a chance to agree with their guy out in public... the kind of rush that you can't get just nodding your head while you listen to Charlie Sykes on the radio in your car.

I see this every day as my politics dealer RSS reader delivers my daily fix latest news to me. I see bloggers every day grappling with this problem, struggling with their addiction, not even knowing they have one. Thankfully I'm one of the few who is immune to such things. But seeing the devastating toll this addiction takes on others is just heart breaking.

John McCain... when will you save us from this scourge with more stringent Campaign Finance Reform?

Part of a new conceptual series entitled "Being Controversial Gets You Noticed".

I fully realize that this post will probably get me in trouble with the fairer sex. But like many men, I still choose to say things I know will get me in trouble. Every now and then I read a post by someone, and instead of feeling the need to respond directly to it, it brings up all sorts of related thoughts that are worthy of something more in depth. Ann Althouse had a post that did that to me. She talks about this piece in the WSJ Editorial Page, and talks about "going after pro-sex feminists again". I'm not going to talk about pro-sex feminists or anti-sex feminists here... that's not the point of the post.

Instead, I'll just finish the opening sentence. The problem with women is that they try to get all other women to agree with them. I think women, much more than men, are wrapped up in identity politics. This is probably the single most unfortunate thing to happen to "women's rights", or whatever you want to call it. Women are much more apt to attack other women for holding the "wrong view".

It's not that men don't do the same thing to other men... of course we do (see war). The difference is that men rarely are under the delusion that all men should act and think the same way. We may try to kill or dismember those who disagree with us, but at least we respect them for their opinion while we stand over their bloody and mangled corpse.

Part of a new conceptual series entitled "Being Controversial Gets You Noticed".

I live in the suburbs and I work downtown. In order to get from where I live to where I work and back, I have two basic choices. Choice one is take the freeway which is overcrowded, plagued with construction (thanks to the Marquette Interchange Project), and has enough bumper to bumper, stop and go traffic to remind me of the opening scenes of Office Space. Choice two is to drive through the ghetto and negotiate the maze of roads and try to remember which bridge got blown up last week and which one was just reopened. Being the Engineer that I am, I've tried both trying to find the optimal drive into work. Sometimes choice one is better, and sometimes its choice two. Choice two scares the shit out of me.

Before you stop reading and call me a racist... allow me to tell you why it doesn't scare me. It's not all the black people. I could care less. I don't have a fear of being shot (though maybe I should after writing this post). Carjackings don't worry me (do they happen in Milwaukee?). Plain and simple, I'm afraid I'm more likely to get into an accident driving through the ghetto than any other place. From purely anecdotal evidence alone, I am convinced that poor people are worse drivers than more affluent people.

Before you stop reading and call me a classist, allow me to explain why I don't think this. It's not because many poor people are black, and all black people are bad drivers. White poor people are bad drivers too. It's not because poor people are stupid, and stupid people are bad drivers or something like that. Plain and simple, poor people have crappier things, and don't care about their things as much.

If you drive a crappy car, full of dents and scratches... really... what's one more? If you don't care about that one more dent, then why go to the effort of checking your blind spot before changing lanes? I see more people turning left from the right lane, and turning right from the left lane in the ghetto than anywhere else. I see more crappy looking cars cutting people off with no fear, or driving in non-existent lanes near the curb in the ghetto than anywhere else.

I on the other hand have a nice car, without any dings or scratches, and I'd like to keep it that way thank you very much. Every time I drive through those areas, I wonder if this will be the day I get into an accident when I see that junker blow through a red light right in front of me. That's why I hate driving through the ghetto.

Today is the day you've all been waiting for... and by "all"... I mean the 7 people who actually read my blog. I was just going to post the few drafts that were voted on without comment, but then I realized I need to do a bit of explaining.

First of all, as it turns out, several of the posts you chose were part of a conceptual series I put together a while ago, but then decided not to publish. Several months back I was disappointed in my traffic (as happens from time to time), and decided to channel Protein Wisdom in an effort to boost traffic. So I wrote several posts in a new series entitled "Being Controversial Gets You Noticed". But before I published them, I decided it wouldn't be very true to myself and canceled the series.

Secondly, I thought I'd go into a little more detail about why I'm doing this in the first place. As some of you may know, I'm going to be moving both of my blogs off of Blogger, and onto a new blog engine with their own domains. I've been doing a lot of work to get everything setup, and to import my current posts, comments and trackbacks into my new blog, and hope to be rolling everything out in the next week or so. Since I'll be leaving Blogger soon then, I thought it might be nice to clean up my drafts as well.

So without further ado... onto the drafts!

I've decided that tomorrow will be Draft Day at The World According to Nick. So if you haven't voted on which drafts you'd like to see published, now is your last chance! Vote by commenting on this post.

First there came surveillance over international phone calls that involved a terrorist on at least one end. I know a lot of people had issues with this, and even I had questions, but I could deal.

Now they're just monitoring every phone call you make, unless of course you use Qwest. Reactions across the blogosphere are pretty mixed, as you'd expect. For instance, Michelle Malkin is is practically joyous in the news. Of course, except when the topic is illegal immigration, she reflexively agrees with everything the White House says, so that's not a shock.

Orin Kerr has some pretty good legal analysis on short notice, which is worthwhile reading as well. One thing I'd be curious about is the implication that the NSA requested this information and the phone companies complied. Isn't this equivalent to a police officer asking to enter your home without a warrant? If you comply, and they find something, you can't complain about an illegal search can you? Now then, in this instance I have serious questions about why the NSA was even asking, but still the point remains. I also wonder if these phone companies are opening themselves up to lawsuits from individuals depending on what their privacy agreements state? Because they gave up this information without a warrant, they are exposing themselves legally.

It's also important to realize that the NSA is not a law enforcement agency. In fact, the most troubling aspect of the whole endeavour was buried way down the end of the USA Today article:

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as "product" in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

This is the general problem I have with most "terrorism" legislation and surveillance programs. Terrorism seems more and more to be a smoke screen to increasing police powers around other efforts, like the war on drugs.

The fact that the DEA was called an "intelligence" group is asinine at best. It is a law enforcement agency, and is bound to obey constitutional limits, and protect the rights of citizens. The NSA is really a military organization, that is chartered to gather signals intelligence against outside enemies of the United States.

The problem that these programs present to me, as a citizen, is that more and more our government is drawing a line between foreign enemies, and citizens with rights. At some point in time, we have to start asking ourselves what benefit we get in protection by giving up these rights. Is this database providing any value in protecting us from terrorists? At some point the cost just won't justify the benefit any more. I wonder if we're not already to that point.

I also have to wonder... what other secret programs are there waiting to be discovered?

Update: Orin Kerr continues to delve into the legalities of this, and comes up with more details. My continued worry is that while "fighting terrorism" is the public reason for this, that the "product" will be given to other law enforcement agencies to do other work that they'd never be able to get away with on their own.

He may not be Mel Brooks, but Scott Mehring has a history packed Carnival of the Badger for you. Go check it out. I'm also still looking for volunteers to host next week's Carnival, so if you're interested, please let me know!

Maybe it's the fact that I'm an engineer... but I just can't wrap my brain around the Journal's math on the death penalty. The Journal, in it's infinite editorial wisdom, is claiming that because the proposed death penalty resolution would only put one out of two murderers to death in it's hypothetical situation, that we should keep the current law which would put neither to death.

Isn't one better than none? Via From Where I Sit.

If you haven't voted for the drafts you'd like to see published from the last year... you still have time. There are 13 choices (I don't fear bad luck)... and I figure I'll probably only take the time to publish 3. So vote now, by leaving a comment on this post.

Update: Could this be the start of a new blog meme? Am I actually a trend setter? The Confidentials is taking votes on drafts too.

If you haven't heard this story yet, check out the site for Fat Man Walking. He's a man from Southern California who went on a walking trek to New York in order to lose weight. Well, today he completed his journey when he made it to New York City, losing 100 lbs. in the process! Congratulations!

I have to wonder though... will he reward himself by flying home?

This editorial made me laugh really... but does bring up a lot of interesting questions. And since I happen to work in the industry... I thought I might expound on a few of them. First a taste of the editorial:

The U.S. Senate is expected this week to vote on a health insurance bill that, like many ill-advised cures, has good intentions but potentially bad consequences. Sponsored by Sen. Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, the aim of the bill is to make it easier for small businesses to buy affordable health insurance policies for their employees.
...
The problem is that it would allow insurance carriers to pre-empt states, such as Wisconsin, from setting minimum requirements for health plans. That covers a wide range of services - everything from cancer screenings to chiropractic treatments, maternity care, mental health treatment and even diabetic supplies.

Not surprisingly, many organizations, including the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association, strongly oppose the bill. They harbor legitimate fears that the bill could undo years of successful treatment and early intervention, not just for cancer but other illnesses.

It's that early intervention that not only relieves needless suffering but saves money in the long run by allowing employees to lead productive lives and not run up the large bills that they would if their problems reach the crisis stage.

First of all... it wouldn't actually allow insurance carriers to pre-empt states at all! It would allow companies to pick the state whose law they want to follow. This is actually quite common in other parts of business today. For instance, certain states are considered corporate havens (like Connecticut) because they have very favorable corporate tax laws. That's why a lot of nationally known companies incorporate in that state.

Right now, in order for an insurance company to do business in a state, they have to file their plans with that state, and have it approved. That means that insurance companies have to modify their plans for each and every single state they do business in, because the states generally don't have compatible laws. Believe me when I say that some insurance companies spend millions of dollars every year in computing infrastructure just to keep up with the myriad insurance laws that are passed annually by each state. Not only that, but then each state audits all the insurance companies to make sure they are obeying the law. If you're a nationally known insurance company, you have to handle audits from 51 separate auditors (including the federal government to handle IRS audits for HSA plans).

By allowing insurance companies to "incorporate" their plans in one state, that would reduce the amount of overhead associated with providing insurance considerably, and would help to reduce premiums.

Of course, what is truly funny about the editorial is how concerned the Journal Sentinel is with the sanctity of state laws. Federalism is one of those tricky things. Liberals only really appreciates federalism when it suits them. Allow states to decide insurance laws? Good. Allowing states to decide abortion laws? Bad. States deciding marijuana legality? Good. States controlling the drinking age? Bad. You get the idea.

In this case, this laws is getting around the "federalism" issue, by saying that only companies that cross state lines, or participate in multi-state groups would be allowed to shop for insurance in this new way. This basically brings interstate commerce into play where before it really couldn't.

The other issue that the Journal seems concerned with is that somehow insurance carriers would stop covering certain types of procedures. First of all, as I said before, insurance carriers would still have to obey state laws... it's just now they'd only have to obey the laws of a single state. Secondly, when it comes to preventative medicine, insurance companies have a vested interest in covering these procedures. Because cancer is significantly cheaper to treat when caught early, insurance companies like it to be caught early, and try to encourage it.

The problem is that many state laws are written in very rigid ways, prescribing the exact types of procedures that should be covered. Because medicine, and medical standards are ever evolving, and because state laws often times don't keep up, this actually ties the hands of insurance companies, and doesn't let them keep up, just because they have to obey state laws.

The Journal here is really just trying to use scare tactics where there is realistically nothing to be scared of. Of course, that's nothing new.