Still forbidden territory

NEW YORK CITY, New York - A few months ago, I snapped a picture of this lounge at work. It was labeled the "Lactating Room" and had a leather couch inside.

It has been rebranded - it is now the "Women's Lounge" and the leather couch has been replaced with a fabric one.

I don't know if I'm now more allowed to use this room, or less allowed. There's no "Men's Lounge" but I'm not inclined to be litigious about these things.

What do papayas, hopscotch, and Ouija boards have in common?

NEW YORK CITY, New York - Answer: they're all just about as effective as multi-billion dollar antidepressant drugs in treating "depression".

The BBC is reporting on a meta-study by the University of Hull, where they dug around and acquired both published and unpublished trial data, instead of only the published data (which is apparently cherry-picked to put the greatest possible light on the "antidepressant" drugs). To summarize, the swanky, patent-encrusted SSRI drugs were deemed to be no better than a placebo for all but the most "severely depressed" patients.

The BBC article notes that new armies of therapists are being trained to provide "talking therapies", and a Financial Times article on the same study notes that "outdoor exercise" can be used to combat "depression."

If talking to someone "cures" them, then there was nothing medically wrong with them to begin with. If a bit of outdoor prancing "cures" someone, then they were not medically ill.

I hate to sound like a Scientologist on this, but even a crazy, blind Scientologist squirrel can stumble upon a nut.

Japanese fall-on-the-sword attitude good for HD-DVD buyers

SEATTLE, Washington - In case you haven't heard, the hi-res disc format war is over, and Blu-ray has won. Nobody cares, except Sony executives and those few folks that bought HD-DVD gear. It's a sunk cost for people in the US, but the shame-based cultural attitudes in Japan are so strong that one retailer is letting customers trade in their HD-DVD player for a Blu-ray player:

The Japanese electronics retailer Edion is deeply ashamed it sold its customers HD DVD gear. So ashamed they that they're allowing buyers to swap in Toshiba HD DVD boxes for Blu-ray players.

Found via Digg

Nitpicky zoning's unindicted co-conspirator - Landmarks Preservation

SEATTLE, Washington - The neighborhood busybodies and resentful bittermen of Seattle (and elsewhere) have multiple avenues available to attack property owners and casually impose their subjective style preferences on every new building in their radar range. One is zoning "design reviews", which I have discussed before; another tool on their belt is the Landmarks Preservation process.

This week's "landmark" is a building in Ballard that recently ended a 24-year run as a Denny's restaurant. The property was acquired by Benaroya Companies with the intention of tearing it down and building condos. Benaroya (in a strategy that many developers end up using) actually applied for Landmark Preservation for the property, so they could (hopefully) get landmark status rejected and out of the way before some neighborhood types file for preservation later in the process and gum things up.

The Landmarks Preservation cabal met last night and, despite Benaroya's best efforts, voted 6-3 to declare the exterior of the building to be a historical landmark. No tearing it down now; options include building condos (or other stuff) around the structure, renovating the interior and doing something else with it, sell it, or let it rot.

You can tell from reading the comments of the supporters of restrictive classifications (just as you can tell from the people that throw darts at design review meetings) that many of them just use the process as an indirect, spiteful way to oppose condos and development in general, because developers are rich and greedy and the proposed condos would not be "affordable". In fact, this building was recently slated to be torn down and turned into a station for the proposed Monorail. The Monorail project vaporized, and the land was subsequently sold to Benaroya. No one seemed to give a shit about the historical significance of the building when it was going to be replaced with a noble, politically correct mass transit project, but try to tear it down for condos that a barista can't afford and suddenly the building's a piece of Seattle, Architectural, Washington State, and World history.

I do not cater to the prurient instincts

SEATTLE, Washington - I have to draw the line somewhere, so I'm not going to provide any links or information on the Gene Simmons sex tape. You're on your own on that one.

Now that Fidel is stepping aside

SEATTLE, Washington - Time to get some real leadership in Cuba - the kind that will again turn Cuba into a tropical gambling mecca. The kind of Cuba that Hyman Roth talked about in The Godfather Part II:

These are wonderful things that we've achieved in Havana -- and there's no limit to where we can go from here. This kind of Government knows how to help business...to encourage it -- the hotels here are bigger and swankier than any of the rug joints we've put in Vegas -- and we can thank our friends in the Cuban government -- which has put up half of the cash with the Teamsters on a dollar for dollar basis -- has relaxed restrictions on imports. What I am saying now is we have what we have always needed -- real partnership with the government.

Transcript from here

Long before the Seattle cupcake wars

SEATTLE, Washington - Today, we enjoy a rainbow variety of cupcakes at our various cupcake shops in Seattle. I found an analogous variety of baked goods from the old old days in Seattle, in the photo book Vanishing Seattle.

The windmill below was the Queen Anne Hill outpost of Van de Kamp's Holland Dutch Bakery, a regional bakery chain based in California. As you can barely see in the scan below, they offered "17 Kinds of Old Dutch Coffee Cakes". Seventeen! Who needs cafe au lait or lavender cupcakes when you can get seventeen kinds of coffee cake?

The Dutch abandoned Queen Anne decades ago, but the Danes are still there; I would encourage all to visit John Nielsen's Authentic Danish Pastry on 2nd Ave. W for a very pleasant experience.

I've made the switch

SEATTLE, Washington - No, I'm not turning gay. Though, maybe I'd be happier gay, and it would certainly be easier to get sex.

No, I've changed my Linux home desktop from Gentoo to Kubuntu. For one thing, there seems to be a bit of chaos at the Gentoo Foundation; Ubuntu has what Linux needs, some corporate backing from a mad billionaire and momentum.

Beyond that, the Kubuntu graphical software installer has been a nice break from two years of compiling all software from source in Gentoo. I wasn't engaging in any optimizations that made compiling from scratch worth it.

And Kubuntu has operated more smoothly in some day-to-day tasks, like plugging in my mp3 player via USB.

Obviously, I chose Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu because GNOME is for losers.

Americans agree with me on where to move

SEATTLE, Washington - When I compiled my livability index of all 50 states, I automatically excluded the 41 states that had a state income tax. Turns out many other Americans have the same philosophy - an editorial in today's WSJ looks at the relationship between state income taxes and domestic migration. Their comments are based on this year's United Van Lines migration study, which has allegedly been fairly representative of overall migration patterns for decades.

The WSJ notes that the 7 of the 8 states without an income tax (in the contiguous 48) are ranked in the top 12 as far as inbound vs. outbound migrants. In case you were simplistically thinking/hoping that people are moving strictly to get to better weather, note that Florida was the one no-income-tax state not in the top 12, and that bad-weather states like Wyoming and New Hampshire are getting a significant influx.

North Dakota, with an income tax, is a big outflux state, while South Dakota, right next door and without an income tax, is a big influx state. I doubt that the weather explains that one.

I've been saying for a while now, your best chance of getting the government you want is not to vote for it, but to move to it. And, as the WSJ notes, the people most likely to move are the ones you probably would most like to keep around:

Our friends on the left say Americans are willing to pay more taxes to get better government services, but their migration patterns reveal the opposite. Governors would be wise to heed these interstate migration trends as they try to cope with what may be one of the worst years in recent memory for state finances. The people who tend to be the most mobile in American society are the educated and motivated -- in other words, the taxpaying class. Tax them too much, and you'll soon find they aren't there to tax at all.

Woody Allen has come a long way from the Orgasmatron

SEATTLE, Washington - Woody Allen's films seem to have hit their erotic peak way back in 1973, with the introduction of the Orgasmatron in Sleeper. The next 35 years have featured a lot of neuroses and Manhattan cocktail parties, but not much sweaty sex.

It looks like Woody is finally about to bring some good old fashioned heat to the screen in the upcoming Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The New York Post is reporting that this movie will feature a torrid lesbian sex scene with Scarlett Johansson and Penélope Cruz. Woody can't pull his camera away from Scarlett lately.



Found via Celebslam

Georgia wants a piece of Tennessee for its water

SEATTLE, Washington - The Tennessean is reporting that there is a resolution bouncing around in the Georgia legislature that would move a boundary with Tennessee by about a mile to the north, giving Georgia more land and giving the water-hungry state access to the Nickajack Reservoir.

Georgia, of course, is not couching this as a hostile action, but as a correction of some incorrect surveying 190 years ago:

The resolution, which has passed early hurdles but has not received final passage, claims that the boundary was erroneously surveyed in 1818 and that Georgia has never accepted it. The resolution calls for the creation of a "Georgia-Tennessee Boundary Line Commission" that would perform joint surveys and change the line to the "definite and true" boundary line: exactly following the 35th parallel.

"We're not talking about sucking it dry," said Rep. Harry Geisinger, a Republican who sponsored the resolution in the Georgia House. "We're talking about augmenting some water needs, and as you know, the Tennessee has got plenty of water in it."

States getting into beefs about water is nothing new. In 1934 Arizona governor Benjamin Mouer assembled an invasion force (40 infantrymen, 20 machine gunners, and one steamer) to hinder construction of the Parker Dam, a federal project that would route water to California. The steamer broke down and ended up being towed away by a tugboat owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Israeli pilots to get jacked up with Viagra?

SEATTLE, Washington - Israeli doctors have noticed that taking erectile dysfunction drugs results in "improved performance in high altitudes" and might start having air force pilots take Viagra for flights:

"The Viagra family of drugs is considered effective in these conditions because when there is a long shortage in oxygen it leads to high blood pressure in the lungs, and the drugs help fight that," the report quoted military medical sources as saying.

Found via Reason Hit & Run

Smoking cigs results in a smoking body

SEATTLE, Washington - Hollywood Tuna recently posted a gallery of pics of Leonardo DiCaprio with his girlfriend Bar Refaeli. As you can see, she has a wonderful body and she's enjoying a cigarette.


Obviously, the cigarettes must help in maintaining a great body - but only if they're used as a part of a more comprehensive health regimen. Hollywood Tuna reported this about a year ago while discussing some pictures of Lindsay Lohan:

For all of you who were wondering how Lindsay Lohan keeps her body in such good shape, well here’s the secret: A steady diet of alcohol, partying, and afternoon jogs in her bikini and high heels while smoking seems to do the trick. Sure genetics and youth may come into play so this program may not work for everyone but give it a shot and let me know how it goes.

I want to emphasize, this was from about a year ago, before Ms Lohan went to rehab and gave up her vices.

Crying Chimp

ISSAQUAH, Washington - It's Super Bowl day today, and as usual the commercials will allegedly be the star of the show. My personal favorite SB commercial is a sentimental favorite, the combined Dotcom and Crying Indian spoof by e*Trade a couple years ago.

I would think that anyone around my age, who grew up watching Saturday morning television in the 1970s and 1980s, and was shown the Crying Indian PSA thousands of times, would have a soft spot for this ad.

Of course, the "Crying Indian" turned out to be a straight-up Sicilian dago named Espera De Corti, but let's not be distracted by that on this special day.

PB&J making return at Trophy, allegedly

SEATTLE, Washington - I have updated the post on the Trophy Cupcakes PB&J, a commenter on that post alleges to be from Trophy and says the PB&J is returning soon. With the anonymity of the internet, you just never know.

Sports-betting gene isolated

SEATTLE, Washington - My mother asked me on the phone about the current football situation. I was explaining that New England is undefeated, and she asked if any team has ever done this before. Since I was born in 1972, I said "the Miami Dolphins did it in 1972, but you were probably busy that year and didn't notice."

She said: "Yeah, you boys were too young to be watching football. And your father, he never watched a football game in his life. He bet on a lot of games, but he never watched one."

Starbucks cannot be all things to all people

SEATTLE, Washington - Starbucks Gossip is reporting on the announcement of the Q1 numbers for Charbucks. For one thing, it featured CEO Howard Schultz spouting platitudes that could have been spoken at the quarterly announcement of any public company in the country - "focus on building a long-term model to realize our transformation agenda", "laser focused on delivering what our customers want and expect", "optimize our resources", etc.

In addition, Schultz is again making noises about the Starbucks Experience, meaning the aroma, the music, he comfy feel, and so on. He thinks the store is losing its focus on coffee, and one of the first steps in restoring that focus is the announcement that Charbucks will stop selling warmed breakfast sandwiches.

When Schultz began talking up the Experience a year ago, he got thrashed by Bill Saporito of Time magazine. Manhattanite Saporito does not want an Experience, he wants faster delivery of the drinks:

It's not the atmosphere, Howard. It's your incompetence. Or at least that of the executives who work for you at your way too laid-back HQ. You're talking atmosphere when you should be talking about front-end operations. Instead, in my Starbucks we have the morning chaos, the lines stretching all the way to the ludicrously heavy doors, a drill duplicated at the coffee hour of 4 p.m., where they've mastered the art of have exactly one less person on hand than needed.
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You don't need more ambiance, you need more throughput. More machines, more sales terminals. You want us to smell the coffee, just grind some. In the meantime, we're waiting.

This is a problem for Charbucks. You can shoot for having a neighborhood vibe, or you can shoot for ruthless in-store operations; it is a challenge for a massive corporation with over 10,000 locations to try to be both, or to be one thing in some locations and another thing in other locations.

Sign that the stock market is in trouble

SEATTLE, Washington - I've had the same investment manager since 1992. He's been a curmudgeon the whole time, through good times and better times. Now, suddenly, he's the optimist. In a recent letter, he said good times are ahead:

15000 DOW
I believe the news media and doom and gloom experts will be completely fooled by year end as the political experts and news media where fooled in New Hampshire

Misuse of the word "where" in the original.

CRDA head frets about "grind joints" in Atlantic City

SEATTLE, Washington - The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (or CRDA, pronounced "creedah") is a New Jersey state agency entrusted with skimming some money from Atlantic City casinos (in addition to various other gaming-only taxes and fees) and investing in various infrastructure and development projects in New Jersey. They are currently in a bit of a dust-up with Atlantic City officials over the sale of Bader Field, a former airport (in fact, the first place in the United States to be called an "airport") that is considered a primo casino development location.

Penn National Gaming has offered Atlantic City $800 million (including fat $50 million payments in each of the first two years) so that they could buy the land and divide it so that up to four casinos could open there. Atlantic City is having its first tax reappraisal on residents in 20 years and wants to use some of that money to soften the blow.

CRDA head Thomas Carver blasted this plan with language a bit spicier than you usually hear from a bureaucrat. He said that the Penn National offer was a "scam", that the two large upfront payments were "tantamount to a bribe", and that Atlantic City would end up with shitty casinos instead of the lavish "megacasinos" he envisions:

"It will take the city back years. It will almost preclude us from reaching the next level in terms of our evolution into an international resort destination. You will end up possibly, at best, with four grind joints out there, based on how they want to divide the land up."

Carver believes that it is the job of CRDA, not the city, to oversee a bidding process for the land, and at least partly blames the dispute on "long-held suspicions by city officials that the CRDA is trying to usurp the city's authority." Well, yes, that exactly what the CRDA is doing, usurping the city's authority. People don't trust Atlantic City to handle its own affairs for good reasons, including Michael Matthews, a childhood friend of my father who became mayor in 1982 and within three years was serving a 15 year jail term for extortion.

And for those not versed in gaming lingo, a "grind joint" is a casino that operates by catering to a large volume of small-stakes players, instead of high-rollers. Perhaps Mr Carver hasn't noticed the 800+ junket and charter buses that arrive daily in Atlantic City, ferrying people directly to the casinos from poor neighborhoods in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Sounds like grinding to me.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Clint Holmes - separated at birth?

SEATTLE, Washington - The Australian Open tennis tournament has just ended, and the AP story describing the men's final refers to runner-up Jo-Wilfried Tsonga as a "Muhammad Ali lookalike" and notes that "a portrait of Ali, a racket sketched in one hand, was taped to the stadium wall."

Whoever put up that sign has probably never been to Las Vegas, because then they'd know that Mr Tsonga bears a much stronger resemblance to Vegas entertainment legend Clint Holmes.

Mr Tsonga is a 22-year-old Frenchman, so... did Holmes tour in France 23 years ago?

Trophy Cupcakes drops the ball

SEATTLE, Washington - My favorite cupcake at Trophy Cupcakes in Wallingford has been the Peanut Butter & Jelly flavor. They used to only sell it on Saturday and Sunday. They then started selling it four days a week, and I warned them that that would make this cupcake less special. They said it was "still special."

Now, it's gone, they don't make it at all. Perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently. It seems to have been replaced by a Chocolate Peanut Butter flavor, but this is just not going to cut it.

UPDATE! See comments - someone allegedly from Trophy Cupcakes has responded, saying that the PB&J will be re-instituted on Good Friday this year. For the Jews out there - that's March 21 this year in the United States. Mark Your Calendars.

Sounds like Wesley Snipes joined the Moorish Republic

SEATTLE, Washington - Just a few days after I discussed the crackpot theories and cryptic court statements of the adherents of Redemption Theory, I may have stumbled upon Redemption's first celebrity devotee - actor Wesley Snipes.

Snipes's trial for defrauding the government recently kicked off in Florida. He was indicted in 2006, so we've known for some time that he had some interesting ideas on taxation; today in court portions of a letter he wrote to the IRS after the indictment sound like plays from the Moor/Redemption playbook.

In the 600-page declaration signed by Snipes and sent Dec. 4, 2006, Snipes said he had "no ill intent or malice" and didn't want to evade any lawful requirement to pay taxes. But he went on to say the government had "no lawful authority to impose any kind of criminal sanctions."
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Snipes declared he had no taxable U.S. income, making the IRS Form 1040 "absolutely the wrong form for me to file." He also claimed taxes withheld were "stolen funds."
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The document also warned the government's "illegal collection action" would result in "significant personal liability" for those involved.

He did everything but "fire" the IRS and try to reclaim the funds of his "straw man." He also made this threat, which his lawyer claimed was not a threat:

"Warning - pursuit of such a high profile target will open the door for your increased collateral risk," Snipes wrote. "I certainly don't believe this is in your best interest and can be avoided."

Snipes's accountants apparently tried to use the "861 Argument" on his tax returns, which is an attempt to exploit an alleged statutory loophole to avoid tax. If you're having trouble sleeping you can read the Wikipedia page that discusses various tax protester arguments.

Found via Drudge Report

UPDATE Snipes was acquitted of fraud but found guilt on some more minor charges of failing to file tax returns.

Homework assignments on Mary Carter Paint

SEATTLE, Washington - In the footnote of one of my posts on the Tropicana gaming license denial in Atlantic City, I noted the rather suspicious fact that Resorts International, the company that opened the first Atlantic City casino in 1978, was the Mary Carter Paint Company only a decade earlier. Paint companies typically don't open casinos. The orthodox explanation is that the company (which was based in Florida in the 1960s) expanded into real estate, which led to acquiring property in the Bahamas, which became casinos, thus they were pros at this thing by the time gambling was legalized in New Jersey.

Various authors that I have read have put a more insidious spin on this. Charles Higham, in Howard Hughes: The Secret Life, says the following:

He [Hughes] made a deal with the CIA, which owned Mary Carter Paints, an improbably named "front" company, to let him buy the operating rights to Mary Carter Paints's Paradise Island Casino, Hotel and Ocean Club. The founders, in 1958, of Mary Carter Paints were Thomas Dewey and Allen Dulles, at a time when Dulles was head of the CIA and shortly before Dulles obtained Maheu's assistance in attempting to kill Fidel Castro, with Hughes's tacit approval... In 1963, the CIA linked up with mob connections through Mary Carter to support fascist governments in South America. By 1964, Robert Kennedy... was aggressively exploring the Hughes-Moe Dalitz-Sam Giancana-CIA-Mary Carter Paints-Nassau connections.

In his source notes Higham says that this came from "files of the Watergate hearings."

Higham may not exactly be a bedrock source of information, as The Secret Life details alleged homosexual activity of Hughes, including longstanding affairs with Tyrone Power and Cary Grant, and essentially alleges that Hughes died of AIDS, even though Hughes died in 1976, he essentially ceased sexual activity in the 1950s, and documented AIDS infections were extremely rare in the US before 1980.

The Money and the Power by Sally Denton and Roger Morris says:

Formerly the Mary Carter Paint Company, which was widely considered to be a CIA front that laundered payments to the Cuban exile army in the early sixties, Resorts International now owned several Bahamian casinos and was thought to be dominated by [Meyer] Lansky.

The source notes for that list Masters of Paradise by Alan Block as the source.

An old conspiracy mailing list post states that the CIA-Dulles-Mary Carter connection was documented in the May 20, 1976 issue of Rolling Stone.

The next time I'm at the library, I'll check out that copy of Rolling Stone (which also has an interview with Marlon Brando!) and look into things further. All of the sources above probably funnel to the research in the Rolling Stone article.

UPDATE I have followed up on this.

Forms to reclaim your Straw Man now available online

SEATTLE, Washington - Backwoods white survivalists and black nationalist schemers have at least one thing in common - a byzantine, conspiratorial plan to escape debts and place themselves above the law known as "Redemption Theory". And while I can visualize the mimeographed newsletters by which this theory was distributed in the past, the paperwork and instructions to help you achieve "Redemption" are now sold on the good old internet, at the Moorish Republic Nation.

I do not wish to contract with you

Redemption Theory was started by a longtime white-extremist figure named Roger Elvick in the 1980s. Without going into too much detail, Redemption holds that the United States government went bankrupt in the 1930s and started taking out international loans against a bureaucratic alter-ego of every citizen. This alter-ego is known as a "straw man" and Elvick and his soulmates claim to have discovered a complex process by which a citizen gains access to his "straw man" and to the money contained therein. In practice, the "process" consists of bad checks and various bureaucratic and commercial filings. Elvick peddled this throughout the 1980s and 1990s before being sentenced to four years in jail for various crimes in April 2005.

The analogous movement among black men is known as the al Moroccan Empire, or Moors, or Moorish Nation, or other things with Moor in the name. The only reason I know about any of this at all is that a few guys in Atlantic City were caught up in this a few years ago. In 2003 three men, including former Atlantic City Housing Authority director W. Oscar Harris, were hauled before a judge [links to Press of AC now pay-only - jeff] for attempting to liberate their "straw man." Per their ideolgy, they responded to questions from the judge with identical, cryptic responses, including "If you think you can make a legal determination for me, you're fired", "I do not wish to contract with you", and my personal favorite, "Is this your chambers, or a courtroom?"

The black wing of all of this has added an interesting twist - they claim that the 1787 treaty between the Morocco and the United States exempts "Moroccans" from U.S. law. Thus, when Moor devotee and former Pleasantville (NJ) police officer Thomas Scott was being tried for fraud, [links to Press of AC now pay-only - jeff]he simply informed the court that his name was now Oman Valord Bey and that the laws of the United States no longer applied to him.

I've read the treaty in question and I don't think I see what they're talking about.

More straight talk from Fabio

SEATTLE, Washington - Fabio has a very stylish command of the English language, especially considering that he is an immigrant. He was recently interviewed on the Details blog and provided yet more choice material.

First he shared some thoughts on his tiff with George Clooney that I wrote about in November.

"This guy, he ate more than he could chew... Right then, I could have knocked him over and beat him," he says. "I could have punched him in the face while he was on his back. That's how you really hurt someone—their face can't amortize the punch so it takes, it takes the whole impact."

"Their face can't amortize the punch!" I wish I had thought of that one.

He also claims to be developing an energy drink for which he predicts smashing success:

"I wish I could tell you, but it's a secret. I'm sitting on this gold mine for a long time. It's like you're looking all over your house for your car keys and it turns out you are sitting on them, that's what this is like."

He also shared his innermost thoughts on what he's thinking while out on a date with an actress:

"And they are always complaining about their work, or how they are not working. About this casting or this part they are hoping to get, and I have to say, 'Come on, you're a fucking waitress.' I don't say that, but I think that, you know, because I'm a gentleman."

That's exactly what I think when I'm on a date with a hot actress.

Found via Mollygood