Jared Loughner, the waste of protoplasm that thought it appropriate to assassinate a federal judge and wound a congresswoman while shooting up a crowd of people, has been found to be too bugnuts crazy to participate in his own defense.  He’ll be sent off to a psychiatric facility for a few months where doctors will try to fix him enough that he can contribute to his defense and understand why he’s on trial.  If they’re successful, they’ll keep him lucid long enough for his trial, and then he goes into the slow moving queue towards the needle.

If I were a betting man, I’d put a few dollars on him never coming out of the psych facility.  Just from the things that are reported in the media, it’s not hard to see that this guy is as crazy as an outhouse rat.  But just because this sick bastard is as nutty as a PayDay bar doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions.   If you want my opinion on what needs to be done, re-read the title.

Macho man Randy Savage 1952 – 2011

Several members of the Internal Revenue Service have been busted for tax fraud.  Apparently these fine upstanding public servants falsely claimed a credit for first time home ownership.  Pardon me if I don’t seem surprised.

This is a problem you find with large organizations.  There is a sort of herd immunity from culpability, so it becomes easier to abuse the trust of those they are pledged to serve.  If you’re just one of several thousand people who do your job, then it’s easy to either coast at a minimum level of effort or to abuse your position for personal gain and not get caught.

One of the reasons I support a winnowing of the government workforce is that a smaller workforce will be easier to monitor for such corruption and malingering.  If there are fewer IRS employees, it will be easier to find those who are not serving the public in the way they should.

The same goes for every other government bureaucracy.  My formula for making government cheaper and cleaner is not complicated:  Simplify the laws, cut the staff, ruthlessly enforce standards of conduct, and improve efficiency.

Wanna buy a bridge?

On today’s date in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opened to the public.  15 minutes later, sales of the Brooklyn Bridge began in earnest. 

Contact your neurologist.

A recent study found that administering sildenafil to animals with symptoms of multiple schlerosis can reduce damage to the nervous system.

If given shortly after disease onset, the scientists say they observed the drug reduced the infiltration of inflammatory cells into the white matter of the spinal cord, reducing damage to the nerve cell’s axon and facilitating myelin repair

The optimist in me sees hope for people who suffer from a crippling disease.  Sildenafil has been in wide use for years, so the side effects are well known.  Taking it for MS would probably be as safe as taking it for sexual disfunction.  A friend of my family died slowly from MS, so any treatment that could give these people a few more years of life is a good thing.

The cynic in me notices that Viagra will be going off patent early in 2012, so Pfizer might be looking at a way to extend their revenue stream.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a new MS treatment wasn’t brought to market soon which combines sildenafil with another MS drug, and therefore can be patented.

Hopefully this research leads to a new treatment for MS.   And if the quality of life for patients is improved, then who can begrudge the company who brought the drug to market from making a few more shekels?

But the term “Surprise aerial insertion into the enemy rear” got me giggling like a fiend just now.  Worst part is, I wrote it about 15 years ago, with no comedic intent.

Dear Creepy Guy at the Playground,

Yes, I know I gave you the hairy eyeball a few times as you sat on the bench at the playground this afternoon.  You see, it’s a bit unusual for an older man to walk alone into a fenced-in playground and sit on the park bench watching the children while holding a bicycle pump.  Plus your chosen attire of a loose fitting hawaiian shirt over a tee shirt screamed “cover garment” to me, and I was looking for the print of a weapon on you.  Not that I have a problem with a parent carrying concealed when they take their kid to the playground. But since I was able to match every child on that playground with an adult that wasn’t you, and you didn’t interact with any of the other adults but were very interested in seeing what the kids were up to, you made my Spidey sense tingle enough to wonder if you had a gun under that shirt along with the openly carried bicycle pump.

I’d say that I was just being paranoid, but you see, all of the other parents seemed to be making sure their kids stayed away, and I heard several mention you to their co-parents.  It’s kind of a herd mentality.  You see, a childless adult, especially a lone male, who is showing a strange amount of attention to our children makes the herd nervous.

I’m glad that nothing happened, and all you did was creep me out a bit as I made sure I kept myself between you and BooBoo.  I hope you enjoyed your walk as you picked up your bicycle pump after a few minutes and headed back the way you came.

Have a nice one,

Daddy J. Bear

Speaking of breathless reporting, scientists in England have found a way to layer polymers in such a way that the resulting material is intricate, beautiful, and difficult to counterfeit.  

By using highly ordered polymer layers, the researchers were able to create any color in the rainbow from two non-colored materials. The color also changes depending on the viewing angle.

The complexity of the chemistry involved in making the polymer means they are very difficult for counterfeiters to copy, they said, making them ideally suited for use on passports or banknotes.

While this is impressive, and if adopted, would make counterfeiting printed materials harder in the short term, I think these guys are forgetting a couple of things:

1. Anything we can do or make, hostile nation states such as North Korea can either copy outright or make a facsimile of that’s close enough to pass all but the closest scrutiny.
2. Anything that requires a university or industrial lab now will be done in a high school lab in 10 years, and at a kitchen table in 20.

They found a rat in the jungles of Brazil!

I know, who would have thought it was possible?

Yes, yes, I know, it’s a rare rat, and no-one has seen one in years.  And the more varied and bountiful nature is, the more beautiful and resilient she will be.  But come on.  It’s a bloody tree rat.  Here’s a hint: if there’s one rat, there’s a million of them.  They literally breed like rats.  I’ve been in rain forests.  There is no shortage in the number and variety of creepy crawlies, snakes and rodents.  Calm down and have another mojito.

This reminds me of the people who spend whole summers in the swamps of the American Southeast looking for a woodpecker that’s supposed to be extinct, but may have some vestigial populations.  The question that ran through my head while I listened to the breathless reporting on NPR was “Don’t these people have something better to do?”.

If a species that’s supposed to be extinct still survives in some small niche, then they’re best left alone.  They’ve been able to survive whatever it was that wiped out their brethren.  We just need to make sure we don’t do anything that will upset whatever balance allowed them to survive.  We certainly shouldn’t be spending time and money searching them out and researching them.

This is National Police Week.  I know that a lot of people have a problem with police in general, but we have to recognize that police fulfill a necessary function in our society.  Yes, there are bad cops, just like there are bad accountants, bad lawyers, bad doctors, and bad systems administrators.  The “Wars on Icky Stuff” has done a lot to drive a wedge between law enforcement and the populace they are charged to serve, but that is not the fault of the policeman.  It is the fault of the politicians who put personal power and meddling in others’ lives ahead of keeping the peace and punishing wrongdoers.

But the small minority of cops who forget their oaths to protect and serve are massivly outnumbered by good cops that get up every day, put on their uniform, and do their best to fairly enforce our laws and investigate when the laws are broken.  Just like most soldiers could make a lot more money working at a job that’s a lot easier, most police could have chosen different paths and increased their pay by several orders while reducing their workload.  We need to recognize that even a cop who never draws his gun or is injured on the job is still making a sacrifice for the good of us all.

Yes, they’re not everywhere, and you’re responsible for your own safety, but until men are angels, we will need police.  I’ll be keeping our police force here in Louisville and Kentucky in my thoughts this week.