TAL: Crime and (excessive) punishment

This week's epsisode of This American Life, Very Tough Love, (430.mp3) is worth listening to. Ira Glass investigates a drug court in Glynn county Georgia where you definitely don't want to piss off the judge, lest you get an "indefinite" sentence to "think things over" in solitary. Drug courts exist in various forms across the United States, and are usually setup with procedures for beating the root causes of addiction. Glass shows several examples of excessive sentences in the Glynn county court which are out of the "norm" for other drug courts across the country. He paints the picture that this is a court with a "hanging judge" setup mostly to meet her sadistic needs. The irony presented here is that defendants voluntarily enter the court because they think they'll get out of jail sooner. They think the system will treat them fairly for minor possession cases. Careful there, in this age of privatized prisons and kickback schemes, this is just another example of when the system gets their hooks into you, they're likely to keep you, maybe for a long time.

Glass's story is from Georgia- that's all the way across the country. However, a story in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune shows the same excessive punishment goes on here, too. And the whole thing is reminiscent of the John Sinclair imprisonment for 2 joints.

Recently watched movies

First viewing:
Easy A, clip
Catfish
Lenny, lost out to Godfather II for best picture 1975.
Song of Bernadette, best actress 1944
Get Low
The Kid Stays in the Picture
Ed Wood, Tim Burton directs.
Mademoiselle Chambon
Eyes Wide Shut
A History of Violence, origin from a graphic novel evident.
The Fighter

Rewatched:
The China Syndrome, topical...a definitive role for Lemmon.
Paper Moon...I want my two hundred dollars!

I will probably update this page with more comments...

Update: 2011-04-03
Rewatched:
A Time for Burning The opening scene where Chambers is cutting hair sets the stage. In his opening speech with the preacher, he presents an indictment and vents a lot of pent up frustration. His speech is like a march- every sentence moves forward advancing ideas, point after point. In the end, Chambers has taken so much ground that the preacher has no choice but to retreat, literally out of the door. The movie is about how the preacher regroups and decides to continue to follow his conscience, even though Chambers predictions end up being prophetic. Still relevant for our time.

FF4: about 8 million downloads in 36 hours

As reported on Slashdot, Firefox 4 is out! Mozilla also has an interesting statistical aggregation application that displays a spoke-wheel chart of who is downloading it.
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Time for a national sales tax?

The sales tax is often called a regressive tax because it hits people living paycheck to paycheck hardest. However, the current tax situation is far from ideal. There are entire financial industries set up to help people with high incomes find loopholes and tax shelters. Not to mention that the complexity of the current system has a significant slice of world labor preparing tax forms. That's a lot of wheels spinning, but all for nothing. I would favor replacing our current byzantine national income tax system with a national sales tax, a VAT, or flat income tax. We need simplification where everyone just has to pay. No loopholes.

Here's another case on point. Did you know that Google is an Irish company? I thought they were from silicon valley, California. Nope. Maybe, they're a Bermuda corp. Who knows? All the world corporations are playing games with their money to minimize their tax bill. They're pushing their money around just like poker chips or Monopoly money. Check this recent discussion on Fresh Air.

Windows and IE upgrades...

Here are some interesting videos, as mentioned on Reddit and Slashdot.

• almost every version of Windows


• every version of Internet Explorer

Catcha 22

I saw this on reddit.