Bruce Tognazzini says: When children sitting in front seats of cars were killed by airbags, the experts decreed that children henceforth shall sit in special chairs in the back. Problem: out of sight too often leads to out of mind; sometimes a child in the back seat is forgotten and dies of the heat. Tog has some suggestions. (Linked by David Cary.)

From the mailbox:

P.P.S. Google’s spelling correction is getting pretty powerful. I typed “alyssa milano” and it responded “Did you mean alyssa milano nude?”

It didn’t work for me.

Sunday I went to a target range for the first time in many months. I had what I call a left-handed day, when my ‘weak’ hand was much steadier than my ‘strong’ hand. (On average I’m nearly as accurate with either hand; the eye does most of the work, and in me neither eye is clearly dominant.)

My elbows have been sore lately, particularly the right. (It’s fate. I normally carry burdens on my right, because the left shoulder has had intermittent pain since age 16.) Vince Miller, at the range as usual on Sunday, said glucosamine did wonders for his “.44 Magnum elbow”; so I bought some at Trader Joe’s afterward. (.44 Magnum was, as Inspector Callahan said, “the most powerful handgun [caliber] in the world”; it has since been surpassed, but .50AE is relatively rare.)

Vince also reported that a friend of ours has been sent up for five years for unchastity with a minor (age 16 if memory serves). We sigh heavily.

No surprise here: ‘Guru of Ganja’ Found Guilty of Federal Marijuana Charges. (Link from Rational Review.)

Deliberating for a day, the 12-member jury concluded that Rosenthal, the self-described “Guru of Ganja,” was growing more than 1,000 plants, conspiring to cultivate marijuana and maintaining a warehouse for a growing operation. He faces 10 years to life when sentenced June 4.
. . . .
Under strict orders from U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, Rosenthal couldn’t tell the jury he was growing pot as “an officer” for Oakland’s medical marijuana program.
. . . .
“There is no such thing as medical marijuana,” said Richard Meyer, a DEA spokesman. “We’re Americans first, Californians second.”

That’s interesting epistemology.

Outside the courtroom, jury foreman Charles Sackett III said jurors suspected Rosenthal was growing medical marijuana, since a host of protesters outside the courthouse held constant demonstrations.

Sackett, however, said the jury followed federal law when it reached its “tough decision.”

“We had no legal wiggle room,” Sackett said. When asked if he hoped the verdicts would be overturned on appeal, Sackett replied: “Personally, yes, I do.”

Does anyone believe an appeal will get anywhere? Every Federal drug law obviously violates the Ninth and Tenth Amendments; but judges practically never enforce either of those quaint clauses. It’s high time for jurors to remember the Nuremberg Principle and resume enforcing the Bill of Rights on their own initiative.

Found in the archives, 1998 April 06:

JPL has now released a processed image of the Face on Mars. . . . It looks nothing like a face.

Is too! It’s a face whose left side shows the ravages of some disease, demonstrating that the Martians were/are more enlightened than us: not ashamed to look squarely at those who are less “perfect”, but able to see beyond the fleshly shell to the true beauty within. Truly we have much to learn from our Barsoomite brethren.

AnyBirthday will tell you my birthdate and zipcode as of 1983, if you know how I spelled my name in those days. Should I be disturbed?

Fascinating article. Boston Globe Online / Health | Science / A mystery in black and white

Charles Darwin wrote: “Not a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears.” Not just dog breeds, but goat, llama, rabbit and even cat breeds sport flopped-over ears. Ears are just the start. The large black-and-white patches typical of dairy cows and pinto horses, not to mention dogs, cats, and rabbits, do not exist in their wild counterparts. And domestic animals characteristically have smaller heads, teeth, and horns, and go into heat more frequently.

What is remarkable about these differences is that they are so universal. The same traits are common to species as different as cats from cows, rabbits from dogs.

While the old explanation has been to say that people wanted these different traits and selectively bred for them (Who wouldn’t want a bull with shorter horns?), the global nature of the changes casts some doubt. To that, add this: No wild animals exhibit these traits. How would people even think to want pintos when there weren’t any spotted horses around in the first place?

Cited by Rand Simberg.