I’ve been useless all day with fever. I didn’t mind so much when the day was warm . .

A friend of Russell writes:

Stephany is having an interesting problem with the California Transit Authority, and someone on one of your lists or blog might have some advice on how to proceed.

In the last two months, Stephany has received three traffic citations for blowing through the Golden Gate Bridge FastTrak lane without paying. They bill her for the unpaid toll ($5) plus a fine ($25) that must be paid within 15 days or her DMV registration will become attached.

The problem is that Stephany never is anywhere near the Golden Gate Bridge nor crosses the toll plaza (something she can prove when the supposed violations took place), never mind blowing through it without paying. And as is the case for such things, you are guilty by default unless you take the time to contest it. She contested the last two, which they cleared, but she just received her third one in several weeks and now she is quite pissed.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. Whether the cause is incompetence or malice, this is harassment under the color of authority that she is forced to take the time to deal with. The people at the Transit Authority are stupid and unresponsive; they have no reason to give a damn and one gets the impression that this happens all the time.

There are two open questions:

1.) Has anyone else been getting these bogus citations?
2.) What is the best way to generate enough pain for the transit authority that this abuse stops?

Comments and suggestions are welcome, and it would be particularly interesting to know if other people have had the same thing happen to them. I’ve found a few references on Google to other people getting these inexplicable citations over the last couple months, but it seems that some people just pay them rather than deal with it. It would not surprise me to find out that these things are being sent out randomly, trawling for revenue from people to[o] lazy to fight it since the fine is not that steep.

and:

Steph sees no reason to anonymize this. She wants this to stop, and it seems the only way to do that will be to inflict some pain on the transit authority. The citation states that the “toll surveillance system” shows that the vehicle in question committed the infraction, but that they are routinely incapable of providing evidence of any type makes this claim doubtful.

It smells like a revenue fishing exercise, and such scams are not without preceden[ts].

Suggestions are invited.

Wodehouse, the next generation: a fan’s delightful movie concept

Bryan Caplan: The Idea Trap: why bad economic policy is so rarely repealed

Institute for Justice: The 25 Best Friends of Property Rights: amicus briefs in support of petitioners in Kelo v. New London

Here in the ogre’s cave we watch quite a lot of English detective shows; my housemate orders them from Netflix. The title of this post comes from an observation of hers that – since the biggest role in a detective show, after the regulars, is the criminal – if you see a prominent actor in the guest cast you can bet who dunnit.

When Anton Rodgers (whom you may remember from The Prisoner) showed up as ragged hypochondriac Lord Chetwood in “Market for Murder”, I eagerly hoped the rule would hold, because the dotty old lord rarely gets to have much fun. Alas, it was not to be.

A curious thing about that series Midsomer Murders, by the way: most episodes appear to be intended for widescreen format, but are not letterboxed, so the faces are distorted. My eye adapts to it before the show is half over.

And while I’m up, another curious thing: at the beginning of this episode the detective’s sidekick gets out of a car whose front plate is mirror-reversed. First I thought the shot was reversed; but the driver got out of the correct door. Then I thought perhaps that’s standard in Britain, so that you can easily read the plate of the car that rear-ended you; but no, all the other plates in the episode are normal. Could it be that the only car available for that shot was foreign, with the steering wheel on the wrong side?

L Neil Smith, stung by a gross misrepresentation of his view of 9/11, fires back.

Neil’s piece mentions three people by code-names: “Mike”, “Russell” and “Anton”. Mike Lorrey, a vice-chairman of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, lets one cat out of the bag with an equally public response, so I may as well confirm that two of those cunning pseudonyms conceal Lorrey and me; I won’t say which is who, save that I’m definitely not “Mike”.

(Both items were brought to my attention by Russell Whitaker.)

Rusin’s disco ball

golden angles

Saff & Kuijlaars

Examples of three algorithms for distributing nodes fairly evenly over a sphere. Those on the middle and right slice the sphere into parallel bands of equal area (much narrower than the white discs), and put one node (center of a disc) somewhere in each band. Saff & Kuijlaars place the nodes along a spiral path across the bands, keeping the distance between turns of the spiral roughly constant. Failing to grok how their rule does that, I approach it from another angle.
( . . more . . )

. . . I consider the right of property to consist in the freedom to dispose first of one’s person, then of one’s labor, and finally, of the products of one’s labor — which proves, incidentally, that, from a certain point of view, freedom and the right to property are indistinguishable from each other.

Frédéric Bastiat (1849): Protectionism and Communism. Cited in FFF Email Update.