Crime in suburbia

From The Landmark (subscription required):

Holden

Monday, May 11

8:23 a.m. Power interruption at police department; operating on generator; blown transformer
7:42 p.m. Four to five teens on beach at Eagle Lake having a fire; extinguished
8:35 p.m. Resident requesting police check residence due to problems with contractor

Tuesday, May 12

3:22 a.m. No clerk evident at Honey Farms; clerk located
4:53 a.m. Pickup truck driving on wrong side of street
10:33 a.m. Question about tenant/landlord issues
3:51 p.m. Warning issued to utility vehicle working without a detail
7:19 p.m. Assist citizen with property to be destroyed
10:30 p.m. Suspicious incident, Wendover Rd.

Wednesday, May 13

8:55 a.m. Flashing yellow lights at house, Yorktown Terr.
9:28 a.m. Paving crew blocking lane of Union St.
8:25 p.m. Report of lots of noise at neighbor's residence, Main St.; OK, just a power washer

Friday, May 15

4:05 p.m. Report of party riding motorized bike on sidewalk, Boulder Hill/Mason Rd. area
7:16 p.m. Individual riding motorized bike on sidewalk, Boulder Hill Rd.
8:05 p.m. Kids on skateboards at Friendly's
9:09 p.m. Party lost debris from motor vehicle and is not picking it up, Main St.
9:18 p.m. Check requested on house party, Sycamore Dr.

Saturday, May 16

2:33 p.m. Two skateboarders removed from Holden Heating property
5:08 p.m. Unknown vehicle on front lawn, Princeton St.
10:05 p.m. Band playing in area of Armington Lane

Sunday, May 17

12:13 a.m. 911 caller for help turning off TV; problem with cable company
7:11 p.m. Report of youths smoking weed in Main St. parking lot
11:08 a.m. Dorothy Ave. resident reporting loud music

Paxton

Monday, May 11

8:38 a.m. Caller would like assistance in getting duck out of her fireplace, behind the glass doors. Duck successfully removed.

Tuesday, May 12

3:14 p.m. Paxton Market reports customer tried to buy beer but would not produce license; concerned he may be unlicensed driver
11:23 p.m. Dog barking for 1 1/2; hours on or near Light Dept. property; officer observed wildlife in area may be causing barking

Wednesday, May 13

2:09 a.m. Suspicious autos behind Paxton CenterSchool; parties spoken to and on their way.

Thursday, May 14

1: 10 p.m. Mother duck and eight ducklings attempting to cross road at Pleasant/Camp Sts.
2:40 p.m. Party in station advising his car ran out of gas, West St.

Friday, May 15

12:51 p.m. Landscapers taking up travel lane on bad corner, Holden Rd.; landscapers will move truck
10:35 p.m. Rutland PD requesting officer to assist in preserving the peace

Saturday, May 16

11:41 p.m. Party in lobby for scavenger hunt; requested picture and autograph

Princeton

Monday, May 11

9:44 a.m. Suspicious motor vehicle, Fitchburg Rd.
10:49 p.m. Suspicious motor vehicle, Old Colony Rd.

Tuesday, May 12

8:10 p.m. Request for animal control officer, Mountain Rd.

Wednesday, May 13

8:38 a.m. Traffic safety hazard, Sterling Rd.
5:13 p.m. Motor vehicle lockout, Mountain Rd.

Friday, May 15

7:00 a.m. Request for animal control officer, Hubbardston Rd.
4:51 p.m. Request for animal control officer, Beaman Rd.
4:55 p.m. Assist other PD, Mountain Rd.

Sunday, May 17

7:42 a.m. Tree limb in roadway, E. Princeton Rd.
4:44 p.m. Request for animal control officer, Leominster Rd.
4:45 p.m. Property found, Leominster Rd.
10:35 p.m. Officer investigation, Beaman Rd.

Rutland

Monday, May 11

9:40 a.m. Report of truck dumping construction material in Dumpster, Maple Ave.
5:10 p.m. Argument between neighbors, Philips Ave.
5:28 p.m. Fraud, John Robert Dr.
6:08 p.m. Report of four teenagers with guns, Oakridge Dr.
6:20 p.m. Suspicious persons, Inwood Rd.

Tuesday, May 12

8:05 a.m. Flag stolen, Main St.
1:25 p.m. Person at station to see officer, Main St.
6:10 p.m. Person concerned about people driving around asking about her vehicle, Maple Ave.
9:15 p.m. Complaint about numerous calls from people claiming to be from Direct TV, Rolling Ridge Rd.

Wednesday, May 13

10:23 a.m. Caller reports fox family living under her gazebo, Brooke Haven Rd.
7:10 p.m. Person yelling and swearing at neighbor working in the yard, Birchwood Rd.

Thursday, May 14

9:32 a.m. Caller claims the people she lives with are mean to her, Kenwood Dr.
2:52 p.m. Caller thinks her neighbor is burning trash in a wood boiler, Bigelow Rd.
6:01 p.m. Person locked out of home, Charnock Cir.

Saturday, May 16

11:09 a.m. Caller asking whether to file a report about incident, Main St.

Sunday, May 17

2:08 p.m. Report of three youths smoking pot at restaurant, Main St.
3:10 p.m. Person wants to speak with officer regarding incident witnessed Friday, Main St.
5:51 p.m. Complaint about two males picking through Dumpsters, Maple Ave.
6:05 p.m. General police, Main St.

Sterling

Monday, May 11

2:25 p.m. Birds in library attic, caught two, requesting assistance, Meeting House Hill Rd.
5:31 p.m. Male going door-to-door trying to sell magazines, Maple St.
5:38 p.m. Officer wanted, men fishing on property and won't leave when asked
5:42 p.m. Several youths skateboarding in Newell Hill Rd.
7;19 p.m. Check parking lot, Boutelle Rd.

Tuesday, May 12

9:34 a.m. Officer wanted, Princeton Rd.
12:47 p.m. Caller asking about regulations concerning hedgehogs, Leominster Rd.
4:33 p.m. Request regarding trap large enough for potentially rabid raccoon, Leominster Rd.

Wednesday, May 13

9:46 a.m. Suspicious motor vehicle traveling up and down Colby Rd.
2:46 p.m. Request to speak with animal control officer regarding problem with dog, Sandy Ridge Rd.
2:56 p.m. Request to speak with officer regarding larceny of apple trees, Kendall Hill Rd.
10:21 p.m. Youths dropped off pink flamingo lawn ornaments on property, Riverview Rd.

Thursday, May 14

5:45 p.m. Question about solicitors asking people to sign petition, Princeton Rd.
7:10 p.m. Inquiry about possible missing boy; found playing army in the woods, Rowley Hill/Wilder Rds.

Friday, May 15

12:58 p.m. Reports of dog barking incessantly, Chace Hill Rd. Dog caught and found to have a turtle in its mouth, appears to be in rough condition. Owner found
3:35 p.m. School personnel wants to speak with officer about company that owns livery vehicle, Boutelle Rd.
5:59 p.m. Ongoing problem with neighbor's dog, Tanglewood Rd.

Saturday, May 16

9:36 a.m. Caller found small Bichon dog on Meetinghouse Hill Rd. Owner found
4:13 p.m. Suspicious blue pickup truck parked in lot, Worcester Rd.
10:12 p.m. Caller reporting male in black clothing and barefoot, walking in middle of Redemption Rock Trl.

Sunday, May 17

12:33 a.m. Complaint about loud party at residence, Princeton Rd.
2:50 a.m. Unoccupied vehicle in back lot, Leominster Rd.
9:35 p.m. Fireworks, Lakeshore Dr.

No Doctor? Call ambulance. Keep warm.

A friend of the family, noting that one of her children had recently received a Ph. D. in one of the social sciences, said, "He's a doctor, but not the kind that can help you."



BTW, the title is a line from the Monty Python Me, Doctor sketch.

Use and misuse of cellphones

We're hearing a lot on the news about cellphones these days, mostly the trouble that texting can cause. Our Great and General Court is considering legislation that would levy a $250 fine for texting while driving. State Senator Mark C. Montigny (D-New Bedford) noted that you can't really legislate stupidity out of existence, but you can make it more expensive.
Not only is it dangerous to use the keyboard on your cellphone while driving, it can also be risky to the phone itself. You've got your Tropicana Orange Coolatta® in one hand, your Egg White Turkey Sausage Flatbread Sandwich in another, your knees firmly at 8 and 4 on the steering wheel, when you remember that you need to call your kid's day center to say that you're running late. Spoosh. Everything winds up in your lap, soaking your phone and voiding your phone's warranty.^[1]
Fortunately, there are ways that you may be able to salvage your phone. This article, Lifehacker - Use Cat Litter to Save Your Doused Cellphone, describes how to use cat litter to absorb liquid from your cellphone. There are no assurances regarding the Mechanically Separated Turkey or Dough Conditioners (Calcium Sulfate, Guar Gum, Vegetable Mono and Diglycerides, L-Cysteine, Calcium Peroxide, Enzymes) found in that sandwich, but, well, good luck.

Of course, you might just decide to throw that phone away. There's a contest for that in Finland in August. If you win, you get a new phone.

---

^[1]"G. Defects or damage due to spills of or immersion in food or liquid;" from Return Policy - Verizon Wireless (PDF)

Dept. of vacation

The temperature is forecast be in the high 80s (32km² in metric) today, giving lots of people a chance to think about summer vacation. Of course, if you've been recently laid off, then you're most likely thinking about how not to have the summer off.
If you work at Netflix (in an office, not at a distribution center), as long as you get your work done, you can take as much vacation as you want.

For example, our vacation policy for salaried employees is "take some". There is no limit on vacation because all we care about is what you accomplish - not how. Similarly, our travel expense policy is "travel as you would on your own nickel." That's it. No soul-sapping policy manuals for us. In our first five years as public company, growing from $100m to over $1 billion in revenue, our commitment to freedom and responsibility has only grown. - from the Netflix jobs page.

"We want our employees to have great freedom - freedom to be brilliant or freedom to make mistakes," said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

It's long been known that Americans have far less paid vacation times than other industrialized countries.

Source: Finns get most vacation, Americans get least

And, because each company sets its own vacation policy, you get things such as this: The Strangest Vacation Policy I've Ever Seen.

Meanwhile, me? This:

Why journalists deserve low pay | csmonitor.com

Why journalists deserve low pay | csmonitor.com: "Journalists are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such as professors or electricians. Consequently, the primary economic value of journalism derives not from its own knowledge, but in distributing the knowledge of others."

OK, got it. The typical salary for a journalist is $33K/year, slightly below that of an assistant manager at a McDonald's restaurant.
Thomas Jefferson, of course, couldn't imagine the great benefit that a McDonald's Happy Meal could bring to our fledgling democracy when he remarked:

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:57

After all, we'ved learned that newspaper customer satisfaction is below cell phone companies, scoring 10 points lower than health insurance companies.

You can't get there from here.

Mass. Pike urging drivers to check new Web cams.
Nice, eh. Check your computer to see if there's a traffic muck-up at the Weston tolls as we saw back in April.
Well, if you're not a Windows user, your only way to see what's going on out on the Pike is to get in your car and drive there. The Pike's camera site requires Windows Media Player. If you are (as I am) running Linux (dunno about MacOS), you can't see the camera's images.
The Mass. Pike chose a proprietary format to display public information. 


There are some work-arounds, but they're not pretty. For example:

tom@tom:~$ winecfg
wine: creating configuration directory '/home/tom/.wine'...
fixme:midi:OSS_MidiInit Synthesizer supports MIDI in. Not yet supported.
wine: '/home/tom/.wine' created successfully.

Now select the Audio tab and set your audio driver, I use OSS and set Hardware Acceleration to "Emulation" If you want to run Wine in a virtual desktop now is a good time to select the Graphics tab and set the size of your preference.

At this time we also need to set quartz.dll and devenum.dll to "Native" this is done in the libraries tab, after you have done this select apply and then ok.

Now you will need to get a native windows quartz and devenum dll and place them in .wine/drive_c/windows/system32 and register the dlls with:

tom@tom:~$ regsvr32 "C:\windows\system32\quartz.dll"
fixme:midi:OSS_MidiInit Synthesizer supports MIDI in. Not yet supported.
Successfully registered DLL C:\windows\system32\quartz.dll
tom@tom:~$ regsvr32 "C:\windows\system32\devenum.dll"
fixme:midi:OSS_MidiInit Synthesizer supports MIDI in. Not yet supported.
Successfully registered DLL C:\windows\system32\devenum.dll
tom@tom:~$

Now we need to install some codecs for Windows Media Player ...

Source: Windows Media Player 9 & 10 on Linux with Wine
You can say that Linux makes things needlessly difficult and I won't argue too strenuously. Let's not forget, however, that the Mass. Pike chose a proprietary format for public information.

Less than a 1000 words

The info graphic on the front page story of today's Telegram, at first glance, looks useful. It's a color-coded map that shows the changes in municipal income from speeding tickets. On closer inspection, however, it's much less useful than a table of the same data:

I have friends and co-workers who are color-blind. Some have difficulty distinguishing just certain colors - red and green - for example. They know which traffic lights to obey by the position of the light, not the color. Other friends see no color at all, just shades of gray. Here's what the graphic might look like to them:

In addition, even for those with good color vision, you need to keep matching colors on the map with the key at the top of the graphic. It's wearying at best and error-prone at worst. Is, for example, Clinton's loss of revenue between 10-19% or 40-44%? The answer is in the text of the story.
If I had an extra 40 bucks, I'd donate a copy of Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information to the Telegram reference desk.

Happy Anniversary

Google text ads

I know that Google has made a gazillion dollars by placing small text ads next to various items in search, Google Mail, and other services. I'm not about to doubt their wisdom, but I'd love to understand the algorithm that leads them to place these ads next to an email promotion from Papa Gino's:

What is that, like, a bushel and a peck?

It's said that we in the U.S. use the English system of measure. Yet, here's a UK web site report:

250kg Russian drops healthy 2kg sprog • The Register: "A 34-year-old Russian woman who tips the scales at 39st 5lb (250kg) has 'surprised' doctors by dropping a perfectly healthy 4lb 6oz (2kg) baby boy, the Times reports."

BTW, here's a world map of countries that don't use the metric system:



Source: http://www.metric4us.com/

Death in America, 2009

1. "Mom, where's Pop-Pop?"
   "He's gone to Heaven, dear."
   "Is he with God?"
   "Even better, dear."
   Aggies Can Get To Heaven Via A&M Cemetery
   
   
   
   via If You Love Your Alma Mater to Death
   
2. 
   "Mom, where's Pop-Pop?"
   "I don't know, Dear?"
   "Isn't he in Heaven?"
   "I don't know, Dear. The cemetery couldn't pay its bills and now it's closed."
   
   
via FREAK Shots: Death and Foreclosure

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable

In his book Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them), Bart Erhman describes a technique called horizontal analysis. You take a number of sources, such as the synoptic Gospels, and compare how they describe the event - the Jesus' birth, the Passion of Christ, or Jesus' Baptism.
Erhman uses this technique in his New Testament 101 to show his students how the gospels differ in often significant and irreconcilable ways. It's an important methodology that shows how our understanding of the Christian message has been conflated, confused, and outright fabricated. Most folks who read the Bible find, in individual passages, words of hope and comfort. Taken as a whole, however, the Bible can be disorienting.
And, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, a similar reading of two popular and familar tales brings a similar dis-ease:

via Cycnical-C Blog to Unreasonable Faith