Tragically, Patrick Lee died last Saturday after having taken a bunch of drugs and winding up in an altercation with the police. Unfortunately the family and a few friends are acting "a-fool" and apparently trying to claim this is a case of police brutality, regardless that the responding officers demonstrated remarkable restraint in their attempts to restrain a guy who was basically running around a parking lot naked.

I've gotten more than a little irritated about this, since under normal circumstances a Taser is a really safe thing to be using (as opposed to batons and bullets), and taking them off the streets is just going to get more people hurt that could probably have been brought under control with a taser. Therefore I have summarized events and countered some of the deliberate misinformation in hopes that this information is going to make it's way into the proper hands and hopefully put some minds to rest.

Regardless of whether he was relatively irresponsible, he will be missed.

The death of Patrick Lee was an accident

The title pretty much says it all. I'm only about halfway through it at the moment, but I don't want to be so full of giggles when I'm done that I forget to pass the URL along.

Read it, email it to co-workers and family. Even meter-maids and politicians should be able to understand the messages carefully contained therein.

It is Clue.

(for those of you who have replied so far, go re-read the final paragraph in the memed article)

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

"Somebody asked George H.W. Bush Monday about the criticism of his son's handling of Hurricane Katrina, and the former president said that the critics ought to tell it to his wife -- and that they ought to don a flak jacket before trying. But this morning, it's Barbara Bush herself who might want to think about some protective clothing, at least metaphorically speaking.

The former first lady toured the Astrodome Monday, and along the way she opined that many of the refugees from New Orleans were so poor to begin with that they ought to be pretty happy with their temporary digs in Houston. "What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in comments first aired on the public radio program "Marketplace" and reprinted by Editor & Publisher. "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

In the midst of that last line, you can hear the former first lady chuckling."

There just aren't words, really, to say how tactless that was.

Barbara Bush on those lucky refugees

HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

This weather report was put out about 20 hours before Katrina hit land. Ted Koppel says his team thought it was a hoax and tried to get it confirmed.

Wow. Some people need to be seriously damned for not having begun acting upon this kind of report.

August 28 2005 10:11 AM CDT NOAA Bulletin - Wikisource

I really think Twisp and Catsby need to be animated flash vignettes.

That's all.

Twisp & Catsby need to be flash

I wish there were a way to link to specific updates on Ill Will Press's site, but alas, there are none.

In any case, if you follow the above link, and then click on the Hurricane Karina update smack in the middle of the page, it'll take you to what I'm talking about.

Foamy the Squirrel is a character in a animated serial comic run on Ill Will Press whose antics primarily seem to focus around expressing distaste for the illogical way most humans go through life. He is basically what you get if you take an Angry Young Man, compress him down to squirrel size and put him in a grey fur suit, and then give him lots of caffiene. It's priceless stuff, really. :)

Foamy the Squirrel vs. New Orleans Government

OKay, my head is still spinning a little from this and I think I'm really going to have to go back and read Flatland (http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/flatland/) again to really be able to wrap my mind around (heh) it, but I suspect that while it may have been wild speculation that allowed them to reach these conclusions, that they may be exactly right.

It really explains a great deal about subatomic particle behaviours.

Dark matter highlights extra dimensions

New York — It began, fittingly enough, with jazz from New Orleans natives Harry Connick Jr. and Wynton Marsalis.

But "A Concert for Hurricane Relief," a heartfelt and dignified benefit aired on NBC and other networks Friday night, took an unexpected turn thanks to the outspoken rapper Kanye West. Appearing two-thirds through the program, he claimed "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and said America is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."

Frankly, I'm very impressed that he had the balls to speak out like this. Corporate America doesn't like it when people deviate from scripts, but basically West was only a little bit off the mark. His main statement was that "Bush doesn't care about black people", but it's really got nothing to do with whether the people who are dying in New Orleans are black or not. What matters (or rather, doesn't matter) is that the vast majority of the people still trapped in New Orleans are very, very poor. Which means that, demographically speaking, they don't vote, they don't put money in lobbyists pockets, they don't hold any kind of political power, and their ability to promote political campaigns is limited--so there's very little chance these people are going to be able to impact Bush in any possible way. The political machine has learned that almost any sort of mismanagement can be covered up in just a few months of campaigning and careful spin-doctoring, and at worst, power will simply shift from one faction to the other for a presidential term or two.

In short, it's not that they're black, it's that they're poor. There's plenty of white (and asian and so on) people down there that Bush cares just as little about.

So long as poor people are busy trying to blame each other (blacks versus whites and vice-versa) they're never going to get around to seeing that their real enemy, the people who really are responsible for generation after generation of poverty and ignorance, are Bush and people just like him, who only care about the poor when it comes time to get them to watch the television so they can be told which faction of rich people have the best interests of "America" in mind. They make their rafts of empty promises and smile and shake hands just long enough to keep their power, and then they go back to their ranches and condos and gated communities and have as little as possible to do with the poor until it comes time for the next round of lies and deception.

If West were paying attention, he'd have figured this out by now. Hopefully he will soon because America needs more people to wise up to what's going on.

Kanye West *almost* gets it--Bush doesn't care about poor people

First there came Karina.

Now there's looting, fires, no electricity, homeless ants outnumbering people about a thousand to one, poisonous snakes, and flood-demolished homes with markers meaning "Body In Attic", lack of food, and a general untidyness about the place. The news vultures have never had a more nutritious diet of human misery to gorge themselves on.

They're pretty busy down there. At this point I think that if any of them survive the next few weeks without having to resort to cannibalism, I doubt there will ever be any problems getting people to evacuate New Orleans again.

Assuming they actually manage to rebuild New Orleans, that is.

New Orleans Decends Into Barbarism

First off, these guys are at least 98% work-safe. You'll have plenty of warning before you hit a comic that isn't.

What the webcomic definitely is, is easy on the eyes. 3D art tools are 4 teh win!

Bot and Cam (3D webcomic!)