What Apple Should Have Launched Instead of the iPad (Or why Apple should beg for help from Kyocera)

The Kyocera 6035 with Stowaway Keyboard

Okay, fine, the iPad is neat. I’m not even going to bash it here. But, if Apple really wanted a killer device, it would have launched my idea — the iPhone power keyboard.

Lets face it, the two worst things about the iPhone are a) its “virtual keyboard” and b) its shitty battery life. If Apple could solve those problems, the iPhone might become a netbook killer.

I’m really not suggesting anything radical. Back in 2001, I had a Kyocera 6035 — one of the first smart phones. It ran on the Palm OS, was the size of a shoe, had a battery that would last for a week, and used the only input system worse than the Apple virtual keyboard — the stylus and shorthand stroke “graffiti” system. Accordingly, while the 6035 was awesome for its ability to keep me email connected, I found that I would usually just call the person back, or receive an email and then run to a computer to reply.

Ah… but enter the fold up keyboard.

Stowaway made a keyboard that folded in fourths, was about four inches square, and gave you a full QWERTY keyboard, with as much (if not better) tactile response as a modern Apple chiclet keyboard. Not only that, the device came with a little stand connector, so your 6035 stood up straight when you had the keyboard attached. For most trips, I just stopped carrying my laptop – as the 6035 and the stowaway did the job. Sure the phone was ridiculously large, the web browsing was primitive at best (but so were websites at the time), and the connection speed was super slow. But, I could look at my phone, check my email, and then if I had to do a long reply (or even draft a longer document), I could just open my briefcase, unfold the keyboard, pop the 6035 into the thing, and bust it out. The battery, as I said, lasted forever. But, you could also pop open the back and swap out the battery, so I always carried two batteries in my briefcase along with the keyboard.

In 2004, Kyocera came out with a color version of the 6035 – the 7135. This gave us a brighter (color) screen and an SD expansion card slot. Unfortunately, the battery life left a little to be desired, but since Kyocera kept the user-changeable battery thing, I just bought three batteries. I can’t remember ever needing to use the third, but I’m paranoid about loss of power. To round out the perfection, my Stowaway keyboard worked with it, once I paid $15 for an adapter cable.

I won’t even bother to bitch about the fact that Apple won’t let you change your own battery. That complaint clearly will never resonate at a tone that Apple can hear, and would require a complete redesign of the iPhone. But, what about the keyboard?

There has been plenty of bitching for a bluetooth keyboard. Ryan Faas says that Bluetooth keyboard support for the iPhone would be a “game changer.”

I call bullshit.

Why in the name of the FSM would anyone want a bluetooth keyboard for their iPhone? Yeah, that would be awesome. The iPhone already sucks more energy than a vampire girlfriend who hates her father and just ran out of prozac. Now these wide-rimmed glasses wearing 120 lb hipster idiots want to turn on the bluetooth in the iPhone, adding to its power suckage, and then also carry around another device with — you guessed it, more batteries?

Stupid.

What would be better? Go find Kyocera and Stowaway and ask them for help. Imagine a Stowaway keyboard, with a goddamned WIRE and a STAND (so the iPhone is FACING you when you type, not lying flat on the table. That would be cool enough, but imagine this…. since you’re carrying a keyboard anyhow, why not make the keyboard with a battery port.

Wait, didn’t I just complain about carrying more batteries?

Yeah, I did… but see in MY keyboard, the batteries would be there to CHARGE THE iPhone while you work! And, the thing might even come with a battery eliminator plug that would … wait for it… use a connector that you ALREADY HAVE, like the iPhone cable.

If we had that, I could probably get by without my laptop on at least 75% of my business trips. What would that mean? No more taking the laptop out of the carrying case for the TSAtards, elimination of another couple of pounds of stuff, maybe even eliminating the need to take an overhead bin on a plane!

And of course, while Apple is at it, maybe they could ask Kyocera how they managed to put an expansion card slot in the 7135.

Cuckoldry in nature

By J. DeVoy

Online “dating” catches on among newlyweds

By J. DeVoy

Via Roissy (I don’t care what he’s calling himself these days), Ashley Madison – the online dating service specializing in matching married men and married women – has had a membership explosion in the Toronto area.

Sexually frustrated and a little lonely, the 25-year-old started Googling “sex club” and “swingers club” before stumbling upon AshleyMadison.com, advertised as a “discreet dating service” for people in relationships. Like most Torontonians, Susan, who did not want her real name used, heard about it before.

Three months and more than a 1,000 profiles later, she sat at the bar at a Hooters restaurant with Michael, a 23-year-old with a 31-year-old wife. “He understood where I was coming from and we had the same expectations,” she says. After about two hours, they got a hotel room.

That was what she was really looking for.

First: A 23-year-old guy is married to a 31-year-old and boffing a 25-year-old.  Let that sink in for a moment, especially when considering that the normal dynamic of gender relations pairs younger women with older men.  But, the real story here is that women are signing up and actually using this online “dating” service.  Often, female profiles on online dating services are computer-generated, which normally is disclosed in the site’s privacy policy.  Famously, Match.com was sued for paying people to send e-mails and go on dates with members.  That doesn’t seem to be a problem with Ashley Madison.

According to Ashley Madison statistics, the number of Toronto-area female newlyweds on their site has skyrocketed in the past year. In March 2009, there were 3,184 women who had been married for three years or less actively using the service. A year later, there were 12,442.

Not bad, but not a guarantee that the users are attractive.  The secret to this success, according to the site’s CEO, is marketing.

Since he founded the service in 2001, it was clear to CEO Noel Biderman that attracting men would be easy. But he and his team thought their female clients would be desperate housewives or dedicated mistresses looking for “lifestyles and fun and sex and gifts.” They deliberately targeted women with everything from the name of the brand to the colour scheme of its advertising was designed to attract aspiring female cheaters.

They soon realized they had overlooked a robust and active demographic: “These were young women who, from their self-description … were only married a year or two and seemed to really be questioning the institution, their next step, entering into parenthood, staying with that partner,” Biderman says.

A skeptical eye may still be warranted.  As noted, there’s no representation as to the attractiveness of the site’s users.  There may also be the issue of user fatigue, where a large number of people register, don’t find what they’re looking for and never return, but don’t delete their accounts.  Statistics about users who have logged in within the last 30 days may be more informative than gross enrollment numbers.  Still, even if only slick public relations, the numbers bandied about in the article are impressive.

Explaining the college admissions gender gap

By J. DeVoy

Noted at Overlawyered, the University of Florida’s freshman class has 3 females for every 2 males.  Most men would like those odds, but then again most men are listless betas shut out of the “dating scene” (i.e. casual sex market), and cannot fathom using this gender ratio to access the top-shelf stuff.  When asked about this disparity, a spokesman had this to say:

 “Girls are being admitted because they are doing the things to be admitted and boys aren’t.” 

Though possibly true, blaming males is becoming passé.  From colonialism to being presumptive rapists – and, the more intelligent, the more effective the rapist – men get a bum rap.  When there’s dissension in the ranks, others blame men for being self-interested.  This is best evinced by the rise of the phrase “angry white men” across all media after 1992, shown by a cursory WestLaw search.

That women are now outperforming men in school is unsurprising, since many institutions of education have been modified to better serve them at the expense of males.  Everything from No Child Left Behind reporting to the SAT has been modified to ensure women’s results mirror men, allowing women to close the gap — or so it seems.  But, because the 2005 changes to the SAT merely removed questions men performed better on, women haven’t necessarily “gained” anything; what the test measures has been fundamentally changed in order to eliminate a gender gap.

Standardized tests are only a portion of the college admissions equation.  Letters of recommendation, GPA and class rank all factor into admissions decisions.  This is problematic for males when their teachers neither resemble nor identify with them, as a full 80% of public school teachers are now female.  While this shouldn’t matter, it does, as sound concepts such as ingroup bias explain why female teachers would give preferable treatment to female students, even if unintentionally.  Coupled with universally negative stereotypes of males as bumbling, incompetent and brutish, and it can become a daunting task for adolescent men to work closely with their female teachers, build relationships with them, and thrive in an alien environment.

The education experience itself may be stifling for male minds.  Biological and social differences make it hard for boys to sit still and behave as they are expected to, even from a young age, and punishments for failing to comply may be steep.  In the U.K., academics are realizing that the grind of coursework in lieu of more rigorous final exams is detrimental to males, leaving them feminized and demoralized upon leaving the education system.  Similarly, having to do work that men are unwilling and unaccustomed to doing has a deleterious effect on their grades, especially if such busy work like homework and a deluge of quizzes is significantly weighed in their final average.  This can also poison the well for letters of recommendation, as a perceived lack of effort or motivation and resulting low grades can sink a teacher’s ability to honestly recommend a student to his desired colleges.  American academics who’ve breached the subject have seen the same issues not just in schools, but throughout society, as male behavior merely is pathologized without being understood or channeled to more productive uses.

One does not need to be a seer to understand the uproar that would ensue if the above changes were made in reverse.  Taking away advantages from a politically unpopular group, males, seems to be quite acceptable, but is not a two-way street.  For instance, women wanted the inclusion of a provision ending gender-rating among insurers in the recent health care reform legislation, which which would spread the higher healthcare costs for women among the genders.  There is no such broad concern about gender-rating in auto insurance, though, which typically results in higher rates for men.

To reframe the debate: What good is accomplished by punishing men?  As of May 2009, 485 Fortune 500 and 972 Fortune 1000 companies were run by men, a sample size significant enough to show self-selection rather than systematic exclusion of women.  The latter, while possible within a particular company’s culture, seems unlikely to occur across 1,000 very large companies interested in having executives who resemble the markets they serve.  Another data point on this issue, the discrepancy between men and women in Nobel prizes, particularly in economics and sciences, is also illuminating.

Indeed, the regular distribution of all data points between men and women, from GRE scores to height, indicates a higher peak for women and fatter tails for men.  While more women are average and above-average then men, there’s more variance among men, both good and bad.  On the positive side, it leads to significant developments from men like Einstein, Kerouac, Newton, Bohr, Dawkins and Stephen Schwarzman.  The downside to increased variability is the higher incidence of negative pathologies among men; women are not leading the charge to ensure equal representation on death row, where they are 1% of the population.

Applause for Spirit Airlines for charging for carry on bags

Spirit Airlines is taking a lot of heat for its latest move — charging for carry on bags. I will not add to that heat. In fact, I applaud them.

It is moronic to charge for checked bags while allowing passengers to bring on free carry on bags. Think about what you want from a flight, and what kind of behavior that you incentivize by giving free overhead bin space. Have you ever sat on the tarmac, waiting for a plane to take off because some stupid prole can’t figure out how to cram a 75 pound floral-print full sized suitcase into a carry on bin? Meanwhile some other jackass is trying to stuff a cardboard box full of god-knows-what tied together by string into his overhead bin. Meanwhile, the entire boarding procedure grinds to a halt because these cheapskate proles wouldn’t pay $20 to check their goddamned bags.

Carry on bags, being dragged down the aisles, crammed into overhead compartments, (usually by weaklings who packed too much shit) delay the boarding process – which adds to travel time for everyone and which makes the airline’s route less profitable. To make matters worse, old people and poor people move slower than regular people. Of course, these are also two kinds of people who are likely to want to avoid paying checked bag fees. So, you have the slowest and most annoying travelers incentivized to do something that will slow the entire process down (and increase costs) for everyone.

On the other hand, checked bags can be controlled by the airline. Although the handlers may beat the shit out of your bags, they at least place them in the airplane in an efficient and orderly fashion. The plane takes off on time.

Now, lets think about how charging for carry ons will change the flight experience. In fact, we don’t need to speculate. Ryan Air in Europe doesn’t charge for carry ons, but it does have overhead bins that are barely big enough for a lunch box. You need to check everything on Ryan Air, and thus Ryan Air flights board and discharge passengers with lightning speed efficiency. That means more flights per day, that means flights are on time more often, that means that you don’t have some slovenly fuck trying to cram a wildebeest into an overhead bin in row 12, while all the rest of the passengers stand on the jetway waiting for that one jackass to get out of the way.

That is behavior we want to discourage, but charging for checked bags has done just the opposite. Boarding times are now longer, and flights are delayed taking off more often, and overhead bin space is about as precious as unobtanium.

If all airlines charged more for bin space than for checked bag space, it would make flying just a little bit more pleasant.

Wisconsin DA threatens charges over sex education

By J. DeVoy

The District Attorney for Juneau County, Wisconsin, has threatened to bring charges against teachers who inform students of reproductive options other than abstinence.  Scott Southworth – whom you can contact here – wrote a letter to Juneau County’s teachers, warning them of the consequences for following a law requiring them to discuss condoms and contraceptives.

“If a teacher instructs any student aged 16 or younger how to utilize contraceptives under circumstances where the teacher knows the child is engaging in sexual activity with another child – or even where the ‘natural and probable consequences’ of the teacher’s instruction is to cause that child to engage in sexual intercourse with a child – that teacher can be charged under this statute [of contributing to the delinquency of a minor]“

In the Journal-Sentinel’s piece on this, Southworth offered some unsurprising tidbits about himself.

“If I’d wanted to be ideological, I would have said in the letter you shouldn’t have sex before marriage because that’s the Christian perspective. I’m an evangelical,” Southworth said.

While perhaps not ideological, the way some people want to push all forms of sexual education other than abstinence out of the classroom certainly is partisan.  Liberals and moderates doubt the causal link that Southworth and his ilk see in presenting information about condoms and increased fornication.  In fact, his position is pretty dumb, as abstinence-only education has coincided with increased teen pregnancy for as long as such data is available.

Normally, someone threatening to prosecute teachers would have me doing a happy dance.  Education majors have lower GRE scores than their peers; from what I see on facebook among those my age, they also seem more prone to simplistic thinking.  In this case, however, the First Amendment is at stake, especially as it applies to something as important as sex education.  Here, Wisconsin has enacted a responsible law that requires sex education to include information about condoms and other contraceptives.  Not only is it unfair to put teachers in a double bind like this – required by the legislature to do one thing, and potentially punished by the executive if they do – it impedes their ability to be honest with students about protecting themselves.  While threatening to prosecute teachers for voluntary speech is intolerable, doing so for statutorily compelled speech is unconscionable.

Finally, it’s hard to believe sex education is so contentious of an issue.  Normally, it’s a brief film and 30 minute presentation that’s never spoken again.  My Catholic elementary school taught us about condoms in the fifth grade; no parents complained, and we’re all miraculously alive today.  Also, who is having so much sex in high school that makes condoms and contraceptives such a heated issue?  It surely wasn’t me or any of my friends, but thumbs up to anyone who was pulling it off, especially in our all-male high school.  The real issue is our sexualized society, where sex isn’t just in porn, but wedged inartfully into most advertisements and the bourgeois mainstream “culture” peddled by ABC, NBC, CBS, MTV and Fox.  Even if mainstream culture’s debasement is undesirable, and many elements of it are, taking a puritanical stance in response to it is counterproductive.

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Naughty Teenagers

by Charles Platt

Since “protecting our children” became a reliable mantra for DAs seeking re-election at some time during the Reagan administration, the horrors of statutory rape and child pornography have justified countless legislative excesses. Unfortunately such laws conflict with the inconvenient biological fact that most young people become capable of reproducing around the ages of 12 or 13.

Age-of-consent laws used to recognize this. (In the text below I am talking primarily about teenagers having sex with each other and taking pictures of each other, not adults taking advantage of children, which is, or should be, an entirely separate issue.) Here’s a site that tabulates international laws on the subject. In Chile, for instance, the age of consent still appears to be 12. Many other nations used to share this permissive attitude until the US and the UN leaned on them to shape up.

Even in the United States, the situation is confusing. Suppose a 17-year-old girl starts giving oral sex to her 17-year-old boyfriend while he drives their car west across Texas (not a safe practice, but, it happens). As they cross the state line into Arizona, they magically turn into sex offenders.

During my lifetime, liberties for young people have been progressively eroded. To see how extreme the transition has been, just take a look at the movie of Woodstock. Two explanations come to mind. From a sociobiological perspective, adults benefit by delaying the reproductive activities of young people for as long as possible. From a political perspective, those under 18 cannot vote, so legislators can trash their rights without reducing their chances of re-election.

Adult backlash against teenage sexuality has been far worse in the United States than in some other countries. The Japanese, for instance, see nothing wrong with cute 15-year-old pop stars in tight sweaters and micro-skirts, flaunting themselves as sex objects. The notorious Saaya Irie, who started modeling lingerie when she was 11, is pictured here at the advanced age of 16. She has appeared in several movies and is promoting herself as a serious actress.

Since this seems to be an area of fear, denial, and repression, I suppose it’s inevitable that laws relating to it should be a mess. This, however, does not excuse their existence. I tend to think that if we really want to stop teenagers from fornicating (and taking salacious pictures of each other), parental guidance is a far more benign remedy than arrest, conviction, jail, and subsequent stigma as a sex offender.

A funderemployment primer

By J. DeVoy

Metalocalypse is one of my favorite shows* for many reasons, among them being its extreme social commentary.  The music video, while graphic, invokes themes that have been addressed in mainstream offerings like Office Space and The Office, such as the futility of working jobs we hate and the soul-killing duplicity that corporate advancement entails.

In light of this message and increasing internet chatter about “going Galt” due to inevitable tax increases, many are questioning whether the rat race of an aggressively upward mobile career is for them.  For recent college and law school graduates, opportunities to work tirelessly and acquire new skills are hard to find.  Technically, any new attorney can open a practice upon being barred, but he or she will lack all but the most basic skills to handle legal work, assuming the fresh attorney can find clients.  Having bounced my plans and rough business model off of others in recent weeks, many are beyond scared – and clueless – about how to begin their futures.

Thus, keeping with the Galt meme, one option is to turn subsistence-level underemployment into Funderemployment.  While not only ensuring that others will not receive the benefit of individual labor, Funderemployment entails choosing a path that maximizes personal enjoyment, however bohemian and novelty-seeking  its nature.  Though the official measure of underemployment, U6, is at 17%, some sources predict it is significantly higher; that number may be even worse for recent graduates in all fields except Pharmacy, Dentistry and Medicine (excepting those Caribbean med “schools”).  With the options for all but subsistence living almost gone, it seems like embracing this fate and channeling it toward something fulfilling is logical.

Just as Lathamed associates masked the career setback of losing their jobs with lengthy, sometimes lavish vacations last year, recent grads can find other means of modest living while maintaining or starting some form of law practice.  Although malpractice insurance will protect new attorneys in the state where they practice, a significant amount of legal work may be handled remotely.  With the advent of technologies like Magic Jack and Skype, even client communication can even when separated by entire continents.  Thanks to PACER, litigation in federal courts can be done almost entirely over the internet.  And, because of the ubiquity of cheap WiFi, research and drafting can be done from the patio of a café in the country of your choice.

In the meantime, new esquires can follow their true passions.  When not busy with legal affairs, they can make paintings or other artwork for sale in galleries or on sites like Etsy.  Contract writing gigs may be available to others.  Teaching english, a foreign language, or tutoring for the LSAT or SAT, which may be comparable to another language for some, are also options.  On good authority, roadies can make money that previously rivaled the pre-tax takings of BIGLAW associates, and may again be competitive as salaries drop at large law firms.  Or, there’s always the option of slumming it in Norway, joining a black metal band that plays two nights a week, and earning just enough to get by while tending to your legal practice by day.

In this economy, unemployment and underemployment at graduation is not the kiss of death it was in 2007.  Among Millennials, there’s much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the need for a student loan bailout.  Dear Leader will have to confront these pleas eventually, or indirectly quell them with Weimar-style hyperinflation.  In light of these circumstances, there has never been a better time for people to do what they truly desire.  If they work hard enough, get noticed and are a little bit lucky, their opportunity to work like dogs will come, and they will relish every moment of it.  Until then, though, there is enjoyment to be had – and money to be made -  in pursuing one’s bliss.

(* One of Metalocalypse’s main characters, rhythm guitarist Toki Wartooth, is my GChat avatar.)

Law School Relegation

by Christopher Harbin

European Soccer Leagues have a concept called relegation.  Teams that are in the bottom of the standings get punted down to the second-class league for the entire next season.  Similarly, top performers in the second-league get promoted to the top-flight league.  Imagine if the loathsome Yankees royally sucked one season and had to spend their next season in Triple-A (or should it be AAA?  Class-AAA?) facing off against the Durham Bulls and Toledo Mud Hens.

Law school already has a system of promotion by allowing top performing law students to transfer “up” after their first year.  But what we really need is relegation.  Perhaps punting the bottom 5% of each class down a tier might actually motivate students to come to class prepared and get the hell off Chatroulette (really!) while in class.  You might see a more dedicated effort from law students to do the work over the bulk of the semester rather than buy a supplement and a commercial outline during the reading period.  What if — *gasp* — fundamental skills classes counted in your relegation determination?

And because law students are so elitist, relegation would be a better motivator than kicking them out of law school entirely.  For most of them, getting kicked out of Columbia is at least more respectable than graduating from Hoftra.

At the very least, relegation would produce a bunch of lulz.  Most law students are already neurotics chasing As.  Relegation would spread this hysteria even further as the slack asses could never be quite sure they’d get saved by the curve.   Crazy mind games and page-ripping would no longer be the exclusive providence of the gunners.  Let a whole new era of insanity wash over law school!  Demand relegation today!

Seizures (not the epileptic kind)

by Charles Platt

I have no formal legal training, but emigrated from the UK to the US partly because I liked the First Amendment. The wisdom of my decision was affirmed when an erotic novel that I had written in 1969 was seized, in Britain, by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the publisher was jailed for three months. That kind of thing tends to stick in one’s memory. Subsequently, I wrote a nonfiction book titled Anarchy Online, examining and defending every type of internet freedom. These days, I am more interested in writing educational material for young people, such as a recent introductory book on electronics.

So that’s who I am. In my first post I want to talk about asset forfeiture, which has little to do with the core issue of free speech, but which I feel is a growing threat to my general sense of personal liberty.

A couple of weeks ago, where I live in Arizona, my neighbor’s car was seized and towed after a random stop and blood-alcohol test. He tested below the legal limit, but they towed the car anyway, on the principle that any trace at all is evidence of possible impairment. Ultimately he was not charged with anything, but he had to find a ride home (15 miles) in the middle of the night, and had to retrieve the car and pay the towing costs the next day. He is a polite, well-spoken, white-haired retiree.

Here’s another sample. An Arizona resident was unaware that his license had been suspended as a result of procedural errors involving a speeding ticket in another state. When Arizona police discovered his suspended status during a traffic stop, they ignored his protestations and attempts to demonstrate his innocence, took away his truck, and abandoned him on foot in a not-so-good neighborhood. Subsequently he had difficulty retrieving his vehicle.

Cases like these are the reason I no longer drink anything at all if I’m going to drive, and log on to the Arizona DMV web site every few months to check the status of my own license. In other words, I now feel impelled to make sure that the police will have no ready excuse to take my property. This doesn’t quite seem consistent with the Fourth Amendment.

Of course, if drugs are involved, it’s much worse. I live close to Interstate 40, which is supposedly a major drug-running corridor. According to our local newspaper, when a drug-sniffing dog indicated narcotic residues in a car that had been pulled over, a search revealed that the driver was carrying about $100,000 in cash. This of course is a “suspicious sum,” so the police seized it. No drugs were actually found, so the driver was allowed to continue on his way, with no charges against him. Meanwhile, Arizona law, his money was retained by the police department, and if he wants it back, he’ll have to prove that he earned it legally.

Your state may be less corrupt than mine, regarding forfeiture–or may be worse. The Institute for Justice has issued a comparative survey titled “Policing for Profit,” which you can download here.

My First Earthquake

I guess there have been other earthquakes since I’ve been out west, but I never really noticed them. Today was a little different. My chair started bouncing up and down, and I thought that the dog was jumping on the back of the chair. Then I noticed that the windows were waving in and out, everything on the shelves was shaking, and there was a really strange noise outside. Funny enough, I had just finished watching 2012 about 15 minutes earlier.

I am sure that seasoned Californians laughed this one off. But, I ran to grab Jennifer from the shower, and made her hold on underneath the doorway. Then ran into the baby’s room, grabbed her and ran outside. By the time I got all that over with, the earthquake was over. Car alarms were going off, but there was no real disruption to anything. At the epicenter in north east Baja, it was a 6.9 7.2, which is a pretty strong quake. By the time the shock waves got here, it was only about a 4 on the Richter scale.

Today's earthquake intensity map

Sexting Story on Nightline

A high school kid forwarded nude photos of his 16 year old girlfriend to some friends. For that, a dipshit prosecutor decided that Philip Alpert needed to be charged with 72 sex crimes, and that he should be on the registered sex offender list. Here is his story. The prosecutor is quoted as saying that he had no other option. Of course he did… he exercised his discretion not to prosecute the 16 year old girl, but decided that his ego couldn’t survive letting Philip get away without being charged.

My former partner, and good friend, Larry Walters is Philip’s attorney and is interviewed in the story. The prosecutor doesn’t show his face.

And this is who Jesus allegedly died for?!

By J. DeVoy

A Florida man recently pled no contest to five misdemeanor theft counts arising from his theft of food from various restaurants and stores.  Though spared jail time, the court required the defendant, George Jolicoeur, to pay court costs and restitution.  This conduct was hardly new for Jolicoeur, who had been grifting free food from businesses for years.

A Seminole County Sheriff’s Officer report details an August 2007 incident in which Jolicoeur attempted a refund scam at a 7-Eleven. Jolicoeur, described as having “labored breathing, similar to wheezing,” claimed to have purchased $50 worth of beef jerky that turned out to be moldy. When Seminole cop Jeff Sabounji went to Jolicoeur’s home to arrest him, the officer reported hearing “what sounded like a male trying to cover his voice as a female. The person said that Jolicoeur was not here.” At that point, Sabounji noted, “I could hear a female inside of the residence stating, ‘George, just turn yourself in.’”

You can’t write comedy like this.  They’ve tried, and it sucked.  But wait; there’s more!

As he was later being transported to jail, Jolicoeur explained to Sabounji, “the beef jerky got me.”

Words can’t describe.  Since he was being taken to jail, Jolicoeur presumably had been Mirandized at some point.  Yet, he attributes all his problems to the beef jerky, as if it – an inanimate object – had laid quietly in wait before striking, ruining his life for mere laughs.

Jolicoeur was busted again two months later for swindling $50 from a different 7-Eleven store. Masquerading as a fireman, Jolicoeur pretended to have been sold 10 “damaged” containers of Breyers ice cream, according to an Oviedo Police Department report. Not surprisingly, he claimed to have purchased 10 gallons of the frozen confection.

George Jolicoeur: A man of a million identities.  Sometimes a woman, sometimes a fireman, but always hungry.  I wonder whether his female persona devised the theft as a precursor to a marathon of Sex and the City or Twin Peaks.

Even considering that this happened in Florida, such theft is not the conduct of rational, normal people.  But, it might just be the province of 600-pound men who breathe with the aid of a respirator.

To be fair, Jolicoeur’s activities were pretty enterprising for someone in his condition.  His claim of being a firefighter is a bit incredible, but at least he’s trying.  The classical moral dilemma in such situations where a man and his family must eat revolves around bread, though, and not ice cream or beef jerky.

For non-Christians and those who have never seen the film Seven, the seven deadly sins are lust, gluttony, pride, greed, sloth, wrath and envy.  While not satisfying a majority of the seven in this case, Jolicoeur and others of his ilk – they need not be named, as we all know a George Jolicoeur – should make us question whether humanity is really worth saving, whether through healthcare, science or any other human effort.  For those who believe, one should really question if Jesus would have died for us if he knew this is how we’d repay him.

No One Has The Right To Live Without Being Shocked

Of course, don’t let any of the academic circle-jerk (The U.S. legal academy) hear you say that.

H/T: Marc D.