Don’t get me wrong, the guy probably should be locked up, but what’s the crime here?

A Thousand Oaks man was arrested this week on suspicion of paying a teenager $31 to spit in his face, authorities said.

The 39-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of annoying a child, a misdemeanor, about 7:10 p.m. Wednesday at the Promenade at Westlake in Thousand Oaks, police said Thursday. The man had been paying male students at Westlake High School to yell profanities at him and slap and spit at him in his face, according to Thousand Oaks police.

Several teens also alleged that the man offered to pay them to urinate and defecate on him, police said.

If I want to pay someone to spit on me, how is that illegal?  Weird – Yes.  Disturbing – Yes.  Wrong – Yes.  But illegal?

And why $31?

I’m so confused.

Holiday travel recommendations…

I caught a show on the National Geographic Channel last night about a sunken Australian Submarine from WWI.

They sent divers down to check it out.  I was trying to fall asleep at the time, but the voices in the show caught my attention.  Because they sounded like they were on helium.

They were.

It turns out that in certain conditions divers mix helium with their oxygen to avoid the affects of “nitrogen narcosis.”  The positive effect: no “nitrogen narcosis,” which sounds rather uncomfortable.  The downside: communication gets a little tough when everyone sounds like chipmunks.

For a brief history of mixed gas diving, head here.

I noticed a rather odd government website the other day, which led me to wonder exactly how many government websites there were out there.  I don’t know if there is a way to count, but it’s a lot.

And since we know that government is oh-so-frugal when it comes to websites, whether it’s the $75,000 tap water site in Minneapolis, or the $9.5/$18.5/$38 million recovery.gov site, just imagine how much of your money powers this government mess.

We can start with sites that act as directories to other sites.  Of course, you have a choice, because nobody wants just one index:

• USA.gov – Which lists other sites by topic.
• Fedworld.gov – Which… also lists other sites.  But this one has been around since 1992.
• If it’s science info you’re looking for, head over to science.gov.
• But if you just want to search, try USASearch.gov.
• And don’t forget egov.gov, which is mostly about the e-government initiatives.

USA.gov, which used to be firstgov.gov, has won many awards.  They won the Federal 100 by Federal Computer Week, and they also won an excellence.gov award.  And let’s not forget being named Entertainment Weekly’s site of the day for January 1, 2009.  (The reason: The federal domain of New Year’s Resolutions, obviously.)

Of course, some of these sites are so big, you find yourself yearning for smaller, boutique sites.

Want to know about the flu?  Flu.gov.  Hydrogen?  Hydrogen.gov Sadly, there is no helium.gov.

But there is a GlobalChange.gov, which is different than change.gov, the online home of the non-existent Office of the President-Elect.

Also, govgab.gov, a blog!!!!  How hip!

The one good thing about all these websites is that you find out about all sorts of federal bureaucracies that you never knew existed.  For instance:

• The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ahcp.gov)
• The African Development Foundation (adf.gov)
• The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (ahrq.gov)
• The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (ttb.gov) – Part of the Treasury, totally separate from the ATF.
• The American Battle Monuments Commission (abmc.gov)
• The Architect of the Capitol (aoc.gov) – Currently being revamped!
• The Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (access-board.gov)
• The Arctic Research Commission (arctic.gov)
• The Armed Forces Retirement Home (afrh.gov)

Whew.  And that’s just the A’s.

“It’s insanity,” said Jim Stergios, executive director of the nonpartisan Pioneer Institute. “They’re less concerned about promoting the interest of individual members than maintaining control over their members.”

“(The union) is standing in the way of innovation,” school Superintendent Carol R. Johnson told the Herald. “I think we have to realize we can’t do business as usual. . . . We have to be willing to make changes and give kids the opportunities they need.”

Following the lead of Canada?

Gore wanted to privatize the air-traffic control system during the Clinton years, which would have had the US following Canada’s lead — yes, Canada — in relying on the private sector to maintain air-traffic control.  Such a system would have encouraged technological innovation as well as expansion of resources to meet demand.  Instead, Congress refused to relinquish control, backed by the air-traffic controllers union that feared privatization:

Hot Air has a video by Reason TV that explains the whole thing.  Worth a watch if you can spare 7 minutes or so on a topic so riveting.  If not, just remember the key phrases union and government corruption.

But as a bona fide IBM hater, I liked this part of the story:

Interestingly, I had a connection to the 1980s attempt to modernize the towers while working at Hughes Aircraft.  Hughes had a modern, working system that it submitted to the FAA, while its chief competitor, IBM, submitted a mock-up system that had never been built.  The story is too long and complicated to retell here (it might have made a good book at the time on government procurement abuse), but in the end, the FAA chose IBM’s vaporware.  Hughes sold its system to South Korea and Canada, while IBM eventually failed to produce its system altogether.

IBM selling someone on a system that doesn’t exist?  I find that… actually that’s about right.  Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of using Web Sphere or Lotus Notes knows the “that will be fixed in the next release” game.

Now, go replicate your domino database so you can get the email from IT notifying you of the latest delay in the new intranet rolling out.  And then thank God that the same technology isn’t powering ATC.

I can see it now – “Sir, we’re about to hit another plane!”  “Looks like ATC forgot to replicate again…”

According to FBI crime statistics, there were 1,547 violent crimes committed in the state last year, and 31 of them were murders. That’s 117 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, or 2.4 murders per 100,000 and random crime is virtually non-existent. Of the 2008 murders, 12 were committed with a firearm. (pdf link). Maine is the sort of state where many people leave their cars and homes unlocked without fear. It’s hard for groups like the Brady Campaign to make the argument that the state needs new firearms laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals when there are so few criminals. The gun control advocates, however, aren’t ones to allow facts to get in the way of their agenda: