This latest foot was a hoax:

"Remains found in a shoe near Campbell River, B.C., Wednesday are not human, the B.C. Coroners Service said Thursday.

"The BCCS, along with a forensic pathologist and an anthropologist, examined the remains and determined that an animal-paw skeleton had been inserted into the shoe with a sock and packed with dried seaweed, according to a press release."

http://tinyurl.com/6bc2mn

Should the boing boing post be updated?

I agree with #5 and #15... the scariest part of this whole post is the misleading and propagandist title.

1) It wasn't the Feds.

2) Nobody was "run to ground".

In fact, if you read the original post, the guy seemed OK with the whole thing, "Everything was fine after I explained why I was taking pictures and I guess it makes me feel a little better to know that someone is watching the people who are watching our infrastructure."

As someone pointed out in a post about the photographer being chased at the oil refinery... how does this fit in with the "directory of wonderful things"?

The wonder here is that the Spokane County and Washington State government employees are actually doing something. They both seem to earning their tax dollars.

You're also assuming that he was confronted because of "terrorist fear induced mania". Was there anything in the original blog post that mentioned 9-11 or the Patriot Act?

@7 -- We are just talking about solitaire, aren't we? Is there some sort of civil liberty angle I'm missing here?

@3 -- I guess I should state that I'm Canadian. I've always assumed that Solitaire was the same as in the US and UK.

@3... What do Americans call the game we Brits know as Solitare?

Solitaire.

Is there another game you'd care to shed light upon?

#23:

"Chip pan fires are responsible for 25% of fire related injury in the UK"

http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/8/4/328

I'm certainly not saying that these people were all stoned... just that being stoned (I used to be a heavy pot smoker) can make it so that you're not paying very close attention and you tend to do stupid things.

Of course it's a matter of context, as you said. And of course it's much more stupid to get stoned when in combat.

In general people who do stupid things (like spend their afternoons arguing on boingboing... like me), do them more frequently when stoned.

Before all the anti-QSD posters come out of the woods (i.e., Takuan) -- don't sweat it. I'm not that attached to my opinion on this one. After all, I used to get baked at every available moment.

Mellowknees: Google translates it as "the rabbit mills".

My thinking is that the person writing the sign meant to write "FRESH" but messed up on the "H" (angling in the side strokes.)

If I recall from a few posts back, "It's only a plant."

Why is it OK for Mom & Dad to do child care while stoned, but it's not OK to shoot at your enemies? (OK -- That's a bit far fetched, and I don't even agree with my logic!)

But still, boingboingers were all is support of pot smoking and telling kids that there's nothing wrong with it... but now we're talking about soldiers.

It's true that a man with a gun shoudn't be stoned... but neither should a mom with a frying pan on the stove making breakfast for little Timmy.

"Jail... It's just a building"

"patently dishonest" sounds like a good candidate for disemvowelling.

And, actually... we're not really "on speaking terms" with each other. That's the great thing about forums such as this. People who apparently have no respect for each other can carry on some sort of dialog.

Re #74, #75: Takuan, it would seem that your arguments are based on a few premises:

1) Americans (and I assume Canadians and British) are only motivated by money, and the only reason for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was the money. It wouldn't matter how many civilians were killed in the process... it's all about money.

2) Iraq and Afghanistan were wonderful places to be before the Westerners came along. Love was in the air, and the Taliban and Saddam were OK dudes.

3) Al-queda in Iraq (those who seem the most active in bombing markets, etc.) are not really to blame when they kill 40 or 50 women & children a day... it's our fault.

If that's your opinion (and in the US, Canada, and Britain you can express such opinions without being jailed), that's OK. If that's the case, there's really no point continuing this thread. Let's pick it up again the next time we have a post about: Iraq, Israel, G.W. Bush, or the military.

Have a lovely day!

Antinous -- Sorry for harping on your #45 & #49 posts. They were not obviously aimed at my comments, and I had no right sniping at you for them.

Teresa: I'd also like to say thank you for the disemvowelling. Some of my comments were entirely lacking in merit and were obviously personal attacks. I'll keep that in mind.

Teresa -- Thank you for clarifying Antinous' posts.

...side of rationality... (I should have done a Preview.)

Howtoplayalone & Deviant -- Thank you for joining in on the site of rationality.

Sister Y (#51): I agree 100%. Thank you for stating it so well.

Prairie Dog (#50): Careful! According to the trend on this thread, any moment now y'r gng t b lbld fscst nd bby kllr.

Takuan -- Based on posting #48 ("QSD's proudest moment"), I would say you've got some issues to deal with. At no point in my postings did I say that I condoned any sort of torture or mutilation.

Antinous -- I really don't know what you're talking about, or if you're just hanging around looking for things to natter about. "Are we getting back to you being the unpopular one again?" "Oh, you're on a mission. I think I'll head out to the pool while you complete it."

Marja -- "I see nothing that suggests that Takuan believes that all American and Canadian soldiers are "bloodthirsty maniacs." ... Actually, that seems to be precisely what Takuan is saying. Shall we ask Takuan?

In response to "I see plenty of evidence that some American and Canadian soldiers kill civilians; we know it happens in war and occupation, and it seems that you're in denial." I'm not in denial -- I agree that some do. But we as a moral civilization rightly condemn them. That's the difference between our soldiers and terrorists.

Takuan -- Shall I go through the same effort and dig up press releases about military people doing some good in this world? It's not needed. You'll never be able to absorb the fact that American and/or Canadian soldiers aren't all bloodthirsty maniacs.

I'm sorry you're so deeply and personally offended. I've obviously pissed you off.

Oh well. Sue me.

Takuan -- Contradicting yourself aren't you?

disbandment of a Canadian airborne unit for torture and murder of a civilian youth

Apparently it's not acceptable behaviour.

Takuan -- Actually Canadian soldiers are trained to drink beer and play hockey. Oops! That would be a stereotype.

Seriously, though: If a Canadian military commander orders his soldiers to intentionally kill civilians, he ends up in jail.

Srry f y'r s dldd t nt s tht.

SAM: Now that would be a different story if it showed a U.S. soldier suicide bombing a Russian market.

[sacasm]The U.S. soldier would be acting evil because America is a nation of rich, imperialist, capitalists! When a jihadi does so, he/she is a freedom fighter![/sarcasm]

Takuan & Antinous -- Perhaps let me re-phrase: When an American (or Canadian... I am one, after all) soldier accidentally or intentionally kills a non-combatant, we as a society generally condemn his actions. When possible, we attempt to bring him to justice. Some of us vote for politicians who join us in the condemnation.

The terrorists' peers and society, on the other hand, cheer them on! They hand out candy in the streets.

Absolutely there are exceptions. But I have enough faith in American and Canadian society, and our military folks to believe that they are not evil. There may be members in those societies who are evil and take pride in killing civilians... but they are the exception.

Terrorist organizations (like Hamas & Al-queda in Iraq) seem to be the exact opposite.

Regardless of the method of the attack, the real villain is the combatant who intentionally kills non-combatants.

No matter how much you disagree with American policies in Iraq, it's pretty hard to argue that when they intentionally kill non-combatants they get off scott-free. They usually end up in military courts-martial.

Terrorists / Suicide Bombers, on the other hand, are condemned and are viewed as villains because they usually target non-combatants.

Am I the only one who's disturbed by a toddler with a mohawk?

Here's a youtube video of his playing that song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBBCJ68mC4c

Apparently his first album "Can you see the light" came out in 1988... but I'm sure he had the single out on 45 around 84 or 85... maybe 86? I was just a lad of 18 or 19 at the time (and apparently drinking too much, as I can't remember the year.) Looking back, I think the band was selling singles that they had pressed themselves.

Anyways, he was the same age as me and his passing tells me that part of my youth is gone forever.

The first time I saw Jeff play was in Calgary in 1984, at a time before he was well known. He had one single out on 45: "Can you see the light". (He may have had more, but I didn't know it!)

Sad to hear about his death.

TOM -- I'll have to check out NoScript ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722 ).

I really wasn't sure what all the fuss was about with the ads, so I checked out the site in IE... yoiks! I had no idea there were that many ads on this site.

Having used Firefox with some sort of ad-blocker extension for at least the last 2 years, it amazes me that so many boingboing readers are _not_ using such technology (either NoScript or AdBlock.)

Doesn't the clutter drive you guys nuts? Also, your download speeds would increase dramatically without all those ad javascripts and images.

Hint: Use Firefox and the Adblock Plus extension... zappo! No more HP, MS, or Honda ads.

Have a look at this wiki page on Cheka torture from the early days of the Soviets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#Cheka_atrocities

Now *that's* torture.

I'm not saying that water boarding is acceptable, but to classify both water boarding and Cheka "atrocities" as torture seems a bit twisted.

Have y'all heard "Cows with Guns"?

http://www.cowswithguns.com/homepage.html

http://www.cowswithguns.com/cowclaymation.html

Update: Climate Audit has won.

New headline: Climate change realists win race for "Best Science Blog"

rodriquezseeds: I don't think you and I are ever going to see eye-to-eye on this one, but at least it's good to converse with someone who is rational about the topic.

One more mini-debate (I can't help myself): Although I concede that Steve McIntyre is a "retired oil dude", I don't agree that "his criticisms are ill-informed and methodologically flawed."

The oil thing is just flak, something that gets thrown in the way to stop the debate.

I currently work on a contract for a provincial gov Health ministry... that doesn't mean that my views about computer science (my specialty) are skewed towards or away from the views of the health system. (I know it's a stretch, but I wanted to give a personal example.) As an "expert" who is respected by my community and peers, it should be assumed that I am un-biased by $ in my opinions... until it can be proven otherwise.

Is an expert automatically a liar because he is associated with a particular opposition group?

Those who are discarding the views of people like Steve McIntyre because he previously worked in the oil industry, are implying that he's being paid by the oil industry to skew his opinions.

Is that fair? Is he to be assumed to be a liar because of his former employer?

Are David Suzuki or Al Gore automatically liars because they are financially supported or linked to Toyota or the Sierra Club?

RUGERREDHAWK: If it was just a matter of "buy Prius" vs. "keep my 20 year old clunker" -- then I agree. Better safe than sorry.

But when it comes to major economic policy decisions, this is too important to let political biases get in the way.

rodriquezseeds: The article at NS was well written, and interesting. It was reasonably non-biased.

The main problem that I see, is that it seemed to say that M&M are the only ones who see problems with the hockey-stick created by Mann and his peers.

It makes no mention of the Wegman report (see the Wiki article) that largely agreed with M&M. Steve McIntyre is indeed a retired oil dude. Wegman, however, is "a statistics professor at George Mason University and chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics."

The report I mentioned before was in Nature: "Time to ditch Kyoto"

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7165/full/449973a.html

DUUS -- The reason why the human factor is important, is that if this is a natural, non-human caused warming... then what makes us think that driving a Prius is going to change anything?

There was a major report a couple of weeks ago (I can't remember where it was from, but it was on the CBC) saying that Kyoto is failed and that we need to re-assess our climate change policies. They said that govs should be spending equal amounts of money between cutting GHG and adaption, i.e., dealing with the results of a warmer climate.

They weren't denying that it's getting to be a warmer climate -- just that we need to spend the same amount of money on reducing the impact as we do on prevention.

rodriquezseeds: Spend 10 minutes and give the wiki article "hockey stick controversy" a thorough read. There's more to AGW than just climate science. The climate science bases a lot of their work on results of statistical science.

Climate scientists are saying the "case is closed". Statistical scientists (more that just M&M) are saying the "case could be closed, but we don't really know." That is not "pseudoscience".

I'd highly recommend reading the Wiki article on the "hockey stick controversy" if you want to know what climateaudit.org is all about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

climateaudit.org is about the statistics involved in climate science. They focus entirely on the science of statistics.

The most telling piece of the CA site is in the FAQs.

Question: Does your work disprove global warming?

Answer: We have not made such a claim. There is considerable evidence that in many locations the late 20th century was generally warmer than the mid-19th century. However, there is also considerable evidence that in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, the mid-19th century was exceptionally cold. We think that a more interesting issue is whether the late 20th century was warmer than periods of similar length in the 11th century. We ourselves do not opine on this matter, other than to say that the MBH results relied upon so heavily by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2001 report are invalid.

Is it just my imagination or is that youtube video of NYC levitation really annoying? The constant switching between peoples' reactions... Fine! We get the point!

(Sorry for the rant.)

Is this item mis-titled? "office supplies" vs "art supplies"?

Mojosan: I'm a Canuck, so I'm no expert... but doesn't Bush leave office in 2009, and not 2008?

The Washington Post article from Sept 11 ( http://tinyurl.com/2u7ofg ) has a few more details:

"...Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., of the D.C.-based Hip Hop Caucus, who allegedly refused to move back after jumping in front of a line of people waiting to get inside the room. He was charged with disorderly conduct and assault on a police officer."

There were other protesters arrested (including Cindy Sheehan), all charged with disorderly conduct after shouting outside the meeting room.