This Was Well Designed

Even after reading a news article about it, I'm still not exactly sure what happened. (But don't stop watching too soon.)

It Looks Like This Case Is Getting Started In The Courthouse Today

More background. (As always, if you're on that jury "please honor the admonishions of the Court.")

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Maybe this PRISM thing won't be the controversy I thought it would be. There's just way too many people on the Right saying "If it saves lives, I'm ok with it." Incredible.
• Newsweek had a cover in 1970 proclaiming "Privacy Is Dead".
• Mrs. LL and I were talking about how silly robbing banks and convenience stores is since the cash is limited and the surveillance is great. "If I were going to do something, it would be big and secretive," I said. We then in unison said, "Like moving a decimal point over one position?" -- a reference to Office Space.
• Mrs. LL also claims that if she ever committed a crime she could absolutely cover her tracks and never get caught. She also warned me not to quote her because it would damage her ability to get a way with it. 
• I was on 287 yesterday and was by an eighteen wheeler who had a tire blow out. That is wuch a shocking experience. 
• Northwest ISD Superintendent will now make over a quarter of a million dollars a year per the Update.
• Man, those Fort Worth cops and alcohol: One was arrested for Boating While Intoxicated while another was in a motorcycle crash where drinking is suspected.
• Very Inside Sports: (1) I think college football prognosticator Phil Steele is brilliant, (2) I think Randy Galloway just churns out the obvious with a cutesy writing style, (3) I don't understand 90% of the college football website Every Day Should Be Saturday and that upsets me, (4) I'll admit to watching portions of this NBA Finals, (5) The Fan's Bryan Broaddus never says anything definitive, (6) The only thing I watch on Sports Center is the Top 10, (7) ESPN's Mike and Mike in The Morning is an automatic punchout for me with 15 seconds. 
• I was walking around the block last night and ran into Mrs. LL who was dropping one of the kids off at a neighbor's house. I had on black socks, tennis shoes, plaid shorts, and a 2011 half marathon shirt. "It's not like I don't have style," I told her. "It's that I'm too old to care."  She told me I might want to start caring. 
• If you are planning on going to Mumford and Sons tonight: (1) What's wrong with you? and (2) No you're not. 
• I've stuck with my x-box workout and haven't returned to running. Makes me a little sad. There's something about the running isolation with is soothing. 
• Tebow to Boston!

Chad Johnson Avoids Jail. Slaps Lawyer on Butt. Judge Gets Pissy And Sentences Him to 30 Days.

"Good job. Good effort."

TMZ — Chad Johnson was just kicked out of a Florida courtroom … after the former NFL star playfully slapped his male lawyer’s ass — a move that ENRAGED the judge, TMZ has learned. Johnson was in court in Broward County, FL to face the judge for his recent probation violation in his domestic violence case. During the hearing, the judge and Chad’s lawyer were about to finalize the terms of Chad’s punishment — terms that were pretty favorable to Chad. But the whole thing fell apart at the last minute, when the judge asked Chad if he was satisfied with his attorney — and the ex-NFL star reached back and playfully slapped his lawyer’s ass. Chad smiled … the court erupted with laughter …. but the judge wasn’t amused. In fact, the judge found the move disrespectful — and lashed out at Johnson … asking him if the whole proceeding was a “joke” to him. Johnson replied, “I had no intent to make this a joke, because my life is in shambles right now.”

Man, this judge needs to lighten up. Big time. (But I think my favorite part is the bailiff turning around and smiling.)

News I Missed: Wise County Has Gravel Trucks

Not a scene from Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive. Or is it?

Story with a slideshow.

"Get ready to get tazed"

Truer words have never been spoken.

This guy out of Cleburne is yelling about police brutality. I'm not buying it.

Prop Accident

I was going to yell at him, but I couldn't even see the prop.  Those ultra-lights are just intrinsically evil. Death machines even on the ground (although this guy didn't die.)

And it was the first time I thought about the Dallas chick which waled into a propeller a couple of years ago. Not bad.

French Open

I would have ran off the court like a school girl. You have no idea what that nutcase had in mind.

(Fast forward to 1:30.)

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• Insomnia, even for one night, will really mess you up. It made my weekend a beating. 
• The NFL Network has been replaying the more than decade old series of Hard Knocks with the Cowboys. It is fascinating watching a bunch of guys with hopes and dreams when you know what actually happens to them.
• Mrs. LL told me this weekend she really likes Bob Dylan. I had no idea. 
• Mrs. LL told the kids this weekend that it was going to be "hard week" because the house was going to be cleaned fro top to bottom. I can only hope. 
• Every time I watch a high profile tennis match I get hooked in.
• I watched some "unsolved mysteries" type show on the Lifetime channel this weekend, and it focused on a lady who was hit by a cigarette boat on Lake Lewisville in 1995. I had always heard the lady was terribly disfigured but she is beautiful. 
• Unrelated: Erin Brockovich was arrested for Boating While Intoxicated.
• I've got a bad habit of forcing Mrs. LL to watch things on TV that are important to me. 
• ESPN promoted and showed a long sit down interview with Tiger Woods last weekend. Although it would violate every journalistic rule, do they secretly pay him for that?  Twenty years ago I would say "no way." Now I'm not so sure.
• I've got a friend who broke his clavicle in a bike accident last weekend and now is at Disneyworld with his family on a pre-paid vacation. 
• One summer I came up with my own baseball game that I played by myself using a tennis ball that I would throw against the back brick wall of our house. The rules were ridiculously complicated. But I remember I threw the ball so often that all the fuzz wore off the ball to the extent it ended up looking like a racquetball  ball. 
• My post about the alligator gar catch became a story on Fox 4. 
• Several of us in the courthouse were trying to figure out if the clavicle is the same thing as the collarbone. 
• Man, what I would give for summer vacation -- not the trip type but the school's out type. 
• I was wrong about Joshua ISD cutting the mic of the Valedictorian. But it seems like they let everyone know in advance that would be done if anyone deviated from their pre-approved speech regardless of the content of the deviation. 

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• One thing I love is my ability to fall asleep the moment my head hits the pillow. Not last night. I mean not right now. I'm writing this sentence at 3:32 in the morning as I suffer from the most bizarre case of insomnia in my life. If you have this problem, you have my deepest sympathies. I hate this.
• I'm loopy, though. No comments from the spelling and grammar police. 
• I think I'm in love with Paula Faris who I had never heard of until I watched ABC's World News Now which is on right now.
• I'm still stunned by the PRISM news. I always thought the Patriot Act controversy was more fluff than substance, but now I feel like I'm living in a science fiction movie.
• I blame Bush. I blame Obama. But more than anything I feel like the government is a runaway freight change that no one is in charge of.
• And for the "well, if you have nothing to hide" crowd, you are beyond naive. I can't begin to wrap my brain around that mentality. And Sen. Lindsey Graham falls into that crowd. He had that attitude yesterday when the spying news was limited to Verison phone records. Watch him backtrack today (but he might be too dumb to even do that). 
• This will be a huge scandal because all sides will jump on it. The Left loves the Fourth Amendment and is stunned by this invasion of privacy. The Right hates Obama and he's on record as saying this wasn't going on. It's the Perfect Political Storm. 
• I read on Twitter that the speech of the valedictorian of Joshua High School had his mic turned off last night when he began to speak about God. I bet that is absolutely not true.
• I just ate microwaved Beefaroni. 
• Jim Adler advertises at 4:00 in the morning. 
• The movie The Internship looks awful. 
• The Dallas DA's Office is trying to get a judge to jack Dallas Cowboy Josh Brent's bond for allegedly testing positive for marijuana. The Motion is here. There's no question it was written with the media in mind because there's no way they go to that much effort every time they make such a request in other cases.
• And one huge development in Brent's case that no one is talking about: His blood results may be inadmissible due to the recent Supreme Court case that threw out such blood results when police failed to get a search warrant (at least under the facts before them.) They didn't get a warrant in Brent's case, and if those results are thrown out it could cripple that case.  Texas prosecutors are now basically taking the position to "always get a warrant" just to be safe.
• Those last two bullet points were written yesterday afternoon. I'm not that lucid now. 

News That Just Exploded: We've All Been Spied On For Years

The Washington Post just posted an investigative report (complete with an amazing government slideshow briefing presentation they got their hands on) which begins: "The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time."

You've never heard of "PRISM" but you are about to. This is going to be huge. We have been living in a Surveillance State operating in almost total secrecy. 

Our Own Swamp Monster

More pictures.

A Weird Statute Finally Gives Rise To A Bizarre Verdict In San Antonio

Texas law has always been bizarre when it comes to justifiably killing someone.

Sec. 9.42.  DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY.  A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property:
(1)  if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41 [meaning a person is
justified in using force against another when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to prevent . . .  unlawful interference with the property];  and
(2)  when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:
(A)  to prevent the other's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime;

Parts of that sound complicated, but it's really not. You can kill someone if you "reasonably believe" its necessary to prevent, among other things, theft at night.

So what if you hire a hooker off Craigslist, you give her $150 at night, and she leaves the room without, uh, rendering services. You follow her and she gets into a car to leave. Can you kill her to protect your $150?

Oh, my!

Troy Aikman Had A Twitter Screwup

Funny.

Father's Day Is Approaching

Maybe it is the Zapruder-like quality of this video which makes it so entertaining or maybe it is the subtleties. I love the guy who reaches for the ball on the way in and then covers his head like a school girl, and it takes a second to realize that the kid that gets bulldozed was already holding the ball that you see go flying.

I'm Not Sure Why I Love This Picture So Much But I Do

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• A note was left yesterday at Paradise High School saying that a bomb would go off at the school today. Dumb, dumb kid. (And it was a handwritten note. Heck, he needs another day of school.)
• A San Antonio assistant DA was fired for advising her friend not to provide a breath sample after a DWI stop and for "flashing her [prosecutor] badge." I don't care about the advice she was trying to give, but the badge flashing is what bugs me.
• I'll publish racist comments (and I've explained why a million times), but there are twice as many that I don't publish.
• If a thunderstorm wakes me up in the middle of the night, I try to stay awake as long as possible to listen to it.
• The Fourth Grader in the House wrote the sweetest thank you letter to her teacher for the last day of school. 
• My continued fascination with a baseball player that I might be the only one who cares about:  "Chris Davis reached 20 home runs and 20 doubles in fewer games than any player in MLB history."
• Scooter Sellers was just an older kid on my street in Bridgeport while I was growing up. I saw where DPS has named their communications center in Wichita Falls after him. 
• Mrs. LL managed to run into two or three spiders while cleaning out under the sink and then basically firebombed the house with insecticide which then made her sick. . 
• A Dallas Tea Party leader is catching heat for saying, "The Republican Party doesn't want black people to vote if they're going to vote if they're going to vote 9-1 for Democrats." Heck, even I understand what he was saying. No big deal. 
• Another Dennis Prager rant: He has "The Happiness Hour" once a week where he actually uses  Don't Worry. Be Happy. as return music. That song is, ironically, enough to put anyone in depression. Not to mention it makes the program seem shockingly dated.
• I think a plea bargain was reached in the Boyd Teacher Sexting trial yesterday. I don't know any of the facts but if I were a teacher, there is no way I would communicate with any student via text/Facebook/Twitter.  
• I've never heard of the Idaho Potato Truck that has a fake 12,000 pound potato on it, but I just got word that it was in Wise County headed towards Rhome on 114 this morning. Pictures?
• This is the anniversary of D-Day and I'm reminded that Robert Capa shot four rolls of film that day but only 11 made it to publication after a processing error in the lab of Life magazine in London. 
• Michael Jackson's daughter is only 15?

A Dallas Billionaire Is Offering You $1 Million To "Solve" A Math Problem

Check out the big brain on Beal!

Andrew Beal came up with this twenty years ago:

If Ax + By = Cz, where A, B, C, x, y and z are positive integers and x, y and z are all greater than 2, then A, B and C must have a common prime factor.

First, that will make sense to Mrs. LL and the Freshman In The House, but I'm not a 100% clear on what's going on there.  But that's not the point of this post. This is: The $1 million goes to anyone who can "prove or disprove his conjecture." 

I understand the disproving part: Get lucky enough to plug in a series of numbers (positive integers and greater than 2, as required)  that don't have A, B, and C with a "common prime factor." Ta-da! Theory disproved.

But how would you prove that it is always true?  Set up some computer program that just keeps printing out result after result which shows it's true? But just because the formula is true for the first billion equations a computer runs doesn't necessarily mean it will be true on the next one. 

Source.