The safest restaurant in Boston / Innocents / Windy / Soda, money and sense / Gaping…

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The safest restaurant in Boston

The safest restaurant in Boston is the Chinatown Eatery, because the local Chinatown cops use it as their other office. They are always hanging in there and making sure that no criminal steals rice or behaves in bad manner. Besides, food is always fresh and one can see in the kitchen.

Innocents

According to the Sydney Morning Herald an innocent German was beaten by US jailers. This is the same case I wrote earlier. What really bothers me here is the emphasis put on innocence. Is it really so, that it is quite right to kidnap anyone, fly them to some secret place, torture, even kill provided that the unfortunate person is guilty of some crime? Just like that, with no system of justice determining the case, no opportunity for the person to defend himself. I am really worried about this mentality. It is not the way the Western societies have traditionally worked, not the way we ask other countries to respect human rights. What kind of barbarians are we becoming? We cannot win the terrorist, or any criminals, by abandoning our fundamental justice systems, our fundamental values, and by thinking that ends justify whatever means become handy. If we go down that road, we will have a war of everyone against everyone, the justice of the strongest, and that will not be a world most of us really want to live in.

Windy

A freak was standing on the Harvard Bridge. He had a wind-speed meter, which he hold proudly in the wind. I asked for the reading: "25 mph, 30 in gusts", which is 15m/s. Most pedestrians have sissied away into busses. Temperature is just -2C.

Soda, money and sense

There is a lawsuit going on soda vending machines at schools. Consumer activists claim, that soda from machines makes kids fat. The soda companies says that it is not the case. And even if it would, they could start selling diet sodas. Problems solved. The soda vendors also say that soda vending is good source of revenue for cash-poor school districts even though 70 percent of revenues go the soda companies. I have a simple solution: kick the wending machines out of schoold, get some cheap diet soda from the local Sam's club and sell it to the kids. The kids will stay lean and all proceeds will go to the schools. Or, even better, tell the kids to drink water and get money for teaching from somewhere else.

Gaping security hole at airports

There is a gaping security hole at airports. It is easy for the terrorists to smuggle bombs to airliners, actually way too easy, so easy that I wonder why they do not do so daily. Remember how one terrorist put explosives in his shoes, but was stupid enough not to explode them in the restroom. For this reason we all have to remove our shoes at airports. Let's take this idea further and hide explosives in push-up bras! I have not, yet, seen mandatory removal of bras or manual inspection of bras at airports. So, the plot is easy to carry though! Also, I have not seen any airport security inspector manually checking groins of people. They should, since it is way too easy to replace a sanitary napkin with a explosive one, or maybe one could put explosives in tampons. Even men could use them, as they use similar methods for smuggling drugs in prisons. I certainly think, that these threats are serious and the department of homeland security should make sure that they will never succeed. Let's make everyone strip butt-naked at the airport! And bras should be banned in airliners. Back to the sixties!

Still on salt

If salting the roads is such a good thing to do, why are the ramps to the Esplanade not salted? I think it matters more if steep slopes are slippery than if level sidewalks are. And for some reason no authority bothers to clean the sidewalks of the Harvard bridge (even though the "commissioner of parks and bikelanes" explicitly promised to do so back in October).

Torture and lies

Dr. Rice has promised, that from now on USA will not torture or abduct anyone. Yesterday she was saying that they have never done that despite widely known evidence. For example, a German man was abducted, flown to Afganistan, and tortured, by CIA. They were stupid enough to let him walk and he has now sued the boss of CIA. But he cannot really sue, because he cannot enter USA. Clever, but also a confession by the US government.
Dostoyevsky would roll in his grave if he would see the state of the American civilization. It is deplorable, to say the least.
What would happen, if a country X would simply abduct an American, fly him to a secret place and torture him in the hope of getting information of the next illegal war Bush and his cronies are about to start. If cronies are consistent, they should not protest!

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs December 2005".