How well do those red-light auto-ticketing cameras work? This well (emphasis added):

"On top of this, many tickets are never paid, partly because failure to do so does not result in a suspension of license but also because 67 percent of tickets were mailed to people making legal right turns on red."

Go ahead, explain the benefit we’re getting from this. And then start running.

Tar. Feathers. Some assembly required.

SF writer Elizabeth Moon has been removed as Guest of Honor at Wiscon, for the crime of stating an opinion that disagrees with the proper view on the subject.

[Update: The Brickmuppet weighs in, with thoughtful and linky goodness, including a Wiscon review. Honestly, after reading the review, I have to think that the only reason they originally invited her was for a chance to hate.]

“​…then how do you know who the hell we are?”

These were the words I just heard from a telemarketer after I politely asked her to repeat the name of the company she identified herself as representing and then said that I had never heard of them. Then she hung up on me.

Apparently she came pre-abused, so I didn’t even have to abuse her. It was a little early in the day to be completely burned out from cold-calling random strangers, though; I’m thinking she doesn’t have a future in the business. She didn’t really sound like a “Michelle”, either; she sounded like someone from India who was trying to hide that fact, and the resulting overcompensation made her even harder to understand.

(blocked caller-id and a generic-sounding financial-services-company name, so of course I wouldn’t have taken their offer, whatever it was going to be, but I didn’t even get the chance to shoot it down)

It ain’t just the thought that counts. Especially when it’s an afterthought.

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[Update: Bumped to the top (more precisely, recreated, since bumping hoses the navigation links), since the original videos disappeared almost immediately, and I just found another source for the show they came from. No short clips, and their embedding code doesn’t seem to let you specify the starting offset, but their simple link code does.]

South Korea has nothing to fear from the North. Not so long as their army knows what they’re fighting for…

[Broken Youtube link replaced with dailymotion; starts at 4:50]

Bonus clip of Yoona being a little too embarrassed to do a sexy solo dance routine, until the entire audience begs for more.

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So I bought a book on the opening of Japan. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but the author leads off by explaining that Pearl Harbor was a healthy psychological reaction to the deep wounds inflicted by Commodore Perry’s black ships and the arrogant American imperialism they represented.

I’m dying to see how he explains Perry’s culpability in the conquest of Korea, the invasion of China, the germ warfare, the comfort women, and all the other “healthy reactions” of poor, traumatized Imperial Japan.

Now it’s certainly possible that the rest of the book is an even-handed treatment of the events on both sides, well supported by the historical record, but somehow I doubt it.

[Update: an old interview with Gardner has been reclaimed from the dust.]

Age 95. If you don’t already have his books, go buy some. Somewhere, I think I still have a large pile of xeroxed copies of his old Scientific American columns…

If you have any interest in games, magic, recreational mathematics, or a reality unencumbered by pseudoscience, you should already know how much he’ll be missed.