The need for civil rights

Professor James Duane explains in shocking detail why, in the USA, everybody should remember to exercise their right under the Fifth Amendment to remain silent. (htp: Obnoxio The Clown, referring to Philip Thomas' post)

"The following is the common Miranda warning used by most law enforcement agencies in the United States today:

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense."

How about here in Britain?

"You have the right to remain silent. But it may harm your defence if you fail to mention anything that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

"Free legal advice is worth what you pay for it." Having said that, here is a site purporting to give advice to activists being questioned by police in the UK.

How many laws are on the Statute Books in the United Kingdom? Is there anybody in the country of legal age who could not be accused of having broken one of them? Do we not have too much law?

UK worse than USA?

If it's the USA (aka The Great Santa) that's in dire trouble, how come the pound sterling has dropped 5 cents against the dollar, since July 17?

Bill Gates: charity begins at home

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is set up to give away $38 billion (plus another $30 billion pledged by Warren Buffett).

While I'm in the mood for mad ideas, how about sparing some fraction of that (oh, a billion?) to go back to Bill's crazy source code and finally straighten out all the problems with Microsoft's core products, then send out a one-use-only disk to all previous purchasers, to reload everybody's programs with reliable updated versions?

Or should I stick with dreaming up more realistic schemes, like the deposit-free banking idea?

Fractional reserve banking - why bother?

Karl Denninger comments on the unfolding crisis of non-subprime mortgages, where he thinks losses will be even worse.

A question: why bother with any kind of reserve?

Once you've determined that banks can lend a high multiple of deposits, you may as well make deposits entirely irrelevant. In fact, it would save quite a bit on operating costs if you could have banks that specifically didn't take deposits from anybody - no cash in or out, so no tellers, no branches. Let the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England give a handful of providers a total lending limit, and then stand back and watch them pump away.

Insolvency? Loan-to-value not good enough? Raise the limits again, pump harder. Get a punter to overpay for one house and you increase the value of all the others in the street, so making their mortgages safer. And if the bank doesn't have to pay interest to depositors, it can charge as little as it likes for its loans.

I can't see the flaw here, any more than I can see the difference between a banker and a swindler.

I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

House prices underpinned by shortages, boosted by inflation?

The Centre for Economics and Business Research reckons house prices will steady next year and shoot up for three years after that, thanks to housing shortages and building project cancellations - reports The Grumbler.

"Real estate could become a very good investment and inflation hedge once the government starts seriously printing money," commented Jim from San Marcos (who still has a realtor's licence) after his July 27th post.

I hate computers

Currently I use Windows, like most people, and my experience of this is certainly like the picture on the left. No wonder there are so many Bill Gates jokes, e.g. "The president of Lotus walks into an elevator with a gun in his hand. In the elevator are: Saddam Hussein, Timothy McVeigh, and Bill Gates, but there are only two bullets in the gun! Who does he shoot? A: Gates, twice, to be sure."

I also have an ASUS laptop that has a nervous breakdown when I ask it to connect to the Internet and my printer at the same time. In fact, it's now objecting to my mouse as well. I half-suspect the power management system is compromised by some ASUS virus that informs Peking of my every keystroke; put that down to paranoia if you like, but we'll see what the history books say one day.

But is the Mac really as simple and reliable as the middle picture suggests? And is Linux really so powerful and jazzy? Before I throw this computer from some carefully-selected high place, I'd appreciate guidance on its replacement.

By the way, here's Daniel Bozet's original cartoon; I thought the one above looked unbalanced.

And here's some techno comment on BoingBoing, that obviously I don't quite understand.

If telephones were like this, I'd be using liveried runners.

Check memes with Snopes.com

My American brother and his wife put me on to Snopes.com, a service that sources and corrects rumours that spread through the Internet. One example is a very sharp, funny diatribe on the Middle East, allegedly by Dennis Miller, but actually adapted from this 2002 article by Larry Miller.

What have I learned?

• Meme alterations tend to add spite - compare the original with its viral successor
• I should include Snopes and Larry Miller in my blogroll

In the piece concerned, I particularly liked the imagined reversal of position between Jews and Arabs. I'm always grateful for a mental flip that lends me a new perspective.