digimills

The Florida Senate today passed an amendment to impose a $60 fine for novelty nuts that often hang off of the trailer hitches of redneck pickup trucks.

Although lawmakers said they’re widespread in North Florida, the bill says that displaying reproductions of bull genitalia — one version has the brand name Truck Nutz — on a vehicle or trailer can lead to a $60 fine, charges of a moving violations, and points against a driver license.

I’m not a fan myself, but I have to agree with Senator Steve:

“I find it shocking we’d tell people with metallic testicles on their bumpers that this is a violation,” said Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallandale.

Apparently these things started as two baseballs inside a pair of pantyhose, but damn have they come a long way!

link (thx matt)

Interesting, highly illegal parking receipt generator for Miami Beach. But good luck finding a spot with Art Basel in full swing!

update: this site has been taken down.

link (via sotp)

A friend and I went to a showing of the Ralph Nader documentary An Unreasonable Man last night at the Miami Beach Cinematheque. Joe Tom Easely, a friend of Naders who was against his running for president in 2000 and one of the main interviewees in the movie, spoke afterwards and a poli-sci prof from FIU was there to encourage a discussion about the film/moderate.

A very good movie, balanced, as Joe said Ralph feels about it. Unfortunately during the screening one man felt the need to loudly agree with just about any fact about Nader. During the discussion, an older couple decided to try to takeover any dialogue by yelling insults about Nader or anyone that disagreed with them. I felt sorry for the professor.

A Mexican politician was disqualified from a German marathon after it was revealed he took a shortcut.

In a photo taken as he crossed the finish line, Madrazo wears an ear-to-ear grin and pumps his arms in the air. But he also wore a Windbreaker, hat and long, skintight running pants — too much clothing, some said, for a person who had just run 26.2 miles in 60-degree weather.

Here’s Madrazo doing his best Borat impression.

link (thx mike)

This past weekend I was working at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Conference at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The NCLR is the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. Set up in the booth directly across from ours was U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Over the two days I saw exactly 1 person give them a visit! Make your own joke from that.

Speaking of protection, security was extremely lax. Obama and Hillary Clinton were speaking at the event (didn’t see Bill around). At one point I walked right up to the back of the stage Obama was on without anyone harassing me. Later I saw a ‘Barack the vote’ banner that made me chuckle. I’m amazed how many people think he has any chance of winning.

Reminds me of all the client docs I’ve received with ‘private’ notes and changes showing upon opening.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the highest intelligence agency in the country that oversees all federal intelligence agencies, appears to have inadvertently released the keys to that number in an unclassified PowerPoint presentation now posted on the website of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). By reverse engineering the numbers in an underlying data element embedded in the presentation, it seems that the total budget of the 16 US intelligence agencies in fiscal year 2005 was $60 billion, almost 25% higher than previously believed.

link (via ministryoftech)

The Cold War Unicorns Play Set allows you to play out the intense struggle between two global superpowers in the majestic fantasy world of the Unicorn! Can the Communist Unicorn’s horn of classless social structure hold up against the Freedom Unicorn’s hooves of capitalist opportunity?

link (via mental floss)

Yesterday I stopped by the The World War II Museum in New Orleans. It opened as the D-Day Museum in 2000 and was later designated by Congress as the country’s official World War II Museum. I’ll post more on the museum later, but here’s some of the vintage posters they had on display. Please excuse the photos as they didn’t allow flash photography.

(more…)

Visit The Great Firewall of China to see if any site is being blocked out east.
Despite candy corn dildos and other iffy subject matter, digimills is still available in China.

link (via discourse.net)

According to statistics recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its citizens for pot. Another 8 billion was spent in criminal justice costs to arrest 800,000 Americans on marijuana charges in 2005.

Screw you William Randolph Hearst.

link (thanks gregos)

Two women in my neighborhood feed strays every day and it’s resulted in at least 40 strays in a half-block radius. One of the women scoops hunks of food from a big prepared bowl onto tin foil held down by rocks and placed under cars. So she gets a crazy pass. Another woman drives up in her car and delivers food to a parking lot of cats and seems otherwise sane. She should be jailed.

Supporting these overgrown populations of cats leads to disease, nightly fights/deaths, cat shit everywhere, hundreds of birds dying every year and continues the cycle with further generations of cats that suffer from life on the crowded streets.

Internet research provided some good news, nearby Surfside has some laws on the books as do some other areas in the country. Seems like it’s a city by city ruling. Unfortunately plenty of idiots are fighting these laws.

Supposedly you can anonymously purchase these drug tax stamps from the Dept of Revenue. I’d like to see one true dealer have the balls to walk into the Revenue office and buy one, many are sold to collectors. Of the 726 stamps sold so far, none have turned up during a seizure.

“In April of 2005, Jeremy Robbins was arrested attempting to traffic two tons of marijuana from Arizona to East Tennessee. Indicted on federal drug conspiracy charges, Robbins was soon assessed a $1.1 million fine from Tennessee’s Department of Revenue. The reason: failure to comply with the state’s Unauthorized Substances Tax, which requires anyone in possession of a certain quantity of contraband — in the case of marijuana, more than 42.5 grams — to buy a tax stamp from the state government and affix it on the drug.”

Opponents argue that the tax penalties on top of criminal charges amounts to a second punishment, and thus a violation of double jeopardy law. For this reason, a Davidson County chancellor ruled the tax unconstitutional, and stopped the state from collecting Robbins’ $1.1 million. The Tennessee Dept of Revenue believes this decision will be overturned on appeal.

link (thanks slurp)

For those only familiar with the Grand Theft Auto video game, Liberty City is also a neighborhood in Miami.

I didn’t take my normal route to work yesterday and ended up driving past a homeless shantytown in Liberty City. I didn’t think much of the place until reading about it later that day in The Miami New Times blog. Apparently it’s been home to about 40 homeless people since Oct. 23, has a name-Umoja, or “unity” in Swahili, and commissioners recently backed away from bulldozing it.

I’m a little confused as to what exactly the ‘Take Back The Land’ sign means. Did one of the homeless once own it? Or is it a general statement of ‘Take it back from the man’.

I drove by again today and snapped some photos. Apparently there’s a potluck tonight. I wonder if they are going to fire up the big grill pictured to the left. I was surprised to see some white folks living in the shantytown, not a common site in Liberty City period.

link

The first female speaker of the house had a $1000 per ticket party kicking things off with members of the Grateful Dead, Phish, Tony Bennett, Wyclef Jean and others.

check out these pics and a related article from the Washington post

link