Boing Boing » texas

The BBC discovers the Texas Germans — and a dying dialect

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:33:27 +0000

My great-grandmother, Hedwig Nietzsche Koerth, never spoke English. My Grandpa Gustav didn't learn the language until he entered first grade. But, by the time I was in grade school — and was going through a brief fling of learning German — Grandpa no longer remembered much of what had once been his first language. Today, nobody in my immediate family speaks any German, much less the dying dialect of Texas German that my great-grandmother spoke. The BBC has an interesting story about the history and linguistics of Texas German, which will probably die out in the next couple generations — largely because the German Germans started a couple world wars in a row and changed the idea of what was and wasn't socially acceptable speech in America.

Girl who lost her hearing after West fertilizer plant exploded is now okay

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:46:34 +0000

The Today Show tracked down the Texas father who shot that now iconic video of the West fertilizer plant explosion — the one where you can hear his daughter screaming and pleading with him to leave after the explosion happens. Derrick Hurtt and his family were within 300 yards of the factory when it went up. They were there specifically to shoot some video of the burning plant. Hurtt's 12-year-old daughter, who says after the explosion that she can't hear anything, has regained her hearing.

Ammonium nitrate fertilizer isn't really a dangerous explosive (most of the time)

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:16:10 +0000

Fertilizer can explode*. We all know that. It was a key ingredient in the bomb that destroyed Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. Last night, a factory full of the stuff went up with enough force that United States Geological Survey seismographs registered it as a magnitude 2.1 earthquake.

Ammonium nitrate is the chemical that makes these dramatic displays possible. But creating an explosion isn't as simple as just having a pile of ammonium nitrate — let alone a pile of fertilizer — sitting around. We've come to think of this as pretty volatile stuff. But, according to chemist Jimmie Oxley, ammonium nitrate is a lot less dangerous than you might guess. Despite a history of high-profile explosions, like the one that happened last night, ammonium nitrate isn't considered to be that big of a danger. In fact, Oxley called it a "marginal explosive" — a chemical that is mostly safe, but can become dangerous when the conditions are just right.

Oxley studies energetic materials at the University of Rhode Island. You could say that she studies stuff that explodes, but it actually goes a lot further than that. Energetic materials aren't just explosives. The classification includes anything that produces heat as it decomposes. That includes ammonium nitrate, but it also includes your compost pile.

"If you keep a compost heap you might have seen it steaming in the winter sometimes," Oxley said. "And it can even catch on fire. That's because biorganisms break down the compost and release heat. Sometimes, that process releases enough heat that it causes the whole pile to catch."

When it comes to energetic materials, the thing you really want to avoid is a runaway reaction, when a substance starts producing enough heat, on its own, to catch itself on fire and then keep that fire going.

But, amazingly, even that isn't enough to ensure that ammonium nitrate will explode, Oxley said. A couple of years ago, she put together a list of ammonium nitrate accidents that had happened around the world — usually in factories, or during shipping. There are 24 cases on the list that involved fire. Of those, in only 11 cases did the event go from fire to detonation.

In fact, since the 1950s, ammonium nitrate-based explosives have basically supplanted the older dynamite explosives used in mining and other industries, precisely because they are so much safer and harder to detonate. Ammonium nitrate isn't even classed as an explosive, Oxley said.

"It's very difficult to get it to detonate at a reasonable scale," she said. "You can toss 50 pounds of it in the back of your car and it will do nothing. With something like dynamite even a gram or two is highly explosive."

But, obviously, ammonium nitrate does explode sometimes. So what makes those circumstances different?

The most important factor is how much ammonium nitrate you have. Fifty pounds ain't nothing. But a couple hundred tons of the stuff is a different story. If that huge amount of ammonium nitrate also catches on fire ... then you have a problem.

As it burns, ammonium nitrate goes through chemical changes that lead to the production of oxygen. And what does a fire need to keep going and get bigger? Why, oxygen.

The largest industrial accident in the United States happened in 1947, off the coast of Texas City, Texas, when two shipping vessels full of ammonium nitrate exploded. Six hundred people were killed. The explosion might not have happened had the captain of one of the two ships adopted a different tactic for fire-fighting. When he realized his hold was in flames, Oxley said, he had a choice — drown the fire or smother it. The captain opted for smothering it, sealing the hold and trying to starve the fire of oxygen. But the pyre of burning ammonium nitrate was producing its own oxygen. Instead of putting out the flames, the act of sealing the hold allowed the fire to burn bigger and longer without inturruption.

Contrary to some explanations, you don't need a physical jolt to make a great big pile of burning ammonium nitrate explode. The fire alone will do just fine, Oxley said. That's because, depending on how the ammonium nitrate is packed together, the heat can create a sealed plug, trapping hot gases.

Think of a cigarette, she said. When you light it, most of the gas flows away from the cigarette. But some doesn't. That stuff that hangs around helps to pre-warm the parts of the cigarette that haven't already caught fire. That same basic process can happen with a pile of burning ammonium nitrate, only, in that situation, the pre-warmed chemical can end up fusing together. The space behind the plug keeps on being heated and gases form. Hot gas expands, but, behind the plug, it has nowhere to go. Eventually, the gas will break through the seal and the force of that will trigger an explosion.

UPDATE: According to news reports, ammonium nitrate might not have been only chemical culprit at work in West, Texas. The factory had large stores of both ammonium nitrate and anhydrous ammonia — a flammable gas — according to the LA Times. The ammonium nitrate storage building was at the center of the blast, according to local Dallas/Ft. Worth news. It's not clear which of these chemicals was the source of the explosion. But if it had more to do with the anhydrous ammonia then the chemistry explanation for all of this would be different than what I've posted here. Just FYI.
*Fertilizer can also detonate. Although we laypeople use them as synonyms, "explode" and "detonate" actually mean different things. The force of detonations travels faster than the speed of sound. Explosions don't. Both can still kill people, but a detonation is a lot more likely to cause severe damage to large buildings. Experts will probably be debating for a while whether the West, Texas incident was an explosion or a detonation, Oxley said. Meanwhile, she suspects that the Boston Marathon bombings were likely to have been an explosion.

• Image: Ammonium Nitrate, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from philliecasablanca's photostream
• Image: Ammonium Nitrate, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from mgspiller's photostream

Is the "secret" room at Houston's ZaZa a voyeuristic sex-dungeon for rich weirdos?

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 20:56:37 +0000

A redditor called joelikesmusic reported that a friend of his had been checked into a weird, narrow dungeon-like theme room at the Hotel Zaza in Houston (it's got lots of theme suites -- I once stayed in their awesome space-themed one with my family, on the way to my honeymoon). When he complained, the front desk apparently told him that it was a mistake -- no one was supposed to use that room.

The ZaZa's management told the press that it was a "prison" themed room, and that there was no mystery, but intrepid redditors have been examining the pictures (especially the portrait of Jay Comeaux, a banking exec from the disgraced Stanford Banking Executive, and have been spinning out theories about secret societies and rituals in the comments.

However, one commenter called lejefferson makes a plausible case that the room is a sex-dungeon with a one-way voyeur's mirror, used by rich weirdos:

What person that you know keeps a creepy picture of a guy over their television. This is obviously a secret room either personal or for a small group of people for sexual liasons/ S&M prostitution or worse. The mirror and small space of the room also indicates there is a good chance that the mirror is two way and that people could pay to come watch the sexual/S&M events occuring. The photo of a Stanford Banking Executive, (Jay Comeaux), on the wall further indicates that this is a high society sex room. The fact that the clerk said, "This room isn't supposed to be rented out" indicates that there was a big mistake and they didn't want anyone to find out about the room. The bricks on the wall line up exactly with the placement of the mirror suggesting that they do not continue behind it but that this is a two way mirror.

ZaZa insiders question - what's up with room 322? (self.houston) (via Super Punch)

Texas student loses ID-badge case

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 22:23:34 +0000

The Texas student who sued over her school's insistence that she wear an RFID-embedded ID card has lost her appeal. The school had offered to issue her an RFID-free ID badge, but her family felt that the ID badge itself was related to the "mark of the beast" and asked the court to find that their religious freedoms were being infringed. The court disagreed.

68,000 Texans no longer have to prove they're not dead in order to vote

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:07:19 +0000

68,000 Texans will no longer have to prove that they aren't dead in order to vote in the next election. The state of Texas has settled a suit brought on behalf of 68,000 "potentially deceased" Texas voters who shared a birthdate and a partial Social Security match with a person appearing on a federal death register. These people will now be able to vote, unless Texas can prove they're dead. Another 12,000 voters will still have to prove that they're not dead before casting a ballot. More from Lowering the Bar:

Under the previous rules, voters were identified as "potentially deceased" if there was at least a "weak match" (such as a birth date plus a partial Social Security number) between their information and the federal death records the state was consulting. The weakly matched dead made up 68,000 of the 80,000 people who received a letter from voting officials telling them they would be removed from the rolls if they didn't speak up. Under the settlement, the burden shifts to officials to prove those people are really dead; the remainder ("strong matches"), who are much more likely to be dead, will still have to prove otherwise if they can.
"Today's order [approving the settlement] is another step toward improving the integrity of the election system," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who had unsuccessfully tried to defend the state's original plan. I think it's actually the same step, but 85% smaller.

Texas Settles With Previously Dead Voters

Texas Republicans call for an end to critical thinking in schools

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:22:55 +0000

A meeting of the Texas Republican party in Fort Worth came out with a list of demands for the education system, including a demand that schools end the practice of teaching "higher order thinking skills" because these challenge "student's fixed beliefs" and undermine "parental authority."

In the section titled "Educating Our Children," the document states that "corporal punishment is effective" and recommends teachers be given "more authority" to deal with disciplinary problems.
Additionally, the document states the party opposes mandatory pre-school and kindergarten, saying parents are "best suited to train their children in their early development."

Texas Republican Party Calls For Abstinence Only Sex Ed, Corporal Punishment In Schools (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

56-year-old Texas grandma gets life without parole on first-time drug charges

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:10:48 +0000

In Fort Worth, Texas, Elisa Castillo—a 56-year-old grandmother with no prior drug offenses— has been sentenced to life without parole. She maintains her innocence, and never "touched the drugs that sent her to prison," points out the ACLU; "Her fate was sealed, in large part because she didn't have a card to play when negotiating her sentence." The Houston Chronicle has more.

Sloths, Magic and Tripping: The Art of Georganne Deen

Amy Seidenwurm — Fri, 04 May 2012 21:20:42 +0000

Georganne Deen - "Song of Myself" detail

I never thought I’d say this, but you are lucky if you live in the Dallas area. Georganne Deen is my favorite living artist and has a show at Webb Gallery in Waxahatchie, TX right now.

The Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum has an excellent exhibition up right now called In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States. All of the heavy hitters are there, including Frida Kahlo, Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. Georganne Deen is heir to this legacy of wonderful (and crazy) group of women. Her work has all of the madness and magic and emotion that you would expect from the surrealists but with a wonderful awareness of current cultural cues and graphic design.

Georganne Deen - "Saturn Return (Sloth)"

Here’s how she explains her new show:

The title Song of Myself is taken from the poem by Walt Whitman, a man who saw the world as a place of ineffable beauty, terrifying darkness, and every shade in between, and recognized himself in all of that. To put it another way, he was tripping.

Most people can see the darkness (some call it evil) in the world, and some can recognize themselves in it. And some people can see the breathtaking beauty, the magicalness of the world but hardly anyone can see that in themselves. Therein lies Whitman’s genius.

Georganne Deen - "Song of Myself" detail

Georganne Deen’s genius is something like this too. You can definitely see what she aspires to...and that she’s tripping. Her paintings are fiercely intelligent and beautiful.

Georganne Deen - "I Am The Drug"

Deen combines seemingly whimsical characters in her art with heart-wrenching and often hilarious text. There’s darkness and self-exploration and insight, but Deen’s charm is in never taking herself too seriously. I asked her to send me a photo of her new show while it was being installed, and this was the only image she liked:

Dexter in front of Georganne Deen's - "Million Dollar Grudge"

Georganne Deen was born in Fort Worth, TX. Her Song of Myself installation runs through July 1 at Webb Gallery.

Texas politician's internet ad features gentleman electrocuted while peeing (video)

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 04 May 2012 03:41:56 +0000

Roland Sledge is a 66-year-old Houston energy lawyer running for a seat on the Texas state commission that regulates the oil and gas industries. In the YouTube ad above, the Republican candidate stares into the camera while standing in a pasture, and riffs on a Will Rogers quote: “Isn’t it about time we elected political leaders that have sense enough not to pee on electric fences?” You'll want to read the New York Times story here. (via Michael Roston)

Reddit-based PAC takes aim at SOPA-sponsor Lamar Smith

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:33:30 +0000

Test PAC, the Reddit-based PAC founded to raise money to support opponents of Lamar Smith, the author of SOPA, has placed its first billboard and is set to run its first advertisements. The materials direct people to unseatlamar.com. Ajpos from TestPAC explains:

Analytics take a few days to come in, and the billboard has been up for only about three hours.
I want to stress that the PAC has about 300 members right now and we have plans to air two commercials, so the billboard serves a few other purposes besides getting Texans to visit the website:
1.) This is an example of the internet flexing its muscles and showing that we can make political speech. This is Test PAC's first venture into the "real world" and shows that we have some teeth. The NYT, Guardian, and Forbes all wanted to do an article on us but ultimately decided not to until we've grown a bit. This is the first example of how we're growing.
2.) We hope this will generate some publicity nationally so people from other districts and states can generate more public support for the campaign. 300 members is not enough, in my opinion, to air two commercials.
3.) It also gives both Mack and Morgan something to use in their own campaigns. They can show how people besides their campaign staff are interested in them. We are a "tertiary" campaign, so we cannot do their campaigning for them, but this certainly helps.
Of course, we would absolutely be thrilled if we start getting hits from San Antonio, and I'll be disappointed if we don't, but it's not the end of the world.

That Reddit-funded billboard in Lamar Smith's district is up (i.imgur.com)

"More Awesome Than A Monkey In A Bacon Tuxedo Riding A Cyborg Unicorn With A Lightsaber For The Horn On The Tip Of A Space Shuttle Closing In On Mars, While Engulfed In Flames."

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:23:09 +0000

Robbo sez, "The title for the article is just a portion of an amazing thank you letter from a primary school student in Austin, Texas - sent to a local weatherman who visited the class. Includes a drawing of a unicorn delivering donuts."

'I will not make you a slave, you will live in my 200 story [sic] castle where unicorn servants will feed you doughnuts off their horns,' Flint wrote.
'I will personally make you a throne that is half platnum and half solid gold and jewel encrested [sic].'
The student, whose age is uncertain, proved he may have a career in creative writing ahead of him if either the meteorology or world domination do not work out as planned.
In fulsome praise, Flint said Ramon was 'more awesome than a monkey wearing a tuxedo made out of bacon riding a cyborg unicorn with a lightsaber for the horn on the tip of a space shuttle closing in on Mars, while ingulfed in flames'.
Flint added: 'And in case you didn't know that's pretty dang sweet.'

'More awesome than a monkey in a bacon tuxedo' - child's letter goes viral (Thanks, Robbo!)

(Image: Flint)

Reddit PAC aims to kick SOPA's daddy Lamar Smith out of Congress

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 02:26:35 +0000

Mike sez, "With the Texas Primaries coming up in May, I thought you would be interested to know that some of the Redditors that were involved in the boycott on GoDaddy.com and 'Operation Pull Ryan' (where Reddit raised money for Rep. Paul Ryan's opponent), have started TestPAC, a non-connected, registered PAC, with the goal of defeating Lamar Smith in the Republican Primaries."

You'll remember Lamar Smith from such stupid Internet laws as SOPA and the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (AKA "the Spy on Everyone Always Act"). He's a 25-year incumbent and a powerful committee chairman. And he's kind of a tool.

What we aim to do is a bit unorthodox: use Texas’ semi-open primary system to edge Smith out in favor of another Republican candidate. When voters identify themselves to the election officials, they must request a party’s specific ballot. As explained on Wikipedia:
Only one ballot is cast by each voter. In many states with semi-open primaries, election officials or poll workers from their respective parties record each voter’s choice of party and provide access to this information. The primary difference between a semi-open and open primary system is the use of a party-specific ballot. In a semi-open primary, a public declaration in front of the election judges is made and a party-specific ballot given to the voter to cast.
This means that Republicans, Independents and Democrats can participate in the choosing of either party’s candidate in the primary election. While Democrats who choose to participate in the Republican primaries are exempt from also voting for their own party’s candidate, it is important to note that their actions would speak volumes in regards to changing the political landscape in their district. Keeping in mind the fact that Smith has enjoyed comfortable margins of victory over the years in a district that heavily favors Republican candidates, a vote for another candidate in Texas’ open primary would possibly have a greater effect than simply voting in the Democratic primary and ultimately losing the race.

Mr. Smith Comes Back From Washington (Thanks, Mike!)

SOPA's author wants everything you do online logged and made available without a warrant

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:00:13 +0000

Lamar Smith (R-TX), author of the ill-starred SOPA Internet regulation, has an even dumber idea for the Internet. In the name of fighting child pornography, he wants to force ISPs to log everything you do online, then make it available to police and government agents without a warrant. Leslie Meredith has a writeup on the mounting opposition to Smith's latest act of unconstitutional lunacy:

However, under Smith’s bill, records of both suspects and ordinary citizens would all be available to any government agency at any time, no warrant required.
"This type of legislation goes against the fundamental values of our country where individuals are treated as innocent until proven guilty," Reitman said. "H.R. 1981 would uproot this core American principle, forcing ISPs to treat everyone like a potential criminal."
The bill has been forwarded from committee to the full House of Representatives for consideration, which is expected later this year. There is no sign of a Senate version at this time.
If the past is any indicator, Smith may be in for a hard fight with activists. He was also sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill that would have shut off access to foreign websites accused of hosting pirated content. But he was forced to withdraw the legislation after massive protests by many of the same opponents who likewise thought the remedy was too harsh for the problem.

Child porn law could affect everyone's privacy

Clever assemble-yourself toys and models made with laser-cutters

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:52:12 +0000

Artifacture Studios is a maker shop based near Dallas, TX (I met the founders at a recent speaking gig at U Texas at Arlington) that does pretty amazing stuff with laser-cutters. They are probably best known for their laser-cut Eiffel Tower models, ornate models of the iconic building cut from stiff card that use cunning slot/tab fasteners that create a robust structure without glue or tape. They've also recently launched a 30-piece acrylic laser-cut puzzle called the "Frabjous" that uses interlocking tesselations of a polygon to form a great rhombic triacontahedron, "a self-intersecting polyhedron with thirty rhombic faces."

The Eiffel Tower model is ingeniously simple to assemble, the Frabjous is challenging and elegant.

Starting with a scan of the original plans by Gustav Eiffel, this was designed to have four identical pieces that tab into one another creating a 3D model without the use of glue, tape or fasteners. Laser cut from high quality soft-touch paper. Online instructional video provided to help with assembly...
Frabjous is a sculpture and geometric assembly puzzle made from dichroic acrylic. The swirling geometric form is composed of thirty identical pieces that catch and reflect the light in stunning fashion. Mathematically, the planes of the shape are the face planes of a "great rhombic triacontahedron," a self-intersecting polyhedron with thirty rhombic faces. But the puzzle piece is a carefully designed subset of the rhombus that doesn't intersect copies of itself. Weaving the parts through each other so each remains planar is trickier than it looks. Instructions are included.

Artifacture

Bruce Sterling freebies at Austin Hackerspace

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:22:28 +0000

Hey, Austinites, Bruce Sterling's giving away his books at the ATX, the Austin Hackerspace, on Saturday from 5-7PM.

Taxi-window sticker: our security stinks and your credit card will be sniffed

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:00:19 +0000

On my way to Dallas-Fort Worth airport today, I snapped this picture of the sticker on the inside of the back-seat passenger-side window of my taxi. It warns "The method used to authenticate credit card transactions for approval is not secure and personal information is subject to being intercepted by unauthorized personnel." There's some history there, I'm guessing. Consumer warnings are very nice, but I'm left wondering why they don't just update the firmware on the credit-card box with some decent crypto (unless this is because they use a CB radio to call in card numbers, which is pretty danged foolish).

White grandfather detained, cuffed in Austin while walking home with his black granddaughter

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:06:36 +0000

Scott Henson, "a former journalist turned opposition researcher/political consultant, public policy researcher and blogger," recounts how he was repeatedly stopped and eventually cuffed and detained while walking his granddaughter home through a park in Austin, TX. Henson is white and his granddaughter is black, and the police said that they were responding to a "kidnapping" call. But their response terrified the little girl and humiliated her grandfather. And it's not the first time it's happened to them.

As soon as we crossed the street, just two blocks from my house as the crow flies, the police car that just passed us hit its lights and wheeled around, with five others appearing almost immediately, all with lights flashing. The officers got out with tasers drawn demanding I raise my hands and step away from the child. I complied, and they roughly cuffed me, jerking my arms up behind me needlessly. Meanwhile, Ty edged up the hill away from the officers, crying. One of them called out in a comforting tone that they weren't there to hurt her, but another officer blew up any good will that might have garnered by brusquely snatching her up and scuttling her off to the back seat of one of the police cars. (By this time more cars had joined them; they maxxed out at 9 or 10 police vehicles.)
I gave them the phone numbers they needed to confirm who Ty was and that she was supposed to be with me (and not in the back of their police car), but for quite a while nobody seemed too interested in verifying my "story." One officer wanted to lecture me endlessly about how they were just doing their job, as if the innocent person handcuffed on the side of the road cares about such excuses. I asked why he hadn't made any calls yet, and he interrupted his lecture to say "we've only been here two minutes, give us time" (actually it'd been longer than that). "Maybe so," I replied, sitting on the concrete in handcuffs, "but there are nine of y'all milling about doing nothing by my count so between you you've had 18 minutes for somebody to get on the damn phone by now so y'all can figure out you screwed up." Admittedly, this did not go over well. I could tell I was too pissed off to say anything constructive and silently vowed to keep mum from then on.

To me, the point of this story is how "see something, say something," fails. The police and some person or persons in the park believed that Henson and his granddaughter didn't "look right" and "just to be safe" called in the report and responded in force. But "doesn't look right" is culturally determined and informed by our conscious and subconscious biases. For people unaccustomed to mixed-race families, "doesn't look right" means calling the police down on the innocent children and grandparents in your neighborhood. At its core, "see something, say something" isn't about a war on crime, it's a war on surprises, whose core premise is to mistrust and fear things you can't understand.

Me, APD, and 'Babysitting While White,' Part Deux (via Reddit)

A reminder for our readers in the Dallas area

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:33:16 +0000

I'm giving a free talk tonight at UT Arlington engineering, 7PM at the Lonestar Auditorium, entitled: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Internet Regulation." Tell your friends!

Patent troll that claimed ownership over the Web loses its case

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:43:28 +0000

Eolas, a notorious patent troll who partnered with the University of California in a shakedown scheme that claimed royalties for all "interactive web sites" that featured rotating images, streaming video, and other practices that had been widely established before their patent was filed, has lost a key lawsuit. A jury in Tyler, Texas (the sleepy town where the shell-companies used by patent trolls have their nominal offices) found that the Eolas patent was invalid, after hearing testimony from Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and other luminaries of the open web.

If the jury had upheld the patents, there would have been a potentially brutal damages phase in which Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Amazon, Adobe, JC Penney, CDW Corp. and Staples would have been sued for infringement and been asked for more than $600 million in damages, with the majority of that coming from Google and Yahoo.
The Eolas patents were denounced for years before this week’s landmark trial, but managed to survive repeated re-exams at the United States Patent and Trade Office.
However, Thursday’s verdict is likely a setback Eolas can’t overcome. It may well be appealed, but that will be a long process, and in the meantime Eolas won’t be able to go after new targets.

Texas Jury Strikes Down Patent Troll’s Claim to Own the Interactive Web

Texas schoolchildren get criminal citations for cussing in class, shouting within 500' of school

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:53:40 +0000

In The Guardian, Chris McGreal looks at the horrific state of policing in Texas schools. The age of criminal responsibility in Texas is 10, and many schools have uniformed police officers on site who ticket small children for throwing paper airplanes or flipping the teacher off. The tickets carry steep fines, and if you graduate with unpaid fines, you go to prison.

Among the more extreme cases documented by Appleseed is of a teacher who had a pupil arrested after the child responded to a question as to where a word could be found in a text by saying: "In your culo (arse)", making the other children laugh. Another pupil was arrested for throwing paper aeroplanes.
Students are also regularly fined for "disorderly behaviour", which includes playground scraps not serious enough to warrant an assault charge or for swearing or an offensive gesture. One teenage student was arrested and sent to court in Houston after he and his girlfriend poured milk on each other after they broke up. Nearly one third of tickets involve drugs or alcohol. Although a relatively high number of tickets – up to 20% in some school districts – involve charges over the use of weapons, mostly the weapons used were fists.
The very young are not spared. According to Appleseed, Texas records show more than 1,000 tickets were issued to primary schoolchildren over the past six years (although these have no legal force at that age). Appleseed said that "several districts ticketed a six-year-old at least once in the last five years".

The US schools with their own police

Aliens: on ice!

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:02:36 +0000

Austin's Old Murder House Theater has mounted a rendition of Aliens -- on ice! It's more or less faithful to the original, and it's, well, stupendous:

Anyone who has seen Aliens can follow what transpires over the next 70 minutes or so. It's James Cameron's film on fastforward…and caffeine…and possibly cocaine. The show captures the little details and turns of phrases that fans will know by heart and cast makes creative use of the ice, never standing still when they have to. Ripley's confrontation with the board that accuses her of destroying the ship from the first film is transformed into humorously blunt exchange, with every party involved skating around each other in menacing circles. The colonial marines searching the seemingly abandoned colony of LV421 becomes a showcase for humorously clumsy figure skating. The subtle relationship between Ripley and Hicks becomes gloriously unsubtle when the two share a brief little spin together on the ice.
These guys may not be professional skaters, but they're not bad. Not bad at all. They're certainly not afraid of the ice and they're not afraid of taking risks. When they do stumble, they play it off beautifully and keep moving. They make the "on ice" part of the show look effortless until they make a mistake and then it becomes a newly improvised joke. Using expert skaters as the aliens is a truly inspired choice and seeing the aliens literally skate circles around the clumsy humans is a genuinely thrilling experience.

'Aliens on Ice': The Review (With Video!) (via JWZ)

Judge whose daughter released video of him beating her suspended from bench during judicial investigation

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 05:50:56 +0000

The Associated Press has a long followup on the story of Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams, whose daughter Hillary posted a seven-year-old video of her father viciously beating her for breaking a rule over using a computer at home. The judge has acknowledged that the video is real, and that he is the aggressor in the assault.

Local law enforcement says that they believe that the video depicts a serious crime, but as the statute of limitations has passed, they have not arrested the judge. The judge has been suspended from the bench while his conduct is investigated by the Texas judicial conduct commission and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

The judge claims that his daughter posted the video as retaliation after he cut her off financially following a fight over her decision to "'drop out,' and strive to achieve no more in life than to work part time at a video game store" that culminated with his taking away of her "Mercedes automobile."

Hillary Adams has not responded to the allegation, but rather discusses her father's history of abuse and her desire that he would seek help. Her mother -- divorced from the judge -- describes the father as having an unspecified "addition" problem (presumably the AP means "addiction").

Hillary Adams said she waited so long to expose her father because she was terrified at what might have happened had she done so while still living under his roof. She said the outpouring of support and encouragement she's received since posting the clip is tempered by the sadness that it's her father repeatedly lashing her with a belt and threatening to beat her "into submission."
During an interview with her mother Thursday on NBC's "Today" show, Hillary Adams said her father regularly beat her for a period of time. has repeatedly said she didn't post the clip to spite her father, and that she hopes it forces him to seek help.
Her mother blamed her ex-husband's bouts of violence on an "addition." She called it a "family secret," but declined to elaborate.

Police: Judge won't be charged over video beating