Jan 10
A judge in Montana has ruled that suspects with Multiple Personality Disorder need to have their Miranda rights read separately to each personality.
Still, it may not matter. A case before the Supreme Court concerns a man who was riding his bike through a field where police were questioning someone suspected of selling drugs. Police ordered the man, Oliviero Martinez, to stop. When one cop found Martinez had a small knife used for cutting strawberries in a sheath on his belt, he decided to wrestle him to the ground. The cop’s partner allegedly saw Martinez reaching towards the cop’s gun, so he shot him five times—in the eyes, spine and legs. (Martinez is now permanently blind and paralyzed.)
The controversial bit is that while Martinez was screaming in agony in the ambulance, and later in the emergency room, the cop continued aggressively questioning him, and didn’t bother reading him his Miranda rights at any point. The cop eventually persuaded Martinez to agree that he was reaching for the gun, and that the shootings were justified, at which point the interrogation ended.
The Justice Department has filed a friend-of-court briefing saying that since Martinez was never charged with any kind of crime on the basis of the extracted testimony, the whole thing was completely OK.
The city has refused to pay any of Martinez’s medical bills.
Jan 10
“We would agree that diets don’t work. We position ourselves as providing a lifestyle program.—
—Linda Carelli, spokesperson for Weight Watchers
Jan 10
Sony plans to introduce Blu-Ray discs this year. They’re 12cm, the same size as DVDs, but start with a capacity of 27GB. Plans are to increase that by 2x fairly quickly.
Looks like I’ll be able to move my photographs to a single disc more quickly than I thought…
Also announced was the PEG-NZ90. Feature list:
- 2MP digital camera with flash
- 16MB RAM
- Palm OS 5 on 200MHz XScale processor
- Removable rechargeable battery pack
- Built-in Bluetooth
- Slot for 802.11b card
- 320×480 screen with 16 bit color
- MP3 player
- High power IR
- Movie and sound recording and playback
- Memory Stick slot
- Tiny standard-layout QWERTY keyboard
- USB printer port
- TV output for slideshows/presentations
There’s a big picture to drool over too. Now that’s a handheld for the 21st Century, at last…
Jan 10
While in Minnesota for Christmas, we stopped off in Rochester. Down by the lake they have geese. Lots of geese.
In fact, if you look closely at the picture, you can see that it’s geese all the way back to the horizon. Thousands and thousands of them. Like a Hitchcock movie. And oh, the honking…
I realize that they can be a problem, but I still find them amusing.
Also on the subject of Minnesota, someone has started making army worm wine. You take a few pounds of army worms, which are in plentiful supply in northen Minnesota in summer, and you mash ’em down and make wine with ’em.
(I can’t remember whether we ever posted the photos of Ely covered in army worm silk…)