Perhaps the one left-over thought about the aftermath of the Washington D.C. sniper is how often the words "death penalty" are being used in the media. Right away, they started asking so-called experts which state had the toughest death-penalty laws. And often times the media suggested that certain states are likely to prosecute them first because of various rules around death penalties (particularly since one of the snipers is considered a minor). The term "death penalty" is used more than the word "election", and we're only a few days away from that!

Honestly, who cares at this point? Will these two get convicted? Yes. Will they ever be free in society again? No. Will they get the death penalty in at least one of the three trials they are likely to face? Yes - of course. Why does it matter which state has an easier time killing people and which has a tougher time? Why are we rushing them to the gallows? You have them in custody. Trials, appeals, and death sentences take years, even more than a decade in most cases. Drop it, and move on.

The other two legal cases that bother me are Winona Ryder and Martha Stewart. Winona was caught shoplifting. You know what? My sister was once caught shoplifting. The police brought her home without charges, and she was banned from going to Towers department store ever again. Why is the Winona case being treated like it's a murder or something? Geez, fine her $1,000 and ban her from Saks 5th Ave if you must. Why is this such a big deal?

And Martha Stewart. Millions of taxpayer dollars (and lots of time) are being spent investigating whether she had a sell order or not. I once worked for a company that went completely out of business three months after being bought by another company. Our company had $30 million in cash when it was bought. Where did that money go? Noone really knows. But why are the police spending time investigating the crooks who bankrupted my company? Why aren't they investigating the dozens of billion-dollar accounting irregularities with such vigor. Poor Martha made a piddly $40,000 off her stock sale.

Wow. They finally caught the two people responsible for the sniper attacks. If there's one thing I hate, it's predicting something, admitting that I was wrong, and then finally being proven right. So it turns out the sniper was caught because he was seen - good eyewitness descriptions led directly to their capture.

It turns out that one of the sniper suspects was seen "clearly" by a policeman, and the investigators had a great description of him for several days before the arrest. This policeman also picked this man out of a photo lineup with some certainty.

The oddest thing I heard today was that one of the snipers served in the Gulf War, actually disposing of Iraqi chemical weapons including Sarin. The suggestion being made is that being exposed to Sarin, even a little bit, can cause all sorts of psychological problems. A good defense lawyer would based his entire defense on this one theory.

Another interesting fact is that many of the recent serial killers in U.S. history (the sniper, Timothy McVeigh, Jeffery Dhamer, and others) have had U.S. military training. So the other defense theory could be, hey, the government taught these guys to be ruthless killers... Military training is essentially an accepted form of brain washing, right? Sir, yes sir!

I don't know what to think about that. Anyways, the sniper will never see the outside of a prison again. Death penalty for sure. Several states are fighting over who gets to kill them first. Sane, insane, who cares? They terrorized millions of people for three weeks, and killed 10 (or more if you count earlier crimes). I'm glad its over.

Scott

Today's sniper news: The police are asking the sniper to call them.

Why didn't they think of that two weeks ago?

Have you ever wondered where the origins of the name John Doe come from? So did I. Thank goodness there are people who have the time to research such things -- I am not one of them.

There is a web site, called Word Detective that has the answer to this question. According to them:

It turns out that the "John Doe" custom dates back to the reign of England's King Edward III, during the legal debate over something called the Acts of Ejectment. This debate involved a hypothetical landowner, referred to as "John Doe," who leased land to another man, the equally fictitious "Richard Roe," who then took the land as his own and "ejected," or evicted, poor "John Doe."

These names -- John Doe and Richard Roe -- had no particular significance, aside from "Doe" (a female deer) and "Roe" (a small species of deer found in Europe) being commonly known nouns at the time. But the debate became a hallmark of legal theory, and the name "John Doe" in particular gained wide currency in both the legal world and general usage as a generic stand-in for any unnamed person. According to Mr. Dickson, "John Doe" and "Richard Roe" are, to this day, mandated in legal procedure as the first and second names given to unknown defendants in a case (followed, if necessary, by "John Stiles" and "Richard Miles"). The name "Jane Doe," a logical female equivalent, is used in many state jurisdictions, but if the case is federal, the unnamed defendant is dubbed "Mary Major."

Well, you learn something new every day!
Scott

I've been fascinated over the past week or so about this sniper that is terrorizing the Washington, D.C. suburbs.

I made a prediction to some friends earlier this week that "this guy has finally made a mistake -- for the first time, several witnesses saw him and can describe him, its only a matter of days before an arrest will be made". Boy, was I wrong. The entire story (van/taillight/ladder/AK74/dark skinned) was concocted by one witness? And it turns out he was making the whole thing up? And so, as a result, the police has no (or at best, conflicting and confusing) information. If anything, the police are worse off today than they were a week ago -- at least a week ago the public was looking for anything, now the public is only looking for Arabs/Hispanics with creme colored vans and AK-74s!

Even if they eventually arrest the sniper, a good lawyer should be able to pull an "O.J." :: get an acquittal through confusing and conflicting evidence.

If we learned anything from the O.J. trial, its that if you get a high-profile case, with hundreds of detectives, lawyers, experts, witnesses, etc. Any piece of evidence can be made to look like anything. Every witness can be made to be a liar.

And, I distinctly remember watching CNN on Monday afternoon, and hearing the reporter say "It looks like the sniper has taken a long weekend off" or something to that effect. I wonder if this VERY statement on CNN caused the sniper to go out and shoot someone, just to prove the reporter wrong...

"The Hunt for Red October" is on TBS tonight. I have probably seen that movie a dozen times over the years, and I will probably see it a dozen more. It's one of those movies you can see time and time again and not get tired of it. Too many darn commercials on TBS though.

I bought a digital camera on Friday - maybe the smallest digital camera I've ever seen. 1.5 inches by 2.5 inches. It's called the "SmartCam Mini V". I don't know who makes it - I searched the Internet for "SmartCam mini" and came up with only 4 matches. So it's one of these nondescript Taiwanese manufacturers. But it's a hell of small camera. So far so good. I've taken a few dozen pictures with it over the weekend, and it's pretty good for the size and price. Not exactly film-quality -- maximum 640x480 resolution. But it fits in my jeans pocket without noticing.

We have a Chinese mall up here, just North of Toronto. Man, you can buy anything there. One store sells both clothes, and dried noodles. I am not joking - clothes and noodles in the same store. Of course, some stores are devoted to Hello Kitty merchandise. I don't get that, but to each their own I suppose. A few weeks ago I bought a tiny remote control race car there - 1 inch by 2 inches, that's how small it is. This place sells some cool stuff - cheap. It reminds me of Stanley Market in Hong Kong. Kudos to Pacific Mall - that place rocks.

There are approximately 100 quinvigintillion protons in the Universe, or 10^80.

Here is the value of the mathematical constant Pi, to 250 decimal places.

3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510
   58209 74944 59230 78164 06286 20899 86280 34825 34211 70679
   82148 08651 32823 06647 09384 46095 50582 23172 53594 08128
   48111 74502 84102 70193 85211 05559 64462 29489 54930 38196
   44288 10975 66593 34461 28475 64823 37867 83165 27120 19091

I had a dream last night that I had become a quadrillionaire. You know, a trillion dollars is hardly enough money to live on these days.

How did I earn all this vast wealth? Well, I met some aliens who gave me medicine that can cure every disease, and extends natural life by 50 years. I started selling injections of this medicine for $1 million per person. I once heard that there are over 1 million millionaires in the United States alone. How many of these wealthy individuals would give up a large piece of their fortune to cure their terminal illness, or extend their life? I bet most if not all would.

Or would these people not give me every thing they had to save the life of their sick or aging spouse or child? I bet you could sell 10 million doses of these things at $1 million each. That's $10 trillion dollars. When the ultra-rich have been cured, I would offer it to the middle class at only $400,000 per dose.

And I hear the first trillion is the hardest. After that, the money will come rolling in from other enterprises. And those aliens will be back to give me something else valuable to sell. How about a machine that produces an unlimited supply of gold? You see, a quadrillionaire in no time!

You know, it occurs to me that there is a whole entire nomencalture devoted to naming numbers, and in every day life we only use three or four of those names. I am going to try to find places to use some of the names of the larger numbers. "I thought about leaving work early and sneaking home to see my wife sexdecillion times today." Oooh... adds a whole new dimension to the language.

Number of zeros	Name
3	thousand
6	million
9	billion
12	trillion
15	quadrillion
18	quintillion
21	sextillion
24	septillion
27	octillion
30	nonillion
33	decillion
36	undecillion
39	duodecillion
42	tredecillion
45	quattuordecillion
48	quindecillion
51	sexdecillion
54	septendecillion
57	octodecillion
60	novemdecillion
63	vigintillion
100	googol
10^100	googolplex

There's a couple of people at work who spend several hours a day playing solitaire -- don't ask me what they are supposed to be doing, I don't know.

Now there's a site in which you can make money playing solitaire "professionally". http://www.worldwinner.com/

Would it be wrong of me to send them this link through email (anonymously, of course)? Would that be rude?

"Work sucks, I know.
Work sucks, I know.
Work sucks, I know.
Work sucks, I know."
-- a song composed by my 3-year old niece Sofie. (She's not even in school yet, but she already knows work sucks... Smart kid.)

Scott

So the question is, what is the purpose of going to war with Iraq. The White House would have you believe it is:
- punishment for not complying with the U.N.
- preventative strike to protect the United States

The United Nations has reached an agreement to bring Iraq basically back into compliance with weapons inspections, and the Americans oppose it. So that rules out the first point as the reason for war with Iraq.

Iraq can, in no way, launch an attack against the United States. These days their army consists of a bunch of guys riding camels. The worst they could do is Israel, and Israel is not the United States. Israel has a huge strong army, and it can defend itself fairly well. So that rules out the second point.

The real reason, of course, is:
- Iraq has remained defiant against the Americans, after all these years, and it pisses the Bush family (both Sr. and Jr.) off.

Ari Fleicher said today about the cost of war with Iraq, "I can only say the cost of a one-way ticket is substantially less than that. The cost of one bullet, the Iraqi people taking it (on) themselves, is substantially less than that, the cost of war is more than that."

So, the real reason is that they'd like to see Saddam ousted, preferably killed. Why don't they just come out and say that already?