I was taking Ponta for a walk, and dropped the phone. I’ve done it dozens of times since I got the phone. The worst that’s happened was a small crack in the lower right corner. Today, my luck ran out:

On the down side, the front glass is shattered. It feels like it could easily get worse; run my finger over the shattered area, it catches more than I like. I sure don’t want to have that loose in my pocket when I reach in for it.

On the up side, the phone still works, even the touch screen, and even in the shattered areas.

I was surprised at how little I was upset by this. It’s a great piece of equipment, and I was looking forward to using it well after I got a replacement–it certainly holds up far better than my old iPhone G3 after I got the 4.

I was figuring, hey, I’ll still keep it; the video camera will be worth it alone, and maybe I can use it for other things not requiring a screen. And then there’s the fact that the new iPhone is coming out soon, which means I won’t have to put up with a shattered screen for too long. Still, I figured I’d get a screen protector film to hold what’s left in place.

But then I thought, hmm, I wonder if they sell replacement kits. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to look, so I went online and was surprised to find out that relatively cheap glass replacement kits are available. In Japan, they go for ¥3880 ($50), but that would be worth it for me. The iPhone 5 (or whatever they end up calling it) may not be out until October. I could survive four months with a broken screen, but looking at it as $12.50 per month to replace it, not to mention keeping it around afterwards as an extra camera or whatever, it’d be worth it.

Alternately, there is ¥3200 ($41) solution with the front panel only. I wonder if the glass will feel better or the parts would be more reliable.

The replacement surgery is pretty damned involved from what I can see, but with the videos on the web, I should be able to do fine.

Anyone here have experience with this? Any advice?

One other idea, though a bit of a long shot: take it to Softbank, see what they do. I figure a good chance they’ll say no can do, but you never know. A G3 I had got video issues, and they just replaced it on the spot–but that was not owner-incurred damage. On the other hand, they may have inventory to clear with a new phone expected soon, and maybe would like to create good customer relations, what with AU now selling the iPhone as well. Probably not. But hey, can’t hurt to try.

Whatever happens, it’s cool. I still have the new iPad for running apps. And, by the end of the year, I’ll have the new iPad, the new iPhone, and the new Macbook Pro. So, there’s something to look forward to.

Now all I gotta do is figure out a way to stop dropping the damned thing.

A conservative chastises liberals for being so off-base on conservatism and history:

Built into this response is an intentional misrepresentation of what conservatism is. In essence, liberals look back at history, identify the social changes of which they approve, and define “conservatism” as opposition to those changes, since conservatism is, in this reading, opposition to social change. Thus the hilarious New York Times reference to those seeking to maintain Communism in post-Soviet Russia as “conservatives.”

This doesn’t hold up to very much scrutiny: The abolitionist movement, for example, was populated largely by people who would be viewed with contempt by modern liberals, because they were crusading Christians who sought to write their own interpretation of morality into the law. (Or, in the case of John Brown, militant anti-government activists pursuing Second Amendment remedies.) One of the things I like most about Frederick Douglass is his economic analysis of slavery. In Douglass’s view, one of the great crimes of slavery is that black Americans were denied the profit of their labor and the ability to invest and engage in enterprise. One of his great sources of bitterness was that even after emancipation, black Americans remained excluded from the economy, and therefore unable to better themselves. Lincoln’s views on the importance of a man’s ability to work to better his condition would be right at home on conservative talk radio today.

So, according to this guy, Kevin D. Williamson, we should ignore the essential foundations of conservatism, the most fundamental characteristics which define it so deeply that its very name is a reflection of that foundation… and instead believe that the heroes of the past are conservative because some of their personal viewpoints are similar to what conservatives are talking about today?

Boy, talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

Not to mention, this guy has his own misinterpretations of liberalism, and his own misjudgments about the religious mainstream. For example, he thinks that liberals would disapprove of abolitionists because they were dedicated Christians trying to bring their Christian morality to the public square. What a one-dimensional perspective this guy must have. Most liberals are Christians, and we have never objected to people allowing their religious beliefs to guide them in making moral decisions–that’s a conservative conceit. After all, how many liberals ever put down Martin Luther King Jr. for doing exactly that? And at the time, you would not have seen many conservatives accepting Dr. King’s cause based on his deep religious convictions, either.

Not to mention that the abolitionists were not trying to codify religious scripture or beliefs (what conservatives try to do with “religion guiding my actions” as a dodge and disguise to accomplish), they were guided by their religious beliefs into making social progress to equality–the exact same thing that conservatives today vilify. Look at the right wing’s vicious attacks against “social justice” movements in American religion today, and you get an idea of this.

Conservatives love to imply the false view that most Christians were abolitionists, that it was the mainstream Christian movement that freed the slaves–and conveniently ignore that they were a minority in the religious community at the time (PDF). They were the like churches today that fight for acceptance of homosexuality; they were not the megachurches with pastors who fight to further discrimination against the minority. The abolitionists were sneered at by conservatives of their time, as similar liberal Christians are sneered at by conservatives today. The fact that these people act on religious convictions have never meant anything in this regard.

Similarly, liberals would not mind religious affiliations at all if the focus were a moral good–and not an attempt to mandate religious practices. If a religious group tried to enforce prayer in schools, liberals would fight them; if, however, a religious group campaigned for legalizing gay marriage or women’s rights, we would march with them. In any of those cases, we would not examine or care whether their motivations were religious in nature; that would not matter.

The citation of Frederick Douglass is even more ridiculous–does Williamson actually believe that liberals were against black people getting paid a fair wage and being encouraged to invest and profit? Really? So why are conservatives hostile to legislation that would help assure that minorities today get paid fair and equal wages today? Why are attempts at fairness that would fit Douglass’ philosophy like a glove so vehemently opposed by right-wingers, with legislation to codify equal treatment denounced as “special privileges”?

Similarly, Williamson’s note about Lincoln’s views about working to better oneself could only be seen as antithetical to liberal values if you have a bitterly skewed and biased misunderstanding of what liberals represent.

But at the core of it all is a deep desire to gloss over basic truths in order to incorrectly claim as one’s own the more respectable icons of history, and to attempt to heave off their own villains as somehow belonging to others. All in an attempt to justify current socially regressive views as being on the right side of history. Santayana be damned.

An aging sign outside a lot on a corner near our house. The lot is filled with old and rusting cars–not the best indicator of how good a “car doctor” the proprietor is. But the sign is the real deal-killer:

Nice aging, wouldn’t you say? The years have given him not only a double chin and some grid-like acne, but two bullet wounds in his right arm.

This sign always freaks me out. Look at the eyes–hell, look at the face:

I mean, damn. It looks like a clone of Super Mario accidentally hybridized with an albino goat, only this moment realizing in abject horror his monstrous fate. Even were the sign not aged and peeling, I feel as if I would recoil from it with a deep sense of hideous disgust.

Really, not a fantastic indicator of the owner’s good sense or taste–in that he not only paid for the thing, but he also has displayed it, for years.

I wrote this a few months ago, and it fell through the cracks. Here it is, though.

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Apparently, more and more American workers are suing employers for unpaid overtime pay:

Americans were pushed to their limit in the recession and its aftermath as they worked longer hours, often for the same or less pay, after businesses laid off almost 9 million employees.

Now, many are striking back in court. Since the height of the recession in 2008, more workers across the nation have been suing employers under federal and state wage-and-hour laws. The number of lawsuits filed last year was up 32% vs. 2008, an increase that some experts partly attribute to a post-downturn austerity that pervaded the American workplace and artificially inflated U.S. productivity.

Workers’ main grievance is that they had to put in more than 40 hours a week without overtime pay through various practices:

• They were forced to work off the clock.

I noted this story because my one experience in court was exactly this. It was back in 1984, if I am not mistaken. I worked at a movie theater for a couple of certifiable douchebags, perhaps the two most unpleasant and dishonest people I have personally known.

They came across as convincingly earnest at first, as douchebags often do. When they took over the theater, they told all the people who were already working there about their dreams to make that theater a terrific place. However, they needed to build up capital, and could not afford everything at the start. They said that they could guarantee us a good health care plan later on, for example, if we would be willing to forgo overtime pay for a while at the beginning. We thought that an actual health care package was way more than we could expect, and didn’t think that overtime would matter much, so we agreed.

Of course, the no-overtime policy never disappeared, and the promised health care plan never materialized.

At one point, one of the workers left and sued the theater for unpaid overtime pay. At that point, the owners told everybody that before they would accept our timecards, we would have to re-write them–falsifying the records, spreading the hours around so that they would never go over 8 hours a day or 40 per week.

Soon afterwards, I quit the theater. The overtime issue was not the only reason, of course. These guys made the place a horrible place to work, and really pushed the limits on what you could even stand by and watch. Someday I’ll go into detail perhaps, but right now it’s beside the point. Suffice to say they disgusted me and I wanted nothing to do with them.

Afterwards, I decided to sue for the overtime pay. I had copied all of my timecards, and decided not to try to make a point of the falsified records; I just sued for what was on the books, which came out to a bit more than $500.

I served them by registered mail and showed up in court, armed with all the documents to prove my case. They did not show, and got away with it. These guys were not new to being served (again, stories for another time), and the dominant douchebag of the pair signed the registered mail as “Rob Roy.” While I’m sure signing that way is illegal, there was no way to pin it on him, and without a valid signature, the registered mail was not sufficient to show the guy had been served. The judge told me I’d have to re-file.

This time I had someone I knew serve them (in exchange for a few six-packs of beer). The day for the court case came, and again they did not show. The judge ruled in my favor by default.

At that point, they had, if I recall correctly, thirty days to appeal, which I was sure they would do. They never did. I think they just figured that they didn’t need to; they were already deep in debt, and figured that they could just refuse to claim, maybe use some more tricks to keep from coughing up the judgment (plus fees and costs).

I don’t think they realized that I knew which bank they used.

All I needed to do was to hire a county deputy sheriff to go to the bank and get the money; all he needed was the bank name and the name of the account holder. A few days later, I got every penny.

I did say these guys were scummy; I did not say that they were particularly bright.

With all the “furor” over breastfeeding, I figured it would be appropriate to re-post this image from 2006:

Frankly, I think people freak out over this way too much. Seriously, we can send troops overseas, have them fight and kill and die, but we can’t handle moms feeding their kids. For crying out loud, get a grip.

In the past two weeks, I’ve had the same uncomfortable experience four times: some guy walks through the train car I am in. Immediately in his wake, he leave a foul, pungent odor. Not sulfurous, if that’s what you were thinking. More like, kind of a “I haven’t bathed in six months” aroma. It takes a full minute for the smell to dissipate.

This being Japan, nobody in the crowded car so much as turns their head. But if you have become even a bit attuned to people’s expressions here, you can see they feel the same way I do: disgusted by the smell, and grateful that the guy walked through and out to the next car instead of settling in among us here. I feel badly for the people he does camp out next to, though.

I don’t even know if it’s the same guy, but I would not be surprised.

Such things are not rare on Japanese trains, but they are not common, either. I do recall a passenger who was much worse once. This was back on the Chuo Line, maybe in the late 80’s (possibly the early 90’s). A short, stocky guy, messily dressed. The car was not packed, but all the seats were taken. This fellow came to a bench at the end of the car, where three people can sit. Nobody was standing in front of the bench, and the three occupants were either women or slight men.

He stood in front of one of the three people sitting there, and after a few seconds, started hitting the seated passenger’s knees with his knees. More or less he was saying, “I want to sit here, pal, so get out!” After a few seconds, the accosted passenger got up and fled to another part of the car.

But the brazen ass didn’t sit down. He moved on to the next passenger, and did the same thing. After that person left, he got to the last passenger and went through the exact same act as before.

After he cleared the bench that way, he laid down and went to sleep.

Yep. Apparently it is now an official Florida tradition. The Florida GOP’s brazen schemes to strip legitimate Democratic voters of their ability to cast their votes comes back, with a vengeance. Republicans claim they are trying to stop voter fraud, something for which there is extremely little evidence–unless, of course, you count the massive voter fraud inherent in repeated GOP attempts to disenfranchise Democrats over the years. But no, they’re not concerned with that. The purge is–surprise!–heavily biased against Democrats, Independents, and Hispanic voters (everyone except Republicans, how strange!), according to a Miami Herald study.

Back in 2000, state Attorney General Katherine Harris, partisan extremist and Bush loyalist, carried out the first politically-directed purge, one which stripped tens of thousands of legal Democratic voters of their right to vote in Florida on the bogus assertion that they were felons. This, in an election which was decided by only a few hundred votes. We have Harris to thank for eight years of G. W. Bush, and, in his wake, a stacked Supreme Court, a bitter partisan divide, a battered Constitution, two massively costly land wars in Asia, and eight trillion dollars of debt.

In 2002, the purge continued, with the company charged to maintain the list claiming that as many as 91,000 of the 94,000 names on the list were not illegal voters. Florida “promised” to clean up the list.

Jump to 2004. Guess what? The voter purge list was still alive, this time even more flawed than ever, and–like all of its iterations–it “accidentally” purged decisively against Democratic voters. Whoopsie! How could that have possibly happened?

Fast-forward to 2008, and we see the techniques to purge Democratic voters continued, albeit in a milder form: meaningless small typos and variations in how names were written (with a middle initial or full name, for example) purged tens of thousands of voters. While this would not target Democrats with the initial purge, it affected Democrats more in the end because elderly and minority voters–heavily Democratic–would be far less able to repair their status. And while ACORN (which legally registered many poor people to vote) was under a vicious attack which would eventually shut down it down, Florida imposed new laws making new registration harder, a move that would disproportionately disadvantage older and minority voters (again, Democrats).

Well, the mild-mannered days of 2008 are out the window, and we see the brazen and corrupt Republican machine surge back into action, this time with an all-new list of 182,000 voters to purge, with easily tens of thousands of them clearly legitimate–and, according to a study by the Miami Herald, “predominantly made up of Democrats, independents and Latinos.” The last groups was famously spared the purge back in 2004, but that was before the numbers shifted from Republican-friendly Cuban-Americans to a current, far greater majority of Democratic-friendly non-Cuban Latinos in the state.

And that really does highlight how this is blatantly political–every single time this happens in Florida, it just “happens” by “accident” that the majority of voters “mistakenly” stripped of their right to vote are Democrats.

Not that any of this is a surprise; Republicans have become more and more shameless and open in their attempts to disenfranchise Democrats. Expect more of this in the months and years to come.