Just the raw amount of debt incurred is pretty worthless.

I suspect quite a few people carrying big lenses have had problems.

Thanks for posting that youtube suggestion about not talking to cops. I hadn’t seen that before and really enjoyed it. In fact, I’ll send the link to my daughter as well. She’s a public defender and I’d like to get her take on it. She told me once she’d like to hand out T-shirts that said, “Nobody Talks, Everybody Walks”. :)

In high school I used to take photos of planes down at the airport with one of my friends (like what you see at airliners.net). I eventually had to give it up due to constant police harassment. I would get questioned at length almost every time I went down there. Another Matt’s post about lenses is hilarious because you need really big lenses to get good shots of airliners, I was in the “Al Qaeda henchman” category I think.

One cop said he had received a report of “guys running around in trenchcoats with guns” and threatened to arrest me if I ever came back (what for I have no idea). I wish I had a better understanding of my rights back then, I was really scared of being arrested for being a terrorist or something like that.

On a related note nighttime photos of airliners landing or taking off are really cool, it looks like someone has hung up some christmas lights in a completely impossible way.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/132833.html

And as we all know, we should never ever talk to the police — I just re-reviewed those two videos by the law professor and the cop over on another website. If you haven’t seen them, look them up, I’m sure they are on youtube — “don’t talk to cops,” part 1 is 27 minutes part two is 21 minutes.

I leave it for wiser heads to decide whether this trend is good or bad.

I was hoping the graph would allow me to compare Bush’s spending vs Obama’s, but this doesn’t look like it does that.

#1. It’s a debt graph, not a spending graph.

#2. The fiscal year starts on Oct 1. By the time 2009 had rolled around, the debt for the current fiscal year was already 485.2 Billion. Which makes me think that Obama’s probably burning money at about the same rate as Bush.

I guess I’ll go looking for budget projections.

The federal case against Jock Sturges that was ultimately dropped because they didn’t think they could win in court. There was also an Alabama case against Barnes & Noble for selling books by Sturges (by then famous because of the federal case) which was dropped when B&N decided to fight it.

Jock Sturges took pictures with an 8×10 view camera at nudist resorts in France and California and has pictorial histories of people from their birth until they themselves gave birth. In the U.S., nudity and porn are thought of as one and the same by many.

Given the hysteria that nothing exceeds the harm caused by nudity, I think it’s only a matter of time before the law requires that children be born with their clothes on.

Personally, I don’t believe it’s a government responsibility to punish a child for publishing a nude picture of themselves. It’s more indisputable evidence that child porn laws have nothing to do with the welfare of children and everything to do with the prejudices of adults.

So, it’s not exceedingly implausible that one might be browsing such photographs, and then experience the sudden chill of “Holy crap, that’s my daughter!” Thus, not specifically browsing for kiddie pr0n, and yet still suddenly in possession of it. And pretty much everyone else out there looking at it won’t know any better, either.

Not necessarily. Child pr0n doesn’t mean there is a sex act occuring in the photo. Or even nakedness. A girl in her underwear, reclining on her bed with her legs slightly apart would be considered CP. That’s something that MySpace would allow, to the best of my knowledge.

#12 | Dave Krueger | April 17th, 2009 at 10:55 am

The Antichrist.

Excellent! My dad should be sending me a hellhound any day now.

#9 Tsu Dho Nihm

I have a 400mm lens…what does that make me?

The Antichrist.

#7 Wayne

Were you looking for child pornography, sir?

I went to see my daughter argue a child porn appeal before the 9th Circuit several years ago. It only involved a single picture, but the judges wanted to see it, but the appeal didn’t hinge on the content of the picture since both sides agreed it met the definition of child porn. As a result, the picture wasn’t really part of the case and wasn’t readily available. What was funny is the discussion of how the prosecutor danced around the issue of getting the picture to the judge because if she sent it through the mail it could constitute a violation of child porn laws and she sure as heck wasn’t going to put it in an email.

There is no common sense when it comes to the justice system and they know it.