Eideard

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Frank and his husband Joe Kapley-Alfano embrace

An appeals court on Tuesday found California’s gay marriage ban unconstitutional in a case that may lead to a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Supporters of the ban said they would appeal the judgment…Their appeal is likely to keep gay marriage in the state on hold pending future proceedings. But the lawyers who won the appeals court round called the decision a milestone, and outside City Hall in San Francisco, a center for gay rights, dozens of same-sex couples hugged and kissed in public, cheering the ruling.

“It means we are included in the American Dream,” said Joe Capley-Alfano, who married his husband, Frank, in the summer of 2008, a window of legal same-sex marriage in California.

The majority in the 2-1 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California’s Proposition 8 ban did not further “responsible procreation,” which was at the heart of the argument by the ban’s supporters.

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” the ruling reads.

Can you imagine these idiots who bankrolled Prop 8 trying to convince anyone other than some spooky True Believer that the only function of sex is responsible procreation. Their own children must laugh at them hiding reality in the bedroom.

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Just about the simplest computer commercial ever produced
 
Apple design guru Jonathan “Jony” Ive has been awarded a second knighthood by the Queen of England as part of her annual list of honors. Ive has been named Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, or KBE for short. When in England or any member of the British Commonwealth like Canada, he will be entitled to be addressed as Sir Jonathan.

Its his second honor from the Queen, who named him Commander of the British Empire, or CBE, in 2006. The new title will be conferred by the touch of a sword held by the Queen.

Interestingly, Ive is only one of two people being given this particular title this year, from the extensive list of other honors published in the London Gazette. The other KBE recipient is the art historian John Patrick Richardson, who wrote a well regarded biography of Pablo Picasso.

The best profile of Ive that I know of is this 2006 BusinessWeek story by my former colleague Peter Burrows. It’s more than five years old, and so may be a bit dated, but it’s terrific.

I’ve worked with some terrible industrial designers – mostly for firms that relied on subcontractors of components to provide whatever was most affordable. That part of life included working for the firm that invented and first produced aerosol products. Yup – like hairspray.

I would love to work with someone like Jony Ive.

Ellis claims this guy stole his tax credits

A federal judge has ordered a California man to stop promoting what the U.S. Justice Department calls a scheme to sell billions of dollars in bogus tax credits.

The Justice Department said in a release Wednesday that Lamar Ellis of Brea has been permanently barred from claiming to have billions of dollars in federal research tax credits supposedly granted him for purported scientific breakthroughs.

The federal officials alleged Ellis advertised the sale of the credits on the Internet and issued phony documents to people who were led to believe they would reduce their tax obligations. Federal officials also alleged Ellis teamed with the non-profit Southwest Louisiana Business Development Center in Jennings, La., to try to sell $24 billion of the fictitious credits.

The civil injunction order requires Ellis to provide the federal government with the names, addresses and Social Security or tax identification numbers of everyone to whom he purported to distribute tax credits.

It’s just a guess. I think Mr. Ellis gets to spend a little time in a federal courtroom – and a larger chunk of time in the federal slammer.

A high school teacher is under investigation after school officials said she was maintaining a pornographic website from her school-issued laptop computer.

Lincoln High School teacher Heidi Kaeslin is on paid leave while the district investigates whether she violated its code of ethics…

The investigation also involves former Stockton police officer Richard Fields, who was assigned to the school as a resource officer. He told the newspaper he had acquired domain names including mysluttyteachers.com to develop them into websites…

Fields said the allegations are overblown. Kaeslin and her attorney declined to comment.

Kaeslin, a special education teacher and former girls soccer coach, has been with the district since 2002. Fields retired from the police department in May. The two are romantically linked…

Lincoln Unified School District has hired a computer expert to study the content on the laptop.

Conflict of interest? Running a business on school time, with school equipment? Bad taste [no reason for dismissal in California, certainly]? Titillating enough to get her on Fox Snooze?

Here in Merced, a city in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley and one of the country’s hardest hit by home foreclosures, the downturn in the real estate market has presented an unusual housing opportunity for thousands of college students. Facing a shortage of dorm space, they are moving into hundreds of luxurious homes in overbuilt planned communities…

There are the three-car garages, wall-to-wall carpeting, whirlpool baths, granite kitchen countertops, walk-in closets and inviting gas fireplaces…

The finances of subdivision life are compelling: the university estimates yearly on-campus room and board at $13,720 a year, compared with roughly $7,000 off-campus. Sprawl rats sharing a McMansion — with each getting a bedroom and often a private bath — pay $200 to $350 a month each, depending on the amenities…

A confluence of factors led to the unlikely presence of students in subdivisions, where the collegiate promise of sleeping in on a Saturday morning may be rudely interrupted by neighborhood children selling Girl Scout cookies door to door.

This city of 79,000 is ranked third nationally in metropolitan-area home foreclosures, behind Las Vegas and Vallejo, Calif., said Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac, a company based in Irvine, Calif., that tracks housing sales. The speculative fever that gripped the region and drew waves of outside investors to this predominantly agricultural area was fueled in part by the promise of the university itself, which opened in 2005 as the first new University of California campus in 40 years.

The crash crashed harder here. “Builders were coming into the area by the bulkload,” said Loren M. Gonella, who owns a real estate company here. “It was, ‘Holy moly, let’s get on this gravy train.’ ”

But visions of an instant Berkeley materializing in the cow pastures were premature. The stylishly designed university planned for a gradual expansion, adding 600 new students a year. That has meant phased dorm construction, which is financed with tax-exempt bonds repaid by student revenue. There is room for only 1,600 students in the campus dorms, but 5,200 are enrolled.

With hundreds of homes standing empty, many of them likely foreclosures, students willing to share houses have been “a blessing,” said Ellie Wooten, a former mayor of Merced and a real estate broker. Five students paying $200 a month each trump families who cannot afford more than $800 a month…

The university’s free transit system, Cat Tracks, stops at student-heavy subdivisions…

RTFA. Some humorous anecdotes. Sour grapes from some of the homeowners still in residence – though they should be glad for the presence of students whose numbers probably deter the incidence of squatters and thieves specializing in everything from copper wiring to posh bathroom fixtures.

Face it. Creative solutions are most often better than sitting back, whining and waiting for a politician to happen along with a useful answer.

Federal civil rights officials announced…they have sent election observers to locations in five states to keep an eye out for potential trouble at the polls Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division dispatched 11 staff attorneys along with 85 trained election observers from the Office of Personnel Management to watch activities at the polls and report any irregularities…

In Mississippi, monitors are being dispatched to four counties, as voters go to the polls in a gubernatorial election to replace Haley Barbour, who is term-limited from running again. The campaign features the white Republican Lieutenant Gov. Phil Bryant and African-American Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, a Democrat. Mississippi political observers say Bryant is a strong favorite to win the election…

The Justice Department has also assigned monitors to Lorain County, Ohio, to protect the rights of Spanish-speaking voters. Last month, the federal government signed an agreement with Lorain County to resolve concerns that limited-English Hispanic voters were being denied their full voting rights because the county failed to provide language assistance as required by law.

In Alameda County, California, the U.S. will monitor voting following an agreement between federal officials and the county in July. The agreement requires Alameda County to provide election materials and information in Spanish and Chinese. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said the agreement “ensures that Alameda County’s Spanish- and Chinese-speaking citizens will be able to cast an effective ballot and successfully participate in the electoral process.”

In Jasper, Texas, racial tensions have run high over the recall election for three African-American city council members responsible for the hiring of the city’s first black police chief.

In Springfield, Massachusetts, activists claim minorities were turned away at the polls in the September primary, and said there was no Spanish-language assistance for voters. Hispanic leaders, the NAACP and ACLU had all urged the Justice Department to travel to Springfield to protect voting rights of all minorities.

Republicans around the country continue to mobilize to deny the franchise to citizens on the basis of ethnicity and language. Nothing new about the practice. Nothing less than bigotry is expected – after all – since the so-called Southern Strategy has never been limited to the South. Or to Black folks alone.

Boy Scouts of America leaders knew for years about incidents involving a Canadian pedophile who preyed on boys in the U.S. but failed to stop him as he moved back to Canada, where he continued his abuse. The organization sometimes even helped him go undetected by authorities, an investigation by CBC-TV’s The Fifth Estate and the Los Angeles Times has found.

Scouts Canada learned of his inappropriate behaviour in the 1980s and kicked him out, but nearly a decade passed before police charged him with crimes.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Richard Turley was involved with the Scouts across California and British Columbia, molesting at least eight scouts…

When Turley was shown the 1979 confidential U.S. file created by the Scouts on him, however, he shook his head in amazement that officials had not contacted police…

“That probably would have put a stop to me years and years ago,” said Turley in an interview at an Alberta motel where he works as a manager and handyman…And yet I went back to the Scouts again and again as a leader and offended against the boys until they came forward…”

It was not until 1995 that police began their first large-scale investigation into Turley – 16 years after the Boy Scouts of America created a “perversion file” and nearly a decade after its Canadian counterpart put him on their “confidential list.”

In the end, it was not the Scouts organization that informed Saanich, B.C., police, but rather a suspicious girlfriend.

Turley was convicted in 1996 of sexually abusing four boys, three of whom were scouts, but later admitted to having at least a dozen victims…

Seattle-based lawyer Tim Kosnoff, who has viewed the U.S. “perversion files,” says historically the U.S. Boy Scouts “routinely” chose not to notify police when aware of child molesters, instead noting them in their own secret files.

The scouts in the US and Canada aren’t alone in this foolishness, of course. The leadership of any organization – civic, religious, sport or social – that decides that uncomfortable publicity might inhibit intake to their fiefdom and therefore they should keep crap behavior like this confidential is not just absurd, it’s criminal.

The victims of sexual predators haven’t much of a stake in the reputations of these groups. Just their own handicapped lives. RTFA for the long career of a pedophile who was barely slowed by lax officialdom even after being convicted of kidnapping. This may be old history. Doesn’t mean that folks don’t need to be reminded.

A central California man has been arrested for possession of child pornography, thanks to a tip from burglars who robbed the man’s property…

Last month, a juvenile and a 19-year-old illegally accessed the property of Kraig Stockard, 54, of Delhi, California, according to a statement from Deputy Tom MacKenzie of the Merced County Sheriff’s Department. They broke into Stockard’s barn and stole approximately 50 CDs they believed were blank…

…When they began putting the discs into their computer, they discovered that some of them contained pornographic images of children, the statement said. Despite having obtained the CDs under decidedly shady circumstances, the pair decided to report Stockard to the police.

A search warrant was served and three more computers and three laptops were taken from Stockard’s home, along with several external hard drives. Police said there were thousands of pictures and movies on the CDs — more than 30 of the 50 discs had child pornography on them…

The two burglar suspects who reported Stockard have not been arrested.

Their case has been sent to the Merced County District Attorney’s Office for review. When reached for comment, a press officer told CNN the office could not comment on the case because one of the informants in question is a juvenile.

Local authorities have made it pretty clear the burglars won’t be prosecuted. Their info led to an arrest for child porn. On balance, they did folks more good than harm. This time.

 
Two years ago, aircraft designers were invited to build an electric airplane that could fly at least 200 miles in under two hours, using less than one gallon (3.8 liters) of fuel per occupant – or the electrical equivalent. Whichever plane performed best would win its makers a prize of $1.35 million. That was the idea behind the Green Flight Challenge, a NASA competition that was managed by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation, and funded by Google.

Well, the challenge wrapped up last week, with the winners being announced this Monday. Pennsylvania’s Pipistrel-USA team took first place, for its Taurus G4.

The twin-fuselage aircraft has seating for four people, and a 145-kilowatt brushless electric motor that turns a two-bladed propeller, which is mounted between the fuselages. Its wingspan is approximately 75 feet.

Out of 14 aircraft originally entered in the competition, it was one of three to make it through to the finals… Of those finalists, both the Taurus and the second-prize-winning eGenius doubled the required fuel efficiency, in that they each used the equivalent of just over half a gallon of fuel per occupant.

The Taurus specifically managed an equivalent fuel efficiency of 403 passenger miles per gallon at a speed of 107 miles per hour – according to Pipistrel team leader Jack Langelaan, that is twice as fast and efficient as a fully-occupied Toyota Prius.

“Two years ago the thought of flying 200 miles at 100 mph in an electric aircraft was pure science fiction,” he stated. “Now, we are all looking forward to the future of electric aviation.”

Bravo! The senior pilot in my extended family [I'm the only one who never piloted a plane] will be here this weekend. Though he’ll probably see this first, here in my blog, I’m looking forward to interesting discussions about the achievement.

 
In the world of animated TV, it’s no stretch to say that good-natured Gumby is far down the list of characters that would commit armed robbery.

But a man clad in a full-figured Gumby costume has made a botched attempt to rob a 7-Eleven store in California, and authorities are looking for the suspect…

It happened early on Monday when the man came into the San Diego store dressed as the green claymation figure, accompanied by an ordinarily dressed accomplice, San Diego Police spokesman Detective Gary Hassen said.

The costumed man announced he was robbing the store, but the clerk thought it was a joke, police said.

“Gumby said, ‘You don’t think it’s a robbery? Let me show you my gun,’” Hassen said.

The suspect then tried to reach into his Gumby outfit but experienced a “costume malfunction” and could not fit his hand in a pocket, he said.

Instead of a gun, the costumed suspect pulled out 26 cents in change which he dropped on the floor, police said.

The accomplice, who had left the store and gotten into a minivan, honked at the man dressed as Gumby. He, too, walked out of the store without managing to take any money, police said. Both men left in the minivan.

Har.