Celebrating Sarcasm

Want to live in the comfort of a five star jail? Do not commit a petty crime but do something big like embezzling public funds or fraud etc. so that you get into one of these jails and live in their comfort from out of the ill-gotten gains !

Read the following story via Marginal Revolution

“Anyone convicted of a crime knows a debt to society often must be paid in jail. But a slice of Californians willing to supplement that debt with cash (no personal checks, please) are finding that the time can be almost bearable.

For offenders whose crimes are usually relatively minor (carjackers should not bother) and whose bank accounts remain lofty, a dozen or so city jails across the state offer pay-to-stay upgrades. Theirs are a clean, quiet, if not exactly recherché alternative to the standard county jails, where the walls are bars, the fellow inmates are hardened and privileges are few.

Many of the self-pay jails operate like secret velvet-roped nightclubs of the corrections world. You have to be in the know to even apply for entry, and even if the court approves your sentence there, jail administrators can operate like bouncers, rejecting anyone they wish.

“I am aware that this is considered to be a five-star Hilton,” said Nicole Brockett, 22, who was recently booked into one of the jails, here in Orange County about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and paid $82 a day to complete a 21-day sentence for a drunken driving conviction.

“It’s clean here,” she said, perched in a jail day room on the sort of couch found in a hospital emergency room. “It’s safe and everyone here is really nice. I haven’t had a problem with any of the other girls. They give me shampoo.”For roughly $75 to $127 a day, these convicts — who are known in the self-pay parlance as “clients” — get a small cell behind a regular door, distance of some amplitude from violent offenders and, in some cases, the right to bring an iPod or computer on which to compose a novel, or perhaps a song.

Many of the overnighters are granted work furlough, enabling them to do most of their time on the job, returning to the jail simply to go to bed (often following a strip search, which granted is not so five-star).

The clients usually share a cell, but otherwise mix little with the ordinary nonpaying inmates, who tend to be people arrested and awaiting arraignment, or federal prisoners on trial or awaiting deportation and simply passing through.

The pay-to-stay programs have existed for years, but recently attracted some attention when prosecutors balked at a jail in Fullerton that they said would offer computer and cellphone use to George Jaramillo, a former Orange County assistant sheriff who pleaded no contest to perjury and misuse of public funds, including the unauthorized use of a county helicopter. Mr. Jaramillo was booked into the self-pay program in Montebello, near Los Angeles, instead.

“I have never run into this,” said Ken Kerle, managing editor of the publication American Jail Association and author of two books on jails. “But the rest of the country doesn’t have Hollywood either. Most of the people who go to jail are economically disadvantaged, often mentally ill, with alcohol and drug problems and are functionally illiterate. They don’t have $80 a day for jail.”

The California prison system, severely overcrowded, teeming with violence and infectious diseases and so dysfunctional that much of it is under court supervision, is one that anyone with the slightest means would most likely pay to avoid.

“The benefits are that you are isolated and you don’t have to expose yourself to the traditional county system,” said Christine Parker, a spokeswoman for CSI, a national provider of jails that runs three in Orange County with pay-to-stay programs. “You can avoid gang issues. You are restricted in terms of the number of people you are encountering and they are a similar persuasion such as you.”

The story is ,on the whole,very interesting .But the side story of Mr.George Jaramillo is even more newsworthy.
Mr.George Jaramillo is an example worthy of emulation.You embezzle public moneys ,abuse public office and helicopter and then plead guilty to perjury and misuse of office and then ask for the five star jail stay the cost of which will be met from out of the riches you have amassed at the expense of the public. After all a public servant deserves to remain in comfort ! The irony in the story is striking. Here is a public servant who has embezzled public moneys and committed acts of perjury which are punishable with the severest of the prison sentence and seizure of the ill-gotten wealth.If he were really afraid of the long arm of law catching up with him he would not plead guilty,as he has done.Instead he would try to prove that he has not abused his office and not embezzled public funds. Actually he readily admits to the charges and readily accepts punishment because he knows the punishment is not a big deal because he will remain in five star comfort and the state will ,by default, foot the bill- because effectively it is the money stolen from the public treasury that is going to fund his five star comfort !

A point about irony.In the whole story the inequity of the jail system which advocates a discriminatory treatment based upon the financial condition of the accused comes out effectively not because the report talks about such inequity openly but because there is an all-pervading irony throughout the story which cannot be missed. The reporting is as though such a system is a desirable thing while the undercurrent is one of a strong disapproval.

“Marginal Revolution”

Read the following story,via www.passablynews.com

“Move over American Idol – Cheese is the Next Big Thing

Since December, when West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers first pointed a webcam at a slowly-ripening round of Westcombe cheddar, over a million visitors have stopped by to pay their respects.

Viewers from nearly 120 countries have seen the cheese – it can be seen 24-hours a day, all year long at www.cheddarvision.tv. “The whole idea was to show people how real food is made – and it seems to be working,” commented cheesemaker Tom Calver. “It takes a year for a cheese to mature. This is not fast food. It is slow food.”

Philip Crawford, chair of the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers Group said, “As you can see we really do take our cheesemaking seriously. We nurture our cows so they produce lovely milk which in turn creates exquisite cheese. Some might say this is the most boring website of 2007, but our cheese is worth waiting for so it’s better than watching paint dry…just.”

For those with limited attention spans, a time-lapse video of the cheese’s progress is available. You can even channel surf, getting a glimpse of the cheesemakers, the cows and the finished products on offer at the West Country Farmhouse online shop.”

This is great fun just like watching the paint dry and the grass grow . We are sure the American public is having a cool time “Saying Cheese ” .In terms of interestingness, cheese should rank next only to the paint watching business but higher than grass watching . They can also find out “who moved my cheese” as their management consultants would urge them to. we suggest the web-cam can also pan the other interesting items of the scene at regular intervals like the happy cow, beautiful milk , hay stacks, etc.

The irony in the report tends to be missed out in a casual reading. The reporter is talking about a web-cam pointed at a bloc of cheese as it ripens .The viewers from 120 countries will continuously watch the cheese ,just as they have watched important road junctions, traffic squares etc. on the web-cam. Cheese is indeed the big thing .We cannot move our eyes away from cheese , the national obsession which is second only to the American idol. The obsession with the trivial and the absurd lengths to which people go towards cultivating icons go hand in hand .Hence the ranking of the cheese obsession immediately after the popular icon of the American Idol. Here the absurdity of the whole thing is apparent from the way web-cam watching has become an obsession with the youth who use the cam for watching the most ridiculous things for hours on end.There is no movement in the web cam images for hours as though one is watching the paint dry.

We love watching our cheese.We love watching the cheese-cake .

In 2006 The Canadian Tire ranked first in reputation among Canadian companies . On the front page is its advertisement for a mountain bike. The model? “The Hooligan”. Next I suppose we’ll have “The Vandal”, “The Looter”, and “The Rapist”.

Language Log

Steven D.Levitt in Freakonomics

The honesty award

I gave a lecture at Wayne State University yesterday.The most memorable part of my day was when two 12 year old girls approached me at a reception. They apparently had skipped a day of school to come attend my campus lecture (accompanied by their father who works at Wayne State). They were absolutely bubbling over with enthusiasm as they told me what big fans they were.

So I asked them what was their favorite part of the book.

“I didn’t actually read it,” one of them responded, “I just really loved the cover.”

“Tourists are causing a lot of anxiety — and are costing money — to a tiny village where signs keep disappearing. What do the signs read? “Welcome to Fucking, Austria.” Pronounced “fooking,” the little hamlet of Fucking is named after the man who founded the village in the 6th century. His name? Focko. The town sign has been stolen seven times in the last few months. With signs costing several hundred dollars apiece, much of the tiny town’s budget is being spent replacing the signs, says Siegfried Hoeppel, the Mayor of Fucking. He went on to express his hope that further thefts will be avoided through the use of increased concrete and screws. The second sign carries the hilarity even further:”Bitte — nicht so schnell!” is German for “Please — not so fast!”
In Fucking the screws cost dearly .More so if you do it so fast!

“A man has been charged following a bizarre incident involving shoplifting, assault using a car, and a duck, whose name was Mr Peepers.

Following the incident, in which two people were hurt but the duck emerged unscathed, Kenneth Blaine Quinlan, 35, of Seattle, has been charged with two counts of third-degree assault, one count each of vehicular assault, and one count of hit-and-run.

The incident began when Quinlan, dropped his girlfriend off at a Petco pet shop, along with her pet duck. While his girlfriend and Mr Peepers went into the pet store, Mr Quinlan went into a nearby shop.

It was there that a security guard claimed to see him attempting to shoplift a set of iPod speakers. A scuffle ensued between Quinlan and the guard, which resulted in Quinlan running into the pet store to get the car keys from his girlfriend.

Having retrieved the keys, Quinlan tried to escape in his car. Unfortunately, it was at this point that Mr Quinlan’s girlfriend walked out of the pet store with her duck.

Confused about what was going on, she tried to stop him, and was knocked over by an open car door as he reversed. This caused her to drop the duck.

This left Mr Peepers directly in the path of the car.

A Petco store employee, seeing a duck in grave danger, rushed to his aid. Flinging herself at the duck, she managed to save him from the onrushing car, but got run over herself in the process.

Quinlan then drove off, only to hit another car a short way down the road.

The heroic pet store employee suffered broken bones in her foot and ankle, while Quinlan’s girlfriend and the security guard received non-serious injuries. Mr Peepers emerged from the affair without any damage.

Quinlan is now being held in Snohomish County Jail.”

(http://www.passablynews.com)

Hilarious,isn’t it ? Mr Quinlan’s journey from the i-pod shop,to the pet shop,to the car and on to the road hitting another car and finally to the Snohomish County Jail is very eventful but the real amusement comes from Mr Peepers emerging from the whole incident unscathed. Sounds like a paragraph from Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers !

 Naked guy evades cops in heels

(www.passablynews.com

“A man dressed only in a stunning pair of heels caused a security alert in McMinnville, Oregon Wednesday.

Two police units responded to a 911 call in downtown McMinnville following sightings of a nude man sitting on a bench in the basement floor of a medical building. Though the medical building was locked down on the cops’ arrival, no trace of the high-heeled streaker could be found.”

“Once in a while (actually, it happens quite often) one runs across a coworker, acquaintance, or total stranger who uses words without knowing what they actually mean. For example, one time I had a supervisor who laughed at a coworker who was not familiar with the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. In breaking the news to this coworker, he said, “How can you not know what the Sixteenth Chapel is?”. At first I couldn’t believe my ears, but I composed myself, and tried to confirm what my ears had heard. So I asked him to repeat the name of the fresco. This time he deliberately pronounced each syllable slowly so that I could really learn; “It’s the Sixteenth Chapel”, he said.”
( No That is Not Ironic : http://www.sarcasmsociety.com)

A class-mate of mine boasted ,very often, of his wide reading ,in particular in English Literature . One time I asked him what his special interests were and who were the writers who had interested him . He said he liked Shakespeare and Milton .When asked what works of Shakespeare he liked ,he promptly came out with the assertion that he had read all of Shakespeare’s novels ! Novels ? He said,yes , all of them.I asked him whether he meant Mary and Charles Lamb .No, he said ,the original novels,all of them !

THEN

In April of 2004, Kaiser Networks Daily AIDS/HIV Report noted that Randall Tobias, serving as the Bush Administration AIDS Czar, was promoting abstinence and denigrating condoms:

Tobias, who was in Berlin for the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS’ 2004 Awards for Business Excellence, said that promoting abstinence and monogamy are “far more effective” than distributing condoms for preventing the spread of HIV, according to Agence France-Presse. “Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective,” Tobias said, adding, “It’s been the principal prevention device for the last 20 years, and I think one needs only to look at what’s happening with the infection rates in the world to recognize that has not been working.”

Now

“….the married Mr. Tobias resigned from his post as Deputy Secretary of State after admitting he was a customer of a DC escort service

Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation. Tobias, 65, Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), had previously served as the Ambassador for the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief.

In a Ted Haggard-like admission, Tobias said he only got “massages.”

Abstinence is for the little people, not the loyal Bushies who take massages. “

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/04/bush-official-who-promoted-abstinence.html

Massages do not spread AIDS. Who says he did not practize continence ? In fact ,we should actively campaign for massages as an effective way of combating the spread of AIDS.

“A dead passenger traveled unnoticed for at least half a day on an executive passenger train, an Indonesian newspaper reported Friday.

Anxious family members found the body of Edy Haryanto, 55, sitting in a locked lavatory on Thursday afternoon, more than a day after he had boarded with a group of friends in the central Javanese town of Tegal, the Warta Kota newspaper reported.”

The tragic part of the news apart, the headline does indeed make news. There is something proactive about the dead man as though he is alive and his actions are consciously being thought of. The reporting makes the reader a little confused , to begin with .The comedy is a bit misplaced when the report says that he “travels” unnoticed .”Travels” is a transitive verb indicating active performance of work. The bizarreness of the comedy,if intended, is not in good taste in the context.