Mr. Random

"Dear Editor of the Register Guard, I would like to second Charles R. Williams’ call for the citizens of Eugene to stop criticizing Chief Lehner for breaking the law [Letters August 27, 2008]. It is time for all citizens of Eugene to realize that the Police Chief reserves the right to break the law whenever he feels it is necessary. We must also accept that he will do this whenever he feels it is appropriate, and that we will not be notified nor given an explanation when Chief Lehner decides to break the law. It would probably also be wise of us to assume that District Attorney Doug Harcleroad and City Manager Jon Ruiz will be breaking the law whenever they believe to it to be necessary or expedient. After all, one does not wash a back, unless one expects the same courtesy in return. Additionally, I think the men and women on the police force have made it clear over the past decade that they, too, share their Chief’s respect for the law and will be violating it when convenient. I believe that the people of Eugene are often too quick to criticize our police. Everyday these brave men and women kiss their families goodbye knowing that they maybe called on to tase some hippy who was blocking traffic, write a letter to the editor on behalf of the Torrey campaign, or, heaven forbid, rape a couple of prostitutes in the course of their duties. I think it is time to cut them some slack."

"Opentape has debuted rather quickly with a set of features that are strikingly similar to Muxtape’s. Opentape may pose a much greater problem for the RIAA, however, as it’s offered as a downloadable software package that can run on most modern web hosts, requiring only Apache 1.x and PHP5. To make matters worse from the RIAA’s perspective, Opentape offers direct links to the MP3s that a user choses to upload, instead of links to legitimate music outlets."

"For most of the album’s yearlong process the songwriting partners were an ocean apart, Mr. Eno in London and Mr. Byrne in New York City, though both are globe-hoppers. They also kept their jobs separate. By and large, Mr. Eno provided the music, and Mr. Byrne topped it with melodies, words and vocals."

"He goes by just one name: Cheeta. Tarzan and Jane may be dead, but their chimpanzee companion lives. The ape is the last of four Cheetas who starred in the old Tarzan movies. Because of his extraordinary longevity, this Cheeta is now considered The Cheeta. He’s believed to be 76 years old, earning a Guinness certificate as the world’s oldest living non-human primate. Chimps in captivity can live up to 60 years; in the wild, up to 40. Today Cheeta is semiretired and living in Palm Springs, as many of the old entertainers do."

"At this time in the nations history with millions on the verge of losing their homes and having their life’s savings destroyed because of Wall Street’s CDO Ponzi Scheme that grossly enriched the few on Wall Street while impoverishing the nation, Joe Biden stands out as the Democratic Senator whose diligent work helped the credit card moguls revise the the nation’s bankruptcy laws so that Americans would stay on the hook to their debtors for years on end as they tried to scratch together a new life."

"RIAA, MPAA: Biden’s track record here is pro-copyright and pro-establishment. As CNET reminds us, he held a Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 2002 on “Theft of American Intellectual Property” without including any internet company, p2p network or consumer group. This year he proposed a $1 billion program to monitor P2P networks for “illegal activity” and a version made it through Judiciary. He sponsored an RIAA bill last year to restrict recording and playback of individual songs from satellite and internet radio stations. In the past, he urged the Justice Department to prosecute individuals who allowed mass-copying intentionally through P2P."

"Two years ago, I read how Ernest Hemingway wrote A Moveable Feast (Scribner, 1964) at a stand-up desk in his room in Cuba. I soon discovered a number of other well-known people—not just authors—who stood up to write, including Winston Churchill, Henry Clay, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Woolf, and John Dos Passos. I decided to give it a try."

"Pickens, thanks to favors from state lawmakers whose campaigns he funded, has created a new government whose only voters are two of his employers; this has empowered Pickens to more cheaply pump water from an aquifer and, by use of eminent domain, seize land across 11 counties in order to pipe the water to Dallas. To win environmentalist approval of this hardly “sustainable” practice, he has piggybacked this water project onto a windmill project pitched as an alternative to oil."