Assorted Stupidity #115

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  • In May, police in New Jersey said they had identified the mysterious person who had reportedly been defecating almost every morning “on or near the track and football field” at Holmdel High School: it was the school district’s superintendent. Surveillance video finally identified the mystery pooper, who has taken a leave of absence to deal with the resulting charges. At a brief court hearing on June 12, neither the superintendent nor his attorney offered any explanation for the behavior.
  • Dealey Plaza, the site of JFK’s assassination in 1963, is a tourist attraction but one that Dallas isn’t especially proud of. In fact, it has apparently gone to war against a guy who sells books and DVDs from the “grassy knoll” under a banner that says “Grassy Knoll” so people can find it. According to the Dallas Observer, the city has charged Robert Groden with something or other on 82 separate occasions, and it has lost every single time. Things like selling books and magazines without a permit, even though a permit isn’t required for that. Nobody wins every case, but once you get up to five or six dozen failed prosecutions, it really sort of starts to look like harassment.
  • In terms of win percentage, the city’s 0.00% score is not all that unusual, but 82 losses without a single win is pretty bad. Perhaps only Orly Taitz and her “birther” compadres lost more consistently, though I quit counting when they were something like 0-158.
  • Finally, the Uttarakhand bureau reports that the High Court has ordered the government to rein in the use of loudspeakers, which apparently are quite common there and “keep on blaring even beyond 12 midnight.” The order directs the state to ensure that no loudspeaker or public address system is used without written permission. Fair enough, but the report says that “the use of loudspeakers, even during day, will be contingent on the user giving an undertaking that the noise level will not exceed five decibels.” Which more or less defeats the purpose of using a loudspeaker, because five decibels is about half the noise level of a single pin hitting the ground.