Recently, the Associated Press reported that a New Zealand woman died as a result of a Coke habit. Hearing reports of someone dying because of coke is nothing new, but this time we aren’t talking about the powdery white stuff.  Rather, this time a woman has died after regularly consuming 2 gallons of Coca-Cola per day.

After the 30-year old mother of eight died of a heart attack in February 2010, an inquest was held to investigate the unusual death. According to the AP, pathologist Dr. Dan Mornin testified that Harris most likely suffered from hypokalemia caused by the excessive consumption of Coke (between 2.1 and 2.6 gallons daily) and overall poor nutrition.  Further, Dr. Mornin indicated that toxic levels of caffeine may have contributed to her death.  That, and the fact that she ate little and smoked 30 cigarettes per day.

via Unusual Coke Habit Leads to Woman’s Death | Abnormal Use.

Please recall, Dear Reader, the Lee Storey hobby loss kerfuffle, in which I briefly mentioned deductions, why they exist, and how they work. For now, it’s enough to know that deductions lower the amount of income tax a person or business pays, which is handy and desirable, and folks do all sorts of things to get deductions.

Florida apparently offers a deduction for agricultural land users, which shouldn’t really be surprising. Farm subsidies take many forms, and a tax break is just as good as any other, right? Well, sometimes. In this case, whether it’s a subsidy or a tax break is kind of moot. If you run a farm, you get a nice tax break to help out, because in America, we take care of farmers. Like, a lot. Lots of other places do, too.

Now, the silly title for this blog post comes from how you get this deduction. You can apparently designate your land as “agricultural use” by simply letting a cow graze on it. Yep. That’s it. Rent a cow, let it nibble on your lawn, and poof. Instant farmland with instant tax break. And it’s not just retirees from the Northeast that are raking in the savings:

Other beneficiaries of the law have included Walt Disney World ($1.5 million in savings), as well as U.S. Senator Bill Nelson ($43,000 in savings), who keeps about six cows on 55 acres of land near the Indian River, courtesy of a cattle ranching operation that leases the property for free. Like Nelson, some developers simply offer their land to ranchers for no charge. Others, as the Herald noted, actually pay the ranchers — hence the loophole’s nickname, “rent-a-cow.”

The total cost of these abuses isn’t clear, but there are hints that it may be significant. According to a 2006 Associated Press article, the law costs Florida $950 million a year total. Some of the breaks go to legitimate commercial farms. But according to the Herald’s 2005 investigation, more than two-thirds of the loophole’s top 60 beneficiaries in South Florida weren’t farmers.

The law actually does stipulate that “property owners are required to use their land for ‘bona fide’ agricultural purposes” – if your local court has ruled that renting a cow for a single day is a bona fide agricultural purpose, then get yourself down to your local cattle renting emporium. Your local judge just did you a favor by torturing the meaning of the term that means “good faith” and replacing it with “good deal.” Though to be fair, not all judges can be sophisticated jurists like yours truly, the owner of numerous domain names with legal puns in them, like http://lawyersaur.us and http://barelylegally.com. Pity, that.

The bad news is that, according to the study, which looked at 700 cases between 2000 and 2010, all-white juries are significantly more likely to convict black defendants than white ones. The good news is that a single black juror can alter that dynamic.

In cases with no blacks in the jury pool, blacks were convicted 81 percent of the time, and whites were convicted 66 percent of the time. The estimated difference in conviction rates rises to 16 percent when the authors controlled for the age and gender of the jury and the year and county in which the trial took place. When the jury pool included at least one black person, the conviction rates were nearly identical: 71 percent for black defendants, 73 percent for whites.

Remember, correlation doesn’t imply causation, but that is some pretty awful correlation. Read the full study at Duke’s web site.

The government alleges that the publishing industry openly colluded to raise ebook prices and end Amazon’s dominance, and that Apple was a willing participant in the scheme. What’s more, the alleged conspiracy sounds like it was actually quite a conspiracy, with secret CEO meetings in private New York dining rooms and promises made to bosses up and down the chain. It’s all quite juicy, so let’s dig in.

Although Apple is listed as the first defendant, the bulk of the case is really about the publishers involved: Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster. According to the government, these publishers greatly feared Amazon’s $9.99 Kindle book prices, which they called “wretched,” and worked for years on a scheme to raise prices and limit competition. They also feared that consumers would get used to paying $9.99 for bestsellers and ultimately decrease publishing profits.

And this breakdown goes on. As always, Patel has the most concise and cogent summary of the key legal issues at play. It really sounds like slimy business. The publishers felt like Amazon had too much leverage in the retail book market, and as such, they agreed to set prices with the new kid in the ebook market (Apple). Apple, for its part, was eager to get a foothold in a growing market, and was happy to not only acquiesce, but actively secure publishers for the price-fixing cartel.

Note that three of the seven publishers have already settled, and the lawsuit was only filed yesterday. So there are at least a few folks who’re pretty sure the complaint is accurate.

Read the excellent summary at The Verge.

Now I can fist-bump my computer to upload photos. I’m not even going to use it, I just love how inventive it is.

Or, sometimes, someone makes a web site with hilariously oversized text, and sticks a WHOIS search form at the bottom. This person also might call it “The Facebook of Websites.” Ladies and gentlemen, I give you WhoDat.biz – the world’s first way to look up WHOIS data.

This is apparently the first product from Kanye West’s fabulous new design startup, DONDA. You might recall that time a couple months ago when Kanye went on a two hour non-stop Tweeting binge. Ideally, this isn’t what he was so excited about.

UPDATE: It’s a faaaaaaaake. Well played, clerks. Well played.

You’ve all heard of Facebook, where everyone knows lots about you, regardless of whether you posted it or not.

You’ve probably heard of Twitter, where you connect with people with short updates and grow your network of online friends.

You might have heard about Path, where you can share your thoughts, places, photos and even your musical tastes with a close number of friends.

You probably haven’t heard about Pair – that’s okay, it’s new – where you can connect with your loved one (yep, just one) when you’re apart.

We think we’ve come up with a social networking platform that speaks to you – and only you – personally. It’s called Solo.

The problem with today’s social networks is that they spread your focus away from the most important person in your life: you. That’s a problem. You end up being connected with everyone else and you stop being connected with yourself. And there’s no way you can be truly connected to others without being connected to yourself first, right?

Read the rest of Introducing Solo: The Social Network That’s Just For You at Vardy.me

From the high-five machine (US 5356330), to the kissing shield (US5727565), to the burial structure for human remains and significant memorabilia (US 6799399) whose resemblance to the Great Pyramids at Giza is uncanny. [...] check out the drawing of the patent for the Interactive Life-Sized Bowl of Soup (US 6168531). That’s right, an interactive life-sized soup bowl not only exists, but there’s a patent for it.

I’m struggling to imagine who would (A) invent an interactive life-sized bowl of soup and subsequently (B) decide I gotta patent this before someone else rides this gravy train! I’m sure weirder things have happened.

The whole slideshow is worth a look, because there’s nothing quite like technical drawings of asinine things.

The patent discusses the technology to analyze the background noise during your phone call and serve up ads for you based on the environmental conditions Google picks up on. Yeah, that’s creepy.

From The Next Web, via Ben Brooks.

In late 2003, the Norwegian government launched Altinn: a web portal that allowed its citizens to access and submit government forms online, as well as get their personal tax information when filing season rolled around. However, users hoping to get an early start on their taxes this year were in for a serious surprise, as Altinn crashed when an influx of Norwegians attempted to access their info. The service was restored a few hours later, but only a sole individual’s personal information was available — and anyone trying to access the site could see it. Icrontic is reporting that the individual in question is “Kenneth,” a 36-year-old man from Oslo. Aside from his own tax information from the last two years being made public, his wife’s details, as well as information about his employer, were accessible.

via The Verge.