Lowering the Bar

Some Updates, Which I Guess Have Turned Out to Be Mostly About Randy Quaid

2013-05-25T12:34:00-07:00

No ruling yet in the case of John Brennan, not the drone-loving CIA director but the heroic anti-TSA protester who stripped naked at Portland International Airport last year. A judge dismissed criminal charges against Brennan on First Amendment grounds but then was fined $1,000 by the Constitution-hating TSA. At a hearing on the matter, the TSA called a police officer and four agents to testify in support of its claim he "disrupted" operations by showing his booty. A TSA manager claimed they were worried that he might be stripping as a "diversion," which is a crock. Well, if you weren't all so eager to run over and see somebody naked, it couldn't serve as a diversion, could it? Morons.

The Vermont legislation that would have made it a crime to take and distribute a picture of anyone under any circumstances without his or her consent, which would mostly have ended the practice of photojournalism, died in committee. It is unmourned.

Professional actor and amateur lunatic Randy Quaid, who fled to Canada with his wife to escape felony vandalism charges but claimed it was really because they were being hunted by celebrity assassins he called "Hollywood star-whackers," will not be getting permanent-resident status there. Sensible as always, Canada denied his petition in December, but the Quaids are appealing. "The refugee claims should remain intact," they wrote when seeking review, "as should Evi and Randy Quaid's heads remain attached to their necks and it is their firm belief that their lives are at stake and being racketeered on." I'm guessing they are representing themselves.

By "celebrity assassins," I meant assassins who kill only celebrities, not assassins who are celebrities. (Quaid claims that Heath Ledger and David Carradine were previous victims of these shadowy killers, for example.) I'd have written that "celebrity-assassins," I think, as in "celebrity-assassin David Hasselhoff," which is just an example that would make sense if David Hasselhoff murdered people for hire. And yes he is still a celebrity.

Okay, one more on the Quaid saga. In the application, they also denied having withdrawn their claim of refugee status (which they did in 2010), saying the government lost the paperwork. They also insist that their lives are still at risk "from real criminals of organized crime," and conclude: "The Quaids [sic] claim is not Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Evi and Randy Quaids [sic] lives are in danger here!.[sic]." Great stuff.

Does "6" Infringe on "9"? What If It's Upside Down?

2013-05-24T11:17:08-07:00

Would you be confused by these marks? Look closely:

Image: Consumerist.com

The one on the left is the logo of West Sixth Brewing Company in Lexington, Kentucky. The one on the right belongs to Magic Hat Brewing Company, based in South Burlington, Vermont. Apparently, for several months Magic Hat has been asking West Sixth to make changes to its logo (that's the one on the left) on the grounds that the latter will be confusing to consumers who are looking for its #9 beer (that's the one on the right). It sent cease-and-desist letters to West Sixth, and the parties disagree about how their negotiations have gone but the answer is apparently "not that well," because Magic Hat sued West Sixth earlier this week.

According to the complaint, Magic Hat registered its mark in 1996, and has sold products in Kentucky since 2009. "Without permission or license," it alleges, "Defendant West Sixth Brewing Company, LLC ('Defendant' or 'West Sixth') [carefully defined in case you might be confused by that, too] began selling beer, ale, and brewpub services in 2012" using marks that "are confusingly similar to Magic Hat's #9 marks" (see above).

The fight has spilled over to social media, partly because West Sixth has asked its fans to sign a petition and also post comments on Magic Hat's Facebook page. According to West Sixth, it has offered to change the star or compass in its label to some extent (Magic Hat uses a star in addition to the number sign in some iterations of its logo), and had agreed to various other changes in order to avoid a lawsuit. But, it claims, Magic Hat insisted that West Sixth stop using the numeral "6," which it was not willing to do.

According to West Sixth—and this does not appear in the complaint, but may be in a cease-and-desist letter—Magic Hat has pointed out that a "6" is simply an "inverted 9," and it is hard to argue with that.

It is also hard to see anybody being confused by it, though:

If it was on a coaster, and the person across the table was colorblind and fairly stupid, I suppose there might be some initial confusion. There is also the fact, though, that West Sixth's logo (again, that's the one on the left) generally seems to appear with "WEST SIXTH BREWING" arranged around the top of the circle, so that might also be a clue, at least to beer drinkers who also read.

After comments (pro and con) began to be posted on its Facebook page about this, Magic Hat issued a press release claiming that the parties had "agreed in principle" but then West Sixth went back on its word and instead "blindsided" Magic Hat with a "social media ambush." The most recent statement by West Sixth says it feels it made a reasonable proposal to Magic Hat that was denied, and continues to ask people to sign an online petition and encourage people to post on Facebook.

The coaster example is the only one I could think of that poses any possibility of confusion (note the qualifiers above, however). The only other one that occurred to me is that there might be a problem if somebody is holding their beer upside down, but hopefully we can agree no reasonable consumer would do that.

Mom Has Son Arrested for Stealing Her Pop-Tarts

2013-05-23T11:50:18-07:00

That headline could just as easily have been something like: "Police Arrest Boy for Stealing Mom's Pop-Tarts"—it just depends whose stupidity you want to highlight, and this is really a toss-up.

Few details are available, mainly because everybody involved was too embarrassed to talk to NBC's Charlotte affiliate about the matter. But according to WCNC's report, a woman in Charlotte did indeed call the police on Monday to report that her son had stolen her Pop-Tarts, and real police officers did indeed show up and arrest the boy for larceny. (They filed a police report and everything, one apparently meant for vehicles and on which they did not correctly spell either the make or model of the stolen item.)

Under North Carolina law, larceny is a felony if the value of the stolen goods is more than $1,000, but otherwise it's a Class 1 misdemeanor. N.C. Stat. § 14-72. Here, the value of the goods was not reported; however, a box of 16 Pop-Tarts can be had from Walmart for about $3.50, which works out to about 22 cents per tart. Assuming the boy took fewer than 4,545 Pop-Tarts, this would be misdemeanor larceny.

But larceny "from the person" is a felony without regard to the value of the property in question. N.C. Stat. § 14-72(b)(1). Larceny is considered "from the person" if the property is "in the immediate presence of and under the protection or control of the victim at the time the property is taken." State v. Barnes, 478 S.E.2d 188, 190 (N.C. 1996). Property held in the hand or carried in a pocket is certainly covered, but "property may be under the protection of the person although not actually 'attached' to him." State v. Hill, 723 S.E.2d 582 (N.C. App. 2012) (unpublished; affirming conviction for "larceny from the person" of a cashier where defendant took money out of her nearby cash register).

According to the report, the boy has been charged only with misdemeanor larceny. I would have assumed that the only reason someone would get worked up enough to call the police about Pop-Tart larceny would be if a fresh, possibly toasted tart was actually taken out of that person's hand, but under the above rules that would have been felony larceny from the person (value irrelevant). So either the theft did not occur in the victim's presence or, and this may be more likely, they realized how ridiculous it would be to charge someone with a felony for stealing some Pop-Tarts.

As the video demonstrates, the neighbors recognized how ridiculous it was to get the police involved at all, let alone for them to actually make an arrest:

"We very much wanted to talk to the woman," said the reporter, which is totally understandable, and they waited over two hours for her to come home yesterday. But she eluded them, mostly.

Apparently warned that a reporter was waiting at her front door, she parked her car a block away and slipped into her house through the back. She emerged only briefly to hurl an obscenity and then slammed the door.

That sounds about right.

Unsurprisingly, the police department also did not want to make a statement. The boy is apparently being charged as a juvenile, a word that really applies to the whole incident.

This Product Contains 100% Something!

2013-05-22T10:38:19-07:00

A reader noticed this label on a carpet:

More specifically, this:

My first thought was, how do they know? What if I can identify one of the fibers? Can I sue because I was promised a mystery rug?

It turns out that products covered by the federal Textile Act have to be labeled to show the fiber content. You can see how that would be helpful to someone who specifically wants cotton or wool or whatever. But the regs require the label even if nobody has a clue what's in the product:

If a textile product is made—in whole or in part—from scraps, clippings, rags, secondhand fibers or fabrics, or other textile waste materials of unknown and, for practical purposes, undeterminable fiber content, the disclosure may indicate that this is the case. [One example: "Secondhand materials—fiber content unknown."] If on the other hand, the fiber content is known or can be readily determined, the full content disclosure must be given.

So basically this statement on a label means "we don't know what's in this and frankly, it'd be hard to figure that out even if we tried." I guess they didn't put an exclamation point on the end ("Made from 100% Unidentified Fiber!), but it still sounds a little like a sales pitch based on not knowing what they put in the thing.

Their real problem might be the "Made in America" claim, though. They can't say that unless "the product is made completely in the U.S. of materials that were made in the U.S." (Emphasis added.) So I guess my question is still, how do they know?

Accused Mustard Vandal and Dog-Puncher Grabs a Couple of Brews During Pursuit

2013-05-21T10:56:41-07:00

The recent exploits of one Florida man (via the great Twitter feed @_FloridaMan):

The bizarre string of incidents began at about 2 a.m. Sunday when a neighbor called police and reported seeing a man climbing up to the second floor of a townhouse. The neighbor said he could hear things smashing and items being slammed to the floor....

When two police officers arrived at the scene, they saw the intruder pacing in and out of the house while wearing a t-shirt over his head. When an officer ordered the man to stop, he took off running and jumped over a fence, according to the report.

Police later found that he had smashed all the televisions in the house, thrown mustard all over the walls, and scrawled numerous messages on them (all of which were illegible).

Shortly thereafter he was spotted walking a few blocks away. This "resulted in a long foot pursuit" that also involved a helicopter, several K-9 units, and a brief pit stop:

During the chase, a deputy in the helicopter noted that [the suspect] jumped onto someone's patio and disappeared briefly. [He] then re-emerged running from the home carrying two bottles of Heineken beer, the report said.

It isn't clear whether he drank any of the Heineken (probably didn't have a bottle opener on him). Police said he was seen throwing the bottles. Eventually he was run down by a police dog, which he allegedly punched without much success. He suffered "unspecified injuries during his encounter with the dog," the article says. I'm guessing it bit him.

There is some evidence that controlled substances were involved. (Evidence other than the above, I mean.) The man is facing multiple charges, including striking a police dog, just to add insult to unspecified injury.