Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,530 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 146 of 153).

Taser abuse, again

Last year an Alamance County man mouthed off to an Elon cop and the next day the cop tasered him for no apparent reason. John Wayne Paylor was essentially assaulted by the cops in what was clearly revenge.

I support the police but there’s no way anyone can excuse this behavior with a straight face. If Paylor caused an incident the day before, why was he not arrested right then and there? This cop should be looking for work now, if not looking at a judge as a defendant. I’d be embarrassed about this if I were a cop.

This makes you wonder how often this happens and no one finds out about it.

Motion-activated air filter

I’ve noticed that when my cat paws through her catbox it raises a lot of dust. I run an air filter near it but I don’t want/need to run it all day or turn it on by hand every time she uses the catbox.

Its the Internets to the rescue! This gentleman blogged about a motion-sensor outlet, which turns any appliance into a motion-activated one. Now I can hook the air filter up and only have run it when the cat’s near the catbox.

Problem solved. Thanks for the tip, Joe!

Context and the Internet

Mark Cuban has some important thoughts about what the Internet has done to context. Worth a read, and something I’ve not considered before.

On the other hand, this isn’t new to celebrities. The tabloids collect a file full of pictures of a celebrity’s differing moods. When that celebrity has a down week, the papers will run an angry picture. When its a happy occasion they’ll run a happy picture. I guess when everything gets recorded this is to be expected.

Popular Mechanics for Kids

I was trying to explain welding to Hallie the other day when her eyes lit up. “Oh,” she said, “that’s in the ‘Undersea Water Creatures’ video!” She marched over and popped the DVD in and sure enough one of the kids on the show does some underwater welding!

A lot of the kid videos out there are lousy. Either they’re too sugary or just plain dumb. I can stand to watch very few of them. Popular Mechanics for Kids, though, is an exception.
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On my reading list: HOAs

I am such a geek when it comes to government. Listen to this: last week the thought actually crossed my mind that writing a book on the power of homeowners associations might be fun. The thought of a homeowners association essentially being a private government intrigues me. If city and county governments derive their power from the state, from where do homeowners associations derive theirs?
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