• the $38 cotton canvas Indiana Jones® hat: from the Village Hat Shop, from Hats in the Belfry
• the $39.99 wool felt Indiana Jones® hat: from the Village Hat Shop, from Hats in the Belfry
• the crushable wool felt Indiana Jones® hat: $39.99 from Hats in the Belfry, $45* from the Village Hat Shop, extra-extra-large and extra-extra-extra-large $50 from the Village Hat Shop, child-sized $45 from the Village Hat Shop
• the $40 bao Outback Indiana Jones® hat: from the Village Hat Shop
• the $40 whip band, straw Outback Indiana Jones® hat: from the VIllage Hat Shop
• the $40 cotton twill safari Indiana Jones® fedora: from the Village Hat Shop
• the wool Outback Indiana Jones® hat: $45 from the Village Hat Shop, extra-extra-large and extra-extra-extra-large $52 from the Village Hat Shop
• the fur felt Indiana Jones® hat: $99.99 from Hats in the Belfry, $99.99 from the Village Hat Shop, extra-extra-large $110 from the Village Hat Shop
• the $160 Original fur felt Indiana Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $160 snap brim, fur felt Indiana Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $160 Black Raider fur felt Indiana Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $170 chin cord, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $170 leather band, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $170 Explorer leather band, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $170 leather buckle band, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $175 leather buckle band, chin cord, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $175 feather band, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $190 leather buckle band, stampede chin cord, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $190 imitation crocodile band, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $200 diamond-back rattle-snake band, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $210 diamond-back rattle-snake-with-g_dd_mn'd-head band, fur felt Indian Jones® hat: from Miller Hats
• the $495 100% beaver fur felt Indiana Jones® hat: from the Village Hat Shop, from Hats in the Belfry

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*The Village Hat Shop has a price-match policy.

On 17 July, LiveJournal, Inc, announced the return of Basic Accounts. As previously noted, what was actually happening was that Basic Accounts were going to be replaced with a new sort of account with the same name.

The essentials of the new programme have now been reported:

• Journals of Basic Accounts will display advertisements to anyone not logged-in, but will not display them to those who are logged-in.
• New Basic Accounts cannot be directly creäted, but one can creäte new Plus Accounts, and then downgrade these to Basic accounts. (The official report is somewhat confusing on this matter, because it is inconsistent in its conceptualization of Account.) The objective of blocking direct creätion seems to be to get new subscribers to try a Plus Account before trying (and often before discovering) the Basic Account.

The report does not discuss what happens when Permanent Account journals are viewed with Basic Accounts. In the case of community journals where the subscription is internal (eg: lj_2008), banner ads are shown when individual entries are viewed with Basic Accounts. In other cases, ads are not being displayed by Permanent Account journals viewed with Basic Accounts.

Based on some experiments, the advertising policy for registered external IDs appear to be same as for the new Basic Accounts.

I received an IKEA catalogue in the mails to-day. They shouldn't have bothered, as I will not buy from them.

In 1999, IKEA proposed to the City of New Rochelle, NY, that they use eminent domain to steal the City Park neighborhood, so that IKEA could have the land for a store.

On the cover of the catalogue, it says

Home is the most important place in the world.

I imagine that some of the people in the City Park neighborhood felt that way about their homes.

For many years now, I have had a Peterman duster (in the original canvas color, which I'm happy to see has again become available), but really no hat to go with it. I've been known to wear a baseball-style cap (with a graphic for the now-defunct UCSD HP-PAL) with it, but the result was questionable.

While I was out to-day, I was seized by the urge to get a hat. So I stopped at the Village Hat Shop. There I found and purchased a chestnut-colored Jaxon Nubuck Safari.

(As I was completing purchase, the salesgirl said that /ˈkiən/ was a fine Irish name. I didn't tell her that my middle name is in fact pronounced /ˈkʌɪən/ and that, though there are Irishmen named Kian, in my case my name was just an invention based on my father's notions of euphany, and his disregard for how a name pronounced /ˈkʌɪən/ ought best to be spelled.)

The hat unfortunately isn't packable/crushable, but should develop some character with time.

I am compelled to correct a claim that I made about Babycakes. Rather than simply sacrificing their parking in order to expand their patio, they have actually installed a very nice moveable partition; which has at least two possible configurations, one of which provides a larger patio but no parking, the other of which provides parking and less patio space. I believe that they can move the partition in a matter of a few minutes, and yet it looks permanent in either configuration.

I did not get to Babycakes last night until shortly after 21:00, at which time the pool was partially drained and any whipped cream boys were long gone, so I didn't take any photos. However, I was told by a barista and by one of the owners that photos were on-line. I believe that these can be found at their MySpace.

I was skimming a summary of the log for this website, and noticed a few hits from various searches for babycakes. This prompted me to do my own search for babycakes, which revealed one or more baked-goods firms doing business by that name, doing inter-state business, or with a presence in California. That means that if the local Babycakes hasn't licensed the name, then there could be a trade-mark battle.

In any case, Babycakes continues to transform the site. In my opinion, most of the physical changes make the place more appealing. A change largely effected to-day reflects considerable confidence, though it may represent a miscalculation; specifically, they have extended the front patio by eliminating the meager parking. [Correction (2008:08/12): The parking wasn't permanently eliminated. Rather, a reconfigurable partition has been installed, which allows the patio area to be extended or contracted.]

I was told a few days ago that peculiar things will be happening at Babycakes to-morrow. Reference was made to a pool and to whipped cream boys. I may not get there until after such events (I didn't get to the place until almost 22:00 on Saturday), but I'll bring a camera if I think that I have a chance of capturing images.

All right, now:

• If Edwards is not the father and ended the affair in 2006, then why did he surreptitiously visit Ms Hunter subsequently?
• If Edwards is not the father, then why did he feel the need to publicly admit to the affair, since his supporters and the mainstream media would have taken a negative paternity test for him (or a positive test for Mr Young) as pulling the rug from under the more general claim of an affair?

I think that Edwards is telling the truth slowly, which is to say that he has planned to admit to the affair and to paternity, but is now deliberately doing so in stages. I don't know how coherently he had previously thought about what he would do, but my guess is that at various times he has told himself that the affair and paternity could be indefinitely concealed, that they could be revealed after his wife dies, or that they could be revealed after he'd achieved greater acclaim in the office of President, of Vice President, or of Attorney General.

Meanwhile, spare a tear for Chet Edwards; his chances of being chosen as running-mate have been gravely injured simply because Obama will understand that there are a fair number of people who would confuse Chet Edwards with the guy who had that affair. (Obama would have been foolish to choose Chet Edwards in any case, but he might have been foolish.)

I have received another, different CNN spoof e.mail, this one ostensibly from CNN Alerts <ontlook_1970@brace4u.com> with subject CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert, now with a link to http://missglobe-albania.com/cnnplus.html — go there only at your own risk. The page again seeks to download and install malware adobe_flash.exe. See my earlier entry CNN Trojan Horse Attack for some discussion of this malware.

Okay, now I could write about the idiocy of the War on Drugs, but I want to instead talk about something else that makes me furious.

Far too many police, in far too many cases, have clearly demonstrated that they believe themselves to have the right to punish criminals by executing their dogs.

I'm not talking about cases where the dog has attacked, or has behaved in a way that indicates that it is an immediate threat.

It's not the right of a police officer to punish, period. And it's not the right of anyone to punish some person by killing an innocent companion animal. It doesn't fundamentally matter, when it comes to the killing of the Calvo dogs, that the Calvos were innocent. Even if they had been guilty of something truly criminal, it wouldn't be the right of police to kill their dogs because of who their owners were.

Police officials who needlessly kill dogs are never given worse than slaps on their wrists. Instead, they need to do hard prison time. More specifically:

• If it can been shown that police conducted a raid such as this, where they could have brought and deployed non-lethal measures but did not, then one or more of the officials needs to spend years in prison. It should even be a criminal offense (albeït perhaps just a misdemeanor) for any participating officer not to know who has been assigned responsibility for those non-lethal measures, so that treasonous bastards cannot merely pretend that there was a mix-up. Note that I am not claiming that non-lethal measures can always be employed; but, when it is practicable to prepare them, police should be required to prepare them.
• In any case where lethal methods have been used against a dog that is plainly not acting aggressively (as in the case of the dog who was attempting to flee), there should be years in prison.

These sorts of laws need to be effected on a state level. Governor O'Malley of Maryland should be recalled from office if he isn't the very first governor to produce a bill to such effect.