I’m up in Manchester, NH this weekend with laur to see Nine Inch Nails and have a weekend getaway of sorts. Tonight was the show at the Verizon Wireless Arena. Never have I had such a poor experience at a concert. They refused to allow me to enter with a chained wallet. I return it to the car. My next attempt to enter I am again stopped for having a chain attached to my keys which was not commented on prior. This chain is barely larger then a necklace. I return it to the car. My next attempt I’m stopped for having a clip for my keys “that could be used as a weapon.” Again the prior agent to pat me down made no comment about. Laur at this point yells to just throw the thing in the discard bucket. I’m quite fed up, throw the clasp into the 30 gallon bucket and tell them to “let me the fuck in.” While inside I notice plenty of people with key clasps and chains as large or larger then the one I had. Men with full sets of large rings. One guy who had his wallet semi permanently connected to a chain was asked to toss his wallet.

I’ve gone to lots of shows in NYC and NJ without ever having such a ridiculous pat down policy. The women were required to open any loose clothing and were patted down about as much as men. It was hardly consistent however. As I mentioned chains, which are not good weapons in the least (especially at 1 foot in length), which were supposedly unable to be trashed were allowed. So as long as someone had to tear their clothing to use the gimpy chain as a weapon it was okay.

There was, as always, a no filming policy. Well the security at the arena took this to mean just about everything. The security spent the entire show hunting down people who held cell phones or cameras up too long. There was one narc in particular standing next to me, speaking plenty loud to distract me from the music, who was ratting out people not even in her general area. Telling other security agents to get them. Teams of agents would approach people and tell them to turn off their camera. They’d walk up behind people on the floor while they were lining up a shot or maybe taking some high quality QVGA footage of the show and just watch their viewfinder for a few seconds then lean in over their shoulder and tell them to stop. After the show a guard told me it was requested by the band. I’ve been to a few NIN shows including one on this tour and never had I seen what I saw tonight.

They said nothing about the lighters or the loud drunks pushing people around to get up front or banging on things. It’s okay to possess the means to burn down the place but not protect your keys from being jacked and it’s okay to be ingesting a drug that often makes people more aggressive.

The security was so distracting I was completely unable to enjoy the show. After the show laur approached a security guard to ask how to submit a complaint. We were directed to the agent responsible for the overseeing of the pat downs. She issued her complaint of having to show more of herself then she’d like in a public setting in particular. We plan to contact Verizon Wireless Arena to further express our displessure with their draconian security. I will also attempt to contact Nine Inch Nails.

At this point we plan to never attend another event at the Manchester Verizon Wireless Arena.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…

Pot-holed roads, crumbling schools, litter-strewn streets – there’s no shortage of problem areas crying out for their attention.But councils believe they have found a better use for their money: reducing the number of holes in chip shop salt shakers.

Research has suggested that slashing the holes from the traditional 17 to five could cut the amount people sprinkle on their food by more than half.Trickle or Treat: Chip shop owner Carol Ackerman shows off an old 17-hole shaker and the new model And so at least six councils have ordered five-hole shakers – at taxpayers’ expense – and begun giving them away to chip shops and takeaways in their areas.Leading the way has been Gateshead Council, which spent 15 days researching the subject of salty takeaways before declaring the new five-hole cellars the solution. Officers collected information from businesses, obtained samples of fish and chips, measured salt content and ‘carried out experiments to determine how the problem of excessive salt being dispensed could be overcome by design’.

They decided that the five-hole pots would reduce the amount of salt being used by more than 60 per cent yet give a ‘visually acceptable sprinkling’ that would satisfy the customer. The council commissioned Drywite Ltd – a catering equipment company based in the West Midlands – to make five-hole shakers and bought 1,000 of them at a cost of £2,000, giving them away to fast-food outlets in their areas.

Drywite confirms that it has since received orders for the shakers from at least five other councils, including Rochdale Borough in Greater Manchester.

Another giving the shakers away is Labour-controlled Middlesbrough Council, where the idea has run into fierce criticism.Cllr Chris Hobson, leader of the Conservatives, said: ‘This is just silly, a total waste of money in an area where council tax is very high. I’m all for good health but do they really think they are going to stop people using as much salt simply by putting fewer holes in thecellar? They’ll just shake it for longer.’

Beryl Scott, who owns the Chipchase Chippy in Linthorpe in the city, said a council worker had visited the previous week to explain the merits of less salty fish and chips. ‘He said he had a salt cellar with five holes to give me free.I thought it was a joke. It doesn’t matter how many holes it has, people are going to put on as much salt as they want.’

Another local chip shop owner, Carol Ackerman, who runs Carol’s Plaice in the suburb of Acklam, said: ‘People will just put on more salt if they want more. ‘In fact, we have had some people unscrewing the lids to do so.’ Gateshead Council defended its decision. A spokesman said: ‘Research carried out by us discovered customers were often receiving huge quantities of salt with their fish and chips – up to half their daily allowance. The council was so disturbed it decided to commission a manufacturer to produce a salt shaker with fewer holes, which it distributed free to every fish and chip shop and hot food takeaway in Gateshead. ‘We believe the cost to be a small price to pay for potentially saving lives.’The scheme is being promoted by the Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services, which is responsible for ensuring councils follow food hygiene rules. A spokesman said: ‘Heart disease costs taxpayers £7billion a year so to say that projects such as this are a waste of money is mind-boggling.’

17 holes?! That seems excessive.

I don’t doubt that increasing the overhead of getting the same ammount of salt would generally reduce the amout used. I believe there have been studies which showed that smaller plates and bowls tend to reduce total consumption of a meal. However, this is simply retarded. If the research they did was so conclusive why not attempt to educate salt providers and consumers? And why did they do research on this in the first place? Isn’t that sort of thing usually done at a national level? Not that I would prefer that. I’d likely be easier to toss out these local busybodies than the national ones.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/…

Padded lampposts are being trialled in a London street to protect inattentive pedestrians.A pilot scheme has been launched in Brick Lane after it was found to have the highest number of ‘walking and texting’ injuries in the country.

A study carried out by 118 118 found one in ten people has hurt themselves while focused on their mobile phone screen.

The charity Living Streets is so concerned that it has teamed up with the directory enquiries service to test a scheme to wrap up the nation’s lampposts.

A poll will be carried out on Brick Lane to gauge the response of locals.

If successful, the concept will be rolled out in Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool.

Are they going to outlaw sports, biking and running too? I’m surprised this int some national NHS initiative to protect people from themselves because you know… we all have to pay for the injuries they get as a result of being idiots so we should pad the entire country with foam to protect them. Ohhh… even better…. foam suits that everyone has to wear. Or just as they have outlawed texting and holding a mobile phone while drive here in NJ they could ban using a mobile device while walking. I guess that would be more like NYC wanting to ban using audio players while crossing streets. Or give everyone drugs to keep them focused on only one task at a time. No one can run into a lamp post while staring at their phone if they are incapible of doing both at the same time.

I just thought about this. Paul got ~8% in NH and ~10% in Iowa. I’ve already described some of the reasons the NH number feels wrong but don’t believe there has been any fraud. In the least because there has no real evidence of it. The machine counting numbers are interesting for sure but without far more careful analysis I think it’s silly to claim fraud.

While listening to Free Talk Live’s January 9th, 2008 show from last night a woman called saying she was holding a Ron Paul sign at a Manchester polling place. She claims all day long vans showed up with people who were not registered to vote. She said that as far as she could tell they were Hillary people and supporters. In New Hampshire you can register on the spot and as far as I understand need to show identification and prove your residency. Probably like every state. However, they will allow you to simply sign an affidavit to prove you are a resident. In theory it’d be fairly easy to bus in people from around the state (outside would be more difficult) and have them just sign the paper. You could probably hop from township to township. Now, this would be easy to prove and no one is saying Hillary’s people did this but I think it’s surely worth investigating.

Something occurred to me while listening to this and Ian or Mark mentioning that New Hampshire had the largest donations per capita of all the states. The donations in dollars per capita are not all that interesting. It could simply be that those donating in NH to the Ron Paul campaign are giving more. Well what about donaters per capita? RonPaulGraphs.com has to use a polling method to collect it’s data. For number of donors and the amount raised that’s not much of a problem. They are cumulative. Names and locations however are fleeting. If you donate and it gets updated before the script scrapes the info again… you aren’t counted. I think it’s safe to assume that while incorrect the numbers gathered should be generally uniformly so. If not this exercise can obviously be disregarded.

According to RonPaulGraphs.com’s donor count by state page there are 69,798 uniquely captured donors. New Hampshire makes up 698 of those and Iowa 680. The donors per million graphs page claims the sitemaster believes those numbers are ‘50-60% the “actual” number.’ Lets ignore that and again assuming the unique donors per state are evenly wrong.

R=Republican, RP=Ron Paul, D=donors, C=Capita, RPV=Ron Paul votes, RV=Registered voters, TRVr=Total Republican Voters, TRV=Total Republican votes; 1) Both states Republicans are 30% of the registered voters

So what does this mean? Iowa’s Republicans stayed home. Almost 10% of those who did wonder out voted for Paul. New Hampshire Republicans did come out to vote overwhelmingly and didn’t much like Paul. Or a whole lot of Independents came and voted NOT Paul. Either way, NH gave Paul more votes per capita, more votes per registered voter, more donors per capita, and donors per registered voter. But IA had more donors per Ron Paul voter, more donors per Republican vote. NH however has a much higher donation per capita. Top of all 50 states + DC. Assuming that active Paul supporters will definately vote for him if given the chance… NH has more supporters. Unfortunately for the Paul supporters those supporting other candidates also have the drive to get out and vote. In Iowa more people are willing to let others run the show. It’d be nice if the number of Republicans vs Independents who voted for each candidate.

If you can derive anything else from the data field free to comment.

But more importantly: On Paul losing. SUPPORTERS, DON’T GET DISCOURAGED!!! I know you are. I can see it.

This is sad. Today is one of the worst day in donations on record so far. This isn’t about Paul. It’s about getting the freedom message to as many people as possible. And Ron Paul is the vehicle for that message right now. We need to stay in the spotlight as much as possible. Don’t give up now. To November and beyond!

UPDATE:

The graph shows an up tick in donations. Just after I posted this the campaign released this. As with many things put out by politicians I very much doubt this was actually written by Dr. Paul. Doesn’t have his style. But it’s great non-the-less. How many releases like this from candidates mentions economists and freedom fighters or quote Hayek? Even if you don’t support him… you have to admit it’s an interesting campaign.

Ron Paul was left out of the Fox News forum on January 6th. Paul’s campaign decided to hold a town hall meeting. I hope most of those at the meeting were not already 100% supporting Paul.

http://www.freestateproject.org/libertyforum/

• It’s cold. A very very dry 7°F. Snow plowed 4-5 feet high on some roads.
• Ran into Chris from NH again. Same guy xyz and I ran into in Manchester during the Ron Paul Family Walk and at the Ron Paul Philadelphia rally. I hadn’t realized that he was part of those running the Liberty Forum. It’s great to see people so dedicated.
• Got to meet Ian Bernard and Mark Edgington of Free Talk Live, FreeKeene.com and Keene Weekly News. Nice to meet those who you donate money to even if only briefly while they grabbed some finger food before they went on to do their show. I really enjoy their show… but they really need a tech guy on the show. If I move up to NH maybe I could participate in the show.
• Chatted with George Phillies, Libertarian candidate for POTUS for 10+ minutes. A bit awkward given I was wearing my Ron Paul Revolution T-Shirt and xyz had a Ron Paul 2008 pin on her coat. We talked about the 2008 race in general, the Libertarian candidates in general, how Kubby and Smith are supporting Ron Paul, Unity08 and Bloomberg’s possible run, how to get some of the Ron Paul Revolution’s people and money into the Libertarian Party and all the hubbub on the LP’s planks. We got a photo of xyz and Mr. Phillies.
• Purchased Gardner Goldsmith’s new book Live Free or Die and had it signed. Sakal/CAI has a raffle going for those who bought Gardner’s book for an iPod. We’ll see if I won by Monday.
• Dave Ridley is here putting together another episode of his Ridley Report.
• Also very briefly met Bernard von NotHaus. Didn’t get to talk about anything however.
• It was really a meet and greet type environment tonight. There are about 300 or so currently signed up for the Forum. I’ll be taking notes the next couple days and will report if I continue to have Net access.