DISQUS

At the end of the day, the opinions here are worth shit. Paul committed arson, even his fans agree that he did. He got convicted of doing so and he's going to do the time. Finger pointing doesn't change the fact that no one *made* him do it. He chose to act and he's going to face the consequences for it.

Never threatened anyone? You mean like the hotel clerk in Seattle or the kids at the school down here?

Damn, my grammar went out the window.

How did it cost him his livelihood?

I hate to break this to you but as people who have known Paul for years as told me, why he used to be a lawyer, he gave it up a long time ago. He isn't working in the legal profession so his eventual disbarment will not affect his livelihood. I have no idea how he made whatever money he had. Maybe he was on disability because of his mental problems.

Great, now we have both Chicken John and John Law lecturing us, at great length, on the noble and eternal principles being compromised and how important the struggle for the soul of Burning Man is...

As I said before, I doubt most attendees care about the personal vendetta that people have (deserved or not) with the BMorg. Whine all you want guys but the reality is that the event is what it is. If you don't like it, don't go. It is as simple as that.

For all the people that rant about the BMorg and its behavior: do you go to Burning Man because of stuff the BMorg does (beyond making a space available) or do you go because of what your friends, acquaintances, friends of friends, etc. are doing there?

Other than building infrastructure and putting the Man up, I don't give a rat's ass about most BMorg policies, the politics around them, how it used to be better in year XX, or such crap. I go to Burning Man for the village next door to me with people doing and building cool shit. I go because my friends go and we get to work on a project, hang out together on the playa doing our project and meeting new people, and, at the end, we watch the Man burn.

I tend to think that my experience or attitude is more in line with most people going to Burning Man. Most people don't give a shit about Larry, whether he lies through his teeth or makes a living off of the work of others, or any of that shit. We go because we enjoy the community, projects, art, etc. that is so different than the day to day lives we have otherwise.

Well, considering I have a friend who admitted to me that he was busted by an undercover cop in 2001 for giving him a small amount of drugs (at the cops request), I know a lot of people who have been watching undercover law enforcement for quite a while. I appreciate the warning, though, and I expect that others do as well. We'll have to see what happens.

The statements about the BMorg pushing at the trial, as mentioned in Timothy's comment shed some more light on this (and I am afraid that I tend to trust this more than the axe that many ex-Burners have to grind with anything BM related). Assuming it is true (which I actually do), that just makes this whole thing more of a mess.

Personally, I'm hoping that sentencing for Paul is on the ligher end of things and that he gets out much earlier, as is common, for behaving there and not causing a ruckus. If he's lucky, he might be back in six months but you never know.

Chicken John, we can go back and forth about this forever. Sure, if I was convicted of something and sent to prison, I expect that I would cry. I think few people wouldn't. I've never been locked up but I've been in there and it is a fucking scary place, even when you get to leave at the end of the day. I don't really wish it on anyone. That said, I also don't believe in a freepass for engaging in dangerous behavior. Paul didn't get busted for smoking weed in front of a trooper, after all. If he's mentally ill and people are such good friends with him, where was everyone a year and a half ago when, I am told, a lot of his behavior started being rather extreme? Where were people after last year's incidents, like BM, Grace Cathedral, the charges at the school or the shit in Seattle? It seems like that if his mental state is so bad, his friends should have had an intervention then and not be simply wringing their hands now about how he's getting jacked by the system.

I sympathize with you (not that you probably care) in that I can understand a bit about where you are coming from and also your relationship with what Burning Man is or has become. That being said, wishes don't make things so, actions do and this has always been the case. In other words, talk is cheap. You may be doing something now as damage control and to help Paul but people who care about him should have acted before he started chalking up law enforcement encounters, not after. At this point, what's done is done and he's going to jail. What are you going to do from here beyond helping him out while he's in there?

Chicken John,

You wrote:

"Mr. Billings, I can’t help but think about what you would be like in the joint with your attitude of privelidge and calous. You would cry like a little baby girl when a 300 lb ganster with a 60 IQ toys with you like a cat plays with a mouse. You would, quite literally, cry for your mother."

Well, thanks for this insightful commentary on what I would or wouldn't do in prison (and implicitly wishing it for me based on the tone of your post).

I have a newsflash for you, I've actually done volunteer work in prisons and I am currently talking to people about doing it again (my previous work was in another state). I've worked with inmates, run classes for them, and tried to help them with their problems to the best of my ability. I did this even when they, personally, terrified me (though not necessarily by intent on their part). I guess that doesn't fit into your little picture, does it? You can kiss my ass with this rhetoric.

You know what I learned from working with inmates in prison? I'll mention a few key things:

1) You never ever want to do anything that will land you in prison. (This is the one thing any work with inmates will drive home with a vengence.) Prison is a horrible place for anyone involved, not just the inmates, and it is an often evil system. Don't fuck up and land yourself there.

2) Most people that are in prison, frankly, deserve it inasmuch as they are guilty of the crimes that put them there. Many, when they get to know you, will freely admit it. Does that make all punishments on the books just? Hardly but there are few innocent men and women in prisons (innocent meaning "did not break the law in question", we'll leave the value of certain laws aside).

3) Most people in prison have emotional or mental issues, often drug related. That doesn't excuse anything. Almost every inmate I ever worked with was all fucked up on drugs, and habitually so, when he wound up committing the crimes that sent him to prison. They only cleaned up and became really reflective about what was going on while sitting in their cells counting the months or years until they got out.

4) In spite of any of the above, people in jails deserve our help and compassion if they actually want to improve themselves or reform their lives. Plenty of them don't. They just want out of the inhumane environment in which they find themselves and will put themselves back in soon enough. I volunteered to work with people because they wanted to make themselves into better people and *not* go back.

Looking at the above and my experience (and I've met Paul, actually), I think I can say that Paul dug his own hole, repeatedly, and knowingly and consciously committed the felony that he was convicted of doing. Larry didn't make him do that with his evil Master of the BMorg powers. Paul chose to be an idiot (perhaps he was high at the time even) and burn down a structure, putting lives at risk and causing damage. He was convicted of the crime he actually committed, regardless of your bullshit reasoning, and he's going to jail for it. Maybe this will shake him up enough that, when he gets out, he changes his life into something a bit more reasoned, sane, and healthy. If he behaves well and if the sentencing is light, we could see him next year back in San Francisco. As I said before, maybe you should focus on helping your friend instead of engaging in your next mayoral campaign here.

On another note, I used to respect much of what you tried to do around the Bay Area. Your posts here, in general and toward me, have shown me this this respect was mistakenly given. I suggest not being so much of a prick next time or turning one man's mistakes into a holy crusade.

I'm sick of all the jaded and burned out Burners getting their knickers in a twist about what Burning Man has become. Hey, Chicken John, if it makes you sick, DON'T FUCKING GO. Oh, wait, you don't anyway. So WTF? If people think Burning Man sucks, don't go. If it isn't as cool as it used to be, don't go. I think you can see the continuation of this thought.

The rest of us continue to go and continue to enjoy it. Having an asshole, a mentally disturbed one at that, set the Man on fire when people are underneath of it at night is not a prank. It's arson and people *could* have been hurt or killed quite easily. He had no control over that except to not torch it in the first place. He created a potentially lethal situation and all the hand-wringing in the world about poor Paul and his mental health won't change that. I don't know if he deserves four years for it but he definitely deserves an arson conviction.

If you don't like that, well, that's too f'ing bad too. It's done. Why not put your money where your mouth is and do something productive to help your friend instead of bitching about Burning Man some more?

Oh, they made this mistake "this time" since, as I recall, this is the *third* time that this issue has been decided. The previous two instances were worked around by the other branches of government. We keep coming back to this again and again.

I had a close friend of mine, who is pretty far to the right, tell me that these people didn't deserve rights and he laughed when I discussed the ethics of denying rights to prisoners (or human beings) because they were non-citizens detained by us. He actually rolled his eyes when I mentioned the the principles of various Founding Fathers (peace be on them) that had seen what a dictatorial crown could do when it wanted. As far as he is concerned (and many others, I know) "terrorists" that we capture don't deserve rights and can rot in jail, without a trial or legal counsel, forever while we torture them all that we want.

It saddens me and I'm not even engaging in hyperbole here. It really does sadden me and makes me worried (more) for this country's future that this seems to be a common set of opinions.

Wow, you post something political, John, and the Right Wind pundits just pop out of the woodwork. Where do they hide the rest of the time?

I tend to agree with Dan Carlin that our torture of people, whether they "deserve" it or not is an extremely shameful action and reflects badly on us as a society. If the people that support this (along with things like detaining people without due process for years at a time) had the courage of their convictions, they would be building torture and detainment centers in Kansas City, not keeping them outside of the United States or secretly operating them in ex-communist nations. It seems to me that the fact that these things are questionable is self-evident since we aren't willing to actually do them here and that even their proponents are ashamed of them, even if they will not admit it in public.

As much as the United States has never lived up to its lofty ideals in its treatment of many groups, this embrace of all of those things that we considered to be representative of "evil" empires in our "War on Terror" is not going to seen favorably in future decades, assuming we don't continue our self-propelled slide into dictatorship. The terrorists are simply an excuse for this. As tragic as the death of a few thousand people in New York City was (and I am and was as appalled by it as anyone), it has been used as an excuse to engage in behavior by various governmental parties that we should never tolerate as citizens.

Too bad Opera isn't open source and doesn't have other projects using its code...

Bart,

People in other industries often have wildly different salaries, even at the same company for different jobs. It is in the interest of the companies that people don't compare notes. I recall one time finding out that I made about 20% less than all of my immediate peers at one company. That was fun for my management (who wound up having to give me a major pay increase during the next cycle).

Well, Dave, that's technically not correct. There are only certain classes of employees where those rules don't apply. Most companies just ignore that though.

I still haven't read the third book in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. My friends and I called reading that trilogy "Climbing Mt. Stephenson" because of the huge size of the books (and the infodumps). The funny thing is that I'm a huge fan.

I am interested in the book you mention here but I'm not sure when I'd have time to read it. :-)

More like wanking issues to work out.

You may or may not realize how influential this graphic novel has been. The whole reason that we had the Batman movies (good or bad) starting in 1989 was the wild popularity of "The Dark Knight Returns" when it came out. When I was in high school, it was literally everywhere and the look and feel of Frank Miller's work, along with its popularity, influenced the films into the "dark" direction that they had, at least for the first few. It was the deathblow to the campy 1960's Batman of television and a return to earlier forms.

This leaves aside how it affected the ongoing Batman comic series that still exist.

As a side note, Frank Miller's reinterpretation of the Battle of Thermopylae was "300", which led to the (bad) movie of the same name, which derived itself from his artwork and ideas much moreso than actual history.

Man, if I owned that thing, I'd attach some fake eyes and wings for a giant fly to it. I mean, *that* would make it creepier.

It's a great album too. Definitely worth $5 from people to get it.

R, you aren't actually correctly representing what I said...

Speaking of scrapping IE for Firefox, ex-MSFT Dave Massy and I have both been taking the IE team to task on our blogs for stopping any real outward facing discussions concerning the future of IE. After IE7 shipped, the IEBlog went into cruise mode and they killed Borgzilla (the Connect site) by taking it offline "temporarily" (more than a year ago).

This seems to be exactly the kind of thing Microsoft seemed so keen on not doing a couple of years ago yet here it is doing it again...

Mr. Dobbs o' Slack,

His "prank" could have killed or seriously hurt people. Given the amount of damage that I've seen people do themselves accidentally through Burnng Man, setting a structure surrounded by people on fire that is held up by high tension cables on top of a *tent* is not exactly a harmless prank.

Bronson, I didn't go to Burning Man this year so I didn't see the Man burn in either instance. I had better ways to spend my time this year. That doesn't change the fact that it is arson.

Geekboy,

Why would you expect to see my donation to the "Pay Chris back his bail money fund?" So, as you say, Chris won't get his money back. Never having been arrested, I didn't realize that the bail bondsman would keep the 10% handed to him.

My overall response is "So what?" If Chris knew that, then he paid up front for his buddy and that's his problems. As far as I'm concerned, Paul should have rotted in jail until his arraignment. If his buddies wanted to bail him out, that's great. It's good to have friends who will get you out of jail. That surely isn't my concern though as I'm:

a) Not Paul's friend.
b) Think Paul is an arrogant putz.
c) See that he has effectively confessed to doing it (and for stupid reasons) while maintaining the official pretense otherwise.

I think he *should* be in jail. He's committed a felony and not something fun like giving a few friends some E or Acid or somesuch but the kind of thing that could have KILLED people. For what reason did he do this? To show that Burning Man is a fake and has lost its way, in his wisdom as a three time burner?

Screw 'em. I'm sure the jury will anyway.

Why would Chris not get his bail money back? The whole friggin' point of bail is that it is a guarantee that the person being bailed out will show up in court. The money is security for it. The only reason Chris would be worried about not getting his money back was if he knew Paul was going to no-show at court.

I almost hope he does that as bail bondsmen are not terribly happy when that occurs and that's when they hire bounty hunters so they aren't out the $30,000 that Chris' $3,000 bought...

From what I hear from a longtime Burner friend (and author of a book on Burning Man) is that Paul Addis is, yes, a lawyer. He really is. This person had no idea if he is a current bar member or if he practices anymore but there it is...