The Internal Revenue Service sent an auditor to a
synagogue. As the auditor reviews all the paperwork,
he turns to the Rabbi and says, “I noticed that you
buy a lot of candles.”
“Yes, we do,” responded the Rabbi.
“Well, Rabbi, what do you do with the candle
drippings?” He asked.
Read the rest below the fold… (warning: language may be offensive to some)
Plastered all over the news the past few days were stories of how unprecedented cooperation between US law enforcement agencies led to 10,000 fugitives being arrested in Operation Falcon. This sounds impressive and did impress people. For instance, Law Pundit noted:
This is a sign of government law enforcement agencies working together effectively for the interests of the people and represents a modern landmark in law enforcement cooperation in getting the criminals off the streets.
This prompted me to remember the question I had asked myself when I read this in the morning paper yesterday: What is the normal rate of arrests?
Well, I did some checking via the The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2002 and found some interesting numbers:
No drug arrests in the above but apparently included in Operation Falcon!
My suspicion is that they simply reported business as usual (in some cases less than usual) and by giving it one of those magic labels, Operation Falcon, and publicizing it they have tried to make us think something new and wonderful is happening. Well, welcome to the world of marketing and government BS.
Oh, and if this really was a real coordinated effort, then we did not get our money’s worth (surprise) as they appear to have failed to meet even average arrest rates.
Update 4/18: More on this at Marginal Revolution and the Washington Post.
This post is way late so I’ll keep it over a bit next month.
On the right side bar is the updated roll of Modulator’s 21 top referrers for the month of March. Numbers 20 and 21 each produced 25 referrals compared to 20 for numbers 20 and 21 in January.
December churn: 6 blogs dropped and 6 new ones added compared to 9 and 9 in February.
Overall traffic was down about 7.7% from February and up 211% from March 04 (no I do not expect the year to year growth to continue at that rate).
Top Referrer: Pharyngula. Thanks, PZ!
Top search phrase/word: live strong
Most popular post: Live Strong
Statistics are culled from AWStats running on Modulator’s server at Hosting Matters.
Again, thank you one and all!
Also, I’d like to acknowledge referrals from some of the blogosphere’s ‘service’ sites: Technorati, weblogs.com, blogrolling.com, MovableType, Blogdex, Bloglines, blogoshpere.us, Sitemeter, NZ Bear’s Ecosystem, Bloogz and Daypop.
All of the blog rolls are ordered by most recently updated so be sure to ping weblogs.com or blogrolling.com to push to the top of the rolls. These are certainly the sites I tend to look at first and visitors will see you at the top of the roll as well.
For a brief discussion of Modulator’s blog rolls look here.
This history stops back in 2001 but is pretty funny and, well, pick your own adjective. Go explore The Mystery of Britney Spears Breasts.
This, of course, reminded me of Jaquandor’s all too infrequent Move Over Britney series (there are more in the series listed part way down his left sidebar).
Via Bacon and Eh’s.
Update (4/22): Welcome to visitors from Blogs etc.! When you are done checking out all the borders here head on over to the current edition of the Friday Ark for more. And, of course, please browse around the rest of Modulator.
Cats, Dogs, Spiders and ? every Friday.
I’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals as I see them (photoshops at my discretion and humans only in supporting roles).
Leave a comment or trackback to this post or email me and I’ll add yours to the list. Check back regularly for updates throughout the day on Fridays and somewhat less frequently over the weekend.
Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings.
Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and will be hosted this week by Watermark.
And, check out Laurence’s fine graphical analysis of Friday Ark boardings.
Archive editions of the Friday Ark.
Cats