(updated) 6 years in prison for gang graffiti? California town loses its mind.

"A Santa Paula man spray-painted gang graffiti on a large wooden sign at the entrance to Marina Park in Ventura nearly two years ago, a jury was told Thursday in a case that could send the defendant to prison for up to six years.

"Sergio Martin ... 22, faces prison if found guilty of two felony charges - committing vandalism that caused more than $400 worth of damage, and possessing tools to commit graffiti, according to his lawyer, Rod Kodman. The damage to the sign totaled $523."

I hope that cooler heads prevail in court, because this is a clear threat of cruel and unusual punishment and it sure smells like racism. Punishing the demographic instead of the behavior is unAmerican. As a society, we can't afford it because it's blatantly unjust.

I'm no fan of gang graffiti, but punishing any type of painting activity with 6 years in prison on felonies is ridiculous. This guy didn't even do $1000 worth of damage (if he's even guilty) and he's only 22 years old. A more practical thing for a sane society to do would be to put him to work in community service of some kind. Imprisoning young people only creates career criminals and a permanent underclass.

Plus possession of tools to create graffiti has been interpreted in California as applying even to things like rocks and pencils. It's just a bogus add-on of convenience. Graffiti tools are not like burglary tools, they are art supplies. California needs a smarter government, and soon.

UPDATE: Sept 1: Jury would not convict Martin, so it's declared a mistrial. This is the second time he's been tried on this and had a mistrial. I feel better now.

The jury did its job after all and refused to give an excessive sentence to someone charged on iffy evidence. Luckily for Martin his jury was not made up of the howling crowd of commenters, many of whom are still out for blood for some reason. It's crazy, because $523 worth of damage, by definition, can be cured for $523. Why would anyone want to pay $30,000 x 6 years to warehouse this guy instead?

(update) Young men jailed in UK for painting trains, citizens are outraged

UPDATE:

The judges at the Court of Appeal decided each should receive a two-year conditional discharge. They have served two months of their original sentences.

Their prison sentences prompted protests by their parents and a petition on the social networking website Facebook.

Five-year Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos) were also quashed by Mr Justice Grigson sitting with Lord Justice Latham and Mr Justice Aikens in London. They said the Asbos were "inappropriate" because the graffiti was not threatening or offensive.

The "positive features" in their cases should also have persuaded the original trial judge a community sentence was the appropriate punishment, said Mr Justice Grigson.

Mers (18) and Krek (20) got thrown in jail (in a police station, since the prisons are full) in Manchester England. Their sentences are 12 and 15 months.

You can see in the [original] article comments that reasonable adults in the area think these sentences are ridiculously harsh. And no wonder. It doesn't make any sense to put kids in jail for nonviolent offenses. Not for the kids and not for the society. At least one of these guys is a first offender also.

But in any country, it's easiest to jail people who can't afford good legal help and to let rich celebrities and white-collar criminals who actually endanger other people's lives go free after token jail visits. Blind justice indeed. We need to reform the stupid policies that result in such society-harming results.

I hope the UK citizens will continue to condemn this sort of destructive sentencing and work to free these kids. Nonviolent first offenders need to be sent to school and to work, not to jail. Otherwise, England risks becoming a prison state like the USA, where more than 2 million people are in prison, a large proportion of which are in for nonviolent and victimless offenses such as drug possession.

Play Defcon free this weekend - till 6pm GMT Monday

Win-OSX-Linux online multi-player (or single player) strategy game

PC world said: "Through 6 p.m. GMT on Monday, August 27, Defcon is free for all to play; gamers are not required to enter key codes to have access to the full game.

Defcon is a throwback to the Cold War. Your job, as a general hidden in a deep underground bunker, is to totally destroy the other side - inflicting massive civilian casualties and disarming your opponent using a thermonuclear arsenal, trying to protect your own forces and people as best you can.

If the game sounds disturbing, it is -- its tagline is "Everybody Dies," and Introversion and Ambrosia don't shy away from showing you the dark side -- and the reality -- of global nuclear conflict."

59MB download
If you decide you like annihilating the world, it's $25 for a license after Monday.

[While you're at that website, you may notice that Ambrosia software also makes Snapz Pro, which is a tempting screen capture utility for OS X, but I like SnapNDrag and iShowu better and they cost a lot less. The Firefox extension PageSaver does a great job of capturing long web pages in one shot too.]

Fotolog is kicking a lot of writers out

I've noticed a lot of forcibly closed Fotolog accounts lately. One writer had a (tasteful) painting of a nude, but it doesn't seem to be all about T&A. If you have a Fotolog you might want to gather up your material and move to a more friendly service before they get around to you.

PowWows.com live webcast

Another reason I love the Web.

I'm really grateful that the Native American tribes have shared some of their traditional celebrations in this way.

Mr Wiggles on the Art of Lettering

Tutorials, alphabets and more.

All Writes Reserved - Seventh Letter Artists

From the current NYC show of LA superstars: Retna, Revok, Saber







The powerHouse Arena
37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
For more information please call 212-604-9074 x101
until September 2, 2007

Google Guide

This is a nice free tutorial that will help you find more of what you're looking for online. It has a downloadable "cheat sheet" also.

How to type all those special characters on a Mac

Accents, symbols, everything. Download the PDF file(s) and you'll always have it on your Mac when you need it, for email, word processing, general lettering and typesetting work.

I used to use PopChar for this but it's US$30 now and I don't need special characters that often these days. PopChar is very fast though, so if you want to use lots of special characters it might pay for itself in time savings.

For making special characters in HTML you'll need an entity list instead.

You are under surveillance

Dangerous ideas and cool posters.

Snarky Graffiti

Traditional graffiti, but much of it's funny stuff.

Ruby Magazine

Online free image zine for designers. It's made in Argentina. Issue 20 has AJ Fosik in it along with many other interesting photographers and designers.

Peeta interview on Fatbombers

El Done flexes his digital painting skills

A quick screen movie of El Done (Barcelona) painting a lovely digital illustration of Lara Croft from Tomb Raider.

40 million have HIV-AIDS (SIDA) + 4 million more this year alone

Teenagers and young adults (and their babies) worldwide are being killed by this incurable disease even though it's preventable.

We must each save ourselves, our friends and our loved ones, because the world can't afford to save us. Even if someone makes a vaccine (and no one knows if this is even possible yet), it wouldn't help you if you're already infected.

Our governments, churches, families and schools are afraid to give us any information that involves sex and drugs. In many countries where the number of infected people is rising most rapidly, the governments won't even alert the public to the threat! They would rather let you die than admit you are having sex.

So it's up to us to bring the news to the kids who need it.

Here's the bottom line: Use condoms and don't share needles. That's what works best.

Condoms show you care about yourself and your partner. Condoms are about germs and sperm, not about morality. Let's be practical. They are not a perfect solution, but this is what we all must do if we're to stop this global pandemic and avoid killing ourselves, our lovers, and our children. We need to get creative about making them more available too, such as providing them at parties and clubs.

Spread the word, please, on your blogs and personal pages ... and on the walls.

Here's a good place to buy them online (in business since 1994) and they ship worldwide: Condom.com

I'd like to show more paintings on AIDS prevention too.
yo@graffiti.org

NeatFonts

Huge collection (7 pages of fonts with names that start with "A" for example, 8 pages of "B" etc., and catagories too). Lots of interesting display typefaces. Free. Ready to install TTFs.

Atome's new blog

Stylish goodness not to be missed.

See which US presidential candidate(s) agree with you

This excellent web tool lets you pick the issues that matter to you and then shows how closely the presidential candidates align with your views ... or not.

I know it's still early in the election process, but the time to fight for your underdog is right now before he gets eliminated or pushed out of the debates. It's also very easy to see which party in general has your burning issues at heart, in case your favorite candidate does disappear before election.

Give it a shot, you might be surprised.

RIP Munik

Munik, from Houston, was run over and killed by a levee cop in New Orleans on August 9. The cop said Munik tripped. I hope we see a competent investigation of this soon at the very least.

Condolences to his friends and family.

Update: Here's another blogpost about Victor's death at Grits for Breakfast.

NYC prohibits unlocked paint, markers for under-21

"The law, authored by City Councilmember Peter F. Vallone Jr., outlaws the possession of graffiti instruments in public places by people under the age 21. Under the new bill, it will be a criminal violation to carry spray paint, broad-tipped markers or etching acid unless it is enclosed in a locked container, or if the tools are needed for educational or professional purposes."

Graffiti artists break Guinness record in Serbia

Photos, please!

"Belgrade - Some 250 young graffiti artists painted a world record-long 605-metre piece on Wednesday in the Serbian city of Kragujevac.

"In a span of 24 hours, the artists topped the previous record of 507 metres held by Norwegian graffiti artists.

"Both local artists and graffiti writers from Germany, Italy and neighbouring Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina joined the event in Kragujevac, some 140 kilometres south of Belgrade."

Maywa Denki

The link goes to more info and pictures about this interesting musical group, called "the first to use a true robotic vocalist." I like everything about this, but I'm especially fond of the guitar-replacement instruments.

via BoingBoing