Pixel picked a good moment to sit up in the windowsill. This is probably my best cat photo to date.

The Background

From the bits quoted in the appeals court decision, the underlying case appears to involve something of a grey area. The complainant was an 18-year-old college student who ended up in a car with a pair of 16-year-old boys after a party failed to take place as expected, and there was a sexual encounter involving at first both boys (non-penetratively), then just one boy (penetratively), and then the other (possibly penetratively, though it is unclear, and I mention the specifics only because they turn out to have strange consequences in Maryland's criminal law). The case deals only with the second boy (the encounter with the other boy, which occurred when the second boy left the vehicle, was nonconsensual, and the first boy entered a guilty plea on rape charges). In the second case, the testimony is in agreement that the girl consented to sex as long as the boy stopped when she said to. There is a discrepancy in testimony about what happened next: the girl claimed that as he was attempting to penetrate her, she asked him to stop and tried to push him off her and he tried to continue for another five seconds before stopping, and the boy claimed that she never actually asked him to stop, but that he was having difficulty penetrating her when she sat up, and he took that as indication to stop, and did. It was noted during questioning of the victim that there was at a minimum social coercion involved, although there was at no time with the second boy any threat of violence:

The Decision

The appellate court review revolved around a hypothetical question that the jury asked of the judge during deliberations that the judge refused to answer:

The judge in the original case held that "the sex act" was ambiguous: that the jury could be referring either specifically to the motions of penetration or generally to all aspects of sex including any foreplay, etc., and as the answer would differ depending on the way that ambiguity was resolved, refused to provide an answer, simply pointing the jury back at the previous instructions given about what defines the elements of rape. He based this decision on a previous case, Battle v. State, 287 Md. 675, 683–85 (1980), which was reversed primarily because a question using the words "during the course of the action", rather than "during the course of the sex act" but otherwise identical, was deemed ambiguous. The next morning, the jury asked a variation of that question:

The judge decided that it was effectively the same question as the previous night, and responded with:

The appellate court decided that an absolute certainty as to the meaning of a jury's question is not a pre-requisite for a judge to be required to answer, and that furthermore that "action" might be ambiguous but that "sex act" referred specifically to intercourse on plain reading, and thus even the judge's decision that it was ambiguous was wrong. It came to the conclusion that the judge's instructions were therefore confusing to the jury, and that therefore a retrial was warranted.

Although the above decision was already completable just based upon the above, the court also decided to answer a claim by the state during the appeals process that even if "sex act" specifically refers to penetration, consent before penetration does not vitiate the crime of rape that occurs if one party fails to stop when consent is withdrawn. (It should be noted that although the state made this argument during the appeals process, there would be no ambiguity in the answer to the jury's first question if the trial judge actually believed this at the time.) The controversial part of this case comes from the appellate court's decision that once penetration has occurred, consent cannot be withdrawn for the purpose of determining guilt of rape. Although it is not applicable to this particular case, this has an obviously terrifying result: if a woman decides for whatever reason that she wants to stop having sex after consensual penetration (it hurts, she's just discovered that her partner is cheating on her or has a veneral disease, etc.), and the partner decides to hold her down, crying and screaming, until he reaches his own climax, it's still not rape.

This result is so awful that one wonders how on earth the court could have reached it.

The Common Law

The controversial conclusion is not part of the law as most people understand it: there is no explicit part of the criminal code that delineates whether or not sexual consent can be withdrawn at any particular point in time. You cannot look up the articles of Maryland criminal law and find anything at all on the topic. What the appellate court's answer stems from is common law: non-codified, non-statutory rules based upon social customs, traditions, and prior precedent. Originally, it stems from the English common law of distant history, but has accumulated the traditions of the United States from the last two hundred years as well.

So far, only Illinois has actually written legislation on "post-penetration rape", as it is termed, but nine states have addressed it judicially based upon common law. Seven states (Maine, Connecticut, California, South Dakota, Minnesota, Alaska, and Kansas) have unequivocally supported it, and two (Maryland and North Carolina) have not. In Maryland, the main case providing precedent for this is once again Battle v. State. In the appeals documents, the state claimed that the entire discussion of post-penetration rape in Battle was dicta — mere commentary from the judge unrelated to the actual decision process that does not set binding precedent. The appeals court, however, found that the analysis of the issue in Battle was quite large, unlike most dicta commentaries, and although it had been quoted as "arguably dicta" in State v. Siering, 35 Conn. App. 173, 644 A.2d 958 (1994), it was referred to as part of the holding in State v. Bunyard, 31 Kan. App. 2d 853, 857, 75 P.3d 750, 755 (Kan. App. 2003). The Baby appellate court then decided two things: that the Battle discussion wasn't dicta, and that it didn't matter anyway because the answer stemmed from ancient common law not yet overturned in Maryland. It may need a professional legal scholar to validate the correctness of this: as in this appeal, the appeal of Battle was fundamentally decided before addressing the issue, but as in this case, the analysis is both large and at least solidly related to the decision. If the discussion of post-penetration rape in Battle is to be declared dicta, then so is the discussion of post-penetration rape in Baby, the case we are examining now. Also, I'm not sure what the legal histories have to say about which takes precedence when no local precedent exists withinin the jurisdiction: recent legal authority from other jurisdictions, or common law as historically practiced within the jurisdiction. Those experienced in criminal law are invited to comment.

The issue of precedent is made even more confusing by the fact that Maryland uses a slightly different heirarchy of courts: although both the court that reviewed Battle and the court reviewing Baby here are appellate courts, they are not on the same level: the court that reviewed Battle was a "Court of Appeals", while the court reviewing Baby is a "Court of Special Appeals". The difference? In most other states, the "Court of Appeals" would be referred to as the Supreme Court: although a case does not have to pass through a Court of Special Appeals to reach it, the precedents of a Court of Appeals are binding upon all lower courts, including the Court of Special Appeals.

If Battle is in fact to be considered binding precedent then the Court of Special Appeals reviewing Baby is correct in following that precedent even to an unjust end: only the judges of the Court of Appeals or an en banc collection of all of the judges of the Court of Special Appeals at once have the authority to overturn that precedent, and it is the law in Maryland, not the majority of the rest of the states, that applies when it exists. That that part of Battle was wrongly decided is not for this appellate court to say, though unfortunately it would appear that it actually went so far as to agree with the reasoning in Battle.

So what was the reasoning?

Archaic Law

The state, in its arguments to the appellate court, made a fairly succinct analysis of the basis of the disregard of post-penetration rape in ancient common law, and the reason why it should be disregarded:

The appeals court in Baby acknowledged this basis, and even expanded upon the history of this in a footnoted passage:

(Footnote 6 traces the origins back to Biblical and Middle Assyrian laws, and 7 discusses the adoption of common law, neither of which needs to be quoted here.)

Despite the obvious abhorrent archaism of this concept, the Court of Special Appeals affirmed it, in part because it's also followed up by another line of reasoning in Battle. That reasoning, missing any prior precedent on the ability to withdraw consent after penetration, focused instead on prior precedent on the ability to grant consent after penetration has been made when it was not present beforehand. That had come up in several cases, and the courts had fairly consistently held that the crime of rape does not become any less a crime just because of the forgiveness of the victim. The reverse, the courts decided, must also be true: if the crime is complete at the moment of penetration, then it doesn't matter if consent is withdrawn subsequently, as you cannot retroactively declare something to have been done without permission.

If it weren't for the fact that this allows for a situation where someone is held down, kicking, crying, and screaming, until the partner decides it's over, that would almost seem logical, and in fact the Court of Special Appeals seems to agree with it. So what's wrong with the reasoning?

Why Rape is a Crime

The problem is that the state's analysis is entirely correct even with respect to the second line of reasoning, and is operating at a level just beneath the prejudices of both of the appellate court judges. The issue stems from why the act of rape is a crime — if you instinctively think of it as vandalism of virginity, then penetration matters, and if you think of it as a crime against the sexual autonomy of a human being, it doesn't. Following the latter as a guide, the reason why rape does not cease to become rape with subsequent forgiveness of the victim is that the violation actually happened: the victim's sexual autonomy was, in fact, violated, and even if the victim subsequently decides that it wasn't that bad, the state has a vested interest in penalizing that action for the sake of the deterrent effect — you don't want would-be rapists to give it a go because they think the victim might forgive them afterwards. In the reverse, however, this does not continue to hold: up until the point where consent is withdrawn, whether or not there is penetration there has been no violation of sexual autonomy. As soon as it has been communicated that consent is withdrawn, however, the violation occurs if the partner does not heed that with reasonable haste. (What constitutes "reasonable haste" is another question entirely, and even one relevant to the original trial, but not one relevant to the appeal.)

By this measure, then, the conclusion about the (non-)existence of post-penetration rape in both Battle and Baby is wrongly decided. At this point, however, it will take either legislation or the Maryland Court of Appeals to overturn. Fortunately, legislation may be on the way. Delegate Jean Cryor of Montgomery County, Maryland, has claimed that the Women's Caucus of the General Assembly is likely to take a closer look at this decision during the next legislative session. Unfortunately, if all that is examined is this decision, the legislation may not go far enough. Now that the results under common law have been examined, it's worth looking at what has been specified under the written criminal law of Maryland, and it turns out that there are serious problems with that, too.

Maryland Criminal Law

The specific statutes relating to sexual crimes in Maryland are available on the web, but they are somewhat poorly indexed and linked. Fortunately, accurate summaries are available from the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MCASA). The most immediate problem is the stringent requirements by the statute for a crime to be considered rape.

The Definition of Rape

For both first degree (§ 3-303) and second degree (§ 3-304) rape, the primary requirement is that a person "engage in vaginal intercourse with another by force, or the threat of force, without the consent of the other" and meet another condition. For rape in the first degree (with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment), there must be either a dangerous weapon (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), suffocation, strangulation, or serious injury, threat of suffocation, strangulation, serious injury, or kidnapping, an accomplice, or a related burglary. For rape in the second degree (with a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment), there must be mental incapacitation, mental defect, or physical helplessness, or a victim under 14 years of age with the attacker at least 4 years older. Curiously, those two statutes are repeated almost word for word (§ 3-305 and $sect; 3-306) and with the same penalties except under the heading of "sexual offense" instead of "rape", but for oral sex, anal sex, or use of sex toys or other objects (as opposed to vaginal sex), apparently for the sole purpose of affecting how marriage is used as a defense, but more on that later.

For all other forms of sexual assault, it comes under the heading of "sexual contact" and has a maximum penalty of 10 years if it is violent (§ 3-307: same conditions as first degree rape) or 1 year otherwise (§ 3-308). That last category is the only one in which lack of consent is the only determining factor, and thanks to a very specific definition of "sexual contact" which explicitly excludes penetration by "penis, mouth, or tongue", this means that if I am reading this statute correctly, if you are coerced into penis-vagina-only sex by blackmail or social pressure without physical incapacitation or threat of "serious" injury, no sexual crime has been committed at all — it is neither rape (without the violence or mental or physical incapacitation), nor (thanks to the exclusion of penis penetration) even sexual contact.

Thankfully (and a little curiously), instructions to the jury don't seem to follow this. The original trial court judge (Judge Scrivener) in Baby gave the following instructions to the jury regarding force and consent:

No mention of the additional factors of threat of serious injury, etc. were mentioned. If this is common practice (the instructions were not specifically commented upon by the Court of Special Appeals, which suggests this might be the case), this weakens the conditions in the statute in practice to the point where they're actually reasonable, but the law almost certainly needs to be rewritten to match.

Non-physical coercion is still an issue, however: implied threats to one's livelihood, social status, or anything else not even capable of gaining consent but capable of inhibiting physical resistance is not covered by statute, and almost certainly also needs to be corrected. It may be covered by common law, but given the treatment of women by common law discussed earlier, I am inclined to be skeptical.

It's Not Rape If She's Your Wife?

The second major problem immediately visible in the statutes is a very confusing section specifically about whether or not you can be convicted of rape if the victim is your wife:

I had to go back and compare this to the listed sections a couple of times trying to reconcile (b)(2) in my head, and I eventually came to the conclusion that all of part (b) is basically meaningless thanks to the problem that force or the threat of force and lack of consent is already a minimum prerequisite for § 3-303, § 3-304, or § 3-307 to come into effect at all, for a spouse or otherwise. Not excluded, however, are all of the subsections relating to age restrictions/statutory rape (marriage is a defense against all of these, so if you are married to a twelve year old, it doesn't matter if you're having sex with her at age 40 — though to actually get married in Maryland under the age of 16 requires not only the permission of the parent but the agreement of a judge, which makes this probably only an issue for out-of-state marriages). If the main sections on rape are ever corrected, however, without this section being modified along with them, spouses will still not be protected from non-violent coercive sex.

Notably, the sections on "sexual acts" (oral sex, anal sex, sex toys) is not included in any of this. This leads one to the head-scratching conclusion that the intent of the law was to make sure that a woman was forced to submit to penis-vagina sex with her husband, but had the right to refuse anal sex, oral sex, or sex toys.

What Needs to Be Done

At this point, the only input a Maryland citizen can have into this is in the legislative process. As mentioned before, Delegate Jean Cryor of Montgomery County, Maryland, has claimed that the Women's Caucus of the General Assembly is likely to take a closer look at this decision during the next legislative session, and locals should keep an eye out for anything coming out of that Caucus in the coming term. Once that process begins, letters can be written encouraging change, and checking not only for an explicit right to withdraw consent, but also encouraging modification of § 3-303 through 3-307 to include nonviolent coercion and heavily modifying § 3-318 so that the only protection that marriage grants is against the age limitations. There is no more reason to endorse sexual coercion between spouses than there is between anyone else.

And if you find yourself in the position of being sexually assaulted in Maryland, make sure you resist physically; failure to do so may end up being used against you.

A Second Look at the Original Case

It is a dangerous thing to second-guess a jury based only on a partial transcript. Missing even from the complete record are the manner of speech, nonverbal cues, and other indicators that may affect judgements on credibility or issues of fact. Nonetheless, I find myself somewhat uncomfortable with the outcome: although the first trial of Maouloud Baby ended in a hung jury, the second trial (which reached the Special Court of Appeals) found him guilty of first-degree rape (§ 3-303), first-degree sexual offense (§ 3-305) and two counts of third-degree sexual offense (§ 3-307). There was another incident involving both boys before Baby left the car, which may have involved the charges other than rape, and lacking the details of the testimony on that matter, I am not inclined to comment. On the matter of first-degree rape, however, there seems to be very little in dispute. By both sets of testimony, there was explicit consent granted, and then either verbal revocation of consent followed by compliance within 5 seconds, or nonverbal revocation of consent followed by immediate compliance.

As the latter is about as good a response as one could ask for, a lot seems to hang on those five seconds. What constitutes timely compliance? Even in the act of driving, requiring about as fast a response as is possible to avoid serious harm, distracted drivers were found to take a couple of seconds to respond to a surprise. A good lover should perhaps be as focused as a good driver, instantly responding to a partner's desires, but as a society we aren't in the practice of imprisoning lousy lovers (for starters, we'd never have enough prisons to keep them all). At some point, there must be evidence of intent not to comply. I don't find that 5 seconds meets that standard. Yet it seems silly to try to assign a numerical time limit — five seconds okay, eight seconds not. The jury, asking questions about withdrawal of consent, obviously felt that there was intent to continue after consent was withdrawn, and that a result hinged on whether or not there was a legal difference.

The prosecution in the original case also attempted to place all of the events in the context of non-violently coercive sex: that the verbal consent didn't matter because it constituted not actual consent, but mere submission to sexual assault. I find myself substantially more sympathetic to this line of thought; by the girl's testimony, for whatever social reason, she didn't really feel like she had a choice but to go along with what the two boys wanted. Even in the mind of a horny teenager, there must have been some kind of awareness that unwanted pressure was being applied, and the result is a symptom of a serious social problem: the distinction between invitation, even seductive, tempting invitation and outright repeated pressure to change a negative reaction to a sexual advance is lost. There is ample cause to penalize the latter under the law as a visible deterrent for this social problem.

And yet, I find myself returning to the issue of intent. For a crime with a penalty of such severity, I find myself feeling a need for full intention under mens rea before assigning guilt. At most, I see here recklessness, and perhaps merely negligence — a failure, perhaps a willfull failure, to consider the girl's feelings, but there was an explicitly stated desire not to actually commit rape, and an explicit request for consent, which was affirmed. I'm not convinced that it is in society's best interest to bring the full weight of a sentence for first-degree rape on that sort of error.

It is a dangerous thing to second-guess a jury based only on a partial transcript, and I find the application of common law in this case to be frightening and abhorrent, but I am left not entirely unhappy that the case will see yet another jury.

Introduction

Moving is always a pain, and usually an expensive pain. The cheapest and most inconvenient way to move is to do everything yourself: rent a huge truck, load everything into it yourself, drive it to the new location yourself (potentially asking someone to drive your own car up), and unload it yourself once you're there. If you've never packed furniture on your own before, you risk the loss of goods, and if you've never driven a large truck before, you may be risking more than that on the road. Special features like "air-ride" suspension or environmental controls may or may not be available. On the far opposite side of the spectrum, you can pay a reputable company to pack, load, drive, and unload everything for you (paying a company you know nothing about to take everything you own is not recommended). The better companies will advertise air-ride trucks with mildew protection at the very least, and will have their own collection of furniture pads, tie-downs, and bubble-wrap necessary to keep everything protected. The downside is that you will have to schedule your move with the mover between two weeks and a month in advance, and it's very expensive. On my last move, from California to Louisiana, I went this route with Mayflower, moving a 1-bedroom apartment for about $3,500, and everything arrived in perfect condition.

In between, there are companies like ABF U-Pack or P.O.D.S. that will provide you with storage containers and will transport them to your final destination, but you will have to load and unload them yourself. This is (in theory) substantially less expensive than using a full-service mover, and not even as difficult to load as a general truck rental, as the storage containers sit on the ground. You also don't have to schedule dropoff more than a couple days in advance, making it a little more flexible for people with a somewhat shaky schedule. Unfortunately, since you are loading yourself, there is practically no insurance on the results. The contracts will pay a tiny $0.10 per pound if the driver gets into an accident that destroys your belongings or simply completely disappears with them, but otherwise they aren't responsible for any damage during shipping at all. In theory, however, for the amount of money you save, you can replace a few breakable items if they don't make it to the other side.

So when I recently moved from Louisiana to Maryland, I went with ABF U-Pack, renting two 6'D x 7'W x 8'H ReloCubes for about $1,600. U-Pack gives you two business days after dropping off the cubes to load them, which means that if you have them dropped off on a Thursday or a Friday, you also get the weekend as extra free time in case something goes wrong. This is highly recommended. Always happy to have a little extra wiggle room, I arranged for the cubes to be dropped off on Thursday, and was told that they would show up in the morning, and my timeline was for an acquaintance to pick up one piece of furniture on Wednesday, I would load everything in the apartment that Thursday and rent a van or small moving truck to start fetching and loading all of the things I needed to move out of a nearby storage facility. On Friday, I'd finish off whatever little things remained and arrange for a cleaning service to come in and take care of everything in a mostly empty apartment. I'd spend the night with a friend, and start driving to Maryland after a refreshing sleep.

Don't try this at home, kids

Things began to go wrong almost immediately. A 15-minute errand to terminate my Cox Communications cable modem service on Wednesday (total actual work required: sign one piece of paper and hand in an already boxed cable modem) resulted in an hour and a half wait as I was shuffled from one building to another and nobody could find anyone who knew where the form was or who had the authority to accept my dropoff. This caused me to miss my scheduled meeting with the acquaintance, who was asking a friend with a pickup truck to help, and couldn't wait. This was frustrating, but not fatal — I could just deliver it myself on Friday when I had the U-Haul. I then went shopping. Tie-downs and bungee cords, it turns out, aren't cheap, and you'll need quite a few of them of different sizes before you're done (I didn't buy all of them at once, not knowing exactly what I'd need, but by the time I was done, I used two 6-foot, four 8-foot, two 10-foot, and two 10-foot-extra-wide tie-downs and a handful of bungee cords). Between that and the bubble wrap and a dolly if you don't already own one, expect to add a few hundred dollars to your bill immediately. I didn't buy furniture pads, figuring that the bubble wrap and various bits of unpacked fabric (sleeping bags, towels, blankets, etc.) would be sufficient. That turned out to be an error resulting in a few extra scratches on the finish of some of the furniture, but those pads are expensive (another $100-150 for a dozen), so I'm not sure how much of an error it was.

On Thursday morning I got a call from the U-Pack people that delivery wouldn't be until around noon. I called back around 1pm to find out what the status was, and nobody knew where the driver was but they presumed he was on his way. I decided not to call the cleaning service, as I was no longer sure that I would have enough stuff out of the way in time. The cubes finally showed up on the truck at about 4:30pm, and it was after five by the time they were on the ground and ready to load. I loaded most of the boxes and some of the smaller bits of furniture that night.

On Friday, I continued loading, and found out three more things: sometimes it can be hard to get even a U-Haul van on short notice (though I eventually succeeded on my third visit, half an hour drive away), even the smallest rental cargo van is large enough to be hideous to drive, and loading by yourself in hot weather can wear you out very quickly and induce you to make poor decisions. One of those decisions was to load with sandals to try to stay a little cooler. I was very careful about not putting my feet where I might drop something on them, but that turned out not to be the real problem: although the ReloCubes sit on the ground, the interior is a few cm elevated and there are thin bits of deceptively dangerous metal used for the door connections just above the ground. While maneuvering a heavy bit of furniture up that slight rise, it started to slide on the dolly. I jumped sideways to get into a position to stabilize it and caught it just fine — but my right big toe also caught a metal protrusion, and lost a sizeable chunk of flesh. The truism of moving being a pain had just become a literal fact. I got it cleaned up and bandaged and took an hour off, but I had a deadline (at a minimum, everything from the storage center had to be moved before the van had to be returned the next day), so once the throbbing had receded to a tolerable level and I put shoes on, I went back to work. Unfortunately, it was necessarily much slower work now, with frequent rests and occasional bandage changes.

To shorten what is already a long tale of woe, I will skip the remainder of the packing process, except to note that I did at least succeed in getting the U-Haul van back on time with everything transported properly, and that I used every bit of extra time from having the weekend. I wrapped up after midnight on Sunday, and at that didn't do quite as good a job of cleaning the apartment as I would have liked. I still haven't found out how much of the deposit I lost from that.

Arrival

Two solid days of driving in my relatively maneuverable little car told me that I was wise not to attempt to drive a big truck myself — there were many drivers behaving rather strangely and I narrowly avoided an accident three times. The house on the far side was semi-furnished, so waiting a couple weeks for delivery was not a problem. I did find out that the cubes weren't picked up on Monday as scheduled, but on Tuesday instead, and I have subsequently discovered from hunting about on the net that this is a common issue with U-Pack -- dropoffs are on the scheduled day (if not at a promised time), but pickups are often a day or even several days late. This wasn't a problem for me, but may be inconvenient for others.

I managed to schedule delivery on a Thursday again, though no time was promised (and I didn't bother to ask). The cubes were dropped off in front of my house and I started inspecting the contents. The good news was that the tie-downs had worked; very little shifting of contents had occurred. The bad news was that some of the furniture was scratched where the item above it had slid slightly and I hadn't had any padding left, and four pieces were out and out destroyed, at an estimated replacement cost of $700-800. It turns out that those cubes travel on a standard flatbed trailer, without any such niceties as air-ride suspension, and as a result, it is more or less as if they rode on the back of a gigantic jackhammer the entire way. I had tightly strapped a halogen lamp to the wall of one, wrapping the glass head to an absurd thickness of bubble wrap, and to my great pleasure the bubble wrap had worked quite well, protecting the glass perfectly.

The plastic neck piece, on the other hand, not in contact with anything at all, had shattered just under the pressure of the bungee cords and the very slight extra width of the top after it was wrapped.

I could have saved it by completely dismantling the top and putting it in a box instead, but it seemed quite secure where it was and I was using that lamp to pack right up to the end; it was one of the last things placed in the cube.

Disheartened, I emptied out that cube and was pleased to find no more significant destruction. The fragile ancient wooden rocking chair had come through okay, and the rest of the furniture escaped with nothing more than minor scratches. In better spirits I opened up the second cube and started unloading. To my horror, I could immediately see that the glass center of my prized marble and wrought iron coffee table had completely fallen. I had wrapped that coffee table with a certain sense of paranoia, the glass center and the legs individually wrapped in bubble wrap, and then the entire thing placed under a larger table so that nothing would be on top of it, and then that table's legs wrapped, and then covered with a quilt, but still only blind luck saved me from destruction. The glass center had apparently been jostled up and sideways enough that it had fallen through the hole completely, and only by sheer luck had been caught on one side by the tail end of the quilt that I had tucked underneath one side, and caught on the other side by the top edge of the bubble wrap intended to protect the legs, where it apparently remained suspended for the rest of the trip.

The most fragile piece in that container having survived, I felt that the sturdier objects must surely have as well. This unfortunately turned out not to be the case. I had stacked two bookshelves horizontally back to back on top of the computer table above the coffee table, and then tossed some lightweight items (camera bags, very small boxes) inside the top bookshelf. I had forgotten that the bookshelves, while primarily made of sturdy wood, had backs made only of what was effectively extra-dense cardboard, and while they held the weight of the small items just fine as I tossed them in there, during the jackhammer of transport they ripped straight through both backs, tearing them free of the nails holding them in place. The bookshelves also managed to rotate very slightly and shift a couple of inches during transport, not enough to actually collide with anything, but enough to move half of one edge of the bottom one off of the side piece of the desk below it and onto the main top piece of that desk. An impact during travel shattered the wood around one of the bolts holding the top of that desk to its side. After some inspection, I judged none of it repairable. I might have saved the bookshelves by placing them vertically in the other container, and swapping out boxes to the one with the tables, but such things look more logical only in hindsight, and probably nothing could have saved the computer table. I needed the space above it, it could not be moved on its side, and any significant weight on the top would probably have had the same result.

The rest of the unloading was anticlimactic. One of the boxes of books had acquired enough condensation at one point to drip through an only partially taped top and damage a couple of the books at the top of the stack, but they remained readable and otherwise all of the fragile boxed items survived. The computer, thankfully, was likewise fine, though it rode the trip out on a folded towel and packed between boxes. The empty containers weren't picked up the next Monday as they were scheduled to, nor for that matter on Tuesday, but letting them sit in front of the house until Wednesday didn't inconvenience me much.

Conclusion

I'm not sure I'd move this way again, given the option to go full service. I saved perhaps $2,000 on the service, but lost over a thousand of that in destroyed possessions, moving materials, and added four days of unpleasant personal labor plus an injury. An experienced mover might do better (and in fact, I'd likely do much better if I had to do it again, especially considering that I've already invested in some of the moving supplies), but moving is an unpleasant enough chore without adding this stress to it. If I didn't have to move all on my own, I might consider it again, but this is definitely not a service for the inexperienced or the solo mover.

I'm inordinately amused by this particular side effect, because truly there are no good guys in this scenario. World of Warcraft is pushing spyware, Sony is pushing a rootkit, and cheaters are using one to attack the other.

In the end, I suspect that makes them all losers, in all senses of the word.

Related entries:

• 2005.11.01: Sony packaging rootkits inside CDs

The proposed theory involves hydrinos, or hydrogen atoms with an electron orbit smaller than the ground state. That one sentence is probably sufficient to send any quantum physicist into fits, as the very notion is preposterous and conflicts with all established models. This hasn't stopped papers on hydrinos from showing up in peer reviewed journals, such as the New Journal of Physics, the Journal of Applied Physics, and the Journal of Hydrogen Energy, and one paper from the Advanced Aeronautical/Space Concept Studies Program is available online. Most notably, these papers have included repeatable experimental results finding mysterious creation of heat:

The theory proposed to explain it, however, is dubious at best. In addition to violating fundamental rules of quantum mechanics, the math appears to be bad. An analysis of the model published earlier this year in the New Journal of Physics not only found it internally inconsistent, but that it didn't even properly predict the hydrino state.

That hasn't stopped Dr. Mills from putting together a company to build new technology based on this process, starting with water heaters, and his prototypes have apparently been convincing enough to draw investors, as well as convince NASA to fund experiments into using this technology in rockets.

This leaves a few possibilites: either Dr. Mills has indeed overturned quantum mechanics, and just hasn't quite worked out the right math to describe how it works, or he's got a completely different process that has nothing to do with his theory but mysteriously seems to work anyways, or he's one spectacular con artist.

Whether or not he really knows what he's doing, the current state of the world's fuel supply is so dire that I'm really, really hoping that he's on to something, as opposed to just being on something.

That and hoping that whatever he's discovered doesn't have any nasty side effects... like, for example, wiping out all life on earth. But what would the thrill of science be without the constant looming threat of armageddon?

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• 2005.11.06: Sony BMG rootkit used to cheat in World of Warcraft