Someone should have told Amir Tofangsazan that if he was going to rip someone off on Ebay by selling them a broken laptop, he shouldn't send it with the hard drive full of his most important personal data and a gallery's worth of perverted pics; there are a just too many smart alecks on the Internet.
BONUS: You haven't lived until you've seen a skeleton marionette sing Little Richard. A nifty street act.
The VA data-theft story just gets worse:
Personal information on 26.5 million veterans that was stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee this month not only included Social Security numbers and birthdates but in many cases phone numbers and addresses, internal documents show.
A Florida commenter at Lucianne left a useful tip:
For any vets to whom this applies, a call to Trans Union at 800-680-7289 will add an Initial Fraud Alert on your credit report that will advise any credit grantors to contact you before issuing credit. Trans Union will also notify the other two major credit bureaus, EquiFax and Experion.The whole process is done with keypad entries and takes about two minutes.
I called. It's the first thing the recording asks you about, so I imagine they've been inundated with the same request.
Via Owen in e-mail, here's an outstanding follow-up to the story of Thomas Autry, the former Marine who fought back against a gang of gun-wielding attackers and won. He did a lot of things right, including being aware of his surroundings (a darting cat put him on alert), carrying something for self-defense, and yelling "Fire!" instead of "Help!" to draw attention as he ran.
Hailed a hero, he reminds us who the real heroes are:
Autry was honorably discharged in 1992 after serving in Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia. When told that many people consider him a hero for his actions, Autry disagreed."The heroes are those guys out there fighting for us every day and not getting respect," he said, referring to military personnel fighting in Iraq and elsewhere. "That [killing the attacker] wasn't admirable, it was fight or flight — and I tried the flight."
--
Thomas Autry is a former Marine corporal, but he doesn't consider himself a brave man for fighting off five assailants, one of whom died.The soft-spoken Autry was somber Tuesday afternoon, less than 24 hours after he was attacked late Memorial Day while walking home from work at a Midtown Atlanta restaurant.
"I'm sorry this whole thing happened. I hate this world has gotten to the point where it is predatory," said a shaken Autry, speaking briefly to reporters from behind the screen door of his Atlanta apartment.
Police say Autry, 36, acted in self-defense when he stabbed 17-year-old Amy Martin, who died of wounds to her chest. Another alleged assailant, Christopher Daniel, 18, was in critical condition Tuesday night with stab wounds to his upper torso.
The group was part of a teenage robbery crew that had struck twice this month, authorities said.
Prowling for a victim just after 11 p.m. Monday, the group might have mistaken the tall, thin Autry for an easy mark as the waiter walked home alone after finishing a shift at Jocks & Jills, police said.
But the Desert Storm veteran, cornered by his pursuers on Penn Avenue at 4th Street, fought back with a pocket knife.
More than his military training, Autry said, "what really helped me was growing up in New York."
He said he knew to stay alert on his long walk home and turned to investigate after seeing a white cat scurry across the street. That's when he saw his attackers piling out of a dark blue 2007 Cadillac, he said.
One of the teens carried a shotgun.
"My first instinct was to run," said Autry. "Those kids were younger than me. They caught me and cornered me. It was about life preservation."
Atlanta police homicide Detective Danny Stephens said that during the chase, Autry was trying to get into his backpack to get the knife, which slowed him down.
As he ran, Autry repeatedly yelled "Fire," which Stephens said attracted the attention of nearby residents, who called 911.
Cornered, Autry kicked the shotgun from the hands of one attacker and stabbed Martin and Daniel. Another suspect attempted to shoot Autry with a .380 pistol but it misfired, Stephens said.
The attackers ran back to the Cadillac and drove to Atlanta Medical Center, where police arrested them.
Police say Autry suffered a cut to his hand. His right index finger was bandaged but he declined to discuss his injuries.
Martin's 17th birthday was earlier this month. Relatives said she was dating one of the boys who was arrested. A 10th- grader at Grady High, Martin was scheduled to take a final exam in social studies Tuesday, relatives said.
Early police reports indicated Martin was pregnant but the autopsy concluded otherwise, according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner's office.
Autry sighed with relief after learning the teenager was not pregnant. "That really makes me feel a whole lot better that she wasn't with child," he said. "I'm sorry to her family. I just feel real bad at the situation."
The surviving suspects were identified as Kendall Barksdale, 17, of Atlanta; Christopher Hayes, 17, of Douglasville; a 16-year old whose name is being withheld because of his age, and Daniel, whose address was not listed. They were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and armed robbery.
Martin, nicknamed "Strawberry" for her sweet disposition as a young girl, had fallen "into a bad crowd," according to relatives who gathered at the southwest Atlanta apartment where she and her family lived.
Her stepfather, Chris Roberts, said Martin's death resulted from "her wrong choices in friends, and being in the wrong place, with the wrong people.
"She wasn't brought up that way," he said.
Martin's younger sister Kristie Roberts, 12, blamed Martin's boyfriend of three years, the youngest suspect in the group.
"She wouldn't have been in that car but for [him]," Kristie said.
The teen's stepfather chimed in: "I told her to stay away from these people who have no ambition but trouble."
Autry said he hopes the culprits can be rehabilitated and not just locked up.
He was clearly troubled by the attack. Concerned about his safety and that of his girlfriend, Autry had his door locks changed Tuesday and he asked to not be photographed.
Autry was honorably discharged in 1992 after serving in Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia. When told that many people consider him a hero for his actions, Autry disagreed.
"The heroes are those guys out there fighting for us every day and not getting respect," he said, referring to military personnel fighting in Iraq and elsewhere. "That [killing the attacker] wasn't admirable, it was fight or flight — and I tried the flight."
Duane may have been fishing here. I'm not sure. ;)
Wail on, Skydog!
Posts you may have missed:
Memories of Tattoos Past
Eat A Peach Deluxe
Hot, Smokin' Titles
Either there's some carrion nearby or Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid just walked in the room:
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who has criticized Republican ethics, accepted free ringside tickets to three professional boxing matches from Nevada officials who were trying to influence his federal legislation regulating the sport.
Reid, D-Nev., took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 from the Nevada Athletic Commission as he pressed legislation to increase federal oversight of boxing, including the creation of a government commission.
Reid defended the gifts, saying they would never influence his position on the boxing bill and that he was simply trying to learn how his legislation might affect an important home state industry. "Anyone from Nevada would say I'm glad he is there taking care of the state's No. 1 businesses," he told The Associated Press.
"I love the fights anyways, so it wasn't like being punished," added the senator, a former boxer and boxing judge. [That's why industries seeking to influence legislation don't send lawmakers gift-wraped boxes of feces.- FC]
Senate ethics rules generally allow lawmakers to accept gifts from federal, state or local governments, but specifically warn against taking such gifts — particularly on multiple occasions — when they might be connected to efforts to influence official actions.
"Senators and Senate staff should be wary of accepting any gift where it appears that the gift is motivated by a desire to reward, influence or elicit favorable official action," the Senate ethics manual states. It cites the 1990s example of an Oregon lawmaker who took gifts for personal use from a South Carolina state university and its president while that school was trying to influence his official actions.
"Repeatedly taking gifts which the Gifts Rule otherwise permits to be accepted may, nonetheless, reflect discredit upon the institution, and should be avoided," the manual says.
Several ethics experts said Reid should have paid for the tickets, which were close to the ring and worth between several hundred and several thousand dollars each, to avoid the appearance he was being influenced by gifts.
Two senators who joined Reid for fights with the complimentary tickets took markedly differently steps.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., insisted on paying $1,400 for his ticket when he joined Reid for a 2004 championship fight. Sen. John Ensign (news, bio, voting record), R-Nev., accepted free tickets to another fight with Reid but already had abstained from taking any votes or actions on the boxing bill because his father was an executive for a Las Vegas hotel that hosts fights.
In an interview Thursday in his Capitol office, Reid broadly defended his decisions to accept the tickets and to take several actions benefiting disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's clients and partners as they donated to him.
"I'm not goody-two-shoes. I just feel these events are nothing I did wrong," Reid said.
The final decision: Two Dudley Do-Rights and one big stinker.
I've been waiting for a picture of this dog:
A man took his dog for a walk near his Coral Springs home and ended up prying a 7-foot alligator off of the pooch's head Monday.Michael Rubin took Jasmine, a 6-month-old golden retriever, and his other dog, a border collie named Frisbee, on a run at a construction site near his home in Heron Bay. Rubin thought the area was far from the gators that prowl the nearby Everglades.
During the 10 a.m. walk, Jasmine ran ahead of Rubin and to the edge of a pond on the site. Then he heard a yelp.
Rubin ran to help his dog and saw her head in the mouth of an alligator. He jumped in the muddy water, which reached his neck, he said, and began beating the beast with his fist.
When that didn't help, he grabbed onto his dog as the gator started to roll in the water.
"I thought she was dead," Rubin said after the ordeal. "But at that point I wasn't going to let him have my dog."
No, no, they can't have a Golden. Yorkies are all-you-can-eat.
Both dog and man are doing fine.
UPDATE:
A video and more pics of both Jasmine and the gator here.
Unless you're a marine:
The victim was walking home after getting off work as a waiter at Jocks and Jills.The five suspects pulled up in a car and confronted the victim in the 500 block of Penn Street just before midnight.
The victim began running down the street yelling for help. Residents who heard him called 911. While he was running, the victim pulled a pocket knife from his backpack.
Two of the robbers jumped from the car. When one of the robbers pointed a shotgun at him, the victim kicked it out of his hands.
At that point two of the robbers jumped on the victim. During the struggle he stabbed both of them. One, a female, died of her wounds. A second is in critical condition.
(Via Fark.)
Al Gore continues to emit copious amounts of "civilization-ending" carbon dioxide. If that weren't bad enough, he swears to continue his one-man mission to choke the planet in exhaust fumes.
He could sit quietly in front of his computer, breathing shallowly, and use his internet creation to reach the world. Instead he jets around the globe, stomping his carbon footprint into Gaia until she screams. Despite claims of being "carbon neutral," one can only wonder if he's made all the charitable donations necessary to balance out his being a human Krakatoa.
Every time Al Gore gets on a plane, a polar bear drowns.
As told with Legos.
Also:
*At this very strange interactive video site, make NevaShut owner Sanjeev happy and win some Pringles.
*Play Russian roulette with the Gimp. Naturally, this one ends poorly.
*Watch the famous chess scene from Bergman's The Seventh Seal, as performed by Weebls.
From the Rocky Mountain News' beautiful slide presentation "Final Salute":
Sands of Iwo Jima
An image from the funeral of Marine 2nd Lt. Jim Cathey.
Florida Korean War Memorial
583 Floridians gave their lives for freedom in Korea.
Two of the dead are Medal of Honor recipients Baldomero Lopez of Tampa and Emory Bennett of Cocoa.
Here's a little Wednesday Duane a few days early.
From an interview with Lyle Tuttle, famous tattoo artist:
Q: And the Allman Brothers?A: This guy came in — pressed Levi’s, turquoise jewelry all over him. I knew he wasn’t some street hippie. It was Gregg (Allman), and I put a coyote on his forearm.
Then, Duane (Allman) made everyone in the band and the crew get mushroom tattoos on the sides of their legs. I did that up in their room in the Holiday Inn. It was a party. Everyone was smoking so much it was getting to me, so Duane — he was a nut case — he screamed at everyone to smoke on the balcony so I could work. He insisted I put one on myself, too.
The next year, he died.
Considering, among other things, an old-time tattoo artist's clientele, Tuttle's impression of Duane made me laugh.
Tattoos are now so mainstream, modern nut cases have to get ones like these.
Hi, I'm Florida Barbie! I could be bummed that I've become yet another victim in the recent spate of alligator attacks, but I prefer to look on the bright side: my face and boobs are unharmed! While I'm waiting for the ambulance, let me show you some great links:
*"Bush must take Charlie Sheen for an idiot." Whatever could Liberal Larry mean?
*Trashy robot porn. Prepare to be shocked.
*"Every time Kirsten Dunst smiles, an angel dies." The Mayor of Mitchieville knows his orthodonture.
*God doesn't make any trash. The Fat Guy says he doesn't pick any up either.
*An innocent tree is being held hostage and used as a political pawn. Will Jesse Jackson fly in to negotiate? Will Smokey the Bear?
*John Kerry reminds us about his magic hat and Doyle reminds the NYT that saying that Kerry "released his records" is a lie by omission.
*Jesse MacBeth, the evil Walter Mitty, is always on the job.
*For the millionth time: eco-evangelists are using faith, not science, in their attempt to make a connection between hurricanes and global cooling warming climate change.
*Florida Cracker would call Hellmann's mayonnaise the "Devil's poop," but she found that term already taken. She says she'll have to settle for christening it "Satan's spooge." How's that, Tree Hugging Sister?
and
*All you hot guitar players, step back and make room for this kid. Here's an online tutorial if you'd like to try it yourself.
(Barbie pic via James in e-mail.)
"Tennessee Waltz" - Eva Cassidy.
(Via blogcup.com.)
UPDATE:
Commenter Owen has made me fear for my life if I didn't add this link to a video containing the song "Fields of Gold." Why do guys like the mushiest songs?
A follow-up to the story on Javaris Chandler, the Hollywood teenager who defended his family during a home invasion. Javaris went out to face the intruder with a gun in each hand. This was a good thing, as one jammed. His father often took him to the firing range, and taught all of his children gun safety:
Javaris Granger wished his father was there instead of him.His father was on the phone, urging Granger, 15, to get the gun they used for shooting practice. "Do what you have to do," his father said.
Granger did. He aimed the gun and fired at the violent intruder.
...He ran out to the dark living room and saw his mother screaming as a man, cursing and muttering, threw a bicycle at the window.
Granger yelled at the intruder to leave, while his mother called his father on the phone and handed it to her son. The stranger began turning the doorknob, intent on getting in the home.
Within seconds, Granger ran into his parents' bedroom, found the safety box, unlocked it and loaded two guns for him and his mother. He ran back to the living room as the intruder threw a bicycle at the door and started kicking it in.
His mother was too shaken to take a gun, so she ran to another bedroom where her daughters and visiting family members were hiding.
"I was real scared and nervous, but I knew I had to stay focused on what I had to do because my mom and the kids were there," Granger said.
The next moment the man kicked down the door and jumped into the living room, yards from Granger.
"I didn't want to hurt anybody, so I fired off a warning shot," the ninth-grader said.
The intruder didn't leave until four shots later.
...Granger does not face charges. The second oldest child in the family, he often goes to the range at Markham Park to practice shoot with his father. He was never a victim of crime before, but calmly went through all the gun safety steps his father taught him, even after one gun jammed after the first shot Saturday.
He even locked up the guns after Jumper left, before he checked on his mother. "My husband tried to get everyone to learn the safety of a gun," Chandler said. "It paid off."
There's been a second remastering from the original done for the Allman Brothers' Eat A Peach. This release also has a second disc that features the complete performance of their June 27, 1971 Fillmore East concert. I know it's only been out a few days, but has anyone heard this one yet?
The way the changes in sound technology keep bringing us ever more sharper and clearer versions of EAP, pretty soon we'll be able to hear the angels that were flapping their wings in that studio.
Lots of fabulous things are popping up on YouTube.
This is an awesome video for the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Sin City," featuring footage of the photo shoot for the cover of The Gilded Palace of Sin:
And a very silly one for "Older Guys," but Gram's stylin' like you knew he would be:
***
Previous Gram Parsons postings:
Convergence
Homefires VI
This dark and creepy stop-animation short film about an android trapped in a maze startled me quite a few times. The rolling, whirling death robot serving as minotaur is really scary (and cool).
It's a good way to spend 10 minutes, so check it out.
When you're done, go make this yeti less abominable. A smooth yeti is a sexy yeti, as you'll discover.
Would you like to have a skeletar? You could play it secretly in your closet. No one would ever have to know.
Some of the exotics in this collection are actually quite pretty.
From the description on this one:
It's interesting that because so much mass of the guitar's body is carved away (a bare bones guitar), the entire instrument is LIVE. Touching the neck is like tapping pole pieces on the pickup. Running your fingernail over the ribs makes a sound like a xylophone. Excellent sustain. The jack is located at the end of the tailbone, and while some guitars have coil tap, this one has a spinal tap.
Some guitarists rub barbecue sauce into the strings. Doing that for this one might be a little offputting.
Thinking better of it, if this were someone's guitar that they'd purchased, doing that might add to the fun.
I'll leave the who's and the why's of the skeletar to you readers (and players).
UPDATE:
What this thing is, I have no idea.
"Nothin' to Lose" - Josh Gracin.
(Via gazze.com.)
I can believe anything of Bert and Ernie:
"A high school in Massachusetts has banned certain T-shirts featuring Sesame Street characters.But these aren't typical pictures of Big Bird and the crew.
In some, Bert and Ernie are standing in a gang posture, armed with automatic weapons. Others feature Oscar the Grouch emerging from his garbage can, wielding a 9 mm handgun."
Ernie looks like he'd really cap you. Bert is drinking supposedly from a paperbag-covered bottle, but at first glance, to me it looked like a bota.
With several decade's worth of rumors swirling around the pair, I couldn't be sure.
Lord save me from Yankee NRO geeks doing music lists. John J. Miller's commentary is cringeworthy: "Despite its sins, the American South always has been about more than racism..."
Gee, thanks, John. Howard Dean couldn't have said it better.
Gah. John J. Miller of NRO, you're an ignorant prick.
(Via Michelle Malkin.)
Where's the death penalty when you really need it:
The only suspect to survive the Beslan school siege was convicted in the deaths of 331 people many of them children and sentenced to life in prison Friday, touching off an emotional scene in which the mothers of some victims tried to attack the defendant in court.Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty for Nur-Pashi Kulayev, but Russia imposed a moratorium on capital punishment when it joined the Council of Europe a decade ago.
This enhanced slideshow will give you a reminder of the horror that was perpetrated there.
(Slideshow via Kyer.)
Edmund Hillary reacts to the decision of Mark Inglis and forty other people to walk past a dying man on Mount Everest:
The first man to the summit of Mt Everest cannot understand how New Zealand climber Mark Inglis and others on the mountain left British mountaineer David Sharp to die.
"All I can say is that in our expedition there was never any likelihood whatsoever if one member of the party was incapacitated that we would just leave him to die," Sir Edmund Hillary said yesterday.
The renowned adventurer was reacting to the decision by double-amputee Inglis, who was one of many who passed the dying Briton near the summit without trying to rescue him.Sharp died on the mountain.
This is a further example of why Edmund Hilary has retained his stature as authentic hero while other people are just guys who climb a mountain. It's interesting that Mark Inglis is alive today because some people carried him down from Mount Cook.
He wasn't the only one who didn't help, though. As I gathered from Into Thin Air, a modern-day Everest expedition is a concentration of some of the most self-absorbed people on the planet. It would take more than one dying man to keep most of them from obtaining their personal goals.
Why does Neil Young hate President Bush? Travis and Jonathan, the guys who brought you "Grizzly Bear Man," have the answer.
I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say my favorite part of this one is where the Levon Helm doll is rolling in a mountain of cocaine.
I'm not getting beyond the second level against these creepy albino baby vampire freaks. If I ever met any in real life, hopefully I'd do better.
The people from the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmention have yet to come out against this game, but their sixth sense will soon detect this besmirchment of their condition. From their torch-lit caves they'll exact their revenge; oh yes they will.
Here's an ideal stocking stuffer for the shit-stain mid-level career who managed to get the personal information of 26.5 million veterans stolen from him.
This item alone will triple the VA's security measures:
“Leave the “Brief Safe” in plain view in your laundry basket or washing machine at home, or in your suitcase in a hotel room - even the most hardened burgler or most curious snoop will “skid” to a screeching halt as soon as they see them.”
(Via TechEBlog.)
The Library of Congress has an online exhibit of the glorious, mindblowing work of color photography pioneer Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii. Made during a photographic survey of the Russian Empire for Tsar Nicholas II, these photos from a hundred years ago leap off the page with their brilliance. Using a camera of his own design, he would take three shots of the subject using red, green, and blue filters. It's breathtaking work from a bygone era.
UPDATE:
Gmac, strong right arm that he is, has found more.
Though I never pass up a chance to fight zombies, I don't do well with these graphic games.
Perhaps one of y'all will fare better.
It's amazing how one kid was able to protect his entire family against a violent and determined intruder merely by filling him full of lead:
With a man breaking through the front door, a Hollywood 15-year-old loaded his father's gun, waited for the intruder to come in and shot him, police said.Keil Jumper, 22, who police said has a long rap sheet, was later found bleeding in an area between two houses. Police said Jumper was seriously injured but his injuries didn't appear life threatening.
The incident happened about 3:30 a.m. Saturday, when Jumper attempted to break down the front door, then picked up a bicycle to smash the window, police said. The sounds terrified a family of eight to 10 people who were asleep in the home, which is on South 61st Avenue in Hollywood, police said.
Police said the teenager is unlikely to be charged in the case. But they said Jumper, who was shot several times, will be -- once he's discharged from Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood.
Duane in the studio with the Hourglass.
Wail on, Skydog!
UPDATE:
Since we're arguing in the comments, here's the video for the Southern Rock Tribute at the 2005 Grammys. I'm still looking for the part where Prettyboy Urban wiped the floor with Dickey Betts on guitar. Urban had a guitar solo on "Sweet Home Alabama" in minute 9:00 and it was very good. Dickey just played his own song like he's been playing it for 30 years. How is this being compared?
I had to bear what shouldn't be borne and listen to Tim McGraw squeak his way through "Ramblin' Man" to check for this. For a 'singer' supposedly in his prime, his voice would suck the snot from a herd of hyenas.
What a terrible story about the British woman whose surgeon removed the wrong kidney. It's not only under British socialized medicine that those kinds of errors occur, though. My neighbor here in Florida developed gangrene in his right leg and went in to have it amputated. The surgeon messed up and cut off the left one. Of course, then they had to go back and amputate the right leg because it was still gangrenous.
To make matters worse, he couldn't even sue.
Here's a hynotic little toy to play with. All it's missing is the sound of grinding cardboard.
BONUS! Teach teamwork and build a cool flying machine at the same time.
So many people have come to enquire about Shawney, the little Cape Coral dog whose owner dragged her almost to death behind his car, that the animal hospital she's recovering at has set up a camera in her cage and a monitor in the lobby. It's not a live webcam, but it's a nice gesture nonetheless.
I've yet to hear about the cruelty case going forward on behalf of my dog Lilly, even though she also had a lot of media attention. Hopefully because Shawney's owner already has a record (he's a sex offender), his prosecution will go forward.
How nice! He didn't even have to stuff them down his pants:
Personal data, including Social Security numbers of 26.5 million U.S. veterans, was stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee this month after he took the information home without authorization, the department said Monday.
...
[Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim] Nicholson declined to comment on the specifics of the incident, which involved a mid-level career employee who had taken the information home to suburban Maryland — on disks, according to congressional sources who were briefed on the incident — to work on a department project.The residential community had been a target of a series of burglaries and the employee was victimized earlier this month, according to the FBI in Baltimore, which was investigating the incident.
The material represents personal data of all living veterans who served and have been discharged since 1976, according to the department. The information was included in the veterans' discharge summary that goes into a government database.
Burglars always go straight for the computer disks. That's why we stopped gluing diamonds on ours and keeping them in a jewelry box. I imagine they'll be taking a hard look at the zealous mid-level career employee.
Also, it's good of John Kerry to offer to come out legislating over this on the behalf of veterans. It's unclear if his own records were affected, as his discharge date remains a baffling mystery.
It takes Werner Herzog to really do a grizzly bear movie right -- he made this parody almost write itself. The "Age of Aquarius" dance at the end is my favorite part. Travis and Jonathan outdid themselves with this one.
(Via Bill.)
Jimmy Carter an ignorant, provincial, terrorist dupe? According to this review of Melanie Phillips' book Londonistan, that would be about right. She doesn't mention anything about him as president wanting the great scientific minds of America to create a time machine so he could go back and mediate a conflict resolution between Jesus and the moneychangers in the temple, or calling himself "the nice J.C."; but I'll throw those in while we're on the subject.
Also, England's got a viper at its throat if "32% of British Muslims agreed that 'Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end.'"
(Via Lucianne.)
I'm in the middle of both an upgrade on this blog and learning the ropes of another system for a different project. This basically means I'm bugging Mr. Cracker to the prescribed limit then breaking out the credit card.
Then I go lay down in a cool, dark place.
The Chocolate City has re-elected Willy Wonka. They say you get the government you deserve, so congrats to New Orleans!
I'm happy someone thought outside the box and stumbled onto the usefulness of buses to transport large quantities of people. They proved very useful in bringing in people living in faraway cities so they could vote. Good thinking!
This is an historic day:
Iraq's first permanent government since the fall of Saddam Hussein was approved by parliament and sworn in on Saturday, despite the failure to fill two key ministry posts because of political disputes.
Underscoring that it is a true democracy, Saleh al-Feingold threw a fit and walked out:
"The main problem now is security, and they could not appoint defense and interior [ministers]," said prominent Sunni Muslim politician Saleh al-Mutlag, who walked out of the proceedings."This session is illegal," al-Mutlag said. "They added seven ministries without getting approval."
Due to a lack of civil war, CNN is now forced to cover vicious sectarian squabbling over "Robert's Rules of Order."
Vandals toppled a wooden statue of the King of Western Swing.
Now he has to wear a sling.
[Fiddle break]
Early Wednesday morning, vandals toppled a wood-carved statue of Western Swing legend Bob Wills in front of the Lone Star Music store in this Americana music capital, breaking one of the statue’s arms.“We came in yesterday morning, and he was laying on his back with his arm broken off,” said Clair Devers of Lone Star Music, which is located in the 1200 block of Gruene Road.
The statue, which is 8 feet tall, was carved from a tree by local musician and artist Doug Moreland.
By Thursday afternoon, Wills had been given a sling for his broken arm, but there are doubts about whether he’ll heal. The statue might be beyond repair, Devers said.
“He’s going to see if he can save him,” Devers said.
***
Previous posting:
Homefires: Southern Music XI
A University of Iowa law school professor is looking back fondly on the time when students entered his class with skulls full of mush. Now all they have between their ears is a thin gruel:
A professor's use of readings containing racial slurs has alarmed students and renewed discussions about diversity at the University of Iowa law school."This incident was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back," said Steven Nelson, 27, a second-year U of I law student from New Orleans. "We're not going to stand for living in an environment that is hostile to us."
The university's Black Law Students Association, a group of 27 students, said in a letter to law faculty, U of I administration and the Iowa Board of Regents executive director that a March 29 incident was "indicative of a much larger problem at the College of Law."
The incident that triggered the larger discussion was professor Gerald Wetlaufer reading aloud two passages that contained racial epithets in his negotiations class, according to law school Dean Carolyn Jones.
The readings, one from Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of former President Lyndon Johnson and another a 1964 speech by a black sharecropper named Fannie Lou Hamer, were in context with the course, Jones said, but students may not have been sufficiently prepared to hear the racial slurs.
Wetlaufer apologized to students for not adequately warning them about the readings but said he believes they were relevant to the course, which focuses on the power of language.
(Via the TaxProf.)
The Sun-Sentinel dutifully reported that Grassfire.org's billboard in Miami hurt some feelings. Ah well, Delta's ready when you are.
This works for me.
A reminder not to get too hung up on political parties: Look what hispander-business our Republican senator Mel Martinez got up to as compared to Bill Nelson:
On the Motion to Table (Motion to Table Ensign Amdt. No. 3985)
Purpose of Amendment:
To reduce document fraud, prevent identity theft, and preserve the integrity of the Social Security system, by ensuring that persons who receive an adjustment of status under this bill are not able to receive Social Security benefits as a result of unlawful activity.
Florida: Martinez (R-FL), Yea Nelson (D-FL), Nay
The Ensign Amendment was defeated 50-49.
Such are the twists of fate in a Red State. When push came to shove, the Democrat was more conservative than the Republican.
UPDATE:
Mel changed his tune since his time stumping for votes.
(Link via comment-guru Gmac.)
Pulling stick-ups is such a demanding profession. You never know when people are going to go all OK Corral on you:
Police say a man who tried to rob a store ended up being shot by the store owner, and snagged by his own shoelace when he tried to get away.The owner of the New Way Supermarket at 3385 N.W. 22nd Ave. said an armed man came into the store and tried to rob it. The store owner and his employee both pulled out guns, and all three began firing.
The would-be robber was struck in the chest by the gunfire. He ran from the store with the owner and employee in pursuit.
A short time later, police found the robbery suspect hanging upside down with his shoelace caught in a fence he had tried to climb over.
Shoelace Joe's in critical condition. The store owner and his employee won't be charged in the shooting.
If you remember last year's March of Dimes TV ad that had a stork dropping by bringing a woman the surprising news of a pregnancy, you know they're on a campaign to teach women the importance of always having folic acid in their systems. A mother's having folic acid in her system at the time of her baby's conception will prevent 50-70% of all neural tube defects. That means life-long and extreme impairments like spina bifida and anencephaly can be prevented with a little spinach salad.
The point the March of Dimes stressed is that because half of all pregnancies are surprises, and because the brain and spinal cord are forming in that large gap of time between when a woman becomes pregnant and when she actually finds out that she's pregnant, women of childbearing age should have folic acid in their system just in case.
Concurring with them is the CDC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention's Division of Reproductive Health and the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
The CDC released a report saying this, and the Washington Post reported it under the unhelpful title "Forever Pregnant." Some of the reactions I've read on the Internet are amazing. When the CDC developed a school lesson plan which asks students the pros and cons of imparting to the public the simple message "If all women who could get pregnant consume 400 micrograms of folic acid every day, 50%-70% of neural tube defects could be prevented," they hadn't counted on the fools of the blogosphere. They had assumed the cons would be things like "Changing eating habits is hard," or "It costs a lot of money to teach people to change habits;" not "The Religious Right is trying to make me a baby factory."
My father's family were the beneficiaries of a NIH anti-Pellagra program that taught Southern mothers not to base their family's diet on corn. This was part of FDR's evil plot to prevent the contracting of an endemic nutritional disease that had a 40% fatality rate.
Some of the most ignorant, Bush Derangement Syndrome-induced crap you'll ever read in your life can be found here.
One example after the jump:
*"Controlling women's bodiesThe people working so hard to make abortion illegal have now gone another step in their relentless persuit of total control over women's bodies. According to the Washington Post, the Bush administration has issued new federal guidelines instructing "all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon."
It's only a matter of time before Ayran-looking women will be awarded extra Deutschemarks dollars for every baby they bring to term."
MOM is wading further into this than I could stand to, and has much more, as does Coalition of the Swilling.
UPDATE:
What's the National Institutes of Health up to today? Telling women of childbearing age to take folic acid:
The panel endorsed consumption of folic acid by women of childbearing age to prevent congenital deformities of the nervous system, such as spina bifida.
Here's another health tip: instead of relying on a newspaper's account of what a report says, read the report yourself. It's better for your blood pressure.
(If needed, WaPo login/pswd=pokemon@pokemon.com/pokemon)
Wearing contacts because you don't want to be four-eyed, but still miss being a freak? You can have the best of both worlds by hanging things off them. Maybe one day Calvin Klein will develop a line of designer adhesive toilet paper that people can stick onto their shoes.
Those desiring to throw body modification into the mix can have platinum jewelry surgically implanted in the whites of their eyes. Not surprisingly, almost every opthamologist questioned said it was foolish and dangerous.
Proving that he had successfully passed on the type of poor decision-making gene that would lead one to marry Cher, two years ago rocker Gregg Allman's daughter Island became the first person in America to have the jewelry implanted. She said it would enhance her appearance and bring out her eyes.
Someone once noted that Nicole Brown Simpson's parents had four daughters who between them had eight breast implants and not a single college degree. I don't think Island's going to be joining the chess club any time soon.
When an alligator made it past Candy Frey's metal-bar fence then came onto her lanai and attacked her golden retriever, the former Marine opened fire. "I just freaked out and shot him -- boom, boom, boom, boom."
For failing to wait until August 1st -- the start of alligator hunting season -- the Bradenton resident and former Marine received a warning citation for hunting without a license. She was relieved, though: she thought she was going to jail.
A Royal Palm Beach gator had better luck and made off with a tasty fou-fou snack.
Meanwhile, the State's got a bead on this baby-killing reptile, and hopefully he'll be sent to the rendering plant very soon.
(Herald-Tribune login/pswd=bob@bobbert.com/bobbert)
"455 Rocket" - Kathy Mattea.
(Via Spirok.net.)
Duane wants to give you a hug.
Wail on, Skydog!
Sometimes that question just doesn't work the magic you thought it would. But don't beat yourself up over it.
City of Miami Commissioner Johnny Winton wiled away the time waiting for a delayed flight by practicing deep elbow bending exercises in the airport bar:
According to police, American Airlines agents called authorities after they claimed Winton became loud and abusive, and when officers told him to calm down, Winton identified himself as a commissioner and called them an obscenity.Police said Winton allegedly struck one officer with his elbow and kicked another before losing his balance and falling, hitting his head.
"As a consequence, I have embarrassed my family, my friends, my colleagues at city hall, my constituents, my city and myself, and for that, I am terribly sorry," Winton said, choking back tears behind his wounded face.
Tee! I'd hate to see the other guy. Oh wait, he is the other guy.
"Portland, Oregon" - Loretta Lynn and Jack White.
(Via The Crutch.)
If you want to talk about the President's speech, go ahead. I was already asleep. He didn't happen to say he was going to mine the border, did he? I'm not seeing it in this John Podhoretz column.
How about death rays? Did they come up?
Even President Reagan screwed the pooch on this one, so at this point I'm willing to cut W some slack.
(Via Lucianne.)
(If needed, NY Post login/pswd=nypost1@dodgeit.com/password)
Yesterday I rubbed my eyes with my forearm and got makeup in them. It burned so bad, even wiping down my eyeballs with my shirt didn't help. I had to stumble to the kitchen and wash them out with running water.
I thought they have rabbits test this crap. Where was mine? Was it burning up the phone line to its Union rep when it should have been burning up its eyeballs on the testing line?
The first step is to admit you have a problem:
A mountain lion that witnesses said walked into a house in a neighborhood, ate a pet cat and the cat's dry cat food before being captured will be rehabilitated, wildlife officials said Monday.
Another killer noshing on his victim's food. That's so sick.
What's red and full of holes? The body of the maniac who sent Daniel Wultz's killer:
Israeli troops yesterday killed the fiendish mastermind of many Islamic Jihad suicide bombings, hours after the death of his latest victim, a Florida teen.Elias Eshkar - responsible for attacks that have killed more than 50 Israelis since 2005 - and four other militants refused to surrender after being surrounded in the West Bank town of Qabatiya. Instead, they opened fire and were killed in the gun battle that ensued.
The American youth, Daniel Wultz, 16, succumbed to injuries he suffered in an April 17 suicide attack orchestrated by Eshkar, becoming the 11th victim of the attack.
Good job, Israel, and thanks.
(Via the indispensible Gmac in comments.)
UPDATE:
Since the paper identifies pizza as Daniel's favorite food, it really would be nice to send the IDF pizza to show some gratitude for their avenging his murder. Those of you who've Paypal'ed me, that money's made its way into the belly of the Zionist Beast in the form of hot Italian pies.
Thanks to Brian for the good idea.
***
Previous posting:
RIP, Daniel Wultz
Donna Blankman was being mugged in front of a Marco Island grocery store in broad daylight. Although she knew she should let go of her purse, she just didn't want to. The mugger knocked her down then began to drag her:
I started yelling help. That's when my hero appeared out of nowhere," said Blankman."I simply walked over and put my hand around his head and put him in a head lock, and twisted his head and gave him a little pain," said [74-year-old Ken] Parker.
The man dropped the purse and Blankman got away.
"I gave him another violent twist where he went down on his face, and I was on top of him," said Parker.
Parker said he bumped his head on the concrete but just then two other men came to help.
OK, I've got to remember this: it's headlock, twist for pain, violent twist to bring to ground.
Although he's been retired for 30 years, Parker says he's still game:
When asked if he would do it again Parker replied, "Oh absolutely. If someone grabbed your purse, I'd throw them right down!"
At the link there's a cute video where he re-enacts the headlock.
The crimefighter's got a lot of snow on the roof, but he can still kick badguy ass.
What act could be considered a provocation to murder? The murdering or sexual assault of a loved one, perhaps? Infidelity? To The Independent's Isabel Conway, writing a film is one:
Ms Hirsi Ali, 36, became internationally known when a film she wrote provoked the murder of its controversial director, Theo van Gogh, by an Islamic radical in 2004.
She's not the only one. Arthur Max of the Associated Press agrees:
Elected to parliament four years ago, she became internationally famous when a film she wrote provoked the murder of its director, Theo van Gogh, by an Islamic radical on an Amsterdam street.
He further adds that "Her 11-minute film "Submission" got its director killed three months after it aired on Dutch television..."
Actually, many people agree.
It's a strange turn of phrase. If Ayaan Hirsi Ali provoked a murder by writing a film, then Theo van Gogh provoked his own murder by directing it.
I'd always considered the killer to be the one with the problem.
Legally, the list of what is considered a provocation to murder is small and the acts extreme. Culturally, are we expanding the list to include writing or directing films? Is this an example of a double standard based on origin or religion?
If we don't hold everyone who walks our streets to the same standards, then we become the ones with the problem.
Incidentally, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is moving to the United States. Hopefully she's put her murder-provoking ways behind her.
Just days after the death of Yovy Jimenez, another fatal alligator attack:
An alligator fatally attacked a 23-year-old woman Sunday near Lake George, authorities said.The woman had been staying at a secluded cabin near a springhead that feeds into the lake, said Marion County Fire-Rescue Capt. Joe Amigliore.
"The people she was staying with came around and found her inside the gator's mouth," Amigliore said. "They jumped into the water and somehow pulled her out of the gator's mouth."
The woman, whose name was not released, was pronounced dead at the scene. Her stepfather, who had tried to help her, was treated on the scene for a hand injury, said Amigliore.
And yet another fatality, this one near Tampa. That victim has been identified as Judy Cooper of Dunedin.
That's three this week.
UPDATE:
The girl killed at Lake George has been identified as 23-year-old Annmarie Campbell of Paris, Tennessee. She went missing while she and three friends were snorkeling:
When the men found her in the water in the alligator's jaws, they gouged its eyes and pounded on its snout with their hands, said wildlife commission spokeswoman Kat Kelley.One of the people in the party ran about a mile from the cabin to State Road 19 where they could get cell-phone reception and called 911, Kelley said.
"I understand they were gouging at eyes and trying to pry open the jaws," Kelley said. "These people are pretty much in shock. The guys had cuts or scrapes on their hands."
Whoever it was who ran that mile, I know it was horrible.
***
Previous postings:
Anything It Wants
How To Make A Nuisance Of Yourself In One Easy Bite
Old People Are Stubborn
This is a humorous and highly interactive site meant for kids, but it's entertaining for adults as well. You get to help the Celts put the severed heads of their enemies over their gate, design your own torc, make cows go poop, and a whole lot more. The colors and audio-visuals are terrific.
OK, maybe just me and some Welsh kids are digging this, but I'll share it just the same. I think it rocks.
Daniel was a local kid who was visiting Israel with his folks. He made the mistake of stopping to get some lunch:
A Florida teenager wounded in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last month died Sunday from his injuries, a hospital spokeswoman said.Daniel Wultz, 16, of Weston, Fla., will be flown home for burial Monday, said Yael Tzuberi, a spokeswoman for the Tel Aviv Medical Center where he was hospitalized. Wultz came to Israel with his parents to visit relatives on Passover. He and his father, Tuly, were having lunch at a Tel Aviv restaurant on April 17 when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated about 10 pounds of explosives in the entrance.
This is a bad Mother's Day for Mrs. Wultz, and will be every year from now on.
Thirty-one of Wultz's schoolmates flew to Israel earlier this month for a special prayer service.Tuly Wultz, who suffered a leg wound in the attack, said at the service that he and Daniel had managed to exchange a few words right after the blast, despite the severity of his son's wounds.
``I held his hand and told him I loved him. He said he loved me,'' the father said. The family did not immediately comment Sunday.
For last words, those are good ones. Better than the "Allahu Akbar" of his killer.
What to do when 12th graders can't pass an exit exam consisting of 8th-grade math and 9th- and 10th-grade English? Get rid of the test:
A California judge struck down the state's controversial high school exit exam Friday, potentially clearing the way for thousands of seniors who have failed the test to graduate with their class next month.Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert B. Freedman issued a preliminary injunction against the mandatory testing requirement, ruling it places an unfair burden on poor and minority students who attend low-performing schools.
Even though having an objective standard by which to measure a school's and a student's achievement would be of benefit to the state, a judge has deemed that it's not fair that although they're given multiple opportunities to take a basic exam, some students can't pass it. Everybody deserves a diploma.
California is spending too much money to merely play at school. I would say that a student who doesn't pass the exam should be given a certificate of attendance and an application for a GED course, but that would hurt that student's feelings should a literate person read this to him.
If needed, login/pwsd=bugmenot@mailinator.com/bugmenot
Why did they remove a bear from this residential neighborhood? Can't we all get along?
A 300-pound black bear showed up on the streets of Fort Myers early this morning, ran around a residential neighborhood, got treed by a pack of dogs, was caught and released back into the wild.The big male bear appeared in the Dunbar neighborhood, in east Fort Myers, and was lumbering down streets in the early morning darkness.
At about 4 a.m., the bear was treed by neighborhood dogs at the corner of Polk and Washington streets.
I bet those dogs will be talking about this for days.
And I'm glad the bear got moved to a place where he'll be safe from cars.
Tim Blair has opened a post for tributes to moms on Mother's Day. I'm surprised and pleased that he's included a picture of my beautiful mother.
Raised in grinding poverty in a tin shack with no electricity or running water along with nine other children during the Great Depression, my mother won a scholarship to college. Growing up, whenever her mother was hospitalized for complications of diabetes, her father would put the children in the children's home. Once the mother had recovered, she'd come get the children out. My mom would beg not to be taken home -- there was food in the children's home, and trips to the doctor and dentist.
Though she was the first in her family to graduate high school, her own mother wouldn't attend the ceremony because she was too ashamed to let people see that she didn't own a pair of shoes. Mom went off to college with two dresses to her name, and graduated to become a teacher. To this day she weeps when anyone mentions the death of President Roosevelt.
My respect to all the moms who rise above their bitter circumstances to make a better life for themselves and their children.
If you'd like to tell us about your mom and leave her a tribute, you can do so in the comments. I'd like to hear.
A swamp angel from Lee County, Florida
They've found the alligator that killed Yovy Jimenez:
The alligator that killed a woman near a canal in Sunrise has been captured, investigators believe.''We captured a gator that had two arms in its belly,'' said Dani Moschella, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. ``We believe that this is the alligator involved in the attack.''
The 9-foot-6-inch male alligator was captured around 9 a.m. under the same bridge where 28-year-old Yovy Suarez Jimenez's dismembered body was found floating in a Sunrise canal Wednesday afternoon.
You could try teaching a 9-foot-6-inch male alligator about peaceful co-existence, but it'd probably be a very short class.
UPDATE:
Here's the video of the capture of the alligator. The reporter actually said that maybe Yovy Jimenez was attacked because she was feeding the gator. A jogger. Do you bring food when you go out to jog? A bucket of extra-crispy, maybe? She was feeding the alligator all right: she was feeding it her arms.
He made that disgraceful statement after already having said that inside the gator's stomach there was found a plastic bag, a raccoon, a turtle shell, and two arms. He still put it out there that she had done something to cause her own attack -- besides the fact that it was a 9-foot-6-inch alligator and she was made of meat, of course.
***
Update:
Feast, Interrupted
***
Previous postings:
How To Make A Nuisance Of Yourself In One Easy Bite
Old People Are Stubborn
Runningback, Quarterback, Halfback, Cornerback, Silverback:
Immokalee High School has had a lot of success on both the soccer and football field over the last couple years. But that success may be erased because both of the two adults caught using fake birth certificates to get into the school, played on the teams.The Immokalee Indian football players did not realize their teammate was 30-years-old.
Here's a pic of one of the culprits, 23-year-old Blontell Jean, on the left. Mr. Thirty-Something has not as yet been identified. It's sweet though to imagine him being comforted by a coach after disappointing losses like this player here. Aww.
How do you think he fared with the chicks? They should have known something was amiss when the conversation always turned to the importance of having a healthy prostate. That and asking the school dealers if they could hook him up with some Rogaine.
What fresh hell is this? I'm not even going to look under this link:
If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what's next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that's surfaced in South Texas.Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible.
"These people will have like beads of sweat but it's black, black and tarry," said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients.
Patients get lesions that never heal.
"Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers," said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.
So far it's mainly in Texas, California, and Florida. Ole!
I know most of you guys are thinking "Whew! At least it doesn't target the genitalia."
(Via Lucianne.)
Trappers are still looking for the alligator that killed jogger Yovy Jimenez. Meanwhile there may be steps taken to control our burgeoning alligator population:
While trappers used to act only in response to complaints, now they can trap alligators at any time in certain populated places. These include swimming areas and boat ramps. The state has more than 200 of these open-harvest areas, but clearly they're not foolproof.The canal where Wednesday's attack took place had been designated an open-harvest area because people live around it and use the canal for fishing and water skiing, said Lindsey Hord, the state's nuisance alligator coordinator.
The state is also considering expanding recreational hunting. The South Florida Water Management District plans to allow alligator hunting this summer on property in southern Hendry County. And state wildlife managers are considering allowing more hunting in certain areas because the gator population continues to grow.
They're going to have to allow in hunters. There simply aren't enough trappers to cope.
Another reminder from Sanibel about who's invading whose territory and why:
Sanibel naturalist Mark “Bird” Westall, the island’s former mayor and alligator trapper, said it’s not the number of alligators — it’s the number of alligators living in residential areas.Although two-thirds of the island is preserve land, many alligators live in neighborhoods.
“When I go on the Sanibel River, I don’t see that many alligators around because the Sanibel River is not prime alligator habitat,” Westall said. “Residential ponds are prime alligator habitat. Developers make alligator habitat, and the alligators go, ‘This is cool. I have a deep lake and soft lawns to lie on. Why should I dredge my own hole?’ You always hear, ‘We’ve moved into the alligators’ habitat.’ That’s hogwash. We make alligator habitat.
Should alligators be eating people in the city? According to the Sun-Sentinel's very tasty-sounding David Fleshler in e-mail:
"To say it moved into human territory is to ignore the other side of the story which is this was gator territory for many thousands of years before humans moved into it."
That was back when alligators dredged their own canals.
***
Update:
Feast, Interrupted
***
Previous postings:
Old People Are Stubborn
"New Favorite" - Alison Krauss.
(Audio via Stuff.)
Tales of institutionalized racism at the highest levels are coming out of Dekalb County, Georgia as the police union releases a tape of a police official bragging about feeling backed-up in his refusal to promote officers merely because of color:
Police union officials Thursday accused the former second-ranking DeKalb County police commander of delaying promotions to hurt the careers of white officers.Union officials released an audio recording purportedly containing the voice of former Assistant Chief R.P. Flemister asking someone: "Have you ever thought about why I ain't promoted them nine on the list right now ... because seven of them are white."
Meanwhile, Elaine Boyer, the lone Republican remaining on the county commission, held a press conference Thursday to blast her fellow commissioners for issuing what she called a weak statement about turmoil at the police department that ignored the county's prevailing problem — racism.
"When a white employee or a black employee places color first it is absolutely wrong," said Boyer. "Others who are elected to lead our county must speak out to stop this. They have a moral obligation to."
Police Chief Louis Graham resigned last week after police union leaders disclosed a profanity-laced audio recording of a conversation between Graham and Flemister in which Flemister referred to an unnamed person as a "white bitch." Flemister retired last Friday.
In the recording released Thursday, a voice apparently belonging to Flemister says that "the white folks understand, [things] done changed. ... That's what this union is about."
Later, he says he is not worried about unspecified rumors about the police department because Chief Executive Officer Vernon Jones is "running the black-[expletive] place."
Flemister, [Graham,] and Jones are black.
The chief and assistant chief of police accidentally recorded their own conversation after confiscating a recording device a police officer had been using to record a conversation between himself and the chief of police.
(Via Lucianne.)
(If needed, name/login/password are nunya/nunya@mailinator.com/abc123)
The Times Online has a write-up on Nie Yuanzi, the woman who sparked the deadly Cultural Revolution in China.
Having lost influence after his "Great Leap Forward" caused famine and death, Mao was looking for a way to get back on top. He found his inspiration in Nie Yuanzi:
NIE YUANZI is a frail, slightly stooped 85-year-old woman who lives with her two Persian cats in a tiny borrowed Beijing bedsit.It is hard to imagine that this was the person who sparked the Cultural Revolution, which cost tens of thousands of lives and destroyed the livelihoods of millions. But she did. And while China’s leaders are suppressing any commemoration of the revolution’s 40th anniversary this month, Ms Nie has used her first interview with a Western journalist to argue that China must learn the lessons of that disaster to ensure that it never happens again.
“The Cultural Revolution was a disaster so huge that we can understand it only if we study it,” she told The Times.
An interesting bit of history on General Tso's spicy terror with Red Guard sauce.
Total cost to prevent the 1996 crash of ValuJet into the Everglades? $9.16, including tax:
A chain of events led to the ValuJet accident, which Goglia called ''100 percent preventable.'' Procedures were not followed, and nobody caught the missteps.Ten years ago today, the ValuJet DC-9 took off from Miami International Airport, destined for Atlanta. Just 11 minutes later, it blazed into an inferno of smoke and fire and crashed into the Everglades. All 110 people aboard died.
The NTSB's findings: The fire was ignited by 144 volatile oxygen-generating canisters removed from two ValuJet MD-80s by maintenance firm SabreTech's mechanics. The canisters, which can generate heat up to 500 degrees when they are triggered, were improperly secured, labeled and packaged by now-defunct SabreTech. They were then delivered for ValuJet to load aboard the cargo hold of the plane.
Despite claiming to have done so, the maintenance company hadn't put anti-triggering safety caps on the canisters. This crash was a crime, and was prosecuted as such. A previous crash in the Everglades, that of an Eastern Airlines flight in 1972, was pure pilot error: they forgot to fly the plane.
(If needed, login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice)
Such a strange and creepy story:
Two lost hikers who survived three nights in rugged terrain were rescued after they scavenged supplies from the campsite of another hiker who vanished last year and is presumed dead.The pair found a backpack containing clothing and matches in the deserted campsite of John Donovan, almost a year to the day after he disappeared in the San Jacinto Mountains.
Donovan's abandoned gear "gave us the means to get out," hiker Gina Allen said Wednesday in a telephone interview.
John Donovan was an experienced hiker and still got into trouble he couldn't get out of. If you want to read a tale of pure folly, read John Krakauer's book "Into the Wild." It's the story of heedless, young Christopher McCandless, who chose to renounce materialism and go be one with nature. After hitch-hiking to Alaska and going to live in the woods, he became one with nature in the form of a starved, mouldering heap shortly thereafter: his foolhardiness had cost him his life. He left a journal of his fatal foray in the wilderness. While you understand the romanticism of his need to try himself, and feel pity for him as he realizes the hopelessness of his situation, you're struck by how astonishingly ill-prepared he was for what he was trying to do.
Most of you have probably read Krakauer's Mount Everest book "Into Thin Air," so you know how well he can tell a story. Even though you already know how it ends, the story's in the telling.
Stay out of her marigolds:
Constance Gittles thought it was just a snake.The south Punta Gorda woman was watering plants in her backyard Tuesday when she felt something bite her leg just above the ankle.
Gittles, 75, quickly pulled her foot away. Instead of a snake, a nearly 6-foot-long alligator was sitting there.
“When I looked down I saw this fellow looking at me,” Gittles said.
But Gittles didn’t panic. She defended herself with the hose.
“I just whacked him right in the snout with the nozzle,” she said. “After that, he took off.”
Even though she was bit to the bone, she finished watering her plants. Watering restrictions are on, you see, and Tuesday is her watering day.
South Florida Alligators are well-known for having a gardener tooth, so she's lucky she didn't get worse.
UPDATE:
Pam points us to this story on a local woman's presumably being killed by a gator yesterday. Thanks, Pam:
Construction workers found the dismembered body of a Davie woman on Wednesday who was attacked by an alligator after she went out for a nightly jog, authorities say.The body of Yovy Suarez Jimenez, 28, was found floating in a canal between Markham County Park and State Road 84 in Sunrise, police Lt. Robert Voss said.
She was last seen dangling her toes in the water. We'll know more about what happened after the autopsy.
UPDATE II:
It's been confirmed. She died of blood loss and not drowning:
A Davie woman found floating in a canal near Markham Park was stalked and killed by an alligator, then dragged into the water, an autopsy confirmed on Thursday.
The Broward medical examiner Dr. Joshua Perper shockingly added, "When they are hungry they can be very very aggressive and attack for food purposes."
I'll add only what was said two years ago at the death of Janie Melsek:
“For 21 years, I’ve been teaching people that if an alligator hasn’t been fed or isn’t protecting its babies, it’s OK,” said Kristy Anders, education director of the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, who was not speaking in behalf of SCCF. “But it’s not OK. These are prehistoric animals with instincts programmed for 200 million years.”
Far from being inconvenienced, alligators like what we've done to the place. Man-made lakes and canals, and soft green lawns make for a very pleasant environment.
***
Update:
Feast, Interrupted
Hi, I'm the Enviro-Guru! Not only will I be presenting links for you, but I'm going to align your chakras while I'm at it -- just like how Deepak Chopra runs his Jiffy-Lube.
You know, I'm terribly disturbed about the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe. Sure, we can bully Pluto and get away with it, but Jupiter's another story. Do you want Jupiter sending an army of moons to attack us? I didn't think so. So I'm going to sit here on this tree that I had cut down for a prop, and I'm going to meditate and try to restore harmony and balance in the universe.
But first, here are the links:
*Horse-rustling! I had no idea that kind of thing still went on. And here I wasted all that time trying to get the horse-wrasslin' vote.
*Mrs. R asks "So you think you're cool, but have you got the touch?"
*Somebody's got to enforce the laws: the sheriff's been doing some deputizing and the posse's fixing to hit the streets.
*The world's chattiest church signs are at it again. Too bad that Catholic sign's going to fry in Hell.
*The Pig-Latin Americans are becoming militant. How long before our cities urnbay?
And
*Liberal Larry jumps into the kiddie-book biz with both shoebomb-clad feet. Make sure you read his comments too: the adventures of "Allah Koala" is a very imaginative idea for a series of children's books.
The latest spin-off in the franchise, L&O:FBTC focuses on cases ripped from the disciplinary files of the Florida Bureau of Teacher Certification. The series' premiere episode "Oral Fixation" starts off with a bang as Tyrone Tinsley, a high school dean of discipline in DeLand, Fla., is accused of asking two female students to have sex with each other and make of a video of it for him to watch.
Given the goldmine of sick and twisted pathology the series' writers have been given to work with, this may well turn out to be the best Law & Order since the original.
No, it's not anti-fans; it's just Duane on the cover of a German magazine.
Wail on, Skydog!
UPDATE:
Yo sends us a link to Derek and the Dominos' debut on the Johnny Cash show. Thanks, Yo.
According to a scientific study, handling a gun will make a man shoot someone just for snoring too loud:
Handling a gun stirs a hormonal reaction in men that primes them for aggression, new research suggests.Psychologists at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., enrolled 30 male students in what they described as a taste study. The researchers took saliva samples from the students and measured testosterone levels.
They then seated the young men, one at a time, at a table in a bare room; on the table were pieces of paper and either the board game Mouse Trap or a large handgun. Their instructions: Take apart the game or the gun and write directions for assembly and disassembly.
Fifteen minutes later, the psychologists measured saliva testosterone again and found that the levels had spiked in men who had handled the gun but had stayed steady in those working with the board game.
Flooded with testosterone, these gunmen were then given the opportunity for devilry by deciding how much hot sauce would be added to an unwary person's water. Determined to pepper someone's backside one way or another, they added the Tabasco with the viciousness of Billy the Kid at an oyster bar.
I'm no scientist, but since a choice was given, couldn't the men who chose the gun have a predilection for impishness? For a follow-up experiment they could take all the men who chose the game, force them to handle a gun, then see if they turn into John Capsaicin Hardin.
(Via Lucianne.)
Baron's keen eye notes there was no choice -- they were given one thing or the other to take apart. Still, there's no way I'm losing a zesty expression like "John Capsaicin Hardin."
This is a disturbing article about a man who catches wild hogs not with traps or guns, but with his dogs and his hands. Why is it disturbing? He calls wild boars "dog killers," and he goes through a lot of canines.
Also instead of calling "Sooo-ie," which means "Come have some supper" in Porcine, he outlandishly goes around calling "Thooo-ugg," which translates as "Come gore this dog." That's just beyond the pale.
The article includes a photo essay with audio.
Instead of being gloomy about possible global warming, it turns out we should be putting on our dancing shoes -- history shows it will make us taller, healthier, and longer lived:
In summary, the evidence supports overwhelmingly the proposition that, during warm periods, humans have prospered. They multiplied more rapidly; they lived longer; and they were healthier. If the IPCC is right and the globe does warm, history suggests that human health is likely to improve.
During the first Great Warming (caused by carbon emissions from cavemen's campfires), besides health and happiness, there was one other consequence of global warming our ancestors had to deal with: the mini-skirt. In Denmark girls were wearing string minis woven from a single strand of looped wool knotted top and bottom, with nothing but pale skin underneath. It forced our poor male ancestors to look at girls like this, but nonetheless they steadfastly refused to ratify any Bronze Age Kyoto Accord. When the Earth turned chilly once more, its likes were not seen for another 3,400 years...until the Great Carnaby Street Age.
Old Blue Jacket has created a moving tribute to our troops that you don't want to miss.
Though military appreciation month should be every month, it is officially designated for May. Go here to find out what things you can do to show them your colors this month.
(Via Roger, Houston.)
**Pinged back to the Top**
There's some good news from the publishing world: Randy Poe's Duane Allman book is available for pre-order. Whenever a copy is ordered, an angel learns a lick.
You'll need a tissue for this one:
For five days after Hurricane Katrina, 69-year-old Thomas Reed and his dachshund, Weezie, slept in an attic, living on cans of vienna sausages and bags of Chee Wees cheese snacks as floodwaters surged through their working-class suburb of New Orleans. "We had no electricity, no ice, no water—we just had to make do," says Reed, a retired civil engineer.Reed's ordeal could have ended earlier, but the rescuers who paddled up to the house on the second day of the flood refused to take his 7-year-old dachshund—and Reed refused to leave without her.
"This little dog is my family," he says. "She's the sweetest, most trusting little thing. No way was I going to leave her behind."
By the time Hurricane Rita rolled around, some officials had learned a little more about human nature and were telling people forced to evacuate by public transport that they could bring their pets.
In the aftermath of Katrina, county hurricane shelters for pets have sprung up all over Florida. Many in county government have come to realize that it's less inconvenient for them to designate a school or two as pet shelters than it is for them to dig out dead citizens who wouldn't leave those pets behind.
Here in Broward you must pre-register your pets for the new shelters. For the people in the flood-prone areas who are ordered to evacuate for almost every storm, this will work out just fine.
(Via Fark.)
WuzzaDem has amazing video captures of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi attempting to open a jar of jelly. Who on God's green earth knew a lid could be so diabolically snug?
(Audio via Terrific Music. Sorry for the song, but if it makes me laugh; that's all that counts. I'm sure you agree.)
The dulcet tones of Fidel Castro sound that much sweeter when they're coming from the mouth of Miami comedian Eddy Calderon. His impersonations are so popular they've garnered him his own TV show:
Calderon’s impersonation of el comandante is so convincing he has succeeded in fooling Cuban officials in hoax phone calls to government offices.
“Some of them catch me, and I really have to get deep into (the personality) to make it work,” he said.But Cuba’s one-party political system works to his advantage.
“They aren’t sure it’s Fidel, but because it’s Cuba they don’t dare question the comandante,” he says. “They are so submissive. He owns the country.”
In one call to the Cuban Embassy in Paris, he hailed a member of the security staff for his especially aggressive — and vulgar — response to anti-Castro protestors in the street, which was caught on video and broadcast internationally. “We liked his attitude . . . when he touched his testicles,” Calderon’s “Castro” says, to hoots of laughter in the embassy.
“You behaved like true revolutionaries and will be rewarded when you come back home,” “Castro” adds.
Phone hoaxes to Cuba and Venezuela are popular in Miami. Radio pranksters who don't have the vocal mimicry ability of Calderon have used soundboards to great comic effect. DJs Enrique Santos and Joe Ferrero's famous call to Hugo Chavez using Castro soundbites is an example of this. Flush with that success and ready for a more elaborate (and satisfying) hoax, they later called Castro pretending to be Chavez asking for an investigation into a missing piece of luggage. With Santos playing Chavez and Ferrero playing an assistant, they managed to beard the lion in his den to the delight of the radio station crew and the Miami audience:
Ferrero: "So you agree with the shit that you have done to the island, assassin?"
Castro: "What?"
Ferrero: "Enrique Santos and Joe Ferrero from Miami, El Zol 95.7! You fell just like Hugo Chavez."
Castro: "What did I fall for, you shit eater? What did I fall for, fag?"
Ferrero: "All of Miami is listening to you."
Castro: "What did I fall for, you big faggot?"
Ferrero: "What do you have to say?"
Castro: "[expletive]"
Castro: "I won't say anything... shove it in your mother's c*nt."
Ferrero: "Miami is listening to you, Fidel Castro."
(Castro hangs up phone)
You can listen to the complete audio of it here. The cheers and screams of the radio station employees cap off what I think is the best radio hoax in Miami history.
(Audio via News to Hughes.)
I cannot believe...sluuurp...how well my pickup book "The Game" is selling.
Now I've got money and hot chicks like Tara here.
Burrttddt ddbirrrttdt...
(Herald login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice)
UPDATE:
This is hilarious and is surely a work of fiction. The disclaimer doesn't say one way or another...
Archeologists have uncovered a new Roman road in France, and will be excavating it over the next couple of months.
On the first stretch of road, they've found a cluster of chiseled-stone signs which read in Latin "If over a/Celtic doorway/Your head must rest/Just make sure/It looks its best/Roma-Shave." Archeologists are at odds over the meaning of the signs, with some saying it was an advertising ploy targeting Roman legionnaires, and others calling it an example of Celtic propaganda.
A former Navy MI'er from Orlando has gotten himself in a spot of bother. He's spent the last 20 years in England pretending to be a "Lord Buckingham," but now the gig's up for the Beatles fan:
In January last year, a prosperous man with a posh English accent boarded a ferry in Calais, France, for the quick run across the channel to Dover. Immigration officials did a computer check on his passport and discovered something startling: The man's particulars matched those of an infant who had died in August 1963.He was arrested in Dover on suspicion of false identity. From there his tale grew ever more intriguing: He had passed himself off as Lord Buckingham in British society for close to 20 years, marrying, fathering two children, writing notes on stationery bearing a family coat of arms.
Last October, he pleaded guilty to lying to obtain a passport under a false name. But if he is not Lord Buckingham, who is he? Held in British jail cells for close to a year, he has refused to say.
Now British authorities think they probably have the answer: He is Charlie Stopford, an American from Orlando. Stopford family members in Florida have come forward to say that Charlie disappeared 23 years ago, remembered for his large collection of Beatles records and ability to perfectly mimic British speech.
There's quite a bit of British coverage on this. They don't seem to be flattered by Charlie's imitation.
(Wapo login/pswd=pokemon@pokemon.com/pokemon)
I'm sad to see that Porter Goss has resigned as head of the CIA. His work in Lee County always showed him to be a man of intelligence and integrity. I'd imagine very few people know the reasons behind the resignation right now, but that didn't stop the Ft. Myers News-Press' web editor Jan Lindsey from asking, "Do you think Porter Goss was a scapegoat for the President?" I'm generous though, and will consider this overt and ham-handed bias as a refreshing change of pace from subtle insinuation.
I do hope Porter comes home and runs for something big here in Florida.
UPDATE:
Plenty of gossip to be had over this one.
The ACLU's going to be on anything smoking:
“In God We Trust” will be the official motto of Florida if Gov. Jeb Bush signs a bill passed unanimously Thursday by the Senate.You can't provoke the modern-day grand inquisitors and not expect a secular auto-da-fe.The measure (HB 1145) had earlier passed the House.
“In God We Trust” has been considered an unofficial, or customary motto of the state for years, but isn’t in statute.
Unless you've got better lawyers.
Everybody's harshing on Patrick Kennedy. At least he kept the car out of the water the two times he's wrecked these past few weeks.
Didn't Billy Joel also have a string of car wrecks? You know what happened to him.
Michelle Malkin has more, including some great links.
Gina Vivinetto, a journalist with the St. Petersburg Times has resigned after admitting "to being involved with" a MySpace page designed to appear to be written by Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms.
Last year, Commissioner Storms introduced a measure two weeks before St. Petersburg's gay pride parade that forbade neighboring Hillsborough County government from acknowledging, promoting or participating in gay pride events. It passed 5-1.
Print-screen caps from the cache of the MySpace page are here and here (followed by numerous vulgar messages); while Ms. Vivinetto's blog is here.
Ms. Vivinetto, pop music critic for the Times, had been recently working on a documentary where homosexuals explained their sexuality to children, although it's unclear if she finished.
UPDATE:
Per her comment on this blog, posting as "Bombshell Gallery," Ms. Vivinetto's MySpace comments relate mainly to Commissioner Storm's underwear and their scent. How embarrassing for the St. Petersburg Times.
In all fairness, she was kind enough to extend the commissioner an invitation to an art gallery, and only the most philistine among us wouldn't enjoy gazing upon works of art in the company of "HOT, YOUNG LESBIANS!!" Indeed, I believe most of my readers would stampede to get in.
***
Also blogging:
Patterico weighs in briefly.
Can this get any stupider? Where is the money coming from for this?:
Construction costs for the World Trade Center memorial have risen to an estimated $1 billion — twice as much as officials had planned to spend.Last year, rebuilding officials said it would cost $490 million to build the memorial and an adjacent museum, which is slated to take up eight acres of the 16-acre site when it opens in 2009. Preliminary site work began in March.
Contractors this week issued a revised estimate of $1 billion, a person familiar with the figures told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the number had not yet been publicly announced.
The new estimate includes $700 million for memorial and museum construction and $300 million to prepare the site, such as work shoring up a retaining wall and other infrastructure costs, the source said.
They can put up a billion-dollar memorial at Pearl Harbor while they're at it. Thousands of people died there too.
I'd assumed we'd shove two towers right back up into the sky, even taller than before. Instead we'll get a billion-dollar boohoo.
This sounds like an excellent place for Moussaoui to live out his days:
Moussaoui was expected to be sent as early as Thursday to the super maximum security federal prison in Florence, Colorado known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies."
If so, he will spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, in a 7-by-12 foot (3.5-by-2 meter) soundproofed cell. The remaining hour he will have the chance to exercise, also alone, in a concrete chamber.Whenever he does leave his cell, Moussaoui will be in leg-irons and with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Furniture in the cells, according to those who have seen them, is made almost entirely of poured concrete. It includes a concrete stool, desk and bed covered by a thin mattress. There is a toilet and a shower in the room which runs on a timer to prevent prisoners causing floods.
A small black-and-white TV in each cell shows closed-circuit classes in subjects like anger management and literacy and religious services of numerous denominations, which are broadcast from a small chapel within the prison.
In addition to this, he won't be allowed any playtime with the other children.
I know many people are upset he wasn't given the death penalty, but I'll just be pleased he's denied martyrdom.
Since I can't change his sentence to death, I'll take what I can get. If you want to scream and shout about the sentence, go ahead. It won't change a fricking thing.
A standard bit of lunchroom entertainment proves extremely difficult as a young man attempts to eat a stick of butter.
Here's to all those enterprising boys from my childhood who ate every pat of butter at the table...for a price. Those were early lessons in capitalism that I've never forgotten. Lacking their confidence and feelings of self-worth, I blew air out of my tear ducts for free.
Although old fellows would deny it, it's best to leave impromptu alligator wrestling to the younger men:
Real estate tycoon Ronald Bergeron, who developed much of the former Everglades in southwest Broward County, was bitten on the hand while trying to wrestle with one of the Everglades fiercest denizens -- an American alligator.Bergeron said he was giving an all-terrain vehicle tour of his 5,000-plus-acre private nature preserve in Hendry County on Sunday morning to guests who had donated $10,000 to the Boys and Girls Club for the weekend.
Coming across an alligator he estimated at 7 feet long resting on the lakeside, Bergeron, who has wrestled many alligators in the past, jumped on the reptile.
"Couples donate a lot of money to charities for the weekend and I always tell them I'm going to wrestle an alligator," Bergeron said Wednesday. "It's part of my Florida cracker culture. My grandfather was a game warden in the Everglades and I grew up around alligators."
Mm-hmm. Me too. They'll bite you if they get a chance. This one got a chance:
"I saw Ronnie jump on its back and suddenly he was dragged under water," said Aleida "Ali" Waldman, Bergeron's real estate attorney.She said the guests stood stunned on the shore.
"He was rolling and I couldn't keep control of his mouth," Bergeron said. "He grabbed my hand in his mouth."
"When Ronnie came up for air, he was screaming," Waldman said.
When the alligator got near shore, Waldman and Bergeron yelled for car dealer Rick Case and others to grab the reptile's tail and pull it out of the water.
Bergeron, who let the gator go when he got on shore, was driven to Cleveland Clinic in Weston. His left pinky finger was shattered, his ring finger was broken and there were puncture wounds through his palm in several places.
An unexpected exhilaration for the guests, and one they will long remember. I'd have liked to see him come up from that death roll myself. He wasn't under too long if he had air to scream with.
One of the best tales of the death roll I've ever heard was that of a man a few years back over at Fisheating Creek near Ft. Myers. He'd been swimming and didn't know what was happening to him. Suddenly there was pain and he was twirling round and round in the water. When he was almost drowned, he broke surface and grabbed a big lungful of air. As he drew in the air, he realized his head was in an alligator's mouth and that the air he'd gulped down...was from the back of the alligator's throat.
He says that moment haunts him, and I imagine it does.
Think you had a bad night? Dr. Karl Swanson of Clearwater came upon the scene of a head-on collision involving his daughter and got arrested for trying to reach her. Despite identifying himself as both a doctor and her father, authorities wouldn't let him near as they were loading her up for transport to the hospital. Try to remember that even if you're a doctor trying to reach your bleeding child, it's impolite to push.
He's now out on $10,000 bond.
Last week Daytona Beach fireman John Garcia also came upon his own daughter in a wreck. There things proceeded more how you would expect in that sort of situation, and I have no clue as to why Dr. Swanson was so shabbily treated.
UPDATE:
Janette has provided an update.
It still looks like he was just too pushy to get to his child. I might do the same thing.
Guess I'd end up in the pokey then.
Got about $8500 to spare? Dickey Betts is one of the musicians at the upcoming session of the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp.
Only knowing how to play the stereo has just saved me a bundle on master guitar tutelage.
The gentlemen callers will soon come courting, even though they've been told by their buddies that it's a waste of time:
The Democrats presumably learned many lessons from the 2004 presidential election - for instance, never go windsurfing when your war record is under attack, as John Kerry did - but perhaps the ultimate lesson was this:
Don't allow yourself to get decimated down in Dixie.
I find the primaries an especially fun time: a wave of politicians come here, trying to pretend they relate to us while at the same time finding us distasteful. Watching Howard Dean's travails in the South was especially enjoyable as he careened barefoot through our pasture, stepping in one cow flop after another.
I've been reminded that historian Grady McWhiney died the other day. He wrote extensively on the South's Celtic connection, and is best known for his book "Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South." His book, James Webb's "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America," and Barry Vann's "Rediscovering the South's Celtic Heritage" have done much in advancing in the United States the understanding of the Celtic underpinnings of Southern culture.
(Via Carl in e-mail, who answers a big "Yep" to the McWhiney quote "Celts and Southerners are pastoral groups with at taste for gambling, drinking, raucous music, dancing, hunting , fishing, and horse and dog racing. They are lazier than the English and Northerners and cling to an easily offended sense of honor, naturally linked to 'a propensity to violence.'")
Hurricane season is only a month away -- don't wait until the last minute to do your fear-mongering!
Unfortunately, Scrooge-like hurricane scientists are still saying "Bah, humbug!" to the Gaian faithful:
The ferocity of last year's season gave ammunition to a growing chorus of voices that says humans and their greenhouse gas-spewing cars and factories could be making hurricanes more destructive.
But it did nothing to convince a hard core of hurricane researchers who insist there's no evidence that people are responsible for the recent intensity, and growing numbers, of tropical cyclones.
One of the scientists is Neil Frank, former head of the National Hurricane Center, who sums up the situation as follows: "These same numerical models that I can't put faith in for a two-week forecast, we're told can be accurate out 200 years. Ridiculous."
Wait 'til sit-com developer and world-renowned scientist Laurie David hears about this.
Duane playing slide at one of his favorite venues, the Warehouse in Nawlins.
Wail on, Skydog!
UPDATE:
Someone else was recently wearing a shirt just like this.
Hillary Clinton is telling her astronaut story again, albeit in a more generic form:
“After determining she'd never be an athlete, she set her sights on becoming an astronaut.
"‘So I wrote to NASA and said, 'How do I sign up to be an astronaut?' she said. ‘And they wrote back very politely and said, 'We don't take girls."'
It's probably best for her to leave out the specifics of the tale, as it appears to be one of those misty water-colored memories:
Inspired by Alan Shepard, the first American to journey into space, a 14-year-old from suburban Chicago wrote a letter to NASA in 1961 asking what she needed to do to become an astronaut.
Back came a curt reply: Girls are not being recruited by the nation's space program.
...of the way she was:
"I wrote off to this new agency called NASA, and asked how a twelve-year old girl could become an astronaut..."
Hillary Clinton was an exceedingly bright child, and has many genuine achievements that she can be proud of. Why she has the need to be forever spicing things up with little politically-expedient fibs is beyond me. If she's not careful, she might even start recalling nonexistent church burnings.
Her mother told her a lot of things, but she might not have told her to just be herself.
Unless that's the problem.
(Via David.)
If this incident had occured in a Florida airport, this man would have come down with a severe case of lead poisoning:
A man was stunned with a Taser, sprayed with a chemical irritant, hit with a baton and eventually tackled by airport police Thursday after he was seen at the Humphrey terminal holding what appeared to be a plunger used to detonate a bomb, according to court documents.Taye Birmachu, 50, of Minneapolis, was charged with one count of terroristic threats Monday in Hennepin County District Court. After the arrest, police found that Birmachu had no explosives on him, said Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman Pat Hogan.
According to the complaint, Birmachu was wearing several layers of protective clothing and had wires that extended from a black device he was carrying into his sleeve and jacket. He ignored police orders to drop his devices. He showed no effects when he was stunned, sprayed with an irritant and hit with a baton. Eventually, several officers wrestled him to the ground. At the same time, other officers were evacuating the airport terminal.
Birmachu told authorities he wore the clothes to make the statement that he is willing to die for his convictions, according to court papers.
What those convictions were remain tantalizingly unknown, as they aren't mentioned in the article. What could they have been? The right to terrorise?
Patience is a virtue. If he'd just been willing to wait a little while longer, and threaten us a little harder, we might have given him free flight training -- or at least a seat in first class.
(Via Baron.)
No wonder the road has to go on forever -- 4.5 cents doesn't go as far as it used to:
In a case that could seismically alter the way labels and artists share download revenue, members of the Allman Brothers Band and Cheap Trick have filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Sony BMG has underpaid artists for digital music transactions.
At issue in the action, filed April 27 in U.S. District Court in New York by Labaton Sucharow & Rudoff and Probstein & Weiner, is whether the label's deal with online services for downloads is a license or a sale.Sony BMG labels consider that their deals with the services are for sales of records rather than licenses for the recordings. But the suit alleges that Sony BMG is violating contractual obligations to share 50% of the net licensing revenue from digital music transactions with artists.
The two bands claim that from 99-cent downloads, they receive only about 4.5 cents, rather than the 30 cents per track they believe they are owed.
For years, artists have complained that royalties are further cut; many contracts permit a 50% reduction in royalties for music sold through a new technology, as well as a packaging deduction. Many artists say these clauses only made sense in the physical world, when music migrated to CDs from cassettes. Sony BMG declined comment.
You can't blame Sony for trying to recoup the cost of all that expensive WLAN cable. After all, they're only following in the footsteps of other great entrepreneurs, such as P.T. Barnum and Andrew Sullivan.
(Via Coalition of the Swilling.)
From Brea Canyon, one of the greatest moments in baseball history: Rick Monday rescuing the flag from people trying to set it on fire. Listening to Vin Scully's play-by-play of the 1976 incident gave me chills.
Links to great coverage of this at Brea Canyon.
Good thing he wasn't wielding a wet noodle -- it would've taken a million lashes:
Shane Patterson of Bonita Springs is charged with second degree murder for allegedly trying to kill his girlfriend with a fork.
Just use that crazy strength of yours, Shane.
He said he'd considered soaking her fingers in Palmolive until they became so soft they fell off, thus causing her demise through a possible combination of blood loss, gangrene, and infection; but didn't know how much dishwashing liquid to buy.
Tell these brazen thieves and terrorists to shove it: go do some shopping today. If you find a place not open, that's your hint to not go there again.
(Graphic via Suzy Rice.)
UPDATE:
Babalu has the perfect song for this day.
UPDATE II:
Allah has a great post up, as does Michelle.
UPDATE III:
The counter-protest has begun in my hometown of Fort Myers:
A counter-protest that gets under way at noon in Fort Myers’ Centennial Park has attracted a couple of hundred people and 1,000 chairs have ordered by people to represent someone "at work."
Counter protestors are holding signs reading “What Part of Illegal Don’t You Understand.” There is music playing loud in the sound system throughout the park. Playing songs like “Hit the Road Jack” and “I Fought the Law and the Law Won.”
The chairs in Centennial Park have signs taped to them reading “I’m Working, I’m Legal, and I Vote.” These chairs have all been reserved by people who support today’s CARL March (Criminals Against Restrictive Laws).
Mandy Connell, host of a morning show on 1240 WINK News radio said the 1,000 chairs weren’t enough. The last count she had was for 1,050 chairs for people who are working and couldn’t be at the protest.
In response to the argument that without illegal immigrants some of the country’s toughest jobs wouldn’t get done, Connell had this response.
“I am against amnesty. Securing the southern border has to be done first,” Connell said. “Historically speaking it’s been proven over and over again that in times of scarcity we found ways to get the work done. That was some of the same arguments that were given for slavery.”
As for the boycott, melon and tomato harvesting and scattered construction projects — including the North Star Yacht Club in Fort Myers —have slowed down, but clearly there will be no impact today like that of April 10.
No doubt he'd already done all the other things:
A man underwent an intensive parachute course so that he could throw himself out of a plane in the UK and commit suicide.
The 27-year-old, who has not been named, died on Saturday afternoon after cutting through the lines of his parachute on his first jump and plunging to the ground.
CHE............................................CK!
UPDATE:
Our minds may have been running on the same track, but Bill's took the spur to a far sunnier clime than my own.
Regarding other falls from a great height (non-airplane category), here's an excellent article on people who've survived jumping off the Golden Gate, and San Franciscan resistance to putting suicide barriers on the bridge.
I had an unwelcome visitor in my kitchen yesterday. It was Donald Sensing pissing in my Cornflakes. Saying individual blogs are a thing of the past (except for Instapundit, mwah), he's heading off for a group blog. As a parting gift, he was thoughtful enough to leave everybody a new reading list.
I don't follow many group blogs for a reason: almost every one I've read has bored the flaming dog crap out of me. I then put that flaming dog crap on that blog's front porch, ring the doorbell and run.
Actually, I just click away. Usually they're either bland (just like some individual blogs), lunatic fringe (just like some individual blogs), or there's a voice in there that's too Yma Sumac for me to bear (just like some individual blogs). Like Goldilocks, I've got to have things just right.
Granted, more posters does mean more posts. Sometimes, though, that just equals more crap -- witness that string of Eagles hits.
So, in the main, blogging Mormon Tabernacle Choir collectives aren't for me. As you can tell from my blogroll - barring a great duet - I like listening to an interesting solo sung by a unique voice.
And I prefer mine to have a twang.
(Via Tim Blair.)
