January, 2014 archive
Dustbiter 0
Another bank bites the dust. Mastering the universe no more is
My father was a banker, back when banks were expected to have integrity.
These days, he would be ashamed to admit his past.
Outsmarting Himself 0
Police track down masked robber by tracking down the mask:
The moral: Don’t use a Lamborghini as a getaway car. There aren’t many of them and they tend to get noticed.
The Entitlement Society 0
The Trump card.
Orderly Executives, Reprise 0
The lies, followed by the truth.
By the Numbers 0
My local rag rounds up some snowy statistics. A nugget (emphasis in the original):
376 million – cubic feet of natural gas delivered to customers between 10 a.m. Tuesday and 10 a.m. Wednesday by Virginia Natural Gas. That’s a record.
6 – degrees Fahrenheit, Thursday’s record low temperature for that date in history, set at Norfolk International Airport.
Also, they point out, 0 . . . jack-knifed tractor-trailers.
Read the rest.
Republican Rebranding 0
Via BartCop.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Neighborly politeness.
The bullet went through the wall of Knight’s mobile home without injuring anyone. It traveled the distance between mobile homes, penetrated the wall of the neighbor’s mobile home, and struck the 15-year-old in the head while she was watching television in the living room, Snodgrass said.
If you are too stupid to clean a gun safely, you are too stupid to have a gun.
A Picture Is Worth 0
Headline: The state of Georgia utterly failed Atlanta, and then sought to blame forecasters.
Taxes are the price of living in civilized society.
Image via BartCop.
“Wound Collector” 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Katherine Ramsland tries to find some explanations for the spate of mass shootings ending in the suicide of the shooter. The article does not purport to explain why they happen, but does find similarities among them that seldom get noted in the news coverage.
A nugget (emphasis in the original):
I call this coercive suicide. We don’t yet know Aguilar’s motive, but typically suicidal mass murderers have the added need to punish someone, to make a public show of their death as a “lesson,” and/or to add their own notch on the infamy scale.
Follow the link to find out what a “wound collector” is.
Teetotalling Totally Tea 0
Reg Henry goes on the wagon for a month and find parallels between teabaggers and another group of tea fanciers: parallels of fanaticism and excess. A nugget.
Of course, this being America, everything gets taken too far. The drys of yesteryear made the whole nation as miserable as one of my Januarys. Today’s Tea Party, averse to compromise, has been happy to shut down the government in honor of a Constitution that is all about establishing a functioning government dependent on compromise.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Still pretty much status quo ante.
(snip)
The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, increased to 333,000 from 332,250 in the prior week.
The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits fell by 16,000 to 2.99 million in the week ended Jan. 18.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite in the churchyard.
Three other teenagers were hit. Apparently, it was a random act of Second Amendment.
Plants with Pointy Hats 0
Somewhere under all this stuff are three dozen assorted pansies.
This is a beach resort that seldom gets much snow, let along 8.5 inches of dry powder. The neighborhood kids were using their boogie boards as sleds.
For a bit of perspective, note that Nevada is having its hottest winter in years . . .
Highs have the potential to surpass records of 71 degrees for Jan. 29 set in 1976 and 72 degrees for Jan. 30 set in 1971, Weather Service meteorologist Chris Outler said.
. . . and Cali is becoming a dry state.
Wells are running dry or reservoirs are nearly empty in some communities. Others have long-running problems that predate the drought.
