Too Stupid for Words category archive

Excerpt:

This is better than real.

This is war as we imagine it.

Via Raw Story.

Virtual divorce court (see the second letter).

Honest to Pete, you can’t make this stuff up.

How low can Fox News go?

Pretty damned low.

Aside:

Despite my determined ignoring of the quadrennial athletic marketing fest in Ye Olde Countrie, I know who Gabby Douglas is. She’s from these parts and therefore mention of her has been, like Savoir Faire, here, there, and everywhere.

Put your fingers in your ears and, all together repeat,

LaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLa

In North Carolina, a state-sponsored science panel warned sea levels could rise by more than 3 feet by 2100. So lawmakers supported by development interests responded with a bill to ban those figures. During their summer session, legislators moved to mandate that future trends be based solely upon historical data, which doesn’t account for the accelerated sea-level rise expected by many scientists. They said the move prevented the economic burdens of building farther from the coast or higher off the ground.

Can you say, “Asking for trouble?”

After a close eighth-inning call at first base went against the hometown Daytona Cubs, a Class A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, Dye queued up an instrumental version of “Three Blind Mice,” the nursery rhyme about a triumvirate of visually challenged rodents and their run-in with a farmer’s wife. Home plate umpire Mario Seneca did not take kindly to the choice and gave Dye an oral heave-ho, along with the team’s public address announcer.

(snip)

“It was the first time we’ve ever played it,” he said, “and within about three or four seconds, the home plate umpire looks at me, points directly at me and yells, ‘You’re gone,’ as loud as he can.

It is one thing for fans to question the umpire.

It’s quite another for a team employee in the press box to do so.

(The story goes on to point out this has happened before in the Bigs, to the Phillies organist in the old Vet, almost 30 years ago.)

Man moves near to airbase.

Man doesn’t like jet noise.

Man shines laser at fighter planes.

Pilots lock targeting computer on laser.

Man cops plea, gets sentenced in October.

If you don’t like the smell of pigs, don’t move next to etc.

The Bensalem, Pennsylvania, volunteer fire department chose to use a gazillion-dollar Homeland Security grant for a fireboat, even though Bensalem has no approachable riverfront, no marianas, no shipping, and no port.

Apparently, they just wanted a boat that spurts. A nugget from a long article by Monica Yant Kinney:

The boat has located no weapons of mass or minor destruction. But there has been drama – caused by the firefighters themselves.

Just before midnight on Jan. 14, a guard patrolling the desolate Neshaminy State Marina called 911. The only boat docked there – “Marine 37” – was sinking.

Earlier that day, firefighters struck something while training with an employee of the Canadian manufacturer, MetalCraft Marine.

“A series of failures,” explains then-chief Jerri, “led to us not noticing there was a hole in the boat.”

The “Bear” took on 2,000 gallons and had to be lifted out of the water, drained, and repaired. Union paid the marina $500 for the use of a crane, but MetalCraft took the blame and ate the cost of the weeks-long repair.

On their own a month later, Union members destroyed a dock box and paid $600 for a replacement. Pulling in and out of the marina, they repeatedly damaged rub rails.

On April Fools’ Day, the “Bear” struck and sank a $25,000 hydraulic lift. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission investigated but filed no charges. Union covered the $500 repair.

That’s just since they took delivery in January.

Hope they do a better job driving their fire engines.

Facebook ’em, Dano.

Clifton C. Hicks, a former assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Norfolk, was charged Thursday with one count of posting a written threat to kill or do bodily injury to another on his personal account, court records state. Hicks, 41, was granted a $20,000 bond and released, records say.

According to an affidavit for a search warrant, one of the Facebook messages on Hicks’ page contained a threat to assault Underwood. “Underwood spoke with Norfolk investigators and indicated he took the threat to be serious,” the warrant says.

I suspect that overreaction is involved in this, but fighting words are fighting words, whether in person, in ink, or in electrons.

Not if you are a student in Texas.

The Texas Republian Party opposes teaching “higher order thinking skills.” A nugget from Leonard Pitts, Jr.; click to read the rest:

The Texas GOP has set itself explicitly against teaching children to be critical thinkers. Never mind the creeping stupidization of this country, the growing dumbification of our children, our mounting rejection of, even contempt for, objective fact. Never mind educators who lament the inability of American children to think, to weigh conflicting paradigms, analyze competing arguments, to reason, ruminate, question and reach a thoughtful conclusion. Never mind that this promises the loss of our ability to compete in an ever more complex and technology-driven world.

Never mind. The Texas branch of one of our two major political parties opposes teaching critical thinking skills or anything that might challenge a child’s “fixed beliefs.” So presumably, if a child is of the “fixed belief” that Jesus was the first president of the United States or that 2+2 = apple trees or that Florida is an island in an ocean on the moon, educators ought not correct the little genius lest she (gasp!) change her “fixed belief,” thereby undermining mom and dad.

Guess they have figured out that “higher order thinking skills” are inimical to Republicanism.

No doubt this will work out well:

Facebook users in Washington state will have something else to brag about to their online friends: that they registered to vote on Facebook.

(snip)

Once it’s live, Facebook users will need to agree to let Facebook access their information, which will be used to prefill their name and date of birth in the voter registration form. Users will still need to provide a driver’s license or state ID number to continue.

Facebook, natch, is renowned for the security and respect with which it treats its users’ data.

At the San Jose Mercury-News, Mike Cassidy considers the case of a yoga instructor contracted to Facebook who was fired for giving someone a dirty look for using a cell phone during yoga class. According to her boss, she had been warned that cell phones are sacrosanct in Silicon Valley.

Cassidy comments:

And I hate to sound stubborn, but I’m not sure the policy of barring instructors from instructing students to behave as if there are others sharing the planet with them makes any difference to my bigger point: Smartphones have become a rudeness accelerant. Too often, too many use them to talk, type or text at times and in places where civility would dictate that they stop it, stop it, stop it.

Whether you view yoga as an integral aspect of a spiritual experience, as in its Hindu roots, or as a form of fitness regimen to release the “relaxation response,” as in the Western spin, it is difficult to see how cell phones contribute to mindfulness and meditation.

Click to read the rest.

The United States Olympic Committee has issued a cease and desist order to Olympic Gyro in Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market (where we nearly ate last Sunday, by the way, but we went to the Indian place instead).

The restaurant has used that name for three decades (that is, more than seven Olympiads).

A Greek restaurant can’t name itself after the mountain that was home to the Greek gods and has been a symbol of Greece for three millenia (as if someone is likely to confuse a sandwich shop in the corner of a converted railroad terminal with the quadrennial athletic carnival and sideshow).

This is stupid and evil.

I’m done with the Olympics.

They have turned into a marketing scam that makes a NASCAR driver’s suit look like a model of tasteful restraint.

As Harry Shearer says whenever he reports on news of the Olympics:

The Olympics.

It’s a movement.

And everyone needs one, every day.

Truth! They can’t handle the truth.

Scientists with a state commission in North Carolina will not be permitted to issue formal predictions of sea level rise based on climate change – at least for the next four years.

After enduring national ridicule for proposing a bill to outlaw any coastal sea level projections based on climate change data, the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature came up with a compromise Tuesday. Lawmakers effectively put the sea level debate on hold by asking for more studies – but none that involve climate change.

Next on the agenda: a law against thermometers because it’s not getting hotter, really, it isn’t.

From an article about the travel tribulations of midweek holidays, such as this week’s Fourth:

“The midweek holiday seems to have travelers confused,” said Anthony Del Gaudio, vice president of hotel sales for Loews Hotels, which isn’t seeing the normal July Fourth spike in bookings.

I doubt that “confused” is the correct word, and I doubt that persons considering whether and how to take time off this week appreciate being described as “confused” by some suit in a suite.

At Psychology Today, Stephanie Newman argues that twit cosplay–twitting as someone who isn’t–on Twitter is somehow a good thing.

Tweeting affords potential psychological benefits. It is a way for adults to flex different mental muscles and exercise a little used part of their brains. Twitter, with its opportunity to write playful messages, provides a play space for those who are mired in day-to-day stresses and challenges.

As near as I can interpret her argument, it seems to boil down to “if it feels good, do it.”

But I’m must a cranky old man.

A Massachusetts man is facing a felony assault with a dangerous weapon charge after allegedly tossing a batch of “hot and oily” McDonald’s french fries at his stepdaughter during an dispute last Friday in the family car, police report.

According to cops, James Hackett, 26, got into an argument about money with his wife after the couple–and the woman’s 11-year-old daughter–picked up food at the drive-thru window of a McDonald’s in Lowell.

Daughter was trying, as daughters can do, to get the parents to stop fighting.

No wonder Bruce wanted to get out of town.

If you step off the beach in Asbury Park and slide into a bar wearing a Speedo or string bikini, you’re technically breaking the law. And a former city councilwoman is trying to make sure you know it.

For decades, there has been a little-known ordinance in the Monmouth County city banning bathing suits on the boardwalk. “No person clad in bathing attire shall be on the boardwalk or the public walks adjacent thereto,” it reads.

Louise Murray, chairwoman of the local Republican party, said she no longer sees the law enforced and is worried skimpy attire at the boardwalk’s bars and restaurants is threatening to wipe away Asbury Park’s image as a “classy” Jersey Shore town.

At one time, there were changing rooms, probably like those cabanas you see in old movies.

No surprise that a Republican is behind this. It’s a party of the hung-up and their hang-ups and hangers-on.

So much for “Keep your eye on the ball.”

An Ocean County woman who was struck in the face with a baseball at a Little League game is suing the young catcher who threw it.

Elizabeth Lloyd of Manchester Township is seeking more than $150,000 in damages to cover medical costs stemming from the incident at a Manchester Little League game two years ago. She’s also seeking an undefined amount for pain and suffering.

Lloyd was sitting at a picnic table near a fenced-in bullpen when she was hit. Catcher Matthew Migliaccio was 11 at the time and was warming up a pitcher.

The lawsuit filed April 24 alleges Migliaccio’s errant throw was intentional and reckless, “assaulted and battered” Lloyd, and caused “severe, painful, and permanent” injuries.

Words fail me.

From El Reg, which notes that, whatever her ancestry and linguistic skills, the customer is American. Follow the link for the story accompanying the video.

An Apple Store in the US state of Georgia refused to sell an iPad to an American teenager because she spoke the Iranian language Farsi in the store. A student in the nearby city of Atlanta was also banned from buying an iPhone for the same reason, according to a report by local TV channel WSBTV.

“I just can’t sell this to you. Our countries have such bad relations,” 19-year-old Sahar Sabet was told after she tried to buy an iPad in her local Apple Store. She had been talking with her uncle in Farsi.

As my mother would have siad, just iGnorance, pure and simple iGnorance.