Too Stupid for Words category archive

This does not involve a big commercial airport like JFK or PHL. It’s a little general aviation field. Heck, according to the website, the refueling gas pumps are self-service.

I have been unable to find a link telling me when the airport was founded, though it seems to have been there more than five years.

It is difficult to sympathize with the home owners.

George and Margaret Osipovs sued the Chesapeake Airport Authority in 2004, saying the airport’s noise and traffic decreased the value of their home.

Chesapeake hired a platoon of private lawyers to convince a judge that there had been no legal damage. The city lost, appealed all the way to the state Supreme Court, and lost again.

Become like Senator John Ensign.

Or Senator Larry Craig.

Or Governor Mark Sanford.

Or–oh, never mind.

Apparently MoDo isn’t happy unless all about her are losing their heads, my son.

There was a big fight, in the middle of the day in the middle of a neighborhood street and in front of at least two dozen witnesses. By the time police got there, though, nobody would tell them what had happened.

There was a time when that alone could have ended the police investigation. Not now.

Officers learned that a video of the incident had been posted on YouTube.

You can guess the rest of the story.

Theft bestows ownership rights as long as Yale wasn’t there when it happened.

When ancient Grecian antiquities looted hundreds of years ago are being returned to their country of origin, this really seems to translate into “I know I am, but what are you?”

Come to think of it, I don’t think Mr. Timmons actually told us that this was a no-no. But he did sort of imply that running into cop cars was not a good way to pass your driving test:

A 22-year-old Bear woman was charged with drunken driving early Monday after she rammed a police car in Wilmington.

Aside: You knew you were in with Mr. Timmons when he let you drive his Karman-Ghia instead of the school district’s 1956 Chevrolet with three on the tree–which was old even then–to rack up driving time for the course.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth springing for the January/February Playboy to read the full story.

Six years later, Playboy magazine has revealed that the CIA fell victim to an elaborate con by a compulsive gambler who claimed to have developed software that discovered al-Jazeera broadcasts were being used to transmit messages to terrorists buried deep in America.

Dennis Montgomery, 56, the co-owner of a software gaming company in Nevada, who has since been arrested for bouncing $1m worth of cheques, claims his program read messages hidden in barcodes listing international flights to the US, their positions and airports to be targeted.

Next time you see some spy story depicting the CIA as technologically sophisticated, do yourself a favor. Turn off the TV and go read something believable, like the story of Rapunzel.

Fiscal Republicanity (hey! that rhymes with Hannity!):

’nuff said:

Hey East Coasters! Any teabaggers out in the streets to stop the Socialist snow removal trucks?

Meanwhile, snow storms have a way of highlighting stupid.

Twitter via the News-Journal. Dither via Eschaton.

Nobody could have predicted that this would cause an uproar.

Nobody.

The new pernicious problematic peril to the purity of the pubescent puerile from the Puritanical, who never ever played “spin the bottle” when they were young:

Members of the Virginia State Crime Commission refused Tuesday to recommend legislation concerning sexting, but the issue is likely to come before lawmakers next month.

Currently, it’s up to commonwealth’s attorneys to charge teens and young adults who send sexually explicit pictures or videos through text messages or e-mails with possessing or transmitting child pornography. Several have done so, and some lawmakers say there should be laws to ensure the issue is dealt with uniformly across the state.

But others, like Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax, said taking the discretion away from the state’s 120 elected prosecutors could result in a teen being punished for a stupid mistake while allowing a serious predator to receive a mere slap on the wrist. Albo called possible legislation “a total minefield.”

Meanwhile, Conor Friedersdorf links to a chilling story of dictatorial prosecutorial vindictiveness and stupidity, which says it so I don’t have to:

Interpolation, 250 Miles Later: The point of this is that some kid who makes a mistake, or maybe it’s not a mistake but he or she’s under age (the age limits are, after all, generalizations) shouldn’t be treated like a 45-year-old who snatches a six-year-old off the street, but that is where we are headed.

You may continue

. . . consists of the dumb crassness (or is it crass dumbness?) to convince persons to buy things unwanted for persons unloved at prices unreal.

Alan Leshner writes at the Guardian:

While former Alaska governor Sarah Palin wrote in her recent opinion essay that she did not deny the “reality of some changes in climate,” she distorted the clear scientific evidence that Earth’s climate is changing, largely as a result of human behaviours. She also badly confused the concepts of daily weather changes and long-term climate trends when she wrote that “while we recognise the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes.” Her statement inaccurately suggests that short-term weather fluctuations must be consistent with long-term climate patterns. And it is the long-term patterns that are a cause for concern.

He opened the column by equating global warming deniers with the doctors who, in the 1950s and 1960s, insisted that tobacco was safe.

I wonder if he listens to GNC? Todd read my email making the same comparison on the air. (The “GW#” links at the GNC link are my submissions.)

I have a quibble. He says she “distorted” facts. I don’t think she did.

Claiming that someone distorted something implies that he or she is capable of understanding it in the first place.

Reuters:

With momentum building in Washington for all 50 U.S. states to outlaw text messaging behind the wheel, there is evidence that the key demographic targeted by such legislation, teen drivers, will not pay much attention.

At least one major study has found that, with mobile devices now central to their lives, young people often ignore laws against using cell phones or texting in the car.

Not that teenagers don’t do stupid and dangerous things (I did, but I was smart enough not to get caught). So do grown-ups. We have a social tradition of thinking that each successive generation is going to hell, doing stuffus horribilus that we would have never done (except that we did).

None of the several cell-phone-using drivers who have nearly killed me have looked to be under 35.

Read more »

It is clear that our public officials cannot distinguish between danger and dumb:

Five students from Miscoe Hill School were suspended, and three questionable Facebook groups were taken offline after school officials learned of them last week. Although Police Chief Ernest Horn opted not to arrest the students late Monday, he said the seriousness of the situation cannot be overstated.

“If any additional information comes to light, I will of course reevaluate the matter,’’ he said.

The author of the online group “If 1,000 People Join This Group, I’ll Slap Mrs. Meyer,’’ was suspended for 10 days, while four others who posted to that site and similar ones were sent home for five days, officials said.

Jeez oh man, if my buddies and I had gotten caught teepeeing Mrs. H(redacted)’s yard these days (misty water-colored memories), we’d probably have been charged with aggravated assault, malicious trespass, and terroristic threatening and sent up the river (well, it was a small place–up the creek) for 20 to 25 with no time off for good behavior.

El Reg:

Cosmpolitan has done its bit to fight the terrifying advance of the H1N1 pig plague by advising its readers to avoid the missionary position during sex and instead adopt the reverse cowgirl (!?!–ed.).

As a long-time reader of Playboy; a common sewer of books by my favorite author, Anonymous; and an internet veteran, and as one who also knows a person whose offspring subscribes to Cosmopolitan, I say unabashedly that Cosmopolitan is the smarmiest, trashiest thing I have ever read in my life.

Not necessarily the most prurient nor the most explicit, but easily the smarmiest and trashiest.

(Yes, I saw the article that El Reg discusses. It was, indeed, too stupid for words.)

And the Power Rangers.

And the Beanie Babies.

So, after 250 miles on the road, the last 60 in a sloppy rain, I didn’t want to either cook or eat out, so I got a package of emergency food Stouffer’s frozen stromboli out of the freezer and found that it didn’t have any directions for cooking it in a conventional oven.

The ex-local rag:

In a report released this month, the (Violence Policy–ed.) center found that the shooting deaths of 67 people – including eight law enforcement officers – had been attributed to people holding legal gun permits. In 10 incidents, the shooters also took their own lives during a murder-suicide, and eight were mass shootings with three or more victims.

The report covers the two-year period from May 2007 through October 2009, not including the Nov. 5 killing of 13 people in Texas. In that most recent mass killing, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is charged with emptying two handguns in a crowded Fort Hood troop-processing center.

All of the shooters – who were identified from news accounts – held legal permits to carry a concealed handgun. As a result, the Violence Policy Center contends that “contrary to the false promises of the gun lobby, the simple and deadly fact is that state concealed-handgun systems are arming cop-killers, mass shooters, and other murderers.”

A yahoo packing heat is still a yahoo–a more deadly yahoo.