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Friday, September 21, 2007

Trafficking in Your Baby

What the crying hell is wrong with England?

A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of “emotional abuse”, even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way.

Social services’ recommendation that the baby should be taken from Fran Lyon, a 22-year-old charity worker who has five A-levels and a degree in neuroscience, was based in part on a letter from a paediatrician she has never met.

advertisementHexham children’s services, part of Northumberland County Council, said the decision had been made because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy, a condition unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself.

Under the plan, a doctor will hand the newborn to a social worker, provided there are no medical complications. Social services’ request for an emergency protection order - these are usually granted - will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates on the same day.

From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.

And we’re all worried about al Qaeda. How droll.

Galileo Would Totally S*** a Brick

So, humanity has been working on making things fly like insects and birds for - what? - millennia? And working toward that endeavor seriously since Galileo.

It’s a crazy dream of humanity for thousands and thousands of years, and now I see the damn solution to the problem - a toy that mimics the flight of a dragonfly - on a commercial on a basic cable station during, appropriately enough, an airing of the new series of Doctor Who.

Ladies and gentlemen, the future is here.

Monday, September 10, 2007

I Made This

Well… we did.

Linus John:

... and with a very sleep-deprived papa, enjoying the soothing tones of Cuban dance music played at deafening volume. Good kid. (Nota bene: even on no sleep with a new infant in the house, I still look at least 5-8 years younger than my actual age. Good genes, evidently!)

Sunday, September 09, 2007

A new low, or high, depending on how you look at it

In my time, I’ve seen examples of just about every scam possible via the Internet. It takes a lot any more to even get my attention as I’m one-button flushing my spam folders.

However, when someone goes above and beyond the call of scum-baggish presumption in reader/recipient stupidity, I think it deserves to be highlighted. I’m a “giver” that way.

Below, in its exact form, including the badly mangled HTML formatting, but minus the actual link to the scamster’s site, the silliest and least plausible piece of spam I think I’ve received in at least a couple days:

Of course, I almost fell for it, because:

• The IRS always communicates with me by sending me email at my blogging email address, natch


• The IRS always speaks to tax payers that way, all courtly-like, and offers its “Regards”


• The IRS always gets things done in 6-9 days


• The IRS claims copyright on all of its email messages, just like normal citizens do


• While claiming said copyright, the IRS always makes sure the recipient knows that it’s the “Internal Revenue Service U.S.A.”, to avoid confusion with all the other Internal Revenue Services around the world.

It occurs to me that if we didn’t have Russian, Romanian, and Slobovian hackers, we’d have to invent them, for our own amusement.

[Wik] It further occurs to me that, in order to avoid appearing churlish, I should point out that if someone wants my $93.60 refund, let me know, and I’ll pass along the link.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Whose House? Ron’s House!

I don’t know who the hell Ronald Jenkees is, or where he came from, but this freaky mothereffer has his shit together. Such a geek! Such incredible beats!!! How soon till H.O.V.A. calls Ronald up for his next inevitable comeback? How many of our readers thought that last sentence was total gibberish?

Support your local independent musicians, y’all!

(found via boingboing)

Monday, August 20, 2007

That’s my boy

The other day, I detailed my son’s incisive reasoning in regard to human-robot relations.  Today, he made his Dad proud once more.  We were down in the basement, playing around a bit, when John had a new idea for a game:

Dad, you be the cops, and I’ll be the Blues Brothers.

My heart just leapt.  Then, not fifteen minutes later, he picked up a stick, handed it to me, and told me:

Let’s fight.  You bring a sword, and I’ll bring a gun.

Such strong tactical awareness in a child not even four and a half years old. 

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Eat Your Heart Out, Dave Chappelle

So there’s this website I am doing some work for, that’s run by the Herb Alpert Foundation. Yes, that Herb Alpert as if there were any other.

In any event, while cruising through the site’s content library I recently came across proof positive that being old kicks ass. Some of you may have heard of Teo Macero, the legendary jazz producer who basically helped Miles Davis invent like four kinds of jazz, plus fusion, funk and electronic besides. Well, he’s old now and kind of cantankerous. But he’s got awesome stories.

Watch this great clip of Teo talking about working with Miles Davis, and wait for the part where he says “so I said book it, you white motherfucker!”

I’m g-dd-mn dying here, with the laughing. You can’t make Blazing Saddles today, and you can’t tell that kind of story if you’re under sixty-five. Absolutely priceless.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Proof, as if it were needed…

...that we live in a world of plenty, nay, a decadent world. Did he really need that badly to see the innards of his new iPhone?

I don’t think he’s just trying to get his Bluetooth speakers working, either. At $500+ a pop, he must have been affirmatively pissed at his new toy.

[Wik] For any iPhoners who might find themselves irked at activation problems, don’t worry, don’t get mad, and don’t bust your iPhone to smithereens. It seems that “DVD Jon” has already broken the activation process.

[Alsø wik] For those with WSJ subscriptions, further info on the myriad workarounds the first week of the iPhone’s life hath wrought.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Waiting is painful

By now, even headhunters in the highlands of New Guinea are aware that the Jesus Phone from Apple will be released on the 29th of this month.  But I will have to wait a little longer to get my hands on my own personal iPhone.  My current two year contract does not expire until July 17th, and I must wait until it does before starting a new one.  Damn, damn, damn.  Mrs. Buckethead is highly dubious of my intentions to get a new phone, especially since it costs half a grand.  I have a perfectly good Motorola Razr, she says, and she’s right.  But the Razr doesn’t have that touchscreen magic.  It doesn’t have the preternaturally slick interface that can only come from Apple.  It doesn’t have WiFi.  I want an iPhone so bad I can taste it. 

Sunday, June 03, 2007

The purity of essence of our precious category tags

Patton has accused me of being overly concerned about wasting a scarce natural resource.  The category tag.  In this, of course, he is completely wrong.  Naturally, I could have argued that over-categorizing a post dilutes the utility of tags.  And I would have been right.  But that wasn’t the point.  I was attacking him on aesthetic grounds, and just to stick a stick in his eye. 

Just to prove that I am not some sort of homo-tree-hugging-enviro-commie, this post, which really is about everything, is tagged with every category we have.  And, when I have a free moment, I’ll add some new categories, and add them to this post.

So there.

Come home, Craig Ehlo, all is forgiven

Holy shit, the Cleveland Frigging Cavaliers are in the NBA Finals for the first time ever.

Holy frigging shit.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Comparative legal analysis

What do these two suits have in common?

”Couple sue Wal-Mart over slip in vomit“
(AP/Nashville Tennessean)

and

“ACLU: Boeing offshoot helped CIA“
(AP/Houston Chronicle)

Simple:

• They each have a distinct odor associated with them
• They’re both based on slippery circumstances
• They’re both as baseless as the day is long

Only one of them, however, appears to have been categorized by the Associated Press as an “Odd Story”.  So let’s look at that one first:

Monday, May 21, 2007

I guess that’s one indication of bad economics

Who knew that trail mix was cheaper than corn? Not me, at least not until this morning’s WSJ article entitled ”With Corn Prices Rising, Pigs Switch To Fatty Snacks“.

GARLAND, N.C.—When Alfred Smith’s hogs eat trail mix, they usually shun the Brazil nuts.

“Pigs can be picky eaters,” Mr. Smith says, scooping a handful of banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews from one of the 12 one-ton boxes in his shed. Generally, he says, “they like the sweet stuff.”

Mr. Smith is just happy his pigs aren’t eating him out of house and home. Growing demand for corn-based ethanol, a biofuel that has surged in popularity over the past year, has pushed up the price of corn, Mr. Smith’s main feed, to near-record levels.

...

Mr. Smith says he’s paying about $63 to feed a single pig for five or six months before it goes to market—up 13% from last year. His costs would be even higher if he didn’t augment his feed with trail mix, which he says helps him save on average about $8 a ton on feed.

The presumption that corn-based ethanol was somehow going to be a great net-positive for the US economy has always been based on the thinnest of pretense, put forward by the farm lobby in the US.  As covered in an earlier post here (regarding Michael Bloomberg’s energy plan), corn is just about the stupidest way to make ethanol, perhaps second only to making ethanol out of oil itself, if such a thing is even possible.

And even if it were technically wise to do so, the mad rush to corn-based ethanol, driven by government mandates and subsidies that help nobody but the farm lobby, was always going to affect the supply/demand curve for corn.

Better late than never, there appears to be a sudden realization of the problem, if recent press mentions count for anything:

• LA Times (via Truth About Trade) -
     Why ethanol backfires
• Food USA -
     Expanding US ethanol market provokes food price surge
• From the investing world, Seeking Alpha -
     Taking Stock in Ethanol: Risks, Challenges and Opportunities
• Pork Magazine (really) -
     Ethanol Industry Needs to Look Beyond Corn
• Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle -
     U.S. should buy cane-based ethanol from Brazil
• Spero News -
     Expert says Brazil could meet world’s gas needs

The items above are cherry-picked from among many, many other such recent stories. The last two are of a genre that puts the lie to the entire boondoggle being foisted onto the American consumer, particularly given that cane-based ethanol actually generates far more energy than it takes to produce, unlike corn-based ethanol.  Cane-based suffers, however, from the choke-hold the farm lobby continues to wield on the American legislative windpipe.

Much the same as, say, in the waste industry, where at a high enough price for landfill space, people are willing to recycle, prices for oil in the energy market can cause people to willingly overpay for alternatives. But when the costs of the alternatives, direct and indirect, become high enough, as they appear to be doing in the ethanol market, consumers are certain to rethink that entire “energy independence” thing.

Corn based ethanol is “ethanol done wrong”. Add to that the fact that it’s “ethanol done expensive”, and you can just wait for the increased backlash, attempting to drown out the farm lobby. The question, of course, is whether our legislative overlords will be allowed to listen and undo the damage they’ve done over the past twenty years on this front.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Suspicious Coincidence

Surely the flags at work and the post office are not half mast for Jerry Falwell

I’m not one to dance on anyone’s grave. But you can bet your bippy I’m going to have a good time steppin’ out tonight. It’s a capella music after all.

[Wik] Nifty! I found out why flags are half-mast today. Try this link They will be half-mast around my office till Thursday dusk when flags should be taken down. But our maintenace staff doesn’t seem to get it. Oddly the Quaker school I went to did. They ran it up every morning and pulled it down every afternoon. Makes me sad to see a flag moulder in the dark at night.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Seeking the ruin of souls

Over the last week, I’ve been spending some time looking over the blogs of people I met at the milblogger conference.  Of course, all of them are chock full of brilliant writing, penetrating insight, late-breaking news and scintilating wit.  But one thing I saw yesterday really caught my eye over at Michael Fumento’s blog:

The guy with the tat was saved by Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor, who later died saving the lives of three of his fellow SEALs, and is now being considered for the Medal of Honor.  You can read the Monsoor’s story here or here.

I googled “Archangel Michael’s Prayer” to see if I could get the text of it, and google and wikipedia again came through:

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host —
by the Divine Power of God —
cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

It turns out that there is an interesting story or legend behind this prayer, which was once said in every Catholic Mass.  Back in the late 1800s, Pope Leo XIII had this experience:

“I do not remember the exact year. One morning the great Pope Leo XIII had celebrated a Mass and, as usual, was attending a Mass of thanksgiving. Suddenly, we saw him raise his head and stare at something above the celebrant’s head. He was staring motionlessly, without batting an eye. His expression was one of horror and awe; the color and look on his face changing rapidly. Something unusual and grave was happening in him.

“Finally, as though coming to his senses, he lightly but firmly tapped his hand and rose to his feet. He headed for his private office. His retinue followed anxiously and solicitously, whispering: ‘Holy Father, are you not feeling well? Do you need anything?’ He answered: ‘Nothing, nothing.’ About half an hour later, he called for the Secretary of the Congregation of Rites and, handing him a sheet of paper, requested that it be printed and sent to all the ordinaries around the world. What was that paper? It was the prayer that we recite with the people at the end of every Mass. It is the plea to Mary and the passionate request to the Prince of the heavenly host, [St. Michael: Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle] beseeching God to send Satan back to hell.”

Others have spun that into a legend that Pope Leo overheard a conversation between Christ and Satan, where Satan claims the 20th Century to try to destroy the church.  That would certainly explain some things, but I don’t think that Satan actually, you know, stopped on 1 Jan 2001.

“Those who roam the world seeking the ruin of souls”

That could describe all too many in this world.

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