Category: News

A couple years ago, a local pastor got the news media and its readers/viewers into a bit of a dudgeon by pointing out that yoga has its roots in another religion, and hence could be considered Satanic or demonic.

One could apply that interpretation to the Olympics as well, which were originally a festival to honor Zeus.

When commenting on the previous story, I said:

I am pretty sure that there’s a whole commandment about not following other religions somewhere, and I didn’t see any footnotes in it about it being okay to follow other religions’ practices with your fingers crossed or not believing in the actual ontology behind the practices. It doesn’t matter if Asherah poles help with television reception. They’re still the practices of another religion, and a lot of bad things happen in the old testament when Israel does something similar.

Rob K. pointed out the non-Christian origins of some of Christmas symbols and Christian calendar come from non-Christian sources.

It’s a conundrum, to be sure, how far to carry the eschewment of things whose origins lie outside Christianity and in other religions and their practices.

But the important thing is that I have a unique hot take on something that seemed more clever as I was going to sleep last night and which probably could be written better later in the morning.

After more than 40 years, YMCA ends used book fair:

There are no more chapters for the YMCA book fair. Canceled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, it won’t be back. Last year would have been its 42nd annual sale.

Run by hundreds of volunteers, the fair raised some $2.6 million for literacy and other programs over its four decades, says Caroline Mitchell, executive director of the organization’s community development.

But late last year, the group decided to sell its old Carondelet building, where it used to store books, CDs, DVDs and other donations during the year. Earlier this year, volunteers were informed that the book fair would not continue, Mitchell says.

As you know, gentle reader, I visited this book sale several years when I lived in the St. Louis area, including a couple of years when it was in the old Carondelet building and once when it was moved out to southwest county past St. Anthony’s Hospital. I have not been there in years, however, which might have contributed to this decision.

You say As drought cuts hay crop, cattle ranchers face culling herds

(They don’t actually mean herds that cull, they mean the ranchers might have to cull their herds. Herds of cattle who cull anything are the makings of a bad horror movie.)

However, when the news says that, I think Increased prices for those who cut hay and Cheap beef on the horizon.

Because I am economically literate and smart enough to know that there’s another side to every transaction.

Chimpanzees are killing gorillas unprovoked for the first time: scientists

Undoubtedly, this will officially be attributed to global warming.

Also, note this is the first time that the “scientists” (evolutionary anthropologists, which is one of the guesswork speculative “sciences”) have seen it. It should not be taken to represent the first time in all of the existence of apes, great or otherwise, most of which happened before grad students were writing things down.

Springfield: Springfield mayor Ken McClure addresses city’s COVID-19 response, recent surge in hospitalizations:

McClure joined CBS’s “Face The Nation” after several weeks of rising COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the Springfield area.

* * * *

“People come to Springfield to shop, to do business. So people will come here. And I think that has greatly increased our exposure,” said McClure.

McClure noted on the broadcast that misinformation may be leading to the recent surge and vaccine hesitancy.

“People are talking about fears they have, health-related fears, what it might do them later in their lives, what might be contained in the vaccinations and that information is just incorrect,” said McClure. “We as a society, and certainly in our community are being hurt by it.”

Branson: Milton comments on COVID: Mayor’s position draws large social media reaction

Hello friends,

I wanted to take a few minutes today to address the ongoing COVID-19 situation facing our area and my thoughts about how our community can respond to the ever-changing landscape of the situation.

First, let me state clearly and for the record: I will not support another government mask mandate, nor will I support a vaccine mandate. I didn’t talk about freedom and liberty during my campaign for Mayor simply as a way to get elected. I championed those values then, as I do now, because I believe that each individual should have the right to decide for themselves how to best handle their own medical decisions.

With that being said, I want to reiterate a few statements I’ve made since the beginning of all this:

If you choose to wear a mask, I support your decision.

If you own a business and choose to require masks in your business, I support your decision.

And the SAME goes for those individuals or businesses that choose not to wear or require masks for themselves and their businesses.

Freedom means the freedom to decide to wear a mask OR not to wear one.

No businesses or individuals should be persecuted, blacklisted or attacked because they disagree with YOUR individual viewpoint on the mask issue. The wonderful thing about our country and our city is that we can disagree while still coexisting with each other.

Ultimately, our consumers will decide where they want to dine, shop and stay based on their own personal views on the issue. If they feel more comfortable patronizing a restaurant, retail store, theater, attraction or any business that requires masks, they should be able to make that choice for themselves. Again, the same applies for visitors that feel comfortable patronizing businesses without mask requirements. Our community can and should decide for themselves how to handle their own medical decisions, and our visitors will do the same.

Now, to address the issue of vaccines.

I believe your Mayor and Board of Alderman should make sure our local community is informed of the availability of vaccines for those who would like to get vaccinated. The Branson area has 15 locations where vaccine shots are readily available and free of charge. If you want to get the vaccine, you can.

I DO NOT believe it’s my place, or the place of any politician, to endorse, promote or compel any person to get any vaccine. That’s a decision that should be made by each individual in consultation with their doctor and their family. If you have questions about the vaccine and if it’s right for you, you should ask your doctor.

Finally, I do have one request I will make of you, the people. Be good to one another. Be good to those who visit our town. Don’t let temporary disagreements drive us apart forever. Whether you are masked or not, vaccinated or not, make smart decisions. Wash your hands regularly, maintain social distancing when possible, if you are sick STAY HOME and be aware of those around you who may think differently than you do about the issue. Be courteous, be thoughtful, be Branson.

Your Mayor,

Larry D. Milton

Brontosaurus is back! Study shows it’s not an Apatosaurus (but we always knew, right?).

C’mon, man, if you cannot replicate it in a lab, it’s not science, it’s speculation. And changing your speculation, variables in a computer program, or terms is not performing any part of the scientific method.

(Link via Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

Independence Day parade stops to save a man’s life:

Joan Cather has been instructing martial arts students for years. She experienced a first on Sunday when her ATA Martial Arts crew was part of the Bridgeton Fourth of July parade. A fellow instructor, an off-duty area police officer, stopped their float after noticing someone along the parade route in need of medical attention.

“The two of us ran to the gentleman,” Cather said. “My instructor started doing compressions; I was checking for a pulse.”

Cather said they began performing CPR. She said, “When we got there, we know there was no pulse.”

Cather said the CPR worked. The man was breathing again as first responders arrived. A few minutes later, Cather and her fellow instructor stopped their float again. This time they stopped to help a visitor who appeared to be overheated.

Although I am pretty sure that the owner of my dojo would have done the same.

Indian Delta COVID variant is now the DOMINANT strain in the US and makes up more than 50% of all new cases, CDC reveals – and urges the 150M Americans still NOT vaccinated to get their shots

And:

California ‘Epsilon’ Covid variant contains three mutations which could allow the strain to bypass vaccine immunity, study finds

Go get your shots now!!!!! Also, the new strains are immune to the vaccines!!!!

You know, we’ve spent a couple of years being ruled by Twitter and exclamation points. Perhaps it’s just time to step outside and interact with humans.

As masking controversy continues, election to recall Nixa Mayor Brian Steele set for November 2:

The lede is the sixth journalistic W (What I Think Of It) before the other five:

In a democracy like the U.S., a small band of committed voters can leverage major public debate, and sometimes change, through ballot petitions.

Apparently, it only took 73 signatures to get the recall on the ballot to recall the mayor who imposed a mask mandate even after the city council voted against it, which led some citizens (at least 73) to get the recall on the ballot in the special election.

As for a small band getting things through passed through ballot initiatives, c’mon, man, don’t you know that’s what the ballot initiative is? Groups of people, often funded by out-of-region money, collect a bunch of signatures to change, often irrevocably, the state constitution or to pass dedicated tax increases for pet projects without elected officials having to answer for establishing funding priorities, and then the secretary of state or local elections official gets them on the ballot schedule according to whether or not the elected official supports the measure–it gets put onto a low turnout election to help the measure pass, as its proponents will be out in force and will outnumber the normal people who vote in every primary and local election or onto a general election to hopefully block the measure, as normal people will dilute the numbers of true believers.

I’ve talked about this phenomenon a couple of times over the years.

It’s strange that a veteran journalist has only noticed it now when it’s a democratic response to an elected official acting unilaterally in a way the journalist presumably supports (and it starts again).

Well, okay, it’s only as strange as a “news” story that starts with a sentence of pure opinion.

Man busted with large stash of fireworks in NYC

Kind of like junk on the bunk.

They busted him with the fireworks in the car, so something like got some in the Datsun or levy in the Chevy or bleep in the jeep.

Comparing it with the prices I saw at the fireworks stand yesterday, that’s clearly several thousand dollars’ worth of near-professional quality items.

Since he was busted handing them off to someone else, he was probably trafficking them. Which is good; otherwise, he might be charged with loving America, which some SorosDAs charge as a hate crime.

US jobless claims fall to 364,000, a new pandemic low

That’s in a whole year.

Clearly, everything is the newest, best, or somethingest in all of remembered history, which began in 2016 or thereabouts when our journalists started paying attention in college.

Let’s ask the audience, the general public, how panicky they get with this story: Springfield pediatricians see rise in patients with RSV, uncommon for summer months:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning parents about a national rise in the respiratory infection RSV, Respiratory Syncytial Virus, this summer.

RSV is common in the fall and winter, similar to the flu season, but not very common in the warmer months. Mercy pediatrician Dr. Laura Waters says her office didn’t see as many cases during the typical season, but they are seeing an uptick now.

”I had a couple of weeks ago about five or six kids who were actually seen over one weekend in the emergency room,” Dr. Waters says. “Later that week I actually had a child that ended up in the ICU with it.”

You know, perhaps the constant drumbeating of disease and whatnot will have the benefit of informing people how contingent life really is, and how precious it is, if we can remove some of the sense of absolute safety that many Americans from the middle and upper classes and the elites have from birth.

Just kidding. I am not sure that’s possible.

John Kass has published his last column for the Chicago Tribune.

Gentle reader, when I first got myself a sit down in an office job in an IT company in 1998, I had an Internet connection all day long, and so, in addition to writing documentation using software that made the contract technical writer cry in frustration, I started reading a lot of newspaper Web sites every day. Especially the newspaper columnists. I read Roeper, Steinberg, Kass, Greene, and Schmich from the Chicago papers.

Over the years, the number I’ve read has dwindled. After 2000, most of them veered too left for me, and Greene was dismissed from the Chicago Tribune. Although I still say “Everybody’s free to wear sunscreen” whenever the topic of sunscreen comes up at Nogglestead, I don’t tend to read new Schmich. Kass was the only one I would go to the Chicago Tribune Web site, intermittently, to read.

Perhaps the loyal devotion to columnists tailed off when it became clearer that I was not destined to be a columnist.

At any rate, for some reason the Chicago Tribune separated him, which means that the only remaining reason I have to visit that Web site is to gleefully follow the heartbreak of another Bears season. Intermittently, and maybe.

Although the corporation is probably better off without me, too, as I don’t tend to click the ads and do not subscribe to Internet publications. But Tronc, or whatever the corporation calls itself these days, has sacrificed a reason old people like me read the physical paper when we do (as a reminder, I subscribe to five newspapers from around the state, soon to be seven now that The Licking News has a way to subscribe online finally and because I’ll also take the adjacent Houston Herald).

For the news, yes, but also the voices of Jim Hamilton, Larry Dablemont, Father Hirz, Cassie Downs, Amber Heard, Karen Craigo, and other friendly print voices. Which does not mean 23-year-old Web content producers writing clickbait listicles; it means adults.

I hope Kass continues writing; I have seen his work in other venues, but that might have just been his Tribune columns syndicated.

Suburban St. Louis police chief resigns over Missouri’s new gun law.

Well, he had been the police chief in O’Fallon for a long time. Last October.

He actually was interim police chief until January, where he was made chief, albeit not unanimously and without controversy.

So this kind of reads more like sour grapes and leaving a bad situation tarted up as Principle.

The articles might be misleading when talking about MICHAEL JORDAN REELED IN 25LB DOLPHIN:

It’s not often a goat catches a dolphin. But that’s exactly what happened when Michael Jordan and his “Catch 23” fishing team reeled in a dolphin on the first day of the 63rd annual Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament.

Or Michael Jordan caught a dolphin to capture an early lead in a $3.4 million fishing tournament in North Carolina:

Michael Jordan has gone fishin’ – and he came back with a dolphin.

It’s not clear whether the writers and repeaters understand this–I am sure it is common enough knowledge on the southeast coast, but I certainly didn’t know it in the Midwest–but the dolphin mammal and the dolphin fish (also known as the mahi mahi) are two different things.

On my first trip to Florida, I ordered the dolphin about every meal because I wanted to show them who was atop the mammal food chain, and I was eventually disappointed to learn I was not eating Flipper.

Springfield organization reminisces over the past by opening time capsule:

2020 marked 50 years for a local organization focused on making north Springfield a better place to work and live.

The celebration was pushed back a year because of the pandemic, but on Saturday, June 12, The North Springfield Betterment Association got to honor its 50th anniversary by opening a time capsule it hid in the courthouse 10 years ago, on the group’s 40th anniversary.

A ten-year-old time capsule? C’mon, man, I’ve got boxes in my store room that I haven’t opened in ten years. That’s not a time capsule. I’m just a pack rat, but not one that has to pet his Commodore or Texas Instruments peripherals that frequently. Come to think of it, the boxes in my store room contain more historical stuff than something tucked away in 2011.

However, I suppose it’s good for a press release to get one’s organization’s name on television.

Woman makes ‘weirdest’ discovery inside nightstand she bought at thrift shop:

A woman who bought a set of secondhand nightstands at a thrift store got a blast from the past when she found an old note stuffed inside, she claimed in a viral TikTok video.

TikTok user Valencia said the nightstands she bought from a Goodwill shop contained a note, clearly scribbled by a kid, with her home phone number from 15 years ago and her mom’s cellphone number, News.com.au reported.

“The weirdest thing just happened, and I’m not making this up. I literally don’t care how many people comment and say ‘Oh my God, this was staged,’” she said in the viral video.

“My heart’s like a little trembly. This is really cool.”

Valencia said the note specifically said “Carly’s home number and mum’s mobile number” — and then explained that her little sister’s name is Carly and the home phone was her family’s landline in the early aughts.

Fifteen years? That’s the equivalent of pre-history. If it’s not on YouTube or TikTok, its truthiness is questionable, ainna?

Bah; I have stuff on hand here that has phone numbers where the exchange is spelled out, child, so don’t tell me about how landlines are old things only found in archeological digs.

My goodness, these people really do think that the world began when they hit puberty, ainna?

Biden ends GOP infrastructure talks, starts bipartisan push.

Somehow in the news speak dictionary (pronounced “Newspeak”), stopping negotiations with one of the two major parties is the way to be bi-partisan.

The front page headline of the New York Post story is misleading:

After all, some of who are not headline writers are old enough to remember Dennis Tito.

Inside, the story itself is titled Jeff Bezos to fly on Blue Origin’s first crewed spaceflight next month, and the record-breaking claim is a little more measured:

Barring surprises, the trip would make Bezos the first of the billionaire space tycoons to travel to space through their own companies. Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, and Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, have yet to ride with their companies to space.

Which is a much smaller circle, but slightly less click- and snark-worthy.

The New York Post has runs a story called Over 50 and fab: Nine of the finest OG supermodels are hotter than ever which includes luminaries like Christie Brinkley, Brooke Shields (the first victim in Alice, Sweet Alice which I might own on videocassette as it was one of the first ones my mother purchased when we got our first VCR in our trailer in Murphy, Missouri, in 1985), and, sorry, where was I? Oh, yes, Naomi Campbell, Elle McPherson, and a Helena C-something who was not in Fight Club.

No depicted: Kathy Ireland.

I suspect that she’s not depicted because she’s not actively posting sexy pix on social media sites these days unlike the others in the set who are posting clickbait pictures or posing topless for magazines even now.

Hey, I’m not saying that it’s wrong to either flaunt what you have or to be more reserved. But the list itself contains attractive women over 50 who are actively flaunting it for profit, whereas some take their profits in other things over 50.