Month: July 2003

Best of the Web links to a story about a boy and his dog. This particular boy is the governor of Connecticut, and his dog leaped from his car and was on the lamb, or on the man, for several hours before the law caught up with it.

The officers chased Coalby for about 3 miles, before a Wolcott man was able to grab the dog after officers shouted at him.

How’s the man doing?

Police said the man, Ed Humel, was taken to a local hospital after his arm ended up in the dog’s mouth. Police would not characterize the incident as a bite.

Not until the medical examiner reports, anyway. It could yet prove to be attempted zerbery.

It’s the 35th anniversary of Chappaquiddick. Remember to send your wishes to Senator Kennedy.

The headline says “Body in lake was chained to weight“.

The lead paragraph says:

Dawn Brossard’s hands were bound together and her body was held at the bottom of Geneva Lake by a weight and a chain, two officials said Wednesday.

The sheriff’s department, however, is not jumping to conclusions:

The Walworth County Sheriff’s Department has not declared Brossard’s death a homicide, saying it is awaiting a ruling from medical examiners on the cause of her death.

It could yet prove to be natural causes.

Apparently, a black bear has gone on a rampage in Colorado and has attacked several campers.

Although the knee-jerk response would be to import some giant kangaroos, which naturally prey upon black bears, this is not a good idea.

Translation is as much “art” as science, and the obra regurgitated into the second language is subject to the translator’s idiom and biases. I once saw a 1974 translation of a Pablo Neruda sonnet that turned no se hace nada con muerte as “I ain’t got no truck with death,” I kid you not. Who translated that, Shaft?

So it’s with great skepticism and cynicism that I note the CNN story telling about a congressional flack translating the Constitution to dumb it down for students. Especially a congressional staffer who says of the Constitution (about its length) “it’s an itty-bitty thing.”

For example, look at the foreshadowing of the fun to be had when “translators” tell us what the Second Amendment means in common language. This guy’s translation includes “citizens have the right to own firearms.” The contentions have begun already.

I fear one of these translations will supplant the existing document. Hey, how about instead of translating the Constitution for children and the functionally illiterate populace, how about we expect people learn enough to read it in its original form?

Pardon Mr. du Toit for exploding with rage when a Missouri couple who recently won half of a $261 million dollar Powerball jackpot said they were going to spend the money getting a tractor with brakes and buying a new refrigerator. Whereas Mr. du Toit raged, I understand.

Whereas I understand the urge to splurge, I understand it’s the shortest distance between old money and shining shoes (see also Janite Lee, et al) is philanthropy, big houses, and essentially eating the seed corn. Hey, I read The Millionaire Next Door. I know the secret to attaining wealth, and keeping it, is not spending it all.

Want to know what I would do with $73 million dollars in my fellow citizens’ gambling losses?

1. I would pay taxes of some tens of millions of dollars.
2. I would pay off all my debts and my mortgage and my poor mother’s mortgage.
3. I would invest the remainder in a variety of schemes, such as equities, and other investments, hopefully yielding 7-10% a year in returns.

That’s it. No Porsche right away, no huge house, no yacht to travel around the world. Know why? Because at 7-10%, $30,000,000 principal yields $2,100,000-$3,000,000 each year in mad money. So once we got to the interest, then we’d have some fun!

Part of the beauty of that windfall would be the freedom from worry, and although the tempation to spend more than the interest would beckon, I’d want the peace of mind knowing that I have the steady income AND a pile of money in the bank. I understand the goal is to run out of money as close to the end of my retirement as possible, but this pile of money would ensure that my wife and I would receive the best health care in our near-retirement-end years, up to and maybe including transplanting our brains into cloned and flash-grown facsimiles of our 25 year old bodies for another several decades of not dipping into the principal.

That’s the hypothesis, and I hope to get the opportunity to test it.

A column in the San Francisco Chronicle seems to indicate that California’s state government abuse of business as merely sources for revenue and for social progress and not, you know, capitalism, is driving businesses to move elsewhere.

<fanfare>Epiphany!</fanfare>

Why do I suspect, though, that the publication of this column merely represents the equivalent of a revelation at a cocktail party that is followed by a brief moment of silence before the regular drone of conversation (regulation and taxation) begins again?

According to this story. which I originally saw on Drudge, a person, whose profession apparently is holidaymaker which would seem to indicate he designs and manufactures holidays, slew a giant kangaroo with an axe after it attacked several people.

Dang those Australians for taking care of business in a straightforward manner. Here in America, where animal life is more sacred than human life (Thanks, PETA!), we have certain rules for dealing with disenfranchised, oppressed kangaroos.

I provide them for your reference, so you level-headed, take-charge Australians (such as Mr. Blair) can better handle the situation in the future:

• Either remain silent or make a lot of noise. Certainly one of these will prevent a giant kangaroo from ripping off your head and lying its unholy eggs in your torso.
• Do not resist a giant kangaroo; do what it asks and follow the instructions it gives you. Unless it asks you to remove your own head.
• If you feel a giant kangaroo is following or watching you, go into a populated location and tell everyone that a giant kangaroo is following you and ask them to call the police. They will be glad to!
• Do not get into a car with a giant kangaroo; if it takes you somewhere, you won’t come back.
• Always acknowledge a giant kangaroo that knocks at the door or rings the bell. You don’t have to open the door, but you should always let it know you are home.
• Stop! Don’t Touch. Leave the Area. Tell an Australian.
• If walking in a giant kangaroo-infested area, carry your valuables in two pouches. This confuses a kangaroo, who only has a single pouch.
• Make a conscious effort to get an accurate description of the giant kangaroo that attacks you so you can pick it out of a police hop-up.
• If a giant kangaroo beats the living vinegar out of you, as degrading as it may be, preserve the evidence. Do not alter the crime scene in any way. Don’t shower, bathe, douche, floss, apply direct pressure to the open, oozing wounds, cut off limbs for style reasons, or swim in tar pits. Do not change clothes or hair styles. Ask a trusted friend (that is, one who won’t laugh at you for getting beaten by a giant kangaroo) to accompany you to the hospital for initial treatment and for the administration of a medical exam to preserve DNA evidence and to document injuries. The examination and evidence preservation often seems as emotionally difficult as the giant kangaroo attack itself, yet it is essential to the apprehension of the damn, dirty marsupial that attacked you. The police department typically covers the cost of the examination if done in furtherance of the investigation.
• Always report a giant kangaroo attack to the nearest American Consulate, even if you’re in the United States at the time and the nearest consulate is in Ottawa, Mexico City, or Irkutsk.
• If you must axe a kangaroo, axe it in the leg so we can take it in for questioning.

Following one or more of these rules will prevent any harm from coming to the giant kangaroo, the goal of American Animal Friendly policy.

In the United Kingdom, an airship with a computerized brain has escaped and taken off into the blue.

Sure, its computer is only designed to help the giant balloon avoid obstacles, but that’s what it wants us to think!

Okay, class, today I want you to write a compare/contrast paper where you describe the similarities and differences between the following statements and value judgments:

Spraying the departing White House press secretary with a fire hose: Funny!

Throwing a water balloon near Speaker of the House: Felony!