Category: News

The headline in the Springfield Business Journal article was not specific: Former STL Blues player files for Congress

I would have guessed Kelly Chase, but it’s actually Jim Campbell; the snippet named him, and I remembered his nickname Soupy and his number 10 without any prompting. He played for the Blues in the late 1990s when we watched all the games and had partial season tickets.

I was not impressed with his play, actually, and I’m not impressed that a business owner in the St. Louis area is filing to run with an address in Camden County. It looks carpetbaggish to me, but maybe he does live out there and only has business interests in the St. Louis area.

Kudos to the St. Louis television station for diminishing his entrepreneurship:

The domino effect of U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler’s decision to run for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat instead of seeking re-election to the House in the fourth congressional district appears to have led a former St. Louis Blues hockey player-turned St. Louis County bar owner to run for a seat in Congress.

A bar owner. How seedy-sounding, probably by intention.

Bat falcon spotted in US for first time:

A bird from Central and South America has been spotted in the United States for the very first time.

The “bat falcon” was captured on camera at the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Texas in December, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Driving down the wages for good American falcons.

You know, I amaze my beautiful wife sometimes when I can hear the propane delivery across the house and across the garage buffer zone, a package delivery, or the mail carrier visiting our mailbox sixty or eighty yards down the driveway (that one’s easy, as I can hear the pattern of acceleration and braking–both acceleration, I know, physicists, but give me a break, okay?–as she (Ginger, now Cara) drives from our mailbox to the next.

But an explosion at the power plant up the road? Nah, brah.

Although it was not dramatic; from the picture in the article, it looks like something small in a shed might have gone up.

Meanwhile, the city of Springfield is blowing up another of its power plants on purpose.

Because excess power generation capacity is so civilization, man.

A British tabloid has a headline that clashes with the news immediately after the event: Star Trek legend William Shatner confesses he ‘wasn’t impressed’ after visiting space

Last autumn, when he actually took the trip, our stories were different.

William Shatner delivers spacey monologue to Bezos after Blue Origin launch

“Everybody in the world needs to do this!” a tearful Shatner told the second-richest man in the world while others celebrated over champagne in the background.

“To see the moon come and whip by — now you’re staring into blackness — that’s the thing,” he added.

“The covering of blue, this blanket, this comforter of blue we have around us. We think, ‘Oh, that’s blue sky,’ and all of a sudden you shoot through it and you whip the sheet off you and you’re looking into blackness, into black nothingness.

“As you look down, there’s your blue down there with the black up there. There is Mother Earth and comfort and there is — is there death? I don’t know. Is that the way death is?” he asked.

“It was so moving. This experience, it’s something unbelievable.”

A British tabloid, making something up? Inconceivable!

I would say Everything old is new again, but I’m not feeling renewed.

But my son mentioned a news tidbit, International Space Station will hurtle to Earth in 2031— but it won’t hit you, to me the other day, and I said, as Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit did, “Oh, you mean like Skylab?”

He had no idea what Skylab was. I guess it’s not on TikTok, and history began somewhere in the 21st century.

Eesh, although we try to educate the lads, they beat on, boats against the current, borne back carelessly into the the eternal present.

An update to the story Don’t approach lab monkey missing after crash, people told:

Woman on rabies meds after crashed truck spills crates of monkeys on road

Geez, I hope she’s okay.

Meanwhile, do not approach lab monkeys missing after a crash or people who have been in contact with lab monkeys missing after crash.

Does anyone think the CDC is on this, or are political opinions made into public health threats more important?

Don’t approach lab monkey missing after crash, people told.

If you’re not a lab employee, any interaction with a lab monkey is going to be the start of some awful movie.

They say that the monkey, one of 100 in a trailer, was headed to the lab when the accident occurred. But, c’mon, man, we know that’s exactly what the authorities would say if the opposite were true. The monkey had nothing to do with the lab-American community. We get it.

And we’re all going to get it… whatever it is… the first time someone tries to befriend this monkey.

I saw this headline, Buddhist monk who brought ‘mindfulness’ to the world dies peacefully aged 95 at Vietnamese temple, and I thought, surely not Thich Nat Hanh, but it was.

I’ve read his books Thundering Silence and Peace of Mind: Becoming Fully Present.

I guess I should not have been terribly surprised that he was still around–Peace of Mind was published but eight years ago. Maybe nine. Sorry, I am still on 2021 in my mental arithmetic.

Jeez, this blog is nothing but death notices of late, ainna? Maybe I should lighten things up and tell you about the most Monday Monday I’ve ever had.

Mechanic totals $3.4M Ferrari after smashing into tree stump on test drive

Except in my short story, “Joy Ride”, a valet “borrows” a Corvette for a ride over his break, and instead of totaling it, he puts it in a ditch and scratches it. Which might be totaled depending upon the age and mileage, I suppose.

Man, I wrote a lot of short stories when I was in college, back when I thought people might like to read what I wrote.

Instapundit links to a Joanne Jacobs Teens eat more, exercise less.

Which is weird, because all the NFL public and charitable announcement commercials during football games are no longer about Play60, its program to get kids to exercise. Instead, they’re all about the It Takes All Of Us announcements about programs raising awareness about race.

You mean the first actual, you know, health problem wasn’t solved yet and in fact worsened, but it was superseded by a more contemporary political concern?

What is this world coming to?

You know, I was going to get “Weird Al” Yankovic concert tickets for my family for Christmas, something to stick into their stockings for a nice treat. But the page for the concert says that proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test within 72 hours of the event.

The concert is scheduled for next August. In the next nine months, we can expect the definition of vaccination and COVID test to change once or twice.

You know, I stream WSIE, the Sound, the jazz station in the St. Louis area, and all of the concert announcements feature the same stricture. And I saw an out-of-date ad for the Springfield Contemporary Theatre–although I thought I would go to a lot of performances there when I first learned of it five years ago, I haven’t been back. But in addition to Facebook showing me ads for productions that were over, the theatre also has the vax passport or negative test bit.

You know what doesn’t have bouncers at the door checking your papers? Sporting events. Movie theaters. School events. You know, the things that the proles like.

So I guess I’ll be avoiding the hoity-toity cultural events for the nonce.

(Related: It’s time to abolish ‘emergency’ COVID-19 powers by Glenn Reynolds. Although down here in the Ozarks, most of those things have already been eliminated, although my son has to mask up again for his school since they set Protocols at the beginning of the year, and they must slavishly follow them.)

Nicklaus: The economy is booming. Why are Americans so glum?

Messenger: Of smoking, masks and shifting views of freedom

And to be honest, using “Booming” to describe how the price of everything has gone up in the last year is a bit of a stretch of optimism.

But, yeah, in an inflationary environment, when the elites and journalists are all about explaining how the inflation is good for you and the loss of freedom is good for you, and you’re a racist anyway, why are Americans glum?

Must be the grey skies with little chance of snow.

Volcanic climate impacts can act as ultimate and proximate causes of Chinese dynastic collapse.

It’s not that the ruling regimes became corrupt and unable to manage or perform the necessary government duties. It was the volcanoes.

I just glanced at it, and I can’t help note that all the data stops at 1911. What, no earthquake in 1949? Weird that when the technology and recorded history gets better at recording actual volcanic eruptions, the charts stop.

I am skeptical about anything about China, especially speculative scientific work by Chinese scientists or historians.

(I saw the link somewhere else first, but it also appeared at Instapundit where Professor Reynolds uses it to advocate for space colonization.)

Next buyer of Prince Charles’ $6.7M former home must let him fish there:

Prince Charles’ glorious former home is up for sale for the first time since he sold it over 27 years ago — but there’s a catch.

Listed at nearly $6.7 million, the next buyer must be OK with his royal highness stopping by to fish.

The listing explains that since the home was built in 1906, it has been owned by the Duchy of Cornwall — an estate that funds “the public, charitable and private activities of the Prince of Wales and his family,” according to its website.

“A quirk remaining from the previous ownership allows his royal highness to retain the right to fish on the property’s riverbank as long as 24-hour notice is given,” a representative for the real estate agency, Knight Frank, told Insider.

In the olden days, of course, the kings and princes could do that at any home they wanted. They were all the king’s fish, after all.