Category: News

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!

I just can’t stop getting riled over this item about the baby with the birth defects and its litiguous parents. As you remember, this baby died from its severe and disfiguring birth defects and its parents began a crusade to force a newspaper to print its picture with the birth announcement. These parents also filed civil rights complaints against the news paper.

Civil rights complaints? Getting your picture with your birth announcement is a CIVIL RIGHT now?

I imagine they framed this in some sort of discrimination against disabilities legalese. However, the exclusion of the photograph isn’t discrimination against the child, who is dead anyway (although its estate and legacy might turn out to be more than my annual salary). It’s editorial discretion.

Can I file a civil rights claim because I don’t get to grace the cover of Esquire or the centerfold of Playboy (those sexist schnucks are discriminating based on my gender!)?

I would hope whatever authorities see these complaints dismiss them easily, but common sense is proving harder and harder.

When your child is born with extreme, visible birth defects from which it dies from in five days, people expect you to grieve. I can sympathize.

Whereas you might want the child’s birth announcement for your scrapbook, that’s okay too. However, I also understand when the newspaper might balk at running a photograph of the child, especially a newborn with extreme facial birth defects. In normal circumstances, people might accuse the paper of sensationalism or insensitivity for running a photo like that.

I do not have any sympathy, however, for throwing a civil fit because the paper balked.

A couple of parents in St. Louis are doing just that. The mother, in between filing civil complaints against the publisher of the Suburban Journals, offered this bit of vocabularial ignorance:

“He … used the word ‘disfigured,'” Kelly Kittinger said. “He needs sensitivity training if he’s going to be dealing with the public.”

Let’s go to the dictionary:

dis·fig·ure (ds-fgyr)
tr.v. dis·fig·ured, dis·fig·ur·ing, dis·fig·ures

To mar or spoil the appearance or shape of; deform.

These particular birth defects (“Perjorative!” the PC banshees will soon wail) marred the appearance of the baby. Disfigured is an accurate description, and I’m certainly not in favor of sensitivity training that destroys accuracy to sooth inflamed feelings of an allegedly grieving mother.

However, this mother is subverting grief into “righteous” rage at the indignities afllicted upon her lost child by lashing out. Perhaps something good will then come of the child’s short life. Increased “sensitivity” and maybe a little settled-out-of-court jackpot for the grieving raging parents.

Also, kudos to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for its continuing coverage of this important breaking story and for showing its compassion for the “little people” by elevating trivial slights into crusades while humping the legs of big corporate interests in St. Louis (publicly funded stadiums, anyone?). An earlier story this week described the birth defects and their disfiguring nature. The linked story does not. By Sunday’s paper, perhaps you, oh monopolithic dispenser of wisdom, will have forgotten why the Suburban Journal balked at displaying the picture at all.

Nevada Supreme Court overrules Nevada Constitution.

(Pointer from InstaPundit.)

The End.

Meanwhile, back in the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman comments (registration required) on President Bush’s trip to Africa and wonders whether we’re helping or hindering Africa’s case with monetary aid. Good question. Unfortunately, he includes this interesting factoid:

This week, he became only the third U.S. president to visit Africa in the last 25 years.

By my dead reckoning, since 1978 we have had only 5 presidents (Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush) serve, and of those 5, only 3 have served their complete terms. At very worst, of our last five presidents, 60% have gone to Africa. I’m not certain 60% merits an only.

CNN reports on the latest Congressional Zero-Intolergence law, which will throw spammers in jail for up to two years for a non-violent offense. That’s right. Send an unsolicited e-mail to someone, go to JAIL! I’ll have to watch my step when it’s time to send out next year’s Atari Party invitations.

The story says:

The bill also won praise from law-enforcement officials, who said spammers who now shrug off civil penalties as a cost of doing business may think twice when faced with a jail sentence of up to two years.

“We believe criminal sanctions will make a big difference in Virginia,” Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore told the House subcommittee on crime.

1. How many spammers have been identified and penalized civilly? Not many, but hey, if you’re going to fire aimlessly and not hit anything, it’s best to have a full quiver of punishment arrows so you can just keep firing.
2. “law enforcement officials“? But Jerry Kilgore is an elected politician, undoubtedly only stopping by the Attorney General’s office on his way to bigger and better elected offices.

Undoubtedly, unsolicited e-mail is annoying, but it’s a stupid target for legislation and law enforcement with the current state of deficits and the continued existence of violent crime which, you know, actually hurts people.

An op-ed piece in the Washington Post, written by a former police officer, argues that as long as drugs are prohibited, neighborhoods will be torn up and will occasionally riot against police.

He’s right, of course, but we’re a long way from any repeals at this point, I fear.

Best of the Web Today links to a press release announcing a study by the Cato Institute. The report’s entitled Economic Freedom of the World: 2003 Annual Report, and the press release summarizes the report with the headline Report: Wealthiest Nations Have Freest Economies.

I think this title doesn’t capture the causal link between the two. Instead, perhaps it should say Freest Economies Create Wealthiest Nations.

But I am no economist, I am just a dude who takes the meaning and order of words seriously.

Drudge links to a story in USA Today headlined Report: Feds lacks bioterror experts. The lead goes something like this:

The government will have an increasingly hard time hiring and retaining biologists and others needed to prepare for bioterror threats, a report concludes.

The report, according to the story, shines its light on the usual suspects: government pay contrasted with private pay, the decline of science graduates, and retirements.

On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to mention the interest the government lavishes upon persons that it hires in this capacity.

Maybe they need a new hiring campaign slogan, such as, “Work on Bioterrorism for us, and we’ll take care of you.”

CNN reports: Last ship in Mars-bound armada begins risky trip.

Couldn’t that warmonger keep his ambitions planetary? No! Instead, he and the martial NASA send an armada, literally a fleet of warships, to Mars to conquer another undefended desert!

For certainly, the CNN headline writer was conscious of the ramifications of the word he, she, or it chose, right?

The Federal Trade Commission, an appointed and not elected body, has determined that individual states do not have the right to pass laws regulating commerce within their borders when it comes to the Internet.

In a move my newly-Federalist friend El Guapo might approve, the FTC would lift bans on Internet wine purchases. Some states think it’s too easy for minors to get liquor off the Internet, so they want to prohibit Internet vendors from selling wine to consumers in those states via the Internet.

The FTC, however, has found another way to abuse the powers granted under the ill-conceived interstate commerce clause of the United States Constitution. Instead of letting the individual states handle moral issues (alcohol consumption) and logistical issues (keeping wine out of minors), Uncle Sam must be listening to the last lobbying dollars from vino dot coms.

“By allowing interstate direct shipping, states would give consumers the opportunity to save money on their wine purchases, and would let consumers choose from a much greater variety of wines,” the FTC said in its report.

It’s all for the betterment of the consumer, and it’s at the expense of the states, who lose more power appropriately left ot them and, ooops, lose all that sales and excise tax money which they cannot charge on Internet sales.

It’s oh so wrong in oh so many ways, I will leave it at that before I start foaming Les Bourheois Jeunette Rouge at the mouth and stain the keyboard.

Professor Reynolds links to this story by Erica Jong wherein Ms. Jong dispenses some advice for married people and their sex lives. Unlike her books, this article seems to present the idea of preserving a marriage.

I guess I shouldn’t be so quick to generalize. I’ve only read How to Save Your Own Life (the sequel to Fear of Flying), and since I was not a neurotic, repressed adultress-waiting-to-happen, I didn’t feel empowered by it.