Category: News

Springfield Board of Education makes changes to meetings

What kind of changes? Fewer chances for parents and taxpayers to speak up.

Springfield’s Board of Education will make changes to the way it takes public comment at future meetings.

The announcement came during Tuesday’s meeting: Public comments will be limited to ten speakers per meeting in the future.

Each speaker will need to sign up ahead of time, and each will have three minutes to voice concerns or ask questions.

The changes have come after several marathon meetings in recent months. On Tuesday, the meeting lasted nearly four hours, with 28 people signing up to speak.

Remember when the only controversial decisions school boards had to deal with was whether to ban Slaughterhouse Five once every couple years?

Now, schools are making political judgement calls regarding education all the time, and they don’t want to be told to stop.

The Daily Dammit, Gannett! had a story about some small company’s social media hireling mentioned Springfield in an article entitled Springfield isn’t the worst place to be should zombies descend. One company’s research explains why.

The company is Lawn Love, which looks like it’s a referral service for lawn and exterior care providers. The blog post, er scientific analysis is 2021’s Best Cities for Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse.

I guess Springfield, Missouri, came in 56 of 200.

But let’s look at the methodology:

We ranked the 200 biggest U.S. cities from best to worst (1-200) based on their overall scores (out of 100 points), averaged across the weighted metrics listed below.

Public Health

• Share of Population in Good Health (Weight: 3)
• Physical Activity Rate (Weight: 3)
• Share of Population Who Jogged in Past Year (Weight: 2)

Vulnerability

• Natural Hazards Index (Weight: 1)
• Number of Military Bases (Weight: 1)
• Hospitals per Capita (Weight: 2)

Infrastructure

• Average Home Square Footage (Weight: 2)
• Share of Available Homes with Basements (Bunkers) (Weight: 3)
• Share of Homes with Complete Kitchen Facilities (Weight: 1)
• Share of Homes with Complete Plumbing Facilities (Weight: 1)
• Off-Grid Lifestyle-Friendliness (Weight: 2)

Supplies

• Supermarkets (Costco, Sam’s Club, Target, Walmart) per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 3)
• Shopping Centers and Department Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 2)
• Pharmacies/Drug Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 3)
• Hardware Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 1)

Protection

• Hunting-Gear Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 3)
• Weapons and Ammunitions Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 3)
• Outdoor-Gear Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 2)

Mobility

• Biking-Friendliness (Weight: 1)
• Hiking-Friendliness (Weight: 3)
• Number of Campsites (Weight: 1)
• Port Availability (Weight: 2)
• Marina Availability (Weight: 2)

Although the “methodology” mentions the number of gun stores, it does not say anything about the number of guns already in private hands, nor does it talk about population density (the fewer people nearby, the fewer potential zombies). In both of these cases, Springfield is already high on the list. Or the number of preppers in the area, nor the neighborliness or Christian values of an area–which would lead to better bonding of groups of survivors, but probably less intrigue than you get in the popular culture.

It’s why your zombie apocalypse movies and television shows take place in urban environments, where different people get thrown together and are suspicious of each other.

But, yeah, the number of basements here is indeed low, which really surprises me since this area gets its shares of tornadoes.

Also, good on that particular content writer, cranking out that blog post for maybe $50 and getting it picked up by at least one newspaper. Unless, of course, it was done the easy way–being the reporter herself or a friend of the same.

Also, as a reminder, it was I who wrote the book on surviving a reanimated skeleton apocalypse. Okay, I exaggerate: I wrote a blog post called A Brief Dissertation On Where To Shoot An Evil Reanimated Skeleton.

I drive through this coming interchange every time I go into Republic: MoDOT announces new roundabout near Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield:

MoDOT has plans for a new roundabout near Republic, which as drivers talking.

“You are essentially entering into a guessing game,” said local Param Reddy.

That roundabout will be installed at the intersection of route ZZ and Farm road 182, right by the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.

MoDOT officials said it would cost around $1.3 million and start construction in Spring of 2023.

As you might know, gentle reader, I oppose roundabouts for a couple of reasons, and this one will illustrate why very well.

This is the intersection in question. ZZ runs north and south and is a pretty straight state highway with good visibility in both directions. Farm Road 182 is hilly and curvy. The intersection itself is within the bounds of the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, so the speed limit on 182 drops to 20, but this is rarely observed. Farm Road 182 has stop signs, but ZZ has no control device.

I have come to this interchange a couple of times where I’ve had to wait behind cars at the stop sign for a couple of minutes, but rarely more.

The area is developing, so perhaps a control other than the stop sign would be in order eventually, but not a roundabout.

• The roundabout is expensive; it will cost at least $1.3 million at least, and its construction will add delays to the intersection.
• The roundabout slows down traffic on the highway even if there’s no merging/crossing traffic. Instead of continuing north or south at speed, drivers on ZZ will often have to slow down unnecessarily when no traffic is present on Farm Road 182.
• The roundabout is inflexible. A stop light can be set to flashing yellow or enabled with sensors to know when to change based on the presence of vehicles. Not the roundabout. It’s the light rail train of interchanges. You cannot adjust it. You can only endure it.

I continue to believe that traffic engineers hate people who drive cars, and I’m starting to think that they’re all from the city and ride ebikes to work. Someone from the country who needs to go ten or twenty miles or more when driving doesn’t need a bunch of European traffic fads. We need consistent speeds to get from one point to another.

But I did not go to expensive Traffic Engineering School, which seems to lead to this thought process:

1. Roundabouts.
2. Diverging Diamond Interchanges.
3. Diverging Diamond Interchanges with roundabouts at each end.
4. Diverging Diamond Interchanges with roundabouts at each end and smoke machines! That will slow the traffic down.

If it saves just one life, it’s worth it! Although I’m not sure that in the ten years that I’ve lived at Nogglestead that one life has been lost at that intersection. Maybe, but it’s not Blood Alley by any means to warrant this imposition.

The “article,” for paying subscribers, is entitled “Young reporter threatened; columnist told that his head is up his #*@”.

C’mon, man, we know what the readers are responding to: The hype stories from the new kid and that the closest thing that the paper has to a local columnist has been writing political diatribes knocking people skeptical of the Recurrent Unpleasantness instead of explaining what’s being built on such and such corner and what’s the story about that one thing we pass on our daily commute.

One wonders how much the article, for subscribers only, will reinforce a certain block of subscribers and how much the article will lead to cancelled or lapsed subscriptions.

I expect both, but for the Daily Dammit, Gannett to continue to shrink in size and subscriber base.

In news other than how I made Ted Nugent a rock god, we have Uncle Ted in the real news today: Ted Nugent Resigns From NRA Board:

The National Rifle Association just lost one of its most famous board members.

In an email to the board obtained by The Reload, NRA general counsel John Frazer announced rock star Ted Nugent is stepping down from his role as a director. Frazer said the group thanked Nugent for his decades-long service on the board. He cited “ongoing schedule conflicts” as the reason Nugent would no longer serve.

I’m still a member, and I hope the organization straightens itself out. I keep nominating Darbo for the board. Maybe now they’ll listen.

(Link via Wirecutter.)

An article on Substack called The Algorithm: The media’s new business model is propaganda explains partly why the media are so untrustworthy–they’re currently seeking readership by reinforcing political and lifestyle narratives and group memberships and because they don’t do any reporting on their own, instead just gleaning what they can from online sources–generally sources biased to their points of view–and regurgitating it in their own words. Basically, journalism as writing college papers.

Unexplored, of course, is the often stated but rarely adequately defended thesis from here at MfBJN, that to the 23-year-old J-school graduates who provide the majority of the print and online content today, putting tweets into paragraph form is journalism because Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and whatever comes next is real life to them. It’s what they know.

Which is why I only trust, sometimes, what I read in the nine small town papers I take. Because why would Bonnie lie to me about what happened in Handy, Missouri, last week?

(Link via Ed Driscoll on Instapundit.)

The new kid at the Daily Gannett sure likes to say people are spreading misinformation, and that’s all you really need to know.

This bit is a particular larf:

But the database does not track death specifically attributable to the COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, it tracks “all serious adverse events following vaccination against COVID-19 — regardless of whether the vaccines are to blame.”

Therefore, any death that occurs after one is vaccinated could be counted in the VAERS system. According to VAERS’ website, the database is “not designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem.”

Silly reader! You only count deaths from the virus that way, not deaths from the vaccine!

Oh, noes, I am spreading misinformation. Perhaps I shall be disparaged by a 23-year-old J-school graduate for exercising my rights and earn a scarlet M.

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.