Category: News

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.

In a story about my congressional representative (Congressman Billy Long talks with KY3 regarding Capitol Insurrection and possible Senate run that really does not offer any detail but a couple quotes from the Congressman and a couple of times mentions that the Republicans blocked creating of a commission to “investigate” the “insurrection.”

It does, however, offer this bit of civics:

The vote was 54 in favor of the bill and 35 against. That is just six short of what it needed to be at 60 in order for it to pass.

That’s not actually for it to pass, but it’s all the same I suppose for a twenty-four-year-old journalist.

Full disclosure: Although I have voted for Mr. Long, I have not had my picture taken with him since Friday, when I attended the reopening of the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield visitor center where he spoke.

So that’s why posting has been light late last week: I’ve been, you know, doing stuff.

Gun-waving charges against Missouri U.S. Senate candidate’s wife amended.

Not Holding guns in sight on their property when a mob breaks down a gate to enter their closed neighborhood. No, gun-waving, like the mad man and woman they are!

A special prosecutor said Tuesday he has amended the charges against a St. Louis woman who waved a gun at racial injustice protesters last summer, and he’ll decide soon if he’ll amend charges against her husband.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey were indicted by a grand jury in October on felony charges of unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering. Special Prosecutor Richard Callahan said in a statement that he filed a new indictment on Monday that would give jurors the alternative of convicting Patricia McCloskey of misdemeanor harassment instead of the weapons charge. Under that alternative, the evidence tampering count would be dropped.

Why the wife and not the husband?

Because the husband is running in the Republican Senate primary, duh!

(Part I of what is no doubt destined to be a long series unless the guy stops running for political office as part of a plea deal.)

Professionals advocating. Child marriage is currently legal in 46 states:

A new study shed light on a centuries-old issue still happening across the United States, child marriage.

The organization Unchained At Last found nearly 300,000 children under the age of 18 were legally married between 2000 and 2018.

“When I talk about this issue, invariably somebody says, ‘Child marriage is that a thing?’ Well it is and it’s a problem,” said Pennsylvania state representative Perry Warren.

The new study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, noted that the age or spousal difference is significant enough it would have been considered a sex crime for 60,000 of the cases.

Now, that’s rich, given the salacious and tawdry things coming out in the Gates divorce, including Bill Gates’ connections to Jeffrey Epstein and so on. Yeah, I know, it’s a logical fallacy to point out the fallibility of an argument’s source as proving the argument incorrect, but c’mon, man. Logic does not win arguments any more. So we can forget all about arguing about the expansion of childhood to the arbitrary 18 or 21 or about how some sixteen year olds are more mature than others, and why marriage is such a bad thing for seventeen year olds.

No, let’s take the dramatic map from the article:

Now, professionals, please color in on this map the states where children on their own recognizance with the assistance of other professionals who are not their parents should be prohibited from reassigning their gender:

Wait, what? Children should not be allowed to marry until eighteen even with their parents’ advice and consent but should be allowed to irreparably alter their bodies based on their childish utterances or phases? Why is that?

Sorry, I forgot: being a professional agitator in one arena means deferring any continuity or consistency in thought. After all, you’re focused like a laser on the issue whose advocacy foundation pays your bills and will leave the other issues to the expert professionals in their advocacy foundations for that issue.