Category: News

Statue task force recommends sign to contextualize Jefferson:

A sign describing both Thomas Jefferson’s accomplishments and shortcomings beside his statue on the University of Missouri campus is the main recommendation of a task force charged with putting the statue in context.

The task force was created by UM System President and MU Chancellor Mun Choi in July 2020 after student Roman Leapheart launched an online petition to get the statue removed. Choi met with Leapheart, but Choi said the statue wouldn’t be removed. Members of the UM System Board of Curators later said it was their decision, though the decision wasn’t made in a public meeting.

I kind of wonder what education is for if not to teach history which itself provides context.

Maybe kids these days just need a meme to LOL at or something.

So I am listening to an audio course lecture series on Buddhism, and it’s from the turn of the century, so it’s holding Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (formerly Burma, but so formerly that I probably don’t have to say that any more, although I probably should explain to public school kids where Burma is, but I won’t–this is the Internet. Look it up.) as an exemplary Buddhist.

I remembered the name, where she was from, and a bit about her doings before I heard the course (even though I went to public school, gentle reader, but that was in the last century, which was a whole different civilization ago). And I wondered if she was still around.

Well, apparently so.

DIVISIVE LEADER Who is Aung San Suu Kyi and why has Myanmar’s leader been arrested?

Apparently, a military coup in Myanmar has swept her government, recently reelected, from power and has returned her to her most famous state, being held prisoner by a military junta.

I will mostly spare you the blogger-stock glib quips. I have only sparsely thought of Myanmar/Burma, so I have no idea what’s going on there. They allege corruption and fraudulent elections, but that’s very common. Even in the United State in this new civilization we’ve got.

Walmart to convert dozens of stores into high-tech warehouses:

Walmart said it will convert space at dozens of its stores into high-tech warehouse space as it expects a surge in online orders for pickup and delivery will persist beyond the pandemic.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said some store locations will get divvied up while others will get additional square footage to create on-site mini-fulfillment centers, in which automated robots roam the floor to retrieve certain items and bring them to an assembly work station.

The robots will whittle the process of picking and packing orders down to “a few minutes,” Tom Ward, senior vice president of customer product in the US, said in a blog post on Wednesday.

Personal shoppers will be used, however, to retrieve fresh food like meat and produce as well as bulkier items, he said.

On occasion, when I have gone to Walmart, I seemed to see more associates picking orders than shoppers. It wasn’t true, of course, but I wondered where the tipping point would come where Walmart would just close down the stores and turn them into warehouses.

That time, apparently, is now.

Last week’s Greene County Commonwealth puts the arrival of a locally grown frozen custard shop on a timeline of important events in human history:

I mean, it’s frozen custard, yo. I’m from Milwaukee. I’ve been to Kopp’s. I’ve been to Kalt’s. They serve frozen custard just as good, and they have burgers. So.

Although I’m going to try to get “So what do you get at Andy’s?” to be the Springfield equivalent of “So where did you go to high school?”

1983 is an interesting choice for The Internet is born, though. I had to research it. That’s when ARPANet went to TCP/IP. Well, maybe that’s when the “Internet” was rebooted, but born? Also note the accompanying photo is a Web browser. Which really doesn’t become popular for another decade and change. Kids Journalists these days, huh?

Missouri senator calling for limits on local lockdowns tests positive for COVID-19

There’s no mention of his condition nor a hope for his recovery; no, just the stain of a positive test coupled with the bad things he said (that is, Republican positions on various issues), and casting wider aspersions on the Republicans who have not taken The Crisis seriously enough and have been/should be punished with the stain of a positive coronavirus test.

Nothing but making sure that everyone knows that this fellow, who thinks wrongly, bears the stain.

Maniac drives tank around neighbourhood scaring neighbours in disturbing footage:

In many parts of the US, it’s commonplace to see people carrying guns in the streets.

But even the unflappable people of Florida draw the line at a tank.

The apparently street-legal armoured vehicle is owned by a man living in the sleepy gated community of Old Cutler Road., in Palmetto Bay, a little way down the coast from Miami.

The shocked residents complaining that the tracked beast that’s been smashing up their kerbs is a “military-style” tank – to avoid any confusion with the perfectly-normal civilian-style tanks we’re all used to seeing on our roads.

Amateur video taken of the vehicle suggests it could be a current FV107 Scimitar or possibly an FV101 Scorpion, a light armoured reconnaissance vehicle that saw service with the British Army through the 70s and 80s.

It looks like the British press has typed up a local (Florida) television station’s minute-long segment on the story. Basically, the television story is some phone footage of the vehicle out on the road, a couple seconds talking about the tank, allegations that it’s destroying curbs (kerbs, as the British say), and a shot of the television report buzzing the intercom of the walled estate asking to talk to someone about the “tank.”

The British tabloid story extends it by calling the driver a “maniac” (unsupported) and identifying the vehicle not as a tank but a British scout vehicle (to women, apparently, all military vehicles with guns look like tanks, which is why when you’re picking you’re Civil War II fantasy team, you should probably leave the anti-armor to the boys, he said, incrementing the variable in the algorithm to his eventual deplatforming with a +1).

I mean, come on now. Let the guy drive his street-legal British scout vehicle in peace.

Here in Missouri, I have seen a number of pieces of post-military equipment out on the roads, generally on the way to an event or parade or perhaps on loan on loan for small-budget local movie shoots.

This is America, [Union] Jack. There’s a rifle behind every blade of grass, and there just might be a privately owned armored vehicle behind every wall.

The polar vortex is about to split again, and it could bring a ‘big’ winter storm by MLK Day

Polar vortex? Ho-hum.

What about a nuclear snowwicane? A neutron coldaclysm?

I mean, snow bomb and bomb cyclone have already been taken.

Meanwhile, in Britain, speaking of which, the tabloids are talking about an ALL CAPS STORM whose weather has not been seen in the north of England since… since…. Well, I saw it at the beginning of Wuthering Heights, but I’m going to go out on a limb that I am one of the few who has recently.

This being Springfield, I’ll believe it when I see it. This leading story from the local paper looks to be, beyond the headline, the weather over the weekend for New England and the very eastern edges of the midwest.

You know, where the important people live.

On the other hand, teams from down south are going to be playing in Buffalo and Green Bay, so that might be fun to watch.

Springfield area Family Videos will soon close for good.

As you might recall, gentle reader, I joined Family Video in 2017 and went on a slow-motion binge of renting movies for a while. After that summer and running the boys up to pick various movies for their days at home, I kind of fell out of the habit, although I was just in on Christmas Eve because I wanted to rent Scrooged but had to settle for It’s a Wonderful Life.

The stores are closing not just because of Covid traffic levels, but because the cinema releases getting pushed off meant new video releases were getting pushed off and because studios were bypassing video releases for their own streaming services.

I hope someone grabs a bunch of the stores’ inventory and opens a smaller video shop, but maybe not. Its time might truly have passed.

Meanwhile, I have to think whether I am going to try to snatch up some of those DVDs for myself. Because I am not eager to spend a bunch of ten dollar bills every month to watch what the studios and multinational conglomerates want me to see (which is why I joined Family Video in the first place).

Democrats In Majority: Democratic Candidates Win All Three Georgia Senate Seats.

C’mon, man: it’s Common Core math. And Civics.

The front page of NYPost.com:

On top, we have the paper going after a Hollywood evangelical for holding an event to pray for the country. The tone, of course, is look at the funny Christian.

The next headline down? Protesters vandalize St. Patrick’s Cathedral early New Year’s Day.

I ask you, gentle reader: Are these headlines culturally related? I would think so. I won’t say that Christians are the only group that one can easily marginalize safely in this, the third decade of the 21st century–skeptics who don’t believe in Received Science^TM also come to mind. But this looks to be an attempt to dunk on a Christian who was on television before the journalist who wrote the story was born. And othering the Christians is what leads to vandalism against Christians and perhaps eventual violence against Christians. It’s happened before, and it happens now elsewhere in the world.

The Air Force Is Building a Spacecraft That Will Beam Solar Power to Earth

(Link via VodkaPundit at Instapundit.)

Come on. A large truck bomb blows up a central telecommunications office that brought down a whole lot of communications equipment, 911 centers, and whatnot, after playing warnings and then Petula Clark’s “Downtown” from a speaker, and the feds are looking to see if it’s some anti-5G thing?

It’s step one in a grand heist of some sort. We all know it.

Get John McClane on it.

I saw this headline at a British tabloid and remembered I used one of her photo spreads as a Rule 5 post: ‘SO SUDDEN’ Stella Tennant dead aged 50 – Victoria Beckham and Stella McCartney lead tributes to model and ex-Vogue star.

The Rule 5 post is High Concept (II) from 2012.

I guess she did some other things besides appearing on this blog. And in the WSJ magazine spread that I made mock of back then.

Only 50. Which is awfully close to how old I am now. I have taken to reading obits in the various papers I take, not so much to see if I recognize anyone (I won’t) but to root for the deceased to be in their late eighties or early nineties. Because I’d like to think I have plenty of time to do those things even though I know I probably won’t.

World Chase Tag marathon set to air Dec. 23.

You know, the proliferation of sports channels is likely to help kill them all.

In the news today:

• Mysterious monolith found in Utah desert has disappeared.
• Dave Prowse, actor who played Darth Vader, dies at 85.

The world is a much more interesting place when you have a vivid imagination. Or are slightly crack’d.

Well, here we are in 2020.

Man seen exhaling on protesters outside Trump golf club charged with assault

On optimist would say we have nowhere to go but up.

I am not an optimist.

The description of the suspect from Saturday’s post on a shooting at Mayfair Mall was:

“Preliminary statements from witnesses indicate that the shooter is a white male in his 20s or 30s,” Weber told reporters. “Investigators are working on determining the identity of that suspect.”

Turns out:

Police had said Friday that witnesses described the shooter as a white man in his 20s or 30s. But Weber described the suspect as a 15-year-old Hispanic boy. His firearm was recovered during the arrest.

Hey, I understand the mix-up. Everyone under 35 looks like a damn kid to me, so I can easily confuse someone who is fifteen for someone who is thirty and vice-versa.