Category: News

Branson fire crews working natural gas leak that may have caused an explosion at a hotel:

Fire crews in Branson are actively investigating a natural gas leak at a hotel in Branson that may have caused an explosion.

Witnesses told KY3 they saw an explosion at the hotel, and pictures sent to KY3 show blown-out windows. According to the city of Branson, it was at the Spark by Hilton, located at 263 Shepherd of the Hills Expressway.

As I often say, not every Hilton that I’ve stayed at has caught fire, but every hotel I’ve stayed at that caught fire was a Hilton.

Series of explosions on buses in Israel are suspected to be a militant attack, authorities say

One suspects the authorities would not follow the AP Style Guide of Moral Equivalence.

‘Fed up’ brother kills ‘bullying’ sister and shoots parents, claiming family ‘gangs up on him’ for being broke and unemployed: Police

This occurred in near the apartment complex where I first lived in the 1970s before we moved to the projects. I just mentioned them last August.

(Link via Wirecutter.)

Springfield cookie store is asking for help finding teens who stole tip jar

Although they have security camera footage, the media is blurring the faces of the youths.

Presumably because they’re juveniles.

But it runs counter to the stated purpose of the article.

Also not in the article: any physical description of the youths.

Tucked into a story entitled Bill Gates says he will never downsize from his mega-mansion with 24 bathrooms — despite being a single empty-nester, we get this declaration:

Xanadu 2.0 — which he named as an ode to the 1941 film “Citizen Kane” — is the epitome of billionaire luxury, featuring six kitchens, 24 bathrooms, an indoor trampoline room, a private library and a swimming pool equipped with an underwater music system.

An ode, gentle reader. An ode. Xanadu is from Citizen Kane. Ye gods.

I’ve done an Internet search to see if Gates himself called it Xanadu 2.0 or if others did, but it’s unclear. Maybe it’s deep in the book The Road Ahead which I have not read, I don’t think, and I don’t think I have a copy of in the Nogglestead library which is odd. It was like Wayne characterized Frampton Comes Alive–it was so ubiquitous in the 1990s and in used book stores and sales for a decade thereafter that it seemed like everyone had a copy that they did not read.

I found one active link that to a story that says the house was called Xanadu in a subheadline (which seems to be the source of the assertion in the Wikipedia entry on Gates’s house. I guess nobody thought of calling it La Cuesta Encantada 2.0. But that would have required not only reading more than a Wikipedia entry but also maybe knowing what Citizen Kane was about. So cinematic history or history of the profession of journalism. Either would have worked.

I’m just here to slag on journalists, whom I suspect do not read almost 100 books, including classics, every year. Because they’re busy tracking down stories by reading the Internet instead.

Oh, and if you’re looking for my comment on Gates owning a very large house (well, several) with no intention of downsizing: So what? I don’t think I would, either, especially since it has a sweet library.

Family survives wrong-way crash on James River Freeway:

A series of wrong-way crashes on the James River Freeway this month, including one that sent a mother and her two children spinning across the highway, raises concerns about driver safety.

Weird how all these crashes are occurring in the area where they’ve added a bunch of diverging diamond interchanges and where they’ve been tampering with traffic patterns for years and not on the parts of US 60 with lights or more traditional on ramps and off ramps.

Probably will be a couple of years (or decades) before Experts and Professionals make a connection. Until then, I guess it’s up to us conspiracy theorists.

Oh, I know: Many of these drivers are intoxicated, and maybe some of them are not from around here, you know. But I would expect that an impaired driver might have a better chance of navigating a regular interchange than something with a lot of atypical loops and whorls.

The exciting new designs, each one different!, might look good in the sketchbooks, artists’ depictions, and the awards ceremonies and magazines, but they’re a lot less fun when you’re trying to drive them at night or in the rain even when unimpaired.

UPDATE: Props to Facebook who is on it in providing me with related content after I posted this morning:

Full disclosure: I have been a skeptic of this particular traffic pattern for a long time (I posted about them and roundabouts in a post in 2011 responding to Steven Den Beste, pbuh). And this is before I almost got creamed at a one such interchange in Joplin where I was driving the family to an athletic event some, jeez Louise, five or six years ago now. No doubt I would have been coming down the ramp to Range Line Road after having driven directly into the sunset and small city traffic. I didn’t realize the underpass was a double diamond–most of our interchanges in Springfield at the time went over the highway (although we have a couple under the highway now), so I yielded and as nothing was coming from my left, I made my right. Ha, ha! Joke was on me! The lanes immediately to the left were the southbound traffic which would have not been coming my way–southbound traffic was stopped at the light to my right across the lanes because the northbound traffic had a green light–and it was coming at 40 miles an hour on the lanes across the roadway, obscured by the pillars and jersey barriers in the middle of the road. I would say I got tootled at, but that’s not the sound of a 40 mile an hour vehicle surprised you would be so impudent as to pull out before it.

I did not get creamed, but I am very sympathetic to drivers who don’t recognize the interchange type and do something foolish. Even impaired ones.

‘Planet parade’ to light up the sky through the end of the month:

The end of January has a wonderful surprise in store for stargazers.

Just by looking up, you’ll be able to catch a glimpse of some planets shining brightly in the night sky.

Wait a minute. If you’re telling us about it in advance, it’s not much of a surprise now, is it?

Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar closing in downtown Springfield

A downtown Springfield hotspot is closing.

In a Facebook post, the owners of Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar announced that this would be its final weekend. They blamed financial challenges for the decision to shut down.

Downtown Springfield has seen another wave of closures recently for evening entertainment. Not sure if it’s really due to crime, homelessness (some overlap), or the challenging economy. Heaven knows I’ve only been downtown at night a couple of times over the last couple of years. Well, I’ve been to the local business co-working space for development meetings, but not for dinner and certainly not for drinks.

But “hotspots” don’t tend to close for financial reasons.

Full disclosure: We actually went to Ernie Biggs for drinks on our anniversary twelve years ago. So maybe I’m the problem by not supporting the downtown nightlife.

Jesus’ real name wasn’t Jesus, scientists claim — here’s why

Scientists have discovered:

• Jesus did not speak English.
• Jesus was not born in the Anglosphere at all.
• Jesus was born a long time ago.
• Different languages have different words…. and sounds!
• History was a long time ago. Like before Trump was president the first time.

The scientists in question are not actually scientists at all.

None of the information in the article is actually news to practicing Christians who attend a church and understand how the Bible came about.

But it’s news to a journalist, and perhaps is proof that Christianity IS BUILT ON LIES!!!!!!

The headline: CNN host Wolf Blitzer roasted for NFL TV setup after fans spot ‘veteran’ detail.

What, was something plugged in incorrectly? A slice of cheese on the uncooked meat, metaphorically speaking? Nah: Twitter just is dumb kids:

While Blitzer has been waiting a long time to witness his Bills lift the Lombardi Trophy, it appears it’s been even longer since he bought a new television.

According to his own photo, the reporter owns a very old school home entertainment setup, featuring a plasma screen television, DVD, VHS and CD players, and at least four difference remotes.

Social media users were quick to roast Blitzer for his ‘veteran’ setup as many urged him to upgrade his setup to more modern standards.

‘Love the two VCR’s. Can rewind one while watching another. Veteran move,’ one fan posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

‘Bro is stuck in the 80’s with his furniture and TV. I thought @CNN paid better. Viewership must be way down,’ another added.

‘Like most grandparents, 20 year old tv with 20 year old peripherals,’ a third said, suggesting Blitzer wouldn’t be the sole member of his generation with a similar setup.

Yeah, dumb kids. Thanks to the news media for reporting the tweets of the uninformed, who will watch, briefly, the latest streaming pap or approved wokelderized versions of classics. Who own nothing and pretend to like it on the Internet.

Nogglestead’s peripherals are older than that. Even the television, big screen projection model that it is, is coming up on 20 years old. And I have almost fifty-year-old gaming systems hooked up.

I would pretend to get worked up about Twitter kidz (who might be 40 years old these days), but I cannot even pretend anymore. It’s all so tiresome.

Postal customers say they’re fed up with backlog of mail sitting in Springfield’s post office

I guess it’s not just me wondering about whether we’ve reached the “then quickly” part of the death of the USPS.

The reporters reached out to the Springfield post office where a man’s drugs-by-mail sat unmoved for days, and their response echoed that of the Postmaster General:

I only reiterate these problems because post offices have been a hallmark of a growing functional country. I mean, one of the only good things to come out of the Qin Shi Huang dynasty in China was a post office, and Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General of the United States over two hundred years ago. A government organization which cannot do its function but instead does oh, so many other things of lesser value is really a fin de siècle symptom.

We watched the holiday movie Die Hard 2: Die Harder last night, and today we learn Die Hard 2 star dies after long health battle as heartbroken wife pays tribute

It was Art Evans, who played the engineer Barnes.

I need to stop reading and watching anything since people I read or watch keep dying.

I have been listening to KCSM, the Bay Area’s jazz station, streaming during the workdays recently to shake things up as WSIE has a pretty limited playlist.

As such, I heard the National Weather Service trigger the emergency broadcast system, and it was not a test. And it was not something we hear when the sounders go off here in Missouri: It was a tsunami warning.

Fortunately, it did not wipe anyone off the beach:

National Weather Service cancels tsunami warning for U.S. West Coast after 7.0 earthquake.

I feel a little like a world traveler and haven’t left my office.

Young men leaving traditional churches for ‘masculine’ Orthodox Christianity in droves:

As more and more Protestant churches unfurl Pride flags and Black Lives Matter banners in front of their gates, young men are trending toward more traditional forms of worship.

A survey of Orthodox churches around the country found that parishes saw a 78% increase in converts in 2022, compared with pre-pandemic levels in 2019. And while historically men and women converted in equal numbers, vastly more men have joined the church since 2020.

Pop Protestantism, perhaps. But such are not ‘traditional’ in any sense of the word.

Authorities would have been okay with firearms and cocaine. But firearms, cocaine, and chickens? Down comes the hammer.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is a Gannett paper, so there’s no way to read the article to see if it was fighting chickens and perhaps the attendant gambling, but one can speculate.

Given that it’s in the Entertainment section, perhaps.

Will these Missouri GOP leaders swear to defend abortion rights? We asked..

Yeah, the young people in charge of “journalism” made a beeline to ask Republicans if they would swear their oath of office even though the constitution now says to kill babies on demand based on a rather narrow ballot initiative that was ready to go in the event of the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade.

Gotcha, Republicans! Are you going to not swear into office now?

What a daft piece of work this is. I don’t recollect any such things when legislators passed restrictions for the Democrats whether they would follow the dictates of laws passed by the legislature to restrict abortion when the Supreme Court passed this back to the states. No, all those stories were about how the states were violating Roe vs. Wade. Laws that could be overturned by other laws passed by legislators.

Instead, we get continued ballot initiative abuse, where instead of representative government, we get One Man, One Vote, Once lawmaking via driving turnout in a particular election.

And prepare yourself for the tut-tutting inherent in stories like ‘Voters want restrictions’; State rep from West County wants abortion restrictions back on ballot where an elected official wants to use the system to reverse what the broken system has wrought.

You know, gentle reader, I am only a little cynical, and I don’t get out much, but I bet people with clipboards appeared in various places on Wednesday morning to gather signatures for another Constitutional Amendment to undo this constitutional amendment.

Because in addition to being a moral question and a sacrament of modern liberalism, the abortion question is big business on both sides. And it won’t be solved until it stops being big national business.

Meanwhile, if you will excuse me, I will be over here supporting the local pregnancy resource center that helps pregnant women at risk.