Category: News

It’s kinda dry reading, but this summary of a study indicates that older men who procreate are serving the interests of the human race, not themselves:

Evolutionary theory says that individuals should die of old age when their reproductive lives are complete, generally by age 55 in humans, according to demographer Cedric Puleston, a doctoral candidate in biological sciences at Stanford. But the fatherhood of a small number of older men is enough to postpone the date with death because natural selection fights life-shortening mutations until the species is finished reproducing.

“Rod Stewart and David Letterman having babies in their 50s and 60s provide no benefit for their personal survival, but the pattern [of reproducing at a later age] has an effect on the population as a whole,” Puleston said. “It’s advantageous to the species if these people stick around. By increasing the survival of men you have a spillover effect on women because men pass their genes to children of both sexes.”

. . . .
Human ability to scale the so-called “wall of death” — surviving beyond the reproductive years — has been a center of scientific controversy for more than 50 years, Puleston said.

Only one of our presidential candidates fits that description. Fred Thompson: selflessly vaulting the wall of death to ensure longevity for the children and our children’s children.

(Link seen on Dustbury.)

Coffee Chain Changes Name Over Concerns It’s An Ethnic Slur:

A small but growing coffeehouse chain is changing its name amid concern that the moniker meant to celebrate the seed of its main product also is a disparaging term for Hispanics.

Beaner’s Coffee, based in East Lansing, Mich., on Friday informed franchisees and employees at its 77 stores in Michigan and eight other states that it would become Biggby Coffee, effective Jan. 31.

“That just doesn’t really fall within our mission to have a name that is derogatory,” Bob Fish, 44, Beaner’s chief executive, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “We felt it was important to do the right thing and change the name.”

Also, doo-wop music shall henceforth be known as doo-biggby music.

Old Building Needs Repairs:
Kirkwood Public Library will ask voters for a 12-cent hike in the residential tax rate:

After November, Kirkwood Public Library Director Wicky Sleight hopes duct tape won’t be needed to hold the aging library’s heating and air conditioning systems together.

On Nov. 6, Kirkwood voters will be asked to approve Proposition L, a 12-cent tax increase. The current residential tax rate, approved in August, is 16.7 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, down from 19 cents in 2006.

The Kirkwood Public Library Board of Trustees on Aug. 15 voted unanimously to place the tax levy before voters.

Residents Say District To Collect More Taxes Than Needed: School board OKs tax rate for year:

Despite concerns of some residents that the Kirkwood School District is not exhibiting fair financial practices, the Kirkwood School Board on Aug. 29 approved tax rates for the 2007-08 school year at $3.75 per $100 of assessed valuation.

In 2005, voters approved an operating tax levy ceiling of $3.85 per $100 of assessed valuation.

. . . .

Board Member Ben Clark said the board could be shirking its responsibility by not taking the $3.85 limit set by the voters.

Each of the government’s priorities get siloed into independent taxes/tax districts and each of them want more, more, more. When it comes down to a single issue, who could say, “No, don’t fix the libraries; no, don’t give the police a retirement plan; no, don’t put air conditioners in the schools.”

Back in the old days, I think they had individual elected officials who made the decisions on the priorities for the town. Now each piece of the town sets its own priorities that never conflict with the priorities of other portions of the government. After all, they can always ask the residents to pay more taxes, even if it’s more than the government needs.

Not that it’s a good standard, but a black comedian has been censured for using the word nigger:

A standup routine by black comedian Eddie Griffin was stopped after he repeatedly used the N-word, a magazine’s spokesman said Wednesday.

Griffin, who has appeared in movies such as “Undercover Brother” and “Date Movie” and the TV show “Malcolm & Eddie,” was performing at a Black Enterprise magazine event in the Miami suburb of Doral on Friday when he was cut off after using profanities and the N-word, said Andrew Wadium, a spokesman for the publication.

So I guess the whole black people say it and nothing happens canard is done, so everyone who used it instead of saying what’s the point in taking offense at a single word so much that it becomes a magic word? ought to feel vindicated. But they won’t. And they shouldn’t.

That’s not what the headline says; it says Verizon agrees to pay utility tax. However, we know that’s the result; apparently, it began collecting the tax, under protest, on bills a year ago.

But here’s the howler of the article:

Municipal officials contend the companies don’t have to make the customer pay.

“I do think it is confusing,” said Tim Fischesser, executive director of the St. Louis County Municipal League. “We would prefer if the companies paid it.”

Haw haw! And you know what, municipal officials? You don’t have to collect the tax money and blow on silly schemes, either. But you do.

Newly released documents indicate WIDESPREAD TROOP ABUSES!!1!! according to the ACLU and its PR firm, AP:

Newly released documents regarding crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan detail a troubling pattern of troops failing to understand and follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions.

A troubling pattern of bajillions millions hundreds of thousands tens of thousands thousands hundreds almost dozens of incidents:

The documents, to be released today by the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, total nearly 10,000 pages of courts-martial summaries, transcripts and military investigative reports about 22 incidents.

The system is at fault because it made the soldiers do it:

They show repeated examples of soldiers believing they were within the law when they killed local residents.

Believing/insisting. Ah, how the truth is merely felt:

In the suffocation, soldiers covered the man’s head with a sleeping bag, then wrapped his neck with an electrical cord for a “stress position” they insisted was an approved technique.

Defense is gospel, unless of course, it’s the military defending itself from a lawsuit designed to….I dunno, make the military look defensive? As a defendant?

I’m glad we live under a system where this sort of thing is possible. I wish we lived in a culture where it was not so pervasive.

Jonathan Edwards identifies the first government diktat he would issue with a government-run health plan:

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

Prepare yourselves to submit yourself to an annual review by a government bureaucrat of some sort, whether it’s a government-paid “doctor” or some paper pusher at the bureau.

Better yet, prepare yourself for the unstated list of government prohibitions that will come when “public health” is funded from the government leaders’ pool of available pork money. Probable prohibitions will include:

• Tobacco.
• Alcohol.
• Junk food.
• Dangerous hobbies.
• Places in the home where you can fall.

Trending toward the absurd? What is absurd in contemporary American public policy? Certainly not building sports facilities while bridges collapse or school districts are taken over by the state; certainly not people rallying for “single payer health care” or nationalization schemes who have thought out what it means other than fewer health care checks written in their handwriting.

Waukesha man loses pants, but not his shirt:

The worst part wasn’t that Mark Stahnke woke up Monday morning in the patio chair of some neighbor he didn’t know.

Or that his pants were missing.

The worst part was the contents of his missing pants: a cashier’s check for $41,093, which he meant to give to his son, and several hundred dollars in cash that he had gotten from the bank.

Stahnke still doesn’t know what happened between the time he left a bar Sunday night and the time he woke up in some stranger’s backyard Monday morning, but thanks to an honest citizen who found the missing pants and returned all the contents to the local authorities, Stahnke retrieved his valuables Friday from the Waukesha Police Department.

He got the pants back, too.

Since governments are spending so much money building/financing venues for sports teams, shouldn’t they at least learn a lesson from the experience? Apparently, the risks of a long-term, high-dollar contract elude our elected “leaders”:

A month after the deadly Minneapolis bridge collapse, Missouri lawmakers are poised to approve a massive bridge repair project that could serve as a national roadmap for renovating aging infrastructure.

Missouri plans to quadruple the pace of its bridge repairs by awarding a single, 30-year contract to fix and maintain 802 of its worst bridges.

The sheer scope and duration of the project is so unusual that Missouri lawmakers are meeting in a special session to waive conventional contractor requirements. The House passed the plan overwhelmingly. The Senate is expected to give its final approval this week.

The key to good service is to guarantee a lot of money for a really long time.

Ill. governor sues House speaker:

The arguments over a state budget are escalating again, with Governor Rod Blagojevich suing the speaker of the Illinois House.

Blagojevich is angry that Speaker Michael Madigan has defied his proclamations requiring the Legislature to meet in special session.

Illinois. Is there anything there worth emulating?

A front page article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch outlines how faith-based organizations delivered more aid to Katrina-ravaged regions than FEMA:

The scope and scale of the devastation brought by Katrina, which crashed ashore Aug. 29, 2005, underscored the crucial role religious groups play in emergency response and recovery.

The National Council of Churches estimates that church-sponsored volunteers have produced $600 billion worth of labor for the Gulf Coast. In contrast, the total amount of federal funds spent on Katrina aid as of March was $53 billion.

Lower-overhead operations driven by their own desire to help fellow man rather than their desire to keep their jobs/budget will tend to be more efficient than the government? Hah!

“There were so many things we learned,” said John Kim Cook, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. “The framework for responding to a disaster is being revised to be more inclusive of faith-based organizations to make sure (the partnership) is improved upon and enhanced for the future.”

The government needs to keep its budget and its jobs and to manage the partnership it has with church groups better.

The lessons government teaches itself never include lessening its reach or trimming its tentacles, ainna?