To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Radioactive scorpion venom may help treat brain cancer:
The search for cancer cures can at times produce some curious treatments, but the latest study just might stun you.
Neurosurgeons at St. Louis University are among the doctors injecting radioactive scorpion toxin directly into the brains of patients with a deadly brain cancer.
When you think about this and the use of botox for cosmetic purposes, we might be now living in the golden age of intaking deadly substances for medical benefit.
Buy My Books!
Remember, citizen, your property rights are conferred upon you by your government. As this story illustrates, your government can arrest you and run you out of town at its displeasure at your standards of maintenance:
An inspection found the homeowner in violation of five housing laws. The roof was too worn; the driveway was cracked and shifted; the trim, siding, doors and windows had exposed surfaces from a lack of paint; there was open storage alongside the house and in the backyard; and the posts that once held up a fence needed to come down.
Despite the letter, the violations remained. Court dates came and went. Hordesky didn’t show. In March, the municipal judge issued warrants for his arrest. Ellisville police officers searched for him at his house. No one answered the door, but the back entrance was unlocked. They later went inside and snapped pictures.
The house was deemed a health hazard, and the electricity and gas were turned off. A condemnation notice was stapled to the front door. The city brought in St. Louis County’s Problem Properties Unit, which routinely handles similar cases. Jeff Young and Rehagen, the two inspectors who work the southern half of the county, have a caseload of roughly 135 properties. They encounter hoarders often, but seldom in upscale neighborhoods.
The day of his arrest, Hordesky posted a $500 bond. After discussions with the Problem Properties Unit, Hordesky eventually agreed to sell the house. He recently provided the city prosecutor with a sales contract, and the closing date is in mid-August.
Please, don’t offer defenses of the community here, for we cannot have a discussion. A priori we differ enough that I won’t want to hear exactly what arbitrary standard you feel justifies this government taking.
Buy My Books!
When searching for a scapegoat or man-made entity to shake its impotent fist at after the recent storms, the city of St. Louis settles on Ameren UE:
City officials expressed frustration today that Ameren Corp. has kept them in the dark while more than half of the city remains without power.
Mayor Francis Slay — whose own home has lost power — said the utility has been “playing it very close to the vest” about when power would be restored to St. Louis.
“They have been very, very vague,” Slay said in a briefing to aldermen at City Hall. “They don”t really promise anything specifically — I think intentionally so.”
Dear politicians:
When dealing with actual concrete things, such as incompletely troubleshot interruptions of service, undiagnosed downed lines, and incomplete timetables of unknown repairs on undiscovered problems, people in the real world don’t make rash promises that they probably cannot meet. Although this is commonplace in your industry, how about you just shut your yap, sweat with your constituents, and never consider about how your efforts to hamstring public utilities might actually have helped lead to the situation you’re in now?
Nah, nevermind. Use this as a pretext to puff your three-pieced chest up and to further meddle with all the incompetent power of preening government.
Buy My Books!
How can we feel national pride in our deadly heat waves?
At least six deaths have been blamed on the heat, and the weather was suspected in at least three others.
Compare to the more nuanced, reasonable, and thoroughly progressive, socialist-minded continent, as demonstrated by France:
The death toll in France from August’s [2003] blistering heat wave has reached nearly 15,000, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday, surpassing a prior tally by more than 3,000.
Scientists at INSERM, the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, deduced the toll by determining that France had experienced 14,802 more deaths than expected for the month of August.
Hopefully, government intervention, regulation, and meddling can solve the crisis we’re having in the lack of actual deaths in our deadly heat wave.
Buy My Books!
The words: the "market." The you: The Brookings Institution:
Low-income residents of 13 cities across the nation pay extra for many everyday services, sometimes thousands of dollars more over a whole year, a study to be released today shows.
By taking out higher-interest mortgages, shopping at rent-to-own furniture stores, using check-cashing businesses instead of banks and buying groceries at convenience stores, the nation’s working poor households pay much more than moderate- and high-income households for life’s essentials, says the Brookings Institution study, which analyzed services in San Francisco, Oakland and 11 other cities.
The report — “From Poverty, Opportunity: Putting the Market to Work for Lower-Income Families” — calls on government officials to create laws to curb services that gouge low-income consumers, and it proposes reproducing fledgling programs the authors found across the country.
No word on whether how the Brookings Institution wants businesses to recoup their losses on the higher default rates of those in poverty. Perhaps the government should just create laws to curb poverty, risk, and rain on days you wanted to go for a bike ride since it’s that easy.
Buy My Books!
Oh, sorry, I guess it’s not really Satanism, just a prosecutor using a law targeting Satanism creatively to punish someone who abused her child:
Boone County Circuit Judge Gary Oxenhandler sentenced Erma McKinney on Monday to 21 years for assault, 10 years for child abuse, eight years for child endangerment, and seven years for child endangerment in a ritual or ceremony. McKinney will serve the first three sentences concurrently and the last one consecutively.
McKinney was convicted in May.
The ritual or ceremony charge was brought because McKinney told police she punished her son with a hot shower more than once.
I demand my legislators do something! and make sure that assault with an active shower head is an additional felony, because 30 years just ain’t enough.
Buy My Books!
As jets soar, so does temperature:
The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for the Milwaukee area today, cautioning residents – who sweated through highs in the mid-90s on Saturday – to prepare for even higher temperatures and humidity.
The advisory, the first of its kind this year, is expected to be in effect until Monday morning.
Darrin Hansing, a meteorologist with the weather service in Sullivan, advised residents to stay indoors and drink plenty of fluids.
“Heat exhaustion and heatstroke are very possible in these types of situations if people don’t take the proper precautions,” he said.
Little relief is in sight until the end of the week.
The weather service predicts a hot and humid day today, with highs in the upper 90s. Residents can expect 90-degree days until Thursday afternoon, said Peter Speicher, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sullivan.
“There’s a front coming in from the northwest,” he said.
Milwaukee hit a high of 94 on Saturday.
Temperatures in Fond du Lac climbed to 95 and reached a high of 91 in Lone Rock. It was 97 in Sheboygan and 93 in Madison, Kenosha and Racine.
No, wait, somewhere around paragraph 24, after all the normal admonishments to turn on your air conditioners, you freaking northerners, and don’t put the pets in the sweat lodge, we get the tie to the weekend air show:
The Milwaukee Fire Department also set up three sprinkler tents around the Veterans Park area for the TCF Bank Air Expo on Saturday, Lt. Tim Halbur said.
We then get a couple short paragraphs about the air show and how people coped with the French-killing temperatures at the air show. I guess that’s where the Journal-Sentinel sent its photographers to cover the heat wave, or maybe it couldn’t afford to take pictures of and write stories about both the heat wave and the air show, so the paper did its part in conserving energy by combining the two stories in a surprising and haphazard way.
Buy My Books!
Inspiration here: Don’t gobble up slick tricks — get Fido a pro: It takes more than fake certifications to make a pet sitter:
So how can you find this trustworthy soul? It makes sense to start with a referral from someone you know and respect, like a friend or veterinarian, preferably someone who has actually used this sitter’s services.
You can also look in the phone book under “Pet Sitting Services” or check with an organization such as the Humane Society, or a local shelter or rescue group. I found a wonderful sitter for my greyhound, Elvis, through the referral program of Golden State Greyhound Adoption. My sole concern has been that sometimes I suspect he prefers her to me.
No doubt the government-solves-everything crowd and the organized pet sitters with organizations and whatnot know that their preferred solution is a license.
Author of the piece identifies some handy due dilligence for selecting a pet sitter in a free marketplace, but caveat emptor can always be solved when you knock out that damn laissez-faire. Both are foreign words anyway, too good for us Americans.
Buy My Books!
Somehow, I’m not sure whether the government should be in the business of determining whether cows are happy enough:
Fears that big operations will muscle out family farms have produced a backlash, including a boycott by the Organic Consumers Association against the country’s biggest organic milk brand, Horizon Organic.
Organic farmers and consumer groups hope the Agriculture Department will level the field. The agency is considering whether to mandate that milk bearing the “USDA Organic” seal come from cows that have significant access to pasture, a move smaller producers say would give them the protection they need.
The whole marketing story used to be that organic junk was better for the consumer, healthier and all that. One would think that corporate economies of scale applied to organics, yielding more healthy consumers, would be a good thing. But not if corporations are involved; then the marketing story switches to more green, cow happiness (which corporations cannot/do not provide):
Chris Hoffman drank Horizon milk until she learned about the dispute and switched brands.
The resident of Sherburne, N.Y., said she’d thought she was buying milk from “family farms with happy cows.” To her, feedlot milk does not follow the spirit of organic farming.
“I just think it’s patently dishonest. And it just really ticked me off,” she said.
The spirit of organic farming, apparently, is protectionism, anti-marketism and anti-consumerism, and creation of artificial price floors to support people who thought that working in a niche market with a pricing minimum would pay off and later discovered, to their own financial (greed!) horror, that when their niche became mainstream, it proved to be less lucrative.
It’s not about the cows, it’s about the cash cows.
Buy My Books!
Rail manufacturers, tar producers, and chicken plucking futures have just gone up! Explosion injures two Mallinckrodt workers:
Two employees of Mallinckrodt Inc. suffered minor injuries this morning in a flash fire that occurred while one of them was mixing chemicals.
St. Louis Fire Department Capt. Steve Simpson said the explosion occurred when dust was ignited, possibly from static electricity. It happened at Building 235 at the Mallinckrodt complex at 3700 N. Broadway at about 10:20 a.m.
Those of us who watched the Praxair accident aftermath (my coverage here, here, and here) have to wonder if Mallinckrodt will suffer the same banishment for the industrial accident, or if there are other criteria which a company meet to draw the ire of the government of the city of St. Louis, such as:
Either way, if the city doesn’t punish the company, it will demonstrate once again the fickle nature of our governments and prove that businesses and citizens exist, live, and do business at the leisure of the regal ruling class.
Buy My Books!
Missouri Democratic Party to pay $20,000 campaign finance fine:
The Federal Election Commission has imposed a $20,000 fine on the Missouri Democratic Party for violating federal campaign finance laws during the 2002 election.
The fine — part of a negotiated settlement — comes less than a year after the party paid a separate $110,000 fine to resolve similar allegations from the 2000 election.
Of course, it reflects more on the labyrinth of campaign finance violations that make it an incredibly violation-fraught journey to try to run for political office in this country than actual corruption. Too bad for the Missouri Democrats.
Oddly, Fired Up! Missouri doesn’t mention this story.
Buy My Books!
Story: Legal bills drain money from public coffers: $100 million paid to attorneys in past 5 years:
Lawyer bills ate up close to $100 million in local tax dollars over the past five years in the five-county metro area, and legal spending by municipalities is on the rise, a Journal Sentinel analysis shows.
Of course, the Journal-Sentinel wants to point the finger at greedy lawyers who suck up all that public money. Personally, since the Journal-Sentinel tends to like spending public money and suing your way to justice or retribution, I find it disingenuous that the paper makes an issue of the combination. But it does.
You want to know what really burns up the people’s money when it comes to legal expenses? Governments suing governments, whether municipalities suing each other, local governments suing regional governments, state governments suing the federal government, or peer agencies suing each other. Such as:
Nah, that’s not wasting the people’s money on legal fees. Not if there’s a chance for a higher office for the right-thinking sort of person involved.
Buy My Books!
To emus from overrunning the neighborhood at up to 35 miles per hour, the neighborhood of Compton Heights has taken extreme measures:
This kid’s pet was not the typical dog or cat, but the world’s longest lizard, a rare – and, to some people, beautiful – animal called the crocodile monitor. It looks like a tiny dinosaur with teeth like razors and a bullwhip for a tail. It is very aggressive. It dines on birds and medium-sized rats.
Now it is missing.
The crocodile monitor escaped from its cage and is assumed still to be roaming the streets of St. Louis’ Compton Heights neighborhood, fending for itself and potentially scaring people.
The introduction of a predator to take care of the largely bulletproof flightless birds will likely save the police department money on ordnance it would spend on dangerous emus, which can act aggressive and elusive to anyone they meet. Carbondale police are watching with interest to see how the Compton Heights program works on controlling the emu population, as well as small yippy dog population, before unleashing exotic predators, anaconda or perhaps dingos, in the small university town.
Buy My Books!
It’s getting hard to tell them apart, with philosophies like this:
The surgeon general’s recent report on the hazards of secondhand smoke could spawn the next big summer sequel: Smoking Ban II.
Last year a controversial attempt to ban smoking in all public buildings died a slow, public death in the St. Louis County Council.
But the failed ban’s author, Council Chairman Kurt Odenwald, R-Shrewsbury, says the new report has led him to consider another run at the issue.
“After this report, I don’t think anyone can say this is not a health issue anymore,” Odenwald said. “The dangers of secondhand smoke are real. They are not hogwash, and I think we need to address them.”
When it comes to keeping a check on the government’s regulation of individual property rights, our elected leaders and the unelected agitators for legislation usurping personal dominion over personal property seem to espouse the philosophy: Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky always.
Buy My Books!
L.A. yoga guru accused of running illegal studio:
Los Angeles prosecutors charged “hot yoga” guru Bikram Choudhury with operating a yoga studio without a permit and other violations that could land the controversial instructor in jail.
Choudhury, his landlord American Sunroof Corp. and company president Christian Prechter were each charged on Thursday with 10 criminal counts including operating without a certificate, overcrowding the yoga studio and not maintaining emergency exits. Each faces a maximum sentence of six months in jail for each count, and/or a $1,000 fine.
As his attorney would tell you, that’s a weak set of twigs to bind together into something with which to beat this instructor.
But, ladies and gentlemen, our activist, “Doing Something!” legislatures have given prosecutors with agenda the ability to legally beat upon the “criminals” using a bunch of lilliputian laws that could bind any one of us.
Sure, this prosecutor isn’t actually beating nor killing this fellow, but it’s just close enough for the Chinese to say that they’re dealing with their oddball religions/exercise programs the same way.
And just close enough that our own consciences will pull up short when it comes to sanctioning the Chinese. After all, we’re no different.
Buy My Books!
St. Louis Post-Dispatch dramatic headline: Bush rallies crowd to back war. However, the story indicates this might be an understatement:
President George W. Bush used his visit to St. Louis on Wednesday to make his case to local soldiers and supporters that the nation must persevere in Iraq and Afghanistan to safeguard America’s security.
His approach, he declared, is “not based on political polls or focus groups,” but on the belief that “we must stay on the offense in order to protect America.”
“The American people expect the government to protect them,” Bush told an enthusiastic crowd of 500 at a fundraising dinner for U.S. Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton. [Emphasis mine]
Yeah, this was more Henry V at Harfleur than Mark Antony at The Forum.
Buy My Books!
Sure, insurance against RIAA lawsuits sounds good, until you realize that the RIAA could just subpoena the insurance company and sue all of its customers on the presumption of guilt. Who would buy this insurance besides those who need it?
(Link also seen on Dustbury.)
Buy My Books!
Let me, prognosticator of unintended consequences, tell you what this Supreme Court decision means:
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The ruling, a strong rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.
If the executive branch and the military must apply United States constitutional protections to enemies captured on the battlefields of foreign wars, it will capture fewer enemies.
The Supreme Court has sentenced those who would have been captured to death.
Buy My Books!
From the dramatic story entitled "Suspect steals county patrol car in Berkeley; suspect, officer injured", we have this suspenseful episode:
The suspect drove the stolen police car for some time while surrounding police agencies attempted to stop him. The police car stopped for a short time at Suburban and Mueller streets in Ferguson. Then the suspect suddenly put the car in reverse and rammed a Cool Valley police car. At that moment officers from more than one police agencies fire shots at the suspect, all missing.[sic]
Fortunately, the suspect was acting aggressively and elusively with anyone he met, but he could not run 35 mile per hour, and both of these criteria must be met for instant execution.
Buy My Books!
New Surgeon General’s Report Focuses on the Effects of Secondhand Smoke:
“The health effects of secondhand smoke exposure are more pervasive than we previously thought,” said Surgeon General Carmona, vice admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service. “The scientific evidence is now indisputable: secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance. It is a serious health hazard that can lead to disease and premature death in children and nonsmoking adults.” Secondhand smoke contains more than 50 cancer-causing chemicals, and is itself a known human carcinogen. Nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke inhale many of the same toxins as smokers. Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and increases risk for heart disease and lung cancer, the report says.
To quote Dean Yeager, “Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!”
Science is the most pragmatic of human endeavors, in that one only believes something is true because even if overwhelming evidence is in favor of a conclusion, science should only be 99% sure, reserving that 1% in recognition of human fallability. I’ve not seen all the data nor all the studies–like many, I’ve only seen the big exclamations from the studies which support the claim about second hand smoke and the vital italicizations of studies that dispute it which were funded by Big Tobacco!
But one thing I’m sure of: I doubt the "scientist" who says he has indisputable proof or an inarguable conclusion because that sort of scientist has mounted a bank and is trying to sell something.
(As some of you know, my beautiful wife vigorously disagrees with me, and I might be sleeping on the couch for the foreseeable future.)
Buy My Books!