To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Looks like everyone’s running with this story today: Study finds we’re human-chimp hybrid.
Revel in the logic, friends. It’s GNUs Not Unix all over again. We, humans, are a cross between humans and chimps. The humans that they crossed with the chimps were a cross between humans and chimps. Which in turn must have been human and chimp hybrids.
Sloppy headlines reveal sloppy thinking. And we get a lot of that in the papers today, ainna?
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Some creative pruning of firearms:
He brought a rifle to school Monday. The stalk had been cut off the gun. Benton was arrested.
(Link seen on Ravenwood’s Universe.)
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The CEO of Boeing gives a speech at Saint Louis University, sponsored by the Boeing Institute of International Business at SLU’s John Cook Business School. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Boeing chief skips mention of scandal in speech:
Boeing Co. Chairman Jim McNerney’s first public speech in St. Louis was filled with historical references: Lewis and Clark, the real story behind the invention of the Post-it and why aviation pioneer James S. McDonnell set up shop here nearly 70 years ago.
However, in his speech on Tuesday, McNerney steered clear of a recent development in Boeing’s history: a $615 million settlement with the Justice Department that allows Boeing to avoid admitting wrongdoing and criminal prosecution on corruption charges.
"Reporter" Tim McLaughlin goes on to list a number of scandals and shoddy business practices that preceded the CEO’s assumption of the Chief Executive post. McLaughlin then throws in an aside to why he thinks the CEO should half turned the collegiate appearance into a weepy, mea-culpa Oprahesque piece of failure and redemption at the audience’s pity:
Not mentioning the scandals and the subsequent tentative settlement in the speech was notable, given that McNerney left 3M Co. to rebuild Boeing’s reputation.
That’s nothing but a self-justification for this particular story list of anti-Boeing bullet points.
Meanwhile, we at MfBJN note that McLaughlin didn’t bother to mention the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s declining circulation or job cuts in this article. We have to wonder why not?
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch today makes equivalent two statements from two very different men (Guards on border: Bistate leaders splitting on plan).
Missouri Governor Matt Blunt:
“As commander in chief of the Missouri National Guard, I stand ready to assist in the border control efforts the president outlined and know that Missouri’s men and women in uniform are more than prepared for this challenge,” Blunt said.
“Missouri’s National Guard personnel have answered the call of our federal government many times in the past and were among the first in the nation to help the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast last year. It is a high honor for me to be associated with such a committed group of patriots,” he said.
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich:
But Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said that after five years during which Bush had largely ignored immigration issues, he should not seek to boost border security in a manner Blagojevich said would be at the expense of homeland security.
He said Bush had already left National Guard units underequipped and stretched too thin, and he expressed concern that the Guard would be weakened further if it were now asked to police the borders, said his deputy press secretary, Abby Ottenhoff. States rely on the National Guard to respond to disasters at home.
The governor called for more answers from Bush about how he plans to protect states if Guard units are diverted to the nation’s borders.
Of course, they have two different biographies.
Matt Blunt, Missouri’s 54th governor was elected on November 2, 2004, carrying 101 of Missouri’s 114 counties.
Governor Blunt was born November 20, 1970 in Springfield, Missouri. He attended public schools in Strafford, and graduated from Jefferson City High School prior to entering the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
Prior to his election as governor, Matt Blunt served as an active duty Naval Officer, as a member of the Missouri General Assembly (District 139) and as Missouri’s 37th Secretary of State.
Governor Blunt graduated from the Naval Academy in May 1993 with a bachelor of science degree in history. He went on to serve as an Engineering Officer aboard the USS JACK WILLIAMS (FFG-24) and as the Navigator and Administrative Officer on the USS PETERSON (DD-969).
Governor Blunt’s active duty service included participation in Operation Support Democracy, involving the United Nations blockade of Haiti, missions to interdict drug traffic off the South American coast, and on duties involved in the interdiction of Cuban migrants in 1994.
During his Naval career, Governor Blunt received numerous commendations, including four Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medals.
Governor Blunt is the only statewide official in Missouri history called to active military duty in wartime, serving for six months in Operation Enduring Freedom, America’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He is currently serving as a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserves.
Rod R. Blagojevich was sworn in as the 40th Governor of Illinois on January 13, 2003.
As Illinois’ chief executive officer, Gov. Blagojevich is working aggressively to create jobs, build stronger communities, provide Illinois families the tools they need to improve their lives, and restore the people’s confidence in state government.
Gov. Blagojevich’s top priority is ensuring access to quality health care for every child in Illinois. Nearly 250,000 children in Illinois are uninsured and many come from working and middle class families who earn too much to qualify for programs like KidCare, but not enough to afford private health insurance. That is why Gov. Blagojevich proposed and signed legislation creating the All Kids program. All Kids makes Illinois the first state in the nation to make sure every child has access to comprehensive and affordable health care coverage. Illinois’ uninsured children will now have access to doctor’s visits, hospital stays, prescription drugs, vision care, dental care and medical devices like eyeglasses and asthma inhalers. Parents will pay monthly premiums for the coverage, but rates for middle-income families will be significantly lower than they are on the private market.
Let’s cut through the first three quarters of Blagojevich’s “biography,” since they’re really nothing more than campaign promises. For substantive biographic information, we get:
Prior to his election, Gov. Blagojevich was a Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney. During his tenure, he prosecuted domestic abuse cases and felony weapons charges, which made him a strong advocate for tougher sentencing laws when he was elected to the General Assembly in 1992.
In 1996, he was elected to represent Illinois’ 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. While a congressman, he secured funding for after-school tutoring programs and distinguished himself as an advocate for education. He was also a leader in the fight to establish a Patients’ Bill of Rights, to assure prompt access to mammograms, and to require higher safety and care standards at nursing homes.
So one of these governors has served in the military, and one of these governors has served himself in the government employ. Personally, I’d take the insight from the one with actual experience in the field more than the insight from the one whose insight runs to electoral campaigns.
But I’m not a real journalist, so I’m missing the beauty of the direct opposition of their viewpoints and how they build drama and conflict into something that’s much of a story with which to begin.
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So the plan is to put 6,000 of our military troops on the border in advisory sorts of roles. Am I the only one who looks at this and sees the possibility for an escalation of sorts?
Because it’s one thing for those reputed Mexican Army incursions to barnstorm across the border and pop off a few rounds at U.S. Border control officials, but it will be another thing entirely to have an exchange with the United States military. As a sometime fiction writer, I can see how easily one or more of these sorts of incidents would lead to a hot pursuit into Mexican territory, and suddenly we have a whole new another Mexican Expedition underway.
It’s easy to forget, with our current public education-enforced historical myopia, just how ultimately unpeaceful our relationship has been with Mexico.
Update: Okay, so I’m not the first to remember Pancho Villa.
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Charity freeze money collected from raffle sales
To someone at the Post-Dispatch, no doubt charity is the plural of the original Latin charitum.
And if you click through the link to the story, note that it deals with one of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s current crusade stories. On any given day in the last week or so, you can find the front page of stltoday.com banging on the drums in its current outrage kit:
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Border troops would be temporary, US tells Mexico
Because they’ll only be on the border before the invasion.
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CNN tries to gin up the old outrage that Report: Mentally ill troops forced into combat, wherein only troops who aren’t down in the dumps go off to war.
No, CNN, you’re missing the bigger scandal: The American military is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by sending those troops off to war without their emotional needs dogs.
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Look at what can happen when you cannot tell the difference between a compound sentence and a compound predicate:
A man’s sexual fetish crosses the line into the bizarre and is now wanted by police.
The world must be a much more interesting place for the ignorant.
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, today, exclaims Blue-collar workers are paid well here:
In St. Louis, it’s good to wear a blue collar.
Despite a wide wage gap in most parts of the country, local blue-collar workers barely trailed their more educated white-collar peers in pay last year.
Last week, in an article by the very same writer, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch lamented Retail overtakes manufacturing:
After decades of industrial layoffs, the St. Louis area has hit an unsettling milestone: More residents now work in retail stores than in manufacturing plants.
The news isn’t surprising. Manufacturing employment has slipped below retailing in selected months in recent years. But last year was the first time it was true year-round.
And never the twain shall meet.
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The hospital where I was born is closing:
St. Michael Hospital, which is losing millions of dollars annually, will close its emergency room and most other departments starting June 5 – greatly scaling back a major health care provider for a large number of poor people.
St. Michael, 2400 W. Villard Ave., is closing its emergency room and inpatient services because the hospital’s non-profit corporate parent, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, can no longer afford them, John Oliverio, Wheaton Franciscan president and chief executive officer, said Monday.
I guess this might have been foreshadowing:
Glendale-based Wheaton Franciscan, which recently changed it name from Covenant Healthcare System, “doesn’t have the ability to fund indefinitely the types of losses we’ve incurred at St. Michael’s,” Oliverio said.
Convenant, as you know, means a sacred contract or an agreement. I guess were it Covenant, the company would be bound to providing care to those with whom it has made the compact. Wheaton Franciscan, on the other hand, is just a health care system.
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Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, Samuel R. Berger opines upon what the United States should do vis-à-vis Iran and says:
Aw, what does it matter what Mr. Berger says? His mucketymuckability went out the door with the documents from the National Archive in his socks.
Still, the introduction of the hallowed and revered former something-or-other with in the Pax Clintona does lend itself to an obvious solution to the Iran question. Picture: A world-reknowned figure and statesman travels on a diplomatic mission to Iran to review their plans and blueprints under heavy security. Diplomatic mission succeeds, in that Iran thinks it has bought more time from the west, but when they look back in their files for the blueprints for centrifuges and nuclear devices are mysteriously gone!
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In just about any professional setting, it would be almost impossible to notice anything different about Caitlin Sabel’s wrists. They might appear a tad scarred, but nothing too out of the ordinary.
Look at them under a black light, though, and the words glow. Then, in an old-English font, her left wrist reads “regret” and her right “nothing.”
Ah, the innovative ways of parting money from fools.
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New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change:
The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.
Almost as though climate change happened cylically, naturally, and without the intervention of a sentient species.
But in the good news within this bad news for environmentalists:
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Keyless entry, OnStar, and so on and so forth. You saw convenience, and I saw it coming:
High-tech thieves are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to stealing automobiles equipped with keyless entry and ignition systems. While many computer-based security systems on automobiles require some type of key — mechanical or otherwise — to start the engine, so-called ‘keyless’ setups require only the presence of a key fob to start the engine.
Of course, you know me; I thought that the keyed ignition system was inviting danger and a step back from cranking the engine.
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After blowing $26,000,000 on a software system it won’t even use, the executive vice president of the University of Wisconsin system offers a mea culpa. Or the bureaucratic, non mea culpa equivalent:
“We’re very sheepish,” Mash told the state Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities. “We couldn’t make this work. We’ve got to dig ourselves out of this hole.”
Dig themselves out of the hole? What the heck does that mean in the public sector? Oh, yeah, it means you’ll have to get more tax money to cover your mistakes.
In the real world, this fellow and/or one or two of his ill-informed cohorts would be out of jobs. But in the rarefied world of the public sector, no doubt a little sheepishness and an expression of desire to dig one’s self out of a hole will save him.
And maybe even make available another $26,000,000 in budget to spend.
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Just because the number 8 Edmonton Oilers eliminated the Detroit Red Wings in the first round of the playoffs is a little early to start stocking up the celebratory fireworks:
On Friday cops found a 1-Teck 9 fully automatic nine-millimetre handgun, an SKS assault rifle and a rocket launcher.
On Sunday, they also seized two handguns, a shotgun, 1.4 kg of cocaine, six vials of steroids, four grams of marijuana with a street value of $60, a samurai sword and one bulletproof vest.
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Weber and Dolan, RIP:
Milwaukee radio veteran Jay Weber, longtime co-host of “Weber & Dolan,” has been selected to host his own program, beginning Monday, May 8.
Weber’s new program, The Jay Weber Show, will be heard weekday mornings from 8:30 a.m. until 12 p.m., in the slot now occupied by “Weber & Dolan.”
Bob Dolan, Weber’s partner on News/Talk 1130 WISN for the past seven-and-a-half years, asked for and received permission from the station to withdraw from his on-air duties, in order to spend all of his time managing and performing within Dolan Productions LLC, a television production company that he recently formed.
Frankly, I have feared this coming since the move. Well, actually, I’ve feared it every time that their contract has come up for renewal. I’ve listened to Weber and Dolan since its inception, accidentally.
I caught it first in probably 2000. I was toiling away in a dark computer testing lab by myself and spent the days dialing around the Internet, looking for something to listen to. I lit upon WISN as a voice of home and enjoyed Weber and Dolan before Dr. Laura in the mornings.
Man, I’ve listened to them for a long time. I’ve listened to them with five different employers–DRA, MetaMatrix, Tripos, Jeracor, and infuz. I’ve listened to them through a series of streaming audio providers and their individual foibles and incompatibilities. I’ve listened, and laughed, through sundry Packer seasons. Tragic as it sounds, when I worked from home, I would often comment to my wife about what Weber and Dolan had talked about that day as though they were co-workers.
But they’re breaking up, finally. I guess all good things must pass. Like childhood stars who’ve passed through cuteness and puberty, I guess these fellows need to expand their repertoire before they’re typecast. Okay, I understand. But it saddens me still.
I probably won’t listen to the Jay Weber Show. Part of the draw of the pair was their counterpoints to each other. Jay could be a bit curt and arrogant, but Bob tempered it with his laid-back nature and old-fashionedness. I wish both the best of luck, but I guess it’s iTunes for me in the mornings now.
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A collector deliberately placed three valuable U.S. coins into circulation in New York in April 2006:
To help introduce more people to “the magic of coin collecting,” Scott A. Travers, a 44-year-old former vice president of the American Numismatic Association and author of The Coin Collector’s Survival Manual, decided to mark National Coin Week in mid-April 2006 by deliberately spending three valuable old pennies as he made routine purchases around Manhattan. “I’m planting a seed, and I hope that a new generation of people will come to appreciate the history that coins represent,” he
said.The three coins Scott Travers planned to spend were all relatively low-mintage U.S. one-cent pieces nearly one hundred years old: a 1908-S Indian Head cent, and 1909-S VDB and 1914-D Lincoln cents.
Hey, it’s less than the Powerball but since I’m too stingy to drop change in the jar at Starbucks, I have a better chance at winning.
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I don’t know about you, but I am having difficulty solving the following word problem, found in this article:
As recently as 1994, more than half of newspaper carriers 57 percent were under 18, often neighborhood kids, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
I blame my own English-degree-fueled mathematical incompetence.
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