To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Hey, I know I read Survival Blog sometimes, but I think AP is jumping the gun a little with this (spotted on the home page of the Springfield News-Leader:
There are two kinds of people: Those who know what TEOTWAWKI means and those with storage space for a couple more boxes of mementos from their childhood and unused wedding presents.
Buy My Books!
Headline: Obama urges china to respect international law
Maybe he is having some sort of breakdown if he’s addressing the kitchenware.
Buy My Books!
Ha! I like not that:
A longtime employee of the Whole Foods Market in Brentwood is suing the company for firing her after she complained to her superiors about the alleged mishandling of organic produce.
Elisha Wellman of St. Louis had worked at the store since 2001. But in late August, she was fired, the lawsuit says, after she repeatedly pointed out unsanitary display crates and shelving, and the commingling of organic and nonorganic produce.
“She attempted to bring this to the attention of her managers, then brought it to a regional level, and then a week or so later she lost her job,” said Gary A. Growe, Wellman’s attorney. “They accused her of being involved with some customer complaints some six or eight months ago, that she had nothing to do with.”
Under the “at-will” doctrine, Wellman had the legal ability to quit at anytime, while Whole Foods could fire her at any time, for any reason, unless the termination was discriminatory. But, Growe explained, the law contains a “public policy exemption” that prohibits a company from firing a person if they point out violations of law or policy. It’s under this exemption that Growe is making his case.
“The law gives you the term ‘whistle-blower,'” Growe said.
Given the number of regulations applicable to any business, it’s a very short slippery slope to making anyone who complains at work into a whistle blower, ineligible for termination.
Buy My Books!
Please, keep the tax dollars flowing; although the Ballpark Lofts II building in St. Louis, funded in part through giveaways and tax credits is going to foreclosure, the Heer’s Building in Springfield handled by the same developer is ship-shape:
A downtown St. Louis property developed by Heer’s developer Kevin McGowan has been targeted for foreclosure, but McGowan said his loan on the Springfield building is not in similar danger.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on its website that Bank of America has filed legal notice that it plans to foreclose on the Ballpark Lofts II building owned by a limited liability corporation McGowan formed with former partner Nat Walsh.
Renovated as condos and offices, the building is at least partially occupied.
McGowan said Thursday he plans for his new company, Blue Urban, to purchase the building by buying the loan made to the earlier LLC before the Nov. 23 foreclosure sale.
He said the notion Heer’s was targeted for foreclosure is “a false rumor” being spread by the project’s detractors.
His company couldn’t pay the mortgage on the property, so his new company might buy it at the foreclosure auction.
God Bless America, and by “America,” I mean the people with the chutzpah to do that sort of thing and the municipal governments that continue to enable them. And by “bless,” I mean something else entirely.
Buy My Books!
A couple of weeks ago, a writer for the Daily Caller contacted me about my obsessive-compulsive, kinda creepy behavior.
The resulting article is here.
Buy My Books!
The government returns to an old idea to help boost cigarette tax revenue in decline as people stop smoking: collectible cigarette packs.
In the first major change to cigarette packaging in a quarter-century, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it will require graphic warning labels on packages, covering half the package’s front and rear. It will also require labeling covering 20 percent of the surface of cigarette ads.
The labels will feature either drawings or photos illustrating graphically the dangers associated with smoking and will be accompanied by text stating that smoking is addictive or that it kills. The pictures are not quite as grim as some used in other countries, but regulators hope they will be sufficiently frightening to keep young people from beginning to smoke and to strengthen the will of those who are attempting to quit.
From Troglopundit, here are what the new collectible packs look like:
Althouse links to some other designs at the FDA Web site.
No word on the official Denis Leary commemorative tin packs which will be the real centerpiece of the campaign.
Back in the old days, cigars and whatnot came with baseball cards. Now they come with collectible government propoganda.
As I said in a comment at Trog’s, there is a certain remarkable consistency in thought here: our Betters in Washington are sure that the proletariat have not modified its behavior according to the Betters’ wishes simply because the Betters have not effectively explained the Message to the proles.
Buy My Books!
Today is the birthday of the United States Marines. As some of you know, some of my favorite people in the world were Marines.
My mother:
(Read here eulogy here.)
My father (he was born on November 10; his fate was cast for him).
My brother (the recruiter promised to get him into Recon if he signed up right away for six years; who knew recruiters made promises they couldn’t keep?).
(Me, I’m the one who went to college.)
My grandfather (wounded on Okinawa; the Japanese got him right in the bulldog tattoo).
Also, my great uncle Henry, whom I never knew but whose discharge papers I inherited.
The Sniper, whose highest aspiration in life was The Army (says the guy who served without distinction for years amongst Jesuits and coeds), recognizes the occasion.
Buy My Books!
Connect the dots, man.
Dot:
Something big is going on at the center of the galaxy, and astronomers are happy to say they don’t know what it is.
A group of scientists working with data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope said Tuesday that they had discovered two bubbles of energy erupting from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The bubbles, they said at a news conference and in a paper to be published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal, extend 25,000 light years up and down from each side of the galaxy and contain the energy equivalent to 100,000 supernova explosions.
“They’re big,” said Doug Finkbeiner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, leader of the team that discovered them.
The source of the bubbles is a mystery. One possibility is that they are fueled by a wave of star births and deaths at the center of the galaxy. Another option is a gigantic belch from the black hole known to reside, like Jabba the Hutt, at the center of the Milky Way. What it is apparently not is dark matter, the mysterious something that astronomers say makes up a quarter of the universe and holds galaxies together.
Dot:
mysterious missile launch off the southern California coast was caught by CBS affiliate KCBS’s cameras Monday night, and officials are staying tight-lipped over the nature of the projectile.
CBS station KFMB put in calls to the Navy and Air Force Monday night about the striking launch off the coast of Los Angeles, which was easily visible from the coast, but the military has said nothing about the launch.
Troglopundit connects the wrong dots. This is about the Bjorrixxk firing defensively at Jrrith’n from their base under the Pacific before the Jrrith’n targeted energy nihltor could reach the Earth.
Man, I’m glad they’re nominally on our side. Until they again hunger.
(Other link seen on Althouse, where she doesn’t connect the dots. But she knows.)
Buy My Books!
Remember how I poked fun at this Department of Education billboard last month? Well, apparently, the government is not getting a multimonth discount on the billboards, since we have a new one there at the corner of Scenic and Battlefield this month:
The text of the billboard is “Take the time and be a good father today.”
The message: The United States Department of Health and Human Services has too much budget.
Seriously, what is it with the government that it spends so much money on signage at the expense of doing things like governing. As I drive along Republic Road south of Springfield, which crosses the James River Freeway several times, the road narrows each time it crosses the highway. Because the government does not have enough money to replace the two-lane bridges with four-lane (and room for six lanes eventually) bridges.
But the governments have the money for billboards, radio ads explaining the dangers of radon, midnight basketball, and lots of social services. Why? I’m cynical enough to think because those things are easy and are done by cool people. Building things? Uncool people who probably bowl on leagues.
Buy My Books!
Well, I read about the rise of one Khan, so it lends itself to a certain symmetry if I were to follow pretty closely with the rise of another. And so I have.
This book is an overview of the rise of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire and the empire after Genghis Khan’s death. The author is a homer, but I prefer that: someone who writes positively of the subject of the book. That’s not to say that the Mongols were not brutal when they were; it just doesn’t stand athwart history, shouting, “Naughty!” and condescending to historical figures with the sensitivites of a modern academic.
The book is a pretty good primer on Asian history from the 13th century and serves as a reminder to a Western reader who has been steeped in Western Civilization that there’s a whole wide world out there with history of its own, and that history went on even during the dark ages. The Mongol Empire was the largest empire in the world, ever. In the 13th century. Also, the Mongols had a pretty large number of Christians among them. The Christians among them were helpful when the Mongols sacked Baghdad, the capital of the Islamic world at that time. The Moslems have not forgotten it.
The Mongols spared Western Europe from most of their predations for two reasons: The heavy forests were not ideal terrain for their horsemen, and Europe didn’t have anything worth sacking relative to China and the Islamic nations of the time.
So it’s chock full of new perspective and whatnot, but unfortunately the last chapter kinda weakens the book. It follows the youth of Ghengis Khan, the rise of Khan, the aftermath of Khan’s death, and Kublai Khan’s rise in China. After the actual history part of the book, the author tacks on a conclusion that talks about how Genghis Khan came to be a symbol of Asiatic man and its inferiority to the West with all the proper sentiments expressed. Then the author LARPs an event out of Khan’s life by riding swiftly on a horse on the Mongolian plains while wearing a deen, the traditional garb. I could really have done without that. Also, as the book progressed, it occurred to me that the legal and civilizationary triumphs of the Mongols that the author celebrates align liberal policies (public education and women’s rights come to mind).
That being said, I feel the need to compare the Mongols under Khan to other personages I’ve read in the last couple of years. The Mongols would have eaten John Hawkwood (100 years later) for lunch. The Aztecs (200 years later)? Not even a snack. They were pretty good at their version of warfare and their administration of the conquered lands. But the book posits the ultimate downfall of the Mongol empire came from the Bubonic Plague, which it carried from its origin in China to the whole populated world at the time.
I enjoyed the book, the last chapter aside, and recommend it. As a side note, I paid full price for this book at a real book store. I’d read an article in the September 2010 History Magazine about Genghis Khan’s law and wanted to learn more, so when I had some time to kill in a mall, I browsed the book store and this book was in it. Kismet. A sign. A worthwhile purchase.
Buy My Books!
Martin concedes but is still worried about voter integrity:
Still, Martin offered criticism for Russ’ sister, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, whose office maintains a voter database that went offline during part of Election Day.
Martin also questioned why the St. Louis Board of Election — of which he was once chairman — hired a private security firm that had once done work for Russ Carnahan’s campaign. (The firm, Special Services, is hired frequently to provide protection at political events.)
Though the election is over, Martin said he will continue to “in the coming weeks and days…to highlight the importantce of protecting our voting system.”
Martin did not impugn nor question the integrity of voters. He questioned the integrity of voter rolls.
Words mean things. It’s sad to see professional journalists–or bloggers who blog for newspaper Web sites–show the same precision with words as you normally get out of Nigerians writing e-mails in an Internet cafe in Lagos.
Buy My Books!
After the consortium began producing these books, it moved from a mob-centric plot to an international terrorist plot template. After all, the 1970s were over and the 1980s were beginning. Out with the Dirty Harry, in with the Rambo.
In this book, Mack Bolan is out to protect America from heroin coming from Turkey. The KGB and its mercenaries are using a guerrilla front group to grow and process opium. The KGB also has designs to encourage an Armenian-American to fund and front an Armenian rebel group so it can thwart the Armenian-American and publicly embarrass America and to drive Turkey into the Russian sphere of influence. To save the day, Bolan has to protect the Armenian-American from a mob-like hit in Beverly Hills and then to air drop into Turkey to rescue Americans and an attractive Kurdish woman and to blow up the operation.
As the book turns from the mob focus to the world focus, it does broaden the possibilities. It also leads to more complex plots and lenghtening books. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll be pleased that it’s more modern thrillerish. The end of the book features a number of cables coming in that tip you to the next several books available in the sundry series in the Mack Bolan world. I dunno. I’m probably romanticizing it in thinking there’s as much lost as gained in the transition.
Buy My Books!
This book is the last one written by Don Pendleton before he turned the series over to The Executioner, Inc., and they turned out hundreds of books in the series and others. As such, it does have an ending sort of feel to it as Pendelton finishes up with the War on the Mafia that covered the first books in the series.
As in Friday’s Feast, this book picks up on the final one week swing through the country that Mack Bolan takes after accepting a job working for Washington. It’s probably best if you not reflect on how Bolan can drive across country in a week while stopping and infiltrating and exterminating various mob bastions while doing so.
This time, he returns to New York to finish off the remainder of the families there who are reorganizing after his previous visit. It’s a pretty standard piece of Bolan fare with a couple of ambushes and set pieces where Bolan turns a bordello and Central Park into a hellground and then he infiltrates the mafia HQ using the same Omega/Frankie/Ace of Spades schtick. I don’t mean to diminish it too much, since I’m learning how relatively good the Bolan books are in the monthly pulp paperback line, but if you read them too quickly, you see they are very similar. That’s part of the comfort and the lure of them, I guess. They are put out by the Harlequin people, for crying out loud.
Buy My Books!
My wife and I attended the cinema this week, and we saw the action film Red.
Because it’s almost the same thing, really, someone with the theater chain or studios determined it would be a good idea to run the trailer for the Valerie Plame fiction (inspired by true events, where the “events” are emotional outbursts of the left).
I booed it, of course.
Here is Kyle Smith’s review, which is also a boo of sorts.
Anyone want to guess the Box Office on this one? I go with $7 million total. Unexpectedly, the American people won’t understand the message and genius of the film that’s for their own good.
(Link seen on Big Hollywood.)
Buy My Books!
After reading Fatherhood by Bill Cosby, I looked for another book of short pieces to keep on the bedstand. I inherited a number of Erma Bombeck titles from my mother, so I chose one of them. I wondered why Erma Bombeck doesn’t get much acclaim or even mention only a decade after her death and why I lump Bill Cosby in with Mark Twain as a great American humorist, but Erma Bombeck doesn’t percolate up to collective memory. Well, this book explained it.
It’s an amusing collection, but Erma Bombeck was a suburban housewife whose great success came writing newspaper columns in the 1970s and 1980s. Her columns in this book really tie themselves to that era and concern, so I cannot relate to them with the depth that I can to Bill Cosby or even to Andy Rooney. Sadly.
This is not my first trip through some of Bombeck’s works. I read some of them, perhaps even the same volumes, when I was in middle school and maybe early high school since my mother had them around and I didn’t have a library of several thousand volumes to read through at that time. Did I say middle school? I might have read some of them as early as elementary school, since it might have been before I moved to Missouri for the first time.
I remember one of the columns from this book, a column about a mother who died at 48 and left each of three boys a letter that said, “Don’t tell your brothers, but I loved you the best.” When I first read it, I had a mother. Now I have my mother’s book. There’s something poignant, self-consciously so, in that. One of the late of-the-cuff remarks in this book, about mothers who throw out their right arms when they step hard on the brakes, struck me. I’d teased my mother about that when she did that to me into my 30s, as though her thin arm was going to save me. But it’s an impulse many mothers who grew up in the era before mandatory seat belts and rear car seats must have had. It will be meaningless to kids these days, but I remembered it well, the karate chop to the chest in a tense automotive situation.
Will you like this book? Probably more if you’re over the age of 35 and can see your mother in it or see yourself in it if you’re over 60. Kids today and adults in the future will look at the sitatutions therein as though they were reading “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” So maybe someday she’ll be something of Mark Twain. But probably not, as humor columnists fall out of favor and are forgotten.
Buy My Books!
Curse that volunteer’s sharp eyes:
The value of a box of old books donated to the Friends of the Library book sale can’t be measured just in dollars.
The box contained an eight-volume collection of Shakespeare’s works by Lewis Theobald printed in 1773 and a volume of the Bard’s poetry published by John Bell one year later. The books were part of an effort to rehabilitate William Shakespeare’s image.
Heck, I would have paid $2 each for them.
Buy My Books!
This story shows how effective security cameras are at preventing crime:
The incident began around 1:30 a.m. Monday, when police say Aberle is pictured in security footage trying to break through a glass window on the north side of the building.
According to court documents, she is seen knocking over a trash can and then throwing trash against the window.
“During this time, Khelawan enters and is posing for the camera while Aberle continues to try to break the glass by throwing a landscaping rock against the glass,” the probable cause statement says.
The glass shattered after about 10 minutes of effort, the statement said.
Then, around 2:30 a.m, a vehicle rams the glass entry doors on the northwest end of the building. Aberle and Khelawan are seen getting out of the car and walking into the school, where they knock over trash cans and kick a glass display case, according to court documents.
No damage to the interior of the school was reported.
Half an hour later, the two are seen on surveillance footage walking from the building, officers said.
The vehicle is seen about 10 minutes later, ramming the glass entry doors on the north side of the building, but no one enters the school. The car is then seen on security footage cutting doughnuts in the grassy area north of the school, court documents said.
The school resource officer responding to the interior alarms at the school told Springfield police she encountered the two on the west parking lot of the school around 3:20 a.m.
The cameras have almost two hours of footage of the vandalism, including one of the alleged perpetrators mugging for the camera. Then, almost two hours later, a single cop shows up in response to the alarms.
Again, cameras save the day.
Buy My Books!
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch could have just recycled the headline for the first story and used it on the second:
Russ Carnahan finally claims victory over Ed Martin
(It was late votes coming in from the city of St. Louis that put Carnahan over the top; the first story is about the city of Webster Groves.)
Buy My Books!
AP headlines GOP victories move nation to right.
The article itself gives the president plenty of quotage from his news conference yesterday wherein he explains away the misunderstandings and ignorance of the populace that serves him and its recent errors in the election. The article then gives the Republicans a couple of quotes to respond.
However, whoever wrote that headline happily conflates country with government. The elections did not move the country. The country used the elections to move the government to the right. More aligned with the country’s beliefs than the government proved to be in the years 2007-2010, most particularly in the years 2009-2010 where the Democratic Party held the legislature and the executive.
Buy My Books!
I had reason to tear into my junk drawers yesterday, the off-to-the-side desk drawers into which I dump old pens and miscellany. I don’t actually open those drawers for months at a time, much less root through them. Most of them are intact from the move from Old Trees to Nogglestead just over a year ago.
However, last night, I tore through them looking for a long unused thumb drive that I thought my wife wanted in an emergency manner, and I uncovered many things that require explanation. And some that defy any.
Like a single post-it note, folded in half so the sticky top is stuck to the bottom of the back. On the sticky note, three names in my handwriting in red pen: Jim Belushi, Juaquin (sic) Phoenix, and Mark Wahlberg.
I cannot think of a thing that unites these particular stars. Maybe three stars who surpassed their older brothers?
I don’t see anything on the blog about them. Of course, if I looked now, I would.
Were I to actually continue this series, I would be able to explain most of the random oddities in the junk drawer, unlike the oddities I find in my work bench.
Buy My Books!
