To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Kim du Toit starts it up again by showing off half of his book collection.
Me, I don’t have time to update it with the new bookshelves, but here’s the Noggle Library in February 2008, before book fair season.
I don’t know why I bother trash talking when comparing our library to the bibliophile libraries of Porch Girl or the du Toits. I mean, it’s clear we (I) have a problem, and we’ve turned the corner in book collection from book lover and are approaching tenured professor levels.
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My wife gave me the very collection for Christmas a couple years ago. Lileks is already further into it than I am.
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Our nation’s defense forces are just spitballing here:
The American military and intelligence communities are increasingly worried that would-be bin Ladens might gather in a virtual world, to plan a real-life attack. But the spies haven’t given many details, about how it might be done. Now, a Pentagon researcher has laid out how such a terror plot might unfold. The planning ground is World of Warcraft. The main target of this possibly nuclear strike: the White House.
There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. But online spaces like World of Warcraft are making some spooks, generals and Congressmen extremely nervous. They imagine terrorists rehearsing attacks in these worlds, just like the U.S. military trains with commercial shoot-em-up games. They worry that the massively multiplayer games make it incredibly easy to gather plotters from around the world. But, mostly, virtual worlds are nerve-wracking to spies because they’re so hard to monitor. The accounts are pseudonymous. The access is global. The jargon is thick. And most of the spy agencies’ employees aren’t exactly level-70 shamans.
And by “spitballing,” I mean rousing a panic amongst the ignorant controllers of budget strings so they totally can get budget for a couple of full time MMORPG players, probably themselves.
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On Wednesday, I found a yard sale and received a book I’d ordered off the Internet. Here they are:
Just when we thought Book Fair Season was over, though, my beautiful wife has found another coming up. Oh, the humanity! Did I brag here about the $25 bookshelves I found at Target? I retract that. Sissy little things are bowing in under a year.
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Isaac Asimov not only wrote science fiction, not only wrote science fact, but also wrote mysteries. This particular bit is one such, and it’s one that includes Isaac Asimov as a character. The first person POV focuses on Darius Just, a literary author whose protege is murdered at the American Booksellers Association conference in New York. Just finds the body and determines that, although staged to look like an accident, his tempermental and sexually deviant, uh, protege (I already called him that, but other nouns are not forthcoming) was murdered. Just has, uh, only four days to find the murder. And if he does, he’ll let Isaac Asimov write the book.
Asimov has fun with the book and with using himself, going so far as to have footnote back-and-forth with Darius Just. Along the way, it’s a whodunit sort of mystery where you could figure it out, sort of, if you looked in the right places. Me, I don’t puzzle the book out that way, so it’s not ordinarily my cup of tea. But I enjoyed it.
As a side note, I’m actually re-reading this book. I first read it in high school, lo those many years ago. I liked it enough to pick it up for a buck, and all I remembered was the gimmick of having Asimov in it.
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In Bel-Ridge, a combination of the municipality and a rent-seeking developer are contributing to blight in the area.
First, of course, the municipality promised the developer land backed by seizure:
A couple of years earlier, Bel-Ridge had approved a redevelopment plan for a 78-acre swath of the city. The developer, Clayco, can acquire property by eminent domain.
The developer isn’t moving on the development because of the economy:
Matt Prickett, a development manager with Clayco, says the Bel-Ridge project is on hold because of the soft economy. It was envisioned as a major retail center, and retailers aren’t in an expansion mode.
“The market is what it is,” Prickett said.
Funny, I don’t expect a company that relies on seizure by force of private property instead of messy, meddlesome purchasing through, I don’t know, the market, understands what the market is.
As a result, a landowner who wants to renovate his property is in a bind:
A year ago, the Hood’s store on Natural Bridge Road was an eyesore. The windows were boarded up, the roof leaked and the parking lot was full of potholes.
Mike Hood, the owner, candidly says the city of Bel-Ridge probably could have condemned the building years ago, or at least cited it for multiple code violations. But it didn’t, and Hood launched a major renovation after buying the discount home-improvement store in January from his father, Ernest.
Three-quarters of the way into that $1 million project, Hood’s has a new roof, new glass, a repaved parking lot and new bathrooms. A shop being built in one corner will cut countertop materials to customers’ specifications.
Assuming he’s right about the market for discounted cabinets and flooring, Hood’s investment should assure the store of a long and prosperous future. But, three months into his renovations, Hood learned of a complication: A couple of years earlier, Bel-Ridge had approved a redevelopment plan for a 78-acre swath of the city. The developer, Clayco, can acquire property by eminent domain.
That means Hood, like owners of other businesses along Natural Bridge and the homes to the north, could have his property taken by force. A court proceeding would determine the property’s market value, but Hood might not get back the money he’s putting into the store. In all likelihood, he also wouldn’t be compensated for what he sees as the store’s potential.
Advice from the Clayco mouth:
As for the wisdom of investing $1 million in a store that Clayco could buy and tear down, Prickett said he’d impart the same advice he gives to homeowners: “We encourage them to make the necessary investments to maintain the health and safety of their property.”
That’s just precious. Of course, anyone on that land right now is just a squatter with actual responsibilities, according to Clayco and Bel-Ridge.
Meanwhile, the area in question will go to seed because macroplanners prevent individuals from sprucing it up. As a result, Bel-Ridge makes its own blight. As do many of these private/”public” deals.
UPDATE: Thanks to gimlet for pointing out I called Bel-Ridge Bel-Nor in the title and intro paragraph. Crikey, what’s with the municipalities naming themselves similarly? Bel-Ridge/Bel-Nor, Vinita Park/Vinita Terrace, etc.
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Fed up with the new municipality’s continuing red tape with his business, a ski resort owner in St. Louis County plans to close shop:
The St. Louis region’s only ski resort will close after this winter because of a dispute with the city of Wildwood, the resort’s owner said today.
“I would basically characterize it as blackmail,” said Tim Boyd, president of Peak Resorts Inc., the company that owns the Hidden Valley golf and ski resort in Wildwood.
Hidden Valley applied for a permit to build a snow tubing area and parking lot to accommodate it. But the city’s planning and zoning commission last week told the resort it would need to meet additional requirements before it could expand.
The resort needed to get its hours of operation approved by the city, and either pay a nearly $252,000 fee to the city for a new parking lot or dedicate some of its land as public space.
The resorts hours of operation are not currently restricted by the city because it was built 26 years ago, before the city was incorporated in 1995.
A new story indicates that maybe the city just expected him to roll over and give them what they want, and now it’s scrambling to reverse the decision:
Two City Council members met with the owner of Hidden Valley Golf and Ski on Wednesday in hopes of persuading him to keep the resort open, but the owner says he is still determined to sell the property.
The council members say Wildwood doesn’t want Hidden Valley, the region’s only ski resort, to close after this season.
Sadly, the municipality won’t learn that it should just get the hell out of the way of businesses; instead, it will learn that it has to ingratiate itself to bigger businesses that threaten to close and continue to stick it to business people too busy doing business to lobby on their own behalf to be left alone by local, state, and federal busybodies.
On the plus side, at least Wildwood isn’t forced to pay businesses to stay in Wildwood, unlike the city of St. Louis.
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Lance Armstrong returns to bike racing:
Lance Armstrong is welcome to compete in the 2009 Tour de France, Tour officials have told USA TODAY in an e-mail.
“Yes, if Lance will have a license and if he is in a team that we will choose for the Tour, L.A. (Lance Armstrong) will be at the start of the 2009’s Tour de France in Monaco the 4th of July,” race director Christian Prudhomme said.”But it’s a long way until July 2009.”
The bad news? He’s biking for the New York Jets.
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This book is one of the last of the series, and quite frankly, it’s not of McBain’s best. I mean, you’ve got the 87th Precinct guys looking into a kidnapping, working around the FBI who would use Carella, their liason, as a gopher. Actually, that’s it. One crime from multiple points of view. Still, I figured it out awfully early and hoped for a twist that never came. Also, sometime this century, McBain started knocking president by name (Bush). I’ve mentioned that before, but he brings it out here again as a couple of asides. I could understand a sort of disgust with the Powers That Be in some of his previous books, but now that he’s naming names for especial vituperation, I’m saddened and slightly put off.
Also, he probably works to hard to get the title thing working.
Even with those knocks, the book doesn’t fall to below the Fair or Slightly Good rating. Better than any Pearson or Randisi novel I’ve read.
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You may now confuse the Primitive Radio Gods (“Standing Outside A Broken Phonebooth With Money In My Hand”) with The New Radicals (“You Get What You Give”).
If you ever happen to think of either, that is.
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A new taxing district adds its penny of sales tax to your purchases in the University City Loop:
When Joe Edwards talks, people listen.
So when Edwards became interested in developing a trolley line to serve The Loop, business leaders didn’t blink — even when talk turned to creating a Transportation Development District.
The district would use sales tax generated at businesses along Delmar Boulevard and DeBaliviere Avenue to partially fund construction and operation of The Loop Trolley.By a mail-in vote early this summer, voters approved creation of the district, which will begin collecting one cent of sale tax per dollar of purchase along the 2.2-mile proposed route for the Loop Trolley. The measure passed with more than 97 percent of those voting favoring the tax.
Of course those business owners were in favor of it. They don’t pay the tax, they merely collect it. And the shiny trolley will bring them additional customers who don’t realize that the rent-seeking business owners favor squeezing extra money from them.
I’d boycott the Loop, but I haven’t gone there since I grew up, and, more to the point, since Sheldon’s bookstore was gone.
Also, keep in mind, this penny is in addition to the other ones on the ballot. Those two miles of Delmar could have taxes go up as much as 1.75% just this year alone, not discounting any other “districts” sneaking their feather-bedding projects’ taxes out of your pocket.
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Whatever the line is in Vegas that Aaron Rodgers breaks his throwing hand while giving high fives during the introduction tonight, be they like 10,000,000 to 1 or something like that, I’ll take that bet. I call him “Mr. Glass.”
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I’m sitting in my sainted mother’s living room, and I flip through one of the innumerable catalogs she gets. It’s the Carol Wright gifts catalog, from which I and she have ordered many Christmas presents and trinkets for loved ones in years past. An innocuous piece of cataloguery, or so I thought.
Until I hit the page that had the personal massagers, male enhancement products, and Naked Aerobics/Naked Yoga and Tai Chi DVDs.
Crikey, Carol Wright–Carol Wright!–has a sexual aids section (NSFW, probably).
I mean, I’m not shocked on account that these things are available, but I am shocked that I found them amongst the throw blankets, quilted air conditioner covers, and magnetic windshield covers.
What’s next? A Vibrating Touch of Class?
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The Bangles “An Eternal Flame”, their biggest hit, released in 1988:
By 2008, the poet-narrator’s “eternal flame,” whom she married in 1990, has left her after succeeding at his career (success being a district manager in a repair-shop-directed auto parts chain) for a 24-year-old whom he met at a coffeeshop in Indianapolis, IN, during a national sales meeting and who “rocked his world.” In 2008, our poet-narrator has been single for 6 years and has begun dealing with empty-nest syndrome as the only child from her “eternal flame” relationship (born ahead of the marriage) has left to go to school in San Francisco.
She’s got nothing left, just a mother nearby who has given up trying to console her daughter and a couple of people whom she calls every couple of months, trying not to impose upon them but ultimately proving too morbid for a return to their early friendship, which she sacrificed to her husbands’ interests (now, they’re married and raising children and don’t want to relate to her experience).
Pleasant dreams.
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Well, not really, but the Sarah Palin thing has really affected the base. How do I know? VenomKate has gone all-Palin, all-the-time (I need room for one more link, so here it is).
Previously, she’d been down on the party and down on Bush, but now she’s onboard for Old Dude/Naughty Librarian 2008.
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A bit of perspective from tonight’s IM conversation with gimlet:
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A self-described anarchist/libertarian embraces government mandates when they improve his quality of life.
Once in a while we get real discussions here on MfBJN, and sometimes they don’t involve grief-stricken parents.
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This book comes from early in McBain’s career, and it’s not even really a McBain book. Instead, it’s McBain finishing a book started by another author. However, unlike Robert B. Parker taking over a Raymond Chandler novel, McBain’s mannerisms and stock characterizations don’t appear. Maybe it’s too early in his career and he didn’t develop the stock. That said, this is a Craig Rice book that Ed McBain worked on.
It’s a little pulpy bit about two New York street photographers (who have had other capers in previous books) who decide to move to Hollywood to get rich and famous. Bingo, the brains of the outfit, almost thinks he has control of the situations and is atop things, but he’s not. Handsome, the athletic and good-looking part of the duo, seems to follow Bingo’s every word, but he has a tendency to go above and beyond his instructions in a beneficial way. Ergo, the characters have a sort of double-effect to them. On one hand, they seem buffoonish, but might only seem buffoonish on the surface.
In a series of events, they’re sold a mansion by a con man whose receipt carries the actual signature of the presumed murdered former owner. Then, the housekeeper and caretaker is actually killed in the house. As the duo run through their cash reserves hiring attorneys and whatnot, while trying to figure out who killed the previous owner, who killed the housekeeper, and whatever happened to April Robin, the starlet who first owned the house.
An amusing little book. I enjoyed it and wouldn’t mind reading the straight-up Craig Rice books in the series.
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I lost several moments of Sarah Palin’s speech last night and didn’t catch the next paragraph after the John McCain uses his career to promote change because the cutaway shot went to a camera focused on a woman’s bosom:
Which the cameraman widened as quickly as he could, but ultimately too late to save me from near hysterical laughter:
You can enjoy it for yourself:
It occurs with about 8:30 to go.
I bet that cameraman got a talking to. Or a promotion to the CCTV security team.
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Three sales tax increases are on the ballot this time around for St. Louis County.
Joseph Goeke, Republican director of the St. Louis County Election Board, said this would mark the first time that a county ballot included three such proposals.
“We went back through the records and couldn’t find another,” he said.
The three taxes, if passed, would apply countywide, not just in the unincorporated areas. Two of the taxes would affect every consumer; the third would affect only those who spend more than $2,000 on out-of-state purchases.
Notice that this would only prove to be a .75% increase to all sales in St. Louis County if these pass, not including sales taxes by your municipality or “community improvement district” (aka unaccountable unelected bureaucracy enrichment zones).
A couple more penny increases each season, and suddenly we’re talking real money, I suppose.
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