With the recent discovery by American scientists that, in the rest of the world, Roxette continued to exist after 1991.
Scientists Prove Rest of World Is Parallel Universe to United States
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Taking The Draft Off The Table
In between the bomp-bomp-bomp-bomps of the NPR All Things Considered intro music today, they teased me that one of their upcoming stories was about the possibility of reinstituting the draft.
Oh, for Pete’s sake, I have been hearing that for the last five years. In 2003, my own grandmother expressed fear of it, sure that Bush was going to impress my younger cousins and send them to Iraq.
To heck with it; I am on the bandwagon. Let’s restore the damn thing so that I don’t have to hear horror stories about that particular monster in the closet, children voters, a whole decade.
UPDATE: Here’s the story.
And I’ve reconsidered; if we reinstitute the draft, the same people worried about it coming back would take to the streets to demand its end, again. So we might as well not if they say we’re going to.
UPDATE II: James Joyner weighs in, sort of.
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Preparing My Plan for $100 Million Cricket Stadium, $100 Million Roller Derby Arena, $100 Million Pokemon Dome
Efforts to bring professional outdoor soccer back to St. Louis will enter a decisive phase on Monday when a prominent Metro East lawyer will propose a $100 million stadium complex in Collinsville that he intends to be home to a Major League Soccer franchise.
A $100 million dollar complex that’s funded as a public/private partnership wherein the city takes the fiscal risk and the private guy reaps any rewards that accidentally occur in spite of this being a Major League Soccer stadium being built in the middle of nowhere.
Public/private partnerships: is there anything they won’t try?
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Book Report: He Was A Midwestern Boy On His Own by Bob Greene (1991)
As you know, gentle reader, I like Bob Greene’s books well enough to spell his name correctly most of the time. This is the first I’ve read in two plus years (since Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War in March 2005 and Bob Greene’s America in May 2004).
It collects a number of his columns from Esquire and the Chicago Tribune again, so he’s back in his sweet spot of short narrative nonfiction with the occasional forays into "People and Things That Happened Because I Am A Columnist" or "Things I Made Happen Because I Know Michael Jordan" filler material. Of course, we cringe when he talks about calling a seventeen year old girl in 1988 and talking to her about her sexual arousal watching Dennis Quaid in The Big Easy and wonder is that the one?
Greene trends more mawkish than Andy Rooney, so he falls beneath the old curmudgeon in my estimation, but he did make a career at it whereas I’m only making a blog of writing my insights. So I respect the man and enjoy his work enough to pick up a collection of columns from time to time, but I’m not exactly plunging into the first edition copy of All Summer Long, one of two first edition copies that have passed through my hands and have remained on my to-read shelf.
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The Coming Russo-Canadian War
Canada joins rush to claim the Arctic:
“Our government has an aggressive Arctic agenda,” Dimitri Soudas, Mr Harper’s spokesman, said on Wednesday.
“The Russians sent a submarine to drop a small flag at the bottom of the ocean. We’re sending our prime minister to reassert Canadian sovereignty,” said a senior government official, according to Canadian press.
Since the Russian expedition was discovered last month, Mr Harper has faced increasing pressure to fight back.
The twenty-first century promises to be as odd as all the others that preceded it. I mean, it almost takes a suspension of disbelief to believe that the French once dominated Continental Europe with its army or that the Belgians had colonies. Looking forward to the 21st century, how many other almost inconceivable things remain to come.
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What a Difference a Good Title Makes
On a book, perhaps, but certainly on a law:
A Cole County judge on Wednesday struck down a new law that would have allowed more midwives to help deliver babies in Missouri.
Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce declared the law unconstitutional. The law was attached to a health insurance bill, and Joyce said the title of that bill was too narrow to encompass midwifery.
Good to see that the Post-Dispatch is impartial on the matter. On one hand, we have:
While a doctors’ association praised the ruling, home-birth advocates promised to appeal it. Mary Ueland, who lobbies for midwives’ interests, said she was confident the Missouri Supreme Court would uphold the law.
A dreaded lobbiest, a paid spokesperson for a vile interest group. And on the other side:
The state’s largest physicians’ association, the Missouri State Medical Association, has fought the changes. Jeff Howell, the association’s director of legislative affairs, said Wednesday that the new law would have “significantly lowered the standard of care for childbirth services, and we just don’t think that’s acceptable.”
An association of physicians and its director of legislative affairs. In other words, a someone who lobbies for physicians’ interests.
Perhaps the Post-Dispatch doesn’t think its readers know any other words or thoughts aside from those it presents to them. Perhaps it’s right.
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A Morbid Hobby, I Know
So I’ve taken to watching music videos from the 1980s and, while watching the comely young ladies in big hair and short skirts shaking their body parts amid the smoke machines for the cameras, started trying to guess: grandmother or dead some 20 years by now from a speedball.
Everybody play!
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In Case Of Catastrophic Failure, An Alarm Will Sound
Wisconsin to install monitors on 15 bridges:
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation will install devices on 15 bridges to monitor unusual movements, officials announced Tuesday, six days after the fatal I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis.
The devices, called accelerometers, will be placed on the 15 bridges in Wisconsin that have support structures similar to the Minneapolis bridge.
Accelerometers work much like seismometers, which measure movements of the Earth, and will gauge horizontal and vertical movements in the bridge supports.
Kudos to the state government of Wisconsin for spending tax dollars making a public gesture that won’t actually fix anything.
Perhaps if they installed cameras, too, so they could have pictures of the actual collapse as well, kinda like security cameras favored by police departments don’t prevent but allow government officials to watch governmental failures in progress from the safety of their offices.
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People Cannot Self-Regulate; Please, Government, Regulate Me
I guess that’s the message from this poll:
Ninety-one percent of Americans believe sending text messages while driving is as dangerous as driving after having a couple of drinks, but 57 percent admit to doing it, a poll released on Tuesday said.
The Harris Interactive survey commissioned by mobile messaging service Pinger found 89 percent of respondents believe texting while driving is dangerous and should be outlawed.
Even so, 66 percent of the adults surveyed who drive and use text messaging told pollsters they had read text messages or e-mails while driving. Fifty-seven percent admitted to sending them.
Please, mama government, save me from myself!
A good follow-up question would have been to ask how many obeyed the speed limits, existing laws designed to regulate behavior while driving, to determine how many of those people we could expect to heed new laws about texting while driving.
Oh, never mind.
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Ailing Retail Development Holds No Lessons
In St. Ann, a municipality in northwest St. Louis County, its sales tax mainstay is not providing the tax revenue it used to:
When Northwest Plaza gets a cold, St. Ann sneezes.
Northwest Plaza is ailing right now, and St. Ann’s finances are following suit.
The city depends on sales taxes from the shopping mall for a big chunk of its revenue, and sales at the mall have been on a steady decline since 2000.
“We are extremely sales tax driven,” said Mayor Tim James. “When that money goes on hiatus, which is what we are hoping, and not gone for good, it really shakes things up.”
Since 2000, the city has reduced its work force to 92 from 112 and has begun charging residents for garbage pickup that used to be free. But so far, the city has kept up appearances. Potholes are being fixed, and the streets are being patrolled.
Ah, yes, the facade of providing core government services instead of blowing scads of cash on a water park that won’t break even on an annual basis (like so many of your neighbor municipalities are).
So what is the lesson about this that municipal leaders can learn? Partnering with land developers in crony capitalist schemes to increase your sales tax revenue and then spending that sales tax revenue as though it will continue to grow infinitely might put you into trouble when those sales taxes decline?
Nah; the lesson is thank goodness you’re not fools like those people in St. Ann!
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That’s a Dig, Right?
Deep within this New York Times article lamenting that having only a couple of million dollars doesn’t make you nutso rich (a point of view with which I agree, actually), we get this bit of commentary with which I don’t:
David Koblas, a computer programmer with a net worth of $5 million to $10 million, imagines what his life would be like if he left Silicon Valley. He could move to a small town like Elko, Nev., he says, and be a ski bum. Or he could move his family to the middle of the country and live like a prince in a spacious McMansion in the nicest neighborhood in town.
But Mr. Koblas, 39, lives with his wife, Michelle, and their two children in Los Altos, south of Palo Alto, where the schools are highly regarded and the housing prices are inflated accordingly. So instead of a luxury home, the family lives in a relatively modest 2,000-square-foot house — not much bigger than the average American home — and he puts in long hours at Wink, a search engine start-up founded in 2005.
“I’d be rich in Kansas City,” he said. “People would seek me out for boards. But here I’m a dime a dozen.”
Speaking on behalf of those of us in the middle of the country, please stay on a coast.
I don’t know who’s more of a self-important twit; the journalist writing the story, or the mcmillionaire.
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Anger Is Not Zero Sum
Anger is not zero sum; that is, if everyone is angry, it doesn’t mean that one person is winning and another person is losing. An angry tide raises all boats, and it makes them run in ship-shape fashion.
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Top People Whose Voices I Wished I Had
- Morton Harket, a-ha
- Iva Davies, Icehouse
- Geoff Tate, Queensrÿche
- Ronnie Dunn, Brooks and Dunn
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Right Hand Called, Left Hand’s Phone Was Busy
You know what those of us with credible city experience call this:
Police were at a loss to explain why thieves removed the license plates of 32 vehicles in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood in the city’s West End over the last few days.
A slow night.
And special good kudos for this insight that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
“This is the first I’ve heard of anything like this,” Sgt. Al Nothum, spokesman for Troop C of the Missouri Highway Patrol, said of the rash of license plate thefts.
“Maybe the thief is taking the plate to get to the tab later, but then, why not snip the tab off instead of taking just as much time or more to unscrew the plate?”
Wholly guacamole, the stunning ignorance on display here is twofold:
- The St. Louis Post-Dispatch runs to the Highway Patrol for a comment? Of course the Highway Patrol hasn’t heard of this. Stealing license plates/tags is a local offense; you would call the City of St. Louis police department or whatever municipality you live in when you discover someone in the Central West End has stolen your tabs
- The state Highway Patrol is obviously unaware that the Missouri Department of Transportation recommends putting the registration tabs in the center of your license plate these days specifically to prevent people from cutting off the corners of license plates if the registration tabs are there.
Cut crisscrosses in your registration stickers, the thieves will snip the corner of the plate. Put the registration stickers in the middle of the plate, the thieves will steal the plates. Got any more good ideas, public officials?
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Someone Hit a Double down the 20 Yard Line
MADD offers comments on Amtrak offering booze to high end rail customers:
Mothers Against Drunk Driving questioned whether $100 in free alcohol was too much.
“This sounds like a lot of credit toward possible overindulging,” said MADD spokeswoman Misty Moyse.
Considering that the overindulgers would be riding a train, I think MADD is out of place here, but kudos to CNN for finding political opposition for a business/travel story.
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Press Leaks Invasion Details
Apparently, the press cannot keep its mouth shut regarding the United States’ covert incursions and invasion of a sovereign nation:
Our citizens cry out for more wait times for medical services!
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Congratulations to the New Hall of Famers
Hey, congratulations to Tony Gwynn on making the Hall of Fame.
I see my rookie baseball card is now worth like $10. Let my retirement commence!
Well, at least I only traded a couple commons circa 1986 for it.
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Lock Up Your Surviving Women and Children
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Ask Dr. Creepy
Dear Doctor Creepy,
I’ve always enjoyed the privilege of being the creepy guy at work, which has meant fewer interruptions of a personal nature and less interaction with my annoying co-workers. However, the company has recently hired another fellow whose creepiness apparently is novel enough that I’m more normal by comparison. This means people are starting to stop by my desk to chat and are starting to invite me to lunches and happy hours. How can I regain my creepiness crown and enjoy merciful ostracization?
Signed,
Not Creepiest
Dear Not Creepiest,
As you well know, creepiness can come in a potion form, so look around the new creepiest person’s desk to see if it’s in a phial on the desk or in the drawers. If not, check the person’s lunch in the refrigerator; if it has mayonnaise upon it, know that this often masks a creepiness potion, and you should lick the mayonnaise off of the target’s sandwich (reassembling it afterwards, of course, to cover your tracks). This will give you the benefit of the elixir and deprive the target of its power.
Additionally, to improve your creepiness, remember the power of the mystical chant; this focuses your energy and chree, the mystical power of discordance that manifests itself as creepiness. I cannot tell you what mystical phrase works for you, but I’d recommend some simple, rhyming chant, perhaps even a nursery rhyme. You should chant this phrase to yourself whenever you’re alone at your desk, in an elevator, or in the men’s room (this works especially well for women). Remember, you can generate some kinetic motion from your chakras by rocking slightly as you chant. Try it now!
Finally, remember eye contact is key in communications. That is, you should never make it. Or you should stare. Don’t do what the straights do, which is break eye contact every once in a while for comfort and then look into someone’s eyes. Overdo it or don’t do it, that’s my motto.
But if you’re going to chant a nursery rhyme, do make the eye contact.
Sincerely,
Dr. Creepy
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Robin Carnahan: Ghostwriter
In 2006, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s office rejected two conservative-minded state ballot initiatives, but put four liberal-minded initiatives on the ballot.
In 2007, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s office might be rewriting a conservative-minded ballot initiative to hinder its passage.
Joseph Stalin allegedly said, “It’s not who votes that counts. It’s who counts the votes.” However, what counts more is who determines what is voted on, and Robin Carnahan is casting enough doubt on the process to merit her removal next election.
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