Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Note the double standard that this story reveals:

It took 12 snakes and almost five years for Bill Carity to turn raw land into a subdivision.

The Butler’s garter snake, a protected species in Wisconsin, was discovered on his property in Menomonee Falls in 1999, and afterward, he struggled to satisfy the competing demands of the Department of Natural Resources and getting his project off the ground.

“The Butler’s took me completely by surprise,” said Carity, of Carity Land Corp. of Brookfield. “For a long time, it was a painful process.”

If only they were humans who legally owned the property and had constitutional rights; then Menomonee Falls could simply have used eminent domain to remove the squatters from the government’s land–and with eminent domain, gentle reader, all land is government land–and could have given the land to developers.

But since the Butler’s garter snakes are reptiles with their bellies in the soil, the government will protect them from rapacious developers.

Horror: Compulsive gambling fuels criminal habits: Mother of 3 stole $520,000 to keep playing, and lost it

On the one-year anniversary of the last time she gambled, Pamela Wick was upbeat. She’s five months into a 10-year prison term for stealing more than $520,000, then losing it all – and more – at casinos.

“It’s a new beginning for me,” Wick, a mother of three, said in an interview last month at the Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac County. “It’s a whole new feeling that life can be normal.

“I’m really glad that I came here. It was time for me to accept responsibility.”

Accept responsibility after she got caught. Oh, she’s saying the right things for the parole board hearings to come.

Stories like this make me angry, because the helpful government wraps us all in stifling protective legislation to keep the few knuckleheads like this safe. People so consumed with stupid pursuits of destructive pleasures that they break the law and inspire new regulation to prevent the impetus the person had for breaking the law.

Let’s get to the nutty graph, where science and statistics are cast aside in favor of the almighty anecdote:

While there are no statistics on how many people run afoul of the law for gambling in the state, anecdotal evidence suggests that people such as Wick and Verbunker are becoming increasingly common, said Rose Gruber, executive director of the Wisconsin Council on Problem Gambling. The number of calls to the council’s gambling helpline has nearly tripled since 1996, with callers reporting escalating amounts of gambling debt.

“Every time we turn around, we hear about someone else,” Gruber said. “I would say that in the last two or three years, we’ve seen an increase.”

Ah, yes, an organization that exists to study and fight the problem tell us that the problem exists and is increasing. “I would say” hardly merits new rules, new funding, and any sympathy for burglars and embezzlers who are really just sick people with an addiction and no adultness to combat it.

Designing inside the box:

Historic renovations to older buildings and a regional boom in infill construction are fueling new design challenges for local architecture firms.

Many of these projects are construction conundrums, such as designing a smaller building to maximize space or following “green” construction standards that call for energy-efficient design codes.

Such challenges require architects to think about the big picture and the little picture when they design, said Michelle Swatek, executive director of the American Institute of Architects in St. Louis.

You have no choice, Howard. Give in, compromise!

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch spends a lot of pages in it’s A1 section today, including two thirds of the front page, thumping on the desk with this shoe: Lives on the line: Organ donors which tells the horror that can befall live donors. Live donors are people who give blood marrow, kidneys, and whatnot without having a motorcycle accident first.

The gripping lead:

Healthy people who donate organs to those desperate for transplants enter a world of unknowns.

Even the medical community does not know how big a risk they face.

Some get hurt. Some die. Some need transplants later.

The Post-Dispatch spent a year examining living donations. The newspaper interviewed about 200 donors, family members, transplant surgeons, hospital officials, government officials and scholars, and studied medical records and transplant research.

The newspaper’s investigation found:

• No one knows how many donors have died or suffered serious injuries or complications, because donors are not systematically tracked.
• The lack of comprehensive data makes it impossible for donors to assess the risks of what is portrayed as an ultimate altruistic deed.
• There is no agreement on who can donate an organ or how to evaluate potential donors. Those approved to donate include children as young as 10, drug addicts, mentally ill people and people who might be selling their organs, which federal law prohibits.
• The government does not regulate organ donations from living donors. Each hospital that performs transplants makes its own rules, which vary widely.

Excellent work, Post-Dispatch. As a result of your fearmongering, perhaps we can look forward to you treating us, in a couple months or a year, to a fearmongering expose on the declining number of live donors.

With a clear conscience, of course. Organizations don’t have consciences, and some don’t even have consistency.

Because I’m just crass enough, I’ll ask this question: Would Helen Harcombe be alive if she lived in a nation with a free market health system?

Michelle Malkin links to the BBC weepy about a woman who died from cancer and left instructions for her husband on how to raise their daughter. However, amid the tissue-sopping prose, we get this glimpse of her health care decisions:

Mrs Harcombe, who was 28, died shortly after Christmas 2004. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, nine months after finding a lump in her right breast.

Her family said she had been initially told she was a “low-risk patient” because she was just 26.

She had undergone a mastectomy, but by last year the cancer spread to her liver and she was told she had six months to live.

Nine months from lump to biopsy, friends. Because “she had been initially told”–by her government health care provider, no doubt–that she was low risk.

In America, we can still get that second opinion and get that damn thing checked out in a week or two. Before it gets the opportunity to gestate into a death sentence. Whether you’re a “low risk” patient or not.

Well, most of us have that chance for the second opinion. Until the government ensures that all of us get a chance at its provider’s opinion. For The Children. The Children of everyone but the Helen Harcombes.

Forest fire ‘biggest in 20 years’: Landowner clearing burning site of grass ignited blaze:

A landowner clearing grass from his campfire and debris-burning site to make it safer ignited a massive forest fire that consumed 3,900 acres in central Wisconsin yesterday, the state Department of Natural Resources said today.

Now that he’s burned everything around his campsite to the bare earth and has removed the natural diet for herbivores which dangerous predators eat, he’s probably got the safest campsite in Wisconsin. But nothing to do there.

Benton Harbor, Michigan, school officials prohibit a marching band from playing “Louie Louie”:

A pop culture controversy that has simmered for decades came to a head when a middle school marching band was told not to perform “Louie Louie.”

Benton Harbor Superintendent Paula Dawning cited the song’s allegedly raunchy lyrics in ordering the McCord Middle School band not to perform it in Saturday’s Grand Floral Parade, held as part of the Blossomtime Festival.

In a letter sent home with McCord students, Dawning said “Louie Louie” was not appropriate for Benton Harbor students to play while representing the district – even though the marching band wasn’t going to sing it.

That the lyrics aren’t really raunchy didn’t factor into the decision, apparently.

Small explosions outside the British consulate in New York:

Two “improvised explosive devices” made from “novelty-type grenades” have exploded in front of the building that houses the British Consulate in New York City, police and officials said.

Surveillance cameras, on duty, didn’t prevent anything:

Authorities were reviewing video from security cameras in the area, and no arrests have been made, Kelly said.

There, citizen, do you feel safer knowing that governments and other entities are putting cameras throughout public spaces for safety’s sake? They didn’t prevent this “bombing” and they haven’t even provided leads yet.

My wife hates this mug. I’ve had it for over ten years, and it’s been the workplace mug. You know the one, the one that gets rinsed out some days, but some days that step’s overlooked. As a result, the inside bears the stain of thousands of cups of coffee. The outside’s fading, too, and some of the images are flaking off. But I won’t replace it this year. I graduated from Marquette in 1994, the last year that Marquette used the Warriors as a mascot. The leaders at Marquette felt that Warriors was demeaning to Native Americans; just remember that when you call a Native American a warrior, it’s like calling a black person a, well, one of those names. Or so the leadership of Marquette thought. So in 1994, Marquette’s mascot changed to the Golden Eagles. Because eagles don’t sue, I guess. The move angered a number of alumni and certainly didn’t impress the students. The controversy had percolated for a number of years, including polls among the students for new names (somehow, suggestions such as Jumpin’ Jesuits and Fighting Octopi didn’t make the student poll, and the most innocuous mascots did). So I’ve held onto this cup, and a t-shirt that no longer fits, because it had the image and mascot which I associated with Marquette. Now that the university has put on a show of considering a new mascot, including a return to the Warriors, it has come up with something more abstract and more inane than Golden Eagles: Marquette Gold (story) I guess it is important that your mascot symbolize and make concrete your ideals. Once, it was tenaciousness, hardiness, and other admirable traits. Then it was, what, freedom? Flight? Now, it’s just….gold.

I even wrote a column for the Marquette Tribune in 1992 defending the Warrior:

Through These Eyes #6: The Great Mascot Controversy

In the interest of saving the university some money, I would like to make my contribution to the “Name the Mascot” competition. There’s no need for them to go throwing away money to a private consultant, even though I realize they just stuck us for ten percent more for just such academic emergencies. Let that much-needed cash go to making some dean’s office more competitively decorated like that of other schools.

Okay, the Native Americans got a little bent out of shape that the university used an image of a Native American for a while there. I know what great strain and emotional upset some of them must have gone through attending basketball games and seeing the mascot, even if it was a descendent of the original Native Americans. This great debate is not limited strictly to the campus. All over the country, groups of Native American are protesting the use of their heritage on athletic teams. I mean, I can understand. I abhor the New York Yankees. How dare they?

So now the university needs a new, non-offensive mascot. Something that can be identified with the Warrior. I humbly submit the following.
How about a white man dressed in skins carrying a club? Think about it, a nice barbarian figure for our sporting events. No, wait. That might be deemed too something-ist for our school if we featured a White European Male mascot like that. Besides, it is not a sort of figure easily identifiable with a Warrior. We’d hate to be mistaken for the Marquette Neanderthals.

Okay, idea two. A nice knight figure. In armor. A chivalrous warrior. No, wait. That’s still a European figure. Besides, some Arabic or Islamic groups might get angry because every few years a bunch of these guys would get together and try to take over the Middle East, or select parts thereof.
Okay, check this out. An African tribesman. With a spear and paint. No, can’t do that. The African Americans would have the same objections as the Native Americans.

Well, how about a samurai in his battle robe and armor, helmet adorned with ox horns, quiver, gold-studded sword, his ancestral crest, the whole bit? Maybe a neat little pseudo-seppuku when the sports team is down? Oh, there’s that blasted heritage argument again.

How about that lone American warrior, the cowboy? Why not, Rick Fields classifies that historical figure as a warrior in his book The Code of the Warrior. Since I’m running low on ideas, why not? A six-gun and ten gallon hat, idealizing the American spirit of independence and swift justice. Uh-oh, wait a minute. Cowboys tended to shoot Native Americans, didn’t they? Maybe this version of our mascot wouldn’t placate them so well….

I have to admit, I’m getting a little frustrated here. When I think of a Warrior from history, I tend to think in terms of different heritages like that, and that’s already proven to be taboo. Either the Warrior was the member of a distinct ethnic group that can and will be offended, and/or they killed people of an offendable group.

I mean, that’s the way I see it. Of course, that is ignoring the common denominator among all Warriors, which is some sort of hardiness and bravery, a willingness to risk their very lives in pursuit of what they thought was right, the skills of life and death intertwined into a person who would kill or die for honor and justice. The Native American Warrior did this. Maybe having a brave as our mascot is not so much a way of spitting on a race of man and saying “Nyah nyah, you injun,” as it is a way of showing respect for a gallant breed of our species and the finest their culture produced.
Or, I guess we could have Patty Smythe mousse up her hair and paint her face up and start singing, “Shooting out the walls of heartache, bang-bang…” But that might get a bit expensive.

Sorry, honey, the mug will go on for at least another decade. But I won’t make you wash it.

Other thoughts:

• The American Mind
• Marquette Warrior

Laura Bush at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner:

He’s learned a lot about ranching since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What’s worse, it was a male horse.

Blogosphere reaction:

• But on Saturday night, Laura Bush set a new standard. After interrupting her husband and telling him to sit down, she did a stand-up routine that included what was probably the first joke told in earshot of a president that involved him and a horse’s phallus. (John Tierney, New York Times)
• The First Lady resorting to cheap horse masturbation jokes is not much better than Whoopi Goldberg trafficking in dumb puns on the Bush family name. Unlike many Beltway and Manhattan commentators, I do not think the Wonkette-ization of the White House is a good thing. (Michelle Malkin)
• So, thanks, Laura, for leaving us with that picture of George with a horse’s penis in his hand! (Ann Althouse)
• (countless others)

Good gravy, people, get a …. well, control of yourselves. Do I need to diagram this humor on the blackboard?

1. He tried to milk a horse, but grasping the teats of the animal didn’t produce milk because it was a horse.
2. What’s more, it was a male horse. You see, even if it had been a cow, Bush’s folly would have been for naught!

For crying out loud, the teats and the phallus are at different ends of the beast, and the joke makes no mention of handjobs or masturbation.

JFC, what kinds of things do you have in your DVD players that led you to this conclusion?

Personally, I am outraged enough with the whole concept of milking which requires manually grasping bestial teats. Perhaps this explains the preference I have had for beer over milk ever since elementary school. But do we have to always drag the level of discourse into the gutter when we could leave it, well enough alone, in the udder?

(Unfortunately, I have Wonkettized this post, since hers is the blog where I found the transcript without, surprisingly, added sexual connotations.)

The Madison County, Illinois, Coroner is awful quick to call it suicide:

Franklin E. Carver, 67, of the 2700 block of Greenwood Lane, shot himself five times – three times in the head and twice in the chest – inside his home Wednesday, but none of the shots was immediately fatal, authorities said. Carver then got into his customized van and drove 10 minutes to the Clark Bridge, where he parked in the bicycle lane and jumped off the south side of the bridge as a frantic motorist called 911 from a cell phone.

“This is probably the most unusual suicide case I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Lt. David Hayes of the Alton Police Department. “It’s a bizarre case; it really is.”

The Madison County coroner said Monday that preliminary autopsy results indicate Carver, who had several convictions, died of drowning. During the autopsy, performed Sunday, doctors pulled five small-caliber bullets that had lodged in Carver’s body. The three shots to the head did not penetrate the skull, while one shot to the chest missed vital organs and the other struck the liver.

Mystery readers and writers want to hear more about this “frantic motorist” who called 911.