Posts from — February 2008

Except for Gravatars the template is settled, and the latest version of WordPress [2.3.3] has been installed. If I can ignore the one small thing I’m going to try to move on to other things.

Update: found the key, it is done…for now.

It’s nearly sort of kind of what I was looking for after too much messing around. The off-site links now open in a new window; the posting area is now wide enough for the I Can Has Cheezeburger? pictures; clicking on the top graphic takes you to the front page. I still need to implement Gravatars, and putz around with the sidebars, but it’s generally done so that when I update WordPerfect I don’t have to rebuild everything.

Oh, the beach scene is local, Grayton Beach. That’s what the quartz sand and turquoise near-shore waters look like. There are six graphics that display randomly- 5 scenes and a variation on the original.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Reading about the incident at NIU you have to wonder if any of the reporters graduated from high school, much less college, based on their research skills and their inability to prioritize facts.

It has been emphasized that the killers at NIU and VTech both bought “gun related items” from the same Internet site. And this tells us what – that this place must have a pretty good price on Glock ammunition clips. What is the relevance of that information?

Almost as an afterthought they mention that like the VTech killer, the NIU shooter had mental health issues, this after they tell us he doesn’t match “the profile” of a mass murderer. While there is no actual profile of a mass murderer, I would think that it would be hard to classify someone who for no apparent reason murders strangers and commits suicide as sane, so maybe mental health should be included in this mythological profile.

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I will probably be messing about the blog this weekend testing a different template, so there will undoubtedly be interruptions in service and weirdness.

Don’t Panic! [and don’t forget your towel]

Bill Dedman, MSNBC Investigative reporter does his job: 10 myths about school shootings

The profile of the gun-toting student in a trench coat is just one of the myths about the rare but murderous attacks in the nation’s schools.

Here are 10 myths about school shootings, compiled by MSNBC.com from a 2002 study by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education. The researchers studied case files and other primary sources for 37 attacks by current or former students, and also interviewed 10 of the perpetrators.

Before long the legislators will be out in force with plans to save us all by passing another totally worthless law. The only reason that people know about these attacks is the media coverage, if they don’t occur in the inner cities. As the media beat their drums people think there is some huge problem that must be dealt with immediately, and during an election year there will be a predictable rush to legislate to provide campaign talking points.

Smaller class sizes would probably do more good than metal detectors, but you won’t see that in the legislative agenda.

My solution would be psych screening for politicians.

Thereby Hang The Tails

He doesn’t spell very well.
It’s what they call a pun.
He doesn’t do that very well, either.

[Editor: Ringo and Excise sprawled on a storage container displaying their extreme tail length.]

Friday Ark

In Memoriam

POP of Morning Martini had to say goodbye to Murphy after 16 years.

Digby weighs in on the mess that is the Democratic Party candidate selection process in Democracy And Democrats.

I really wanted to like this, I did. Things were going so well and the situation in Florida was presented accurately for a change and then this:

In a campaign that looks like it’s going to cost a billion dollars, I think the money can be found to hold new primaries in both states. Since neither of the candidates campaigned in the first round neither should complain. It’s not cheap, but it’s doable. Chris Bowers (who also believes that supedlegates [sic] should represent their constituents) suggests that the Florida delegates should be seated as is and offers some solid reasons as to why that makes sense. But since legitimacy is a problem with this whole thing and I’ve heard talk of “marching in the streets all the way to Denver” I think we can assume that seating those delegates in a way that would tip the results is a non-starter. So, I’m for a new election. It’s not that difficult.

She doesn’t see the problem. We’ll just wave a wand and have an election. Everyone will be happy.

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CNN, and everyone else, is reporting 6 shot dead, including gunman, at Northern Illinois University.

Normally I wouldn’t mention it, but Michael at Musing’s musings works and studies there. He’s OK, but it won’t be over for a while – not for Michael or anyone else in the area.

The Associated Press reports the Pentagon to shoot down broken spy satellite

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. officials said Thursday that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire missiles from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth’s atmosphere.

The cruiser is part of the “doesn’t actually work” missile defense system, so the satellite is probably going to hit North America, if the current tracking is correct, in rather large flaming chunks with a lot of hydrazine available to make things sicken and die which will be good news for the Shrubbery after the media get done reporting. No doubt the possible death and destruction will prove to have prevented another terrorist plot.

In other news, the BBC reports South Korea to send ‘kimchi’ to space. Kimchi consumed in a closed environment like the space station should certainly test the effectiveness of the air filtration system, both pre- and post-consumption. I’m fairly certain this violates laws about space-based weapons.

Why are you being hustled by street vendors to buy sad and drooping former roses, vegetative matter that missed the cut for bouquets, or were too late to the hospital?

Blame Esther A. Howland (1828 – 1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her guilt is writ large by the Greeting Card Association’s Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary. She imported the concept to the US from Britain to bolster her father’s stationery store in 1847.

Of course, it wasn’t long before the stationers had infiltrated school boards and imposed the now mandatory exchange in the classroom to push the low end product of Asian children and prisoners.

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CNNMoney has an important piece of information on the rebates that Congress passed: Wanna tax rebate? You gotta file first.

If you know someone, especially someone on Social Security, or possibly a student who only has a part-time job, who doesn’t normally file a tax return because they don’t make enough to pay taxes, if they made $3,000 last year they may be eligible for a rebate, but they won’t get it unless they file.

They are apparently handling this through the Internal Revenue Service, and they don’t “know” you exist unless you file the form.

There are usually groups in a community that offer free help with filling out the forms, so you don’t need to go to a tax preparer and spend a chunk of the rebate to file.

Spread the word, you have to file.

Just, don’t read them, because if you read them you will find out things you really don’t want to know and that just really tick you off.

For example, via Turkana at the Left Coaster I found a Jerome Anderson piece on Rule 11A, the rule that Florida and Michigan violated. The problem is that I found out that the penalty was to lose half your delegates until the DNC used its “discretion” and stripped both states of all of their delegates, and I found out that Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina also violated the same rule with no penalty.

It ought to be an interesting challenge for the Democratic Presidential candidate to start out 44 electoral votes in the hole, but I can’t imagine anything that the party can do that will get normally Democratic voters in either Florida or Michigan to bother to go to the polls. They have once again found a way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Actually, it is possible that a Democratic candidate may not even appear on the Florida ballot unless they apply through the independent process of a filing fee and petitions, because the Florida Democratic Party has no part in the process. I guess they could certify Clinton, even if Obama wins the nomination, since she is the winner of the Florida primary, where the process ended.

I don’t really care, I won’t be using that line on the ballot anyway.

I heard Justice Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States on the radio yesterday attempting to justify torture with hypothetical scenarios of when it might be useful.

I would request the esteemed Justice and the other brain dead individuals in this country whose thinking can’t make it out of the twelfth century to review the incident of September 11, 2001 and answer one question:

EXACTLY WHAT PART OF THE PHRASE “SUICIDE MISSION” IS TOO COMPLEX FOR YOU!!!

Thank you.