Posts from — August 2015

The Chinese government is sending military chemical troops to Tianjin to see if they can figure out what’s going on and what needs to be done.

El Niño is strengthening and may make it to the top of the list for strength and lifespan. It has pretty much eliminated the hurricane season in the Atlantic, and made life hell in the Pacific.

Despite speculation that Al Gore might run for President again, close friends say the rumors are absurd. It is beginning to look like the media wants someone other than Bernie Sanders challenging Hillary Clinton.

The ABC reports that Deadly blasts rock northern Chinese city; hundreds injured: “Huge explosions have hit an industrial area in the north-eastern Chinese city of Tianjin, killing at least 17 people and injuring more than 400, state media says.” Officials are not certain that the 17 fatalities includes the 9 firefighters who are known to have died.

This is a port and industrial city to the southeast of Beijing that is home to 15 million people. No one knows why the explosives detonated because it is highly unlikely that any officials knew the explosives were stored there. More people will probably die in the fires caused by the explosions.

This is Ellroon’s area of concern, people being killed by the free market in China, because regulations are bad for business.

Update: The death toll is rising. The ABC is updating that link.

For some reason the people running for re-election come up with strange proposals for non-problems.

In Canada you have this: Stephen Harper vows to outlaw travel to ‘places that are ground zero for terrorist activity’. Every government issues travel warnings designating places that are not considered safe for their nationals, so why waste time and money criminalizing people who are stupid enough to go despite the warnings? All this would do is put the burden of proof on individuals, i.e. people would have to prove they weren’t terrorists, rather than the government proving they were.

In New Zealand when he was running for re-election, John Key, brought up changing the country’s flag. Well, he is doing it, and these are the candidates. This is expensive. This takes a lot of time and resources to organized all of the elections that are anticipated. It is hard to believe that New Zealand doesn’t have better uses for the funds that will be spent on this.

“Political Correctness” started as a sarcastic variation on adhering to the party line, that was coined by European Communists to label followers of the Stalinist line in the West in the middle of the 1900s.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s that Conservatives started using it to distract from their ad hominem attacks and/or anti-social rhetoric. No one is objecting to politicians’ views on political doctrine, they are objecting to a lack of manners. Private citizens can’t actually be politically incorrect, since it is a standard for politicians, but everyone can be obnoxious. Making negative public comments about someone’s personal appearance is obnoxious. Making negative public comments about someone’s political views is politics.

If more people paid attention to and remembered the lessons they learned in kindergarten the world would be a better, more civil place. The ladies of the South, bless their hearts, have proved for decades that is possible to be polite and nasty at the same time.

The ABC has the news: Trans-Pacific Partnership delegates fail to reach final deal; pharmaceuticals, cars, dairy key sticking points.

Japan, Canada, the US, Mexico, and New Zealand all have problems with the TPP as it stands, but the workers and consumers most affected by this treaty aren’t allowed to know what is in it. Let this thing just die – show mercy and remove it from life support.

When that flap-aileron was found on Reunion, it was quickly identified as a part from the missing Malaysia airliner because the part number on the outside was from a Boeing 777, and that was the only 777 that might be missing the part. The French government investigators wouldn’t make it official, but it was obvious. This reluctance by the French has caused problems and friction between the families of passengers and Malaysian officials. The families believe that the officials are hiding something from them. This situation is bad for all concerned because no one knows what happened to aircraft.

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The EPA was supposed to be cleaning up a former gold mine, but there was a little accident. Dumping heavy metals into water ways that are used for people’s drinking water is not what you expect from the EPA.

Siesta Interrupted

Do you mind?

[Editor: CC is not pleased with my camera noises.]

Friday Ark

Dallas Seavey, who has won 3 out of the last 4 Iditarods has come up with a new piece of training equipment: a refrigerated dog treadmill. Normally during warm weather sled dogs don’t move around much, because they have real problems with warm weather, and, yes, while they are short, summers in Alaska are warm. This will help maintain the conditioning of the dogs year round, giving Dallas an advantage.

Поздравляю НТодда с днём рождения.

And a happy birthday to Steve Bates.

I have been following the two dozen wild fires on the West Coast using the California Fire Map. Until there is relief for the drought this is going to be a constant threat for the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Alaska.

Another theater attack: “A man brandishing an axe and pepper spray has been killed by police after attacking people in a cinema in suburban Nashville, Tennessee.” When the police arrived, he pointed a pellet pistol at them and they opened fire. The man had major mental health problems

In local news: “Florida authorities are calling a recent triple murder in Pensacola a ‘ritualistic killing’ and believe the suspect had ties to witchcraft.” Apparently the bodies were posed, and I would assume that there were probably symbols and/or paraphernalia at the scene.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. Proverbs 17:28

That verse is often rendered: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” This is not the guide used by the participants of Fox’s two new reality pilots being aired this Thursday – Five Losers and Ten Shades of Stupid.

The network must be really desperate to fill air time to create this waste of bandwidth. Nothing remotely useful to voters is going to come out of it, but the media will watch – looking for sound bites.

If you are waiting for me to critique these shows, don’t hold your breath. I couldn’t care less about them.

As expected Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, started the 11-week election campaign on Sunday by asking the Governor General of Canada to dissolve Parliament. The other parties are already complaining that the Tories called the longest election period since the late 19th century in order to take advantage of their larger resources.

Meanwhile in the US we have already been subjected to campaigning for months, and it will continue for another 15 months. It would be nice if we could at least limit the whole thing to one year.

It could be that people don’t vote because they are totally fed up with the campaigns by the time the election actually takes place.

It’s bad enough when local people know you’ve been stupid, but no one really wants to attract the attention of a comedian with a Twitter account and millions of followers like this Texan: Karmadillo!

In April it was a Georgian, but it wasn’t funny because it was his mother-in-law who was hurt.

Once again- what part of they eat termites and ants’ don’t you understand?