Posted 11/29/2007 05:49:00 PM by Douglas

I'm sure this is a fascinating article, I'm just not going to read it. That doesn't mean I don't love this line, lifted shamelessly from Arts & Letters Daily, which I recommend reading, well, daily:

North Korea is a small, isolated, stagnant pond left over from the flood of Marxism-Leninism, which long ago receded. But it has nowhere to drain away.

[...]

It is more to be pitied than to be feared.

Perfect! But this got me to dig up this monstrosity, the Ryugyong, the creepiest hotel in North Korea. It isn't any less creepy now that it's falling in on its own misguided intentions.

Posted 11/29/2007 05:43:00 PM by Douglas

Over two years later, Katrina refugees are still living in trailers. Well, not after tomorrow.

Dozens of Hurricane Katrina victims still living in FEMA trailer parks will have to find new housing by Friday, as the agency works to shutter the temporary facilities it set up after the 2005 storm.

The move is intended to help the hurricane victims move into more stable, permanent housing, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said. But advocates worry that a housing shortage in the still-recovering area could leave some struggling to find a place to live.

This may not be a fair assessment, but something tells me that if you're living in Federally funded housing over two years after being displaced by the storm, you were probably living in Federally funded housing before the storm as well, and will continued to live in Federally funded housing for a long, long time. Which makes it even more difficult to understand the downside to getting rid of these trailers.

Posted 11/29/2007 05:35:00 PM by Douglas

Graveyard shift causes cancer? I think not.

Like UV rays and diesel exhaust fumes, working the graveyard shift will soon be listed as a "probable" cause of cancer. It is a surprising step validating a concept once considered wacky. And it is based on research that finds higher rates of breast and prostate cancer among women and men whose work day starts after dark.

Also bad for you? Drinking a gallon of what you think is "coffee" and eating a bag of funyuns at 4am.

Posted 11/29/2007 05:27:00 PM by Douglas

More proof that TV weather, specifically hurricane weather, is intended to scare the crap out of old people.

With another hurricane season set to end this Friday, a controversy is brewing over decisions of the National Hurricane Center to designate several borderline systems as tropical storms.

Some meteorologists, including former hurricane center director Neil Frank, say as many as six of this year's 14 named tropical systems might have failed in earlier decades to earn "named storm" status.

"They seem to be naming storms a lot more than they used to," said Frank, who directed the hurricane center from 1974 to 1987 and is now chief meteorologist for KHOU-TV. "This year, I would put at least four storms in a very questionable category, and maybe even six."

Most of the storms in question briefly had tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph. But their central pressure — another measure of intensity — suggested they actually remained depressions or were non-tropical systems.

What?!? They're blowing shit out of proportion just to justify my paying out the scrotum for my insurance? NO!!!!! Why ever would they do that?

The number of a season's named storms forms the foundation of historical records used to determine trends in hurricane activity. Insurance companies use these trends to set homeowners' rates. And such information is vital to scientists trying to determine whether global warming has had a measurable impact on hurricane activity.

Forecasters at the hurricane center deny there's any inconsistency in the practice of naming tropical storms.

I hate it when I agree with someone who drinks more than I do, but Dr. Frank is right on this one. Check out the 2007 Hurricane Season. Andrea, Erin, Ingrid, Jerry and Melissa are five named storms that never got above 40 knots. You know what we call a 40 knot wind on the barren steppe of West Texas where I'm from?? Tuesday! Yet these bastards want to use this to milk more money out of me for my home's insurance. I think for every "named" storm that doesn't reach at least, oh, I don't know, 50 knots, the head of the NHC loses a finger.

Posted 11/29/2007 05:06:00 PM by Douglas

Can't we all just get along? At least this time he wasn't hopped up on PCP and running from cops: just drunk and getting into shit with his neighbors.

Rodney King, whose videotaped beating once made him an international symbol of police brutality, suffered minor injuries after getting hit by a shotgun blast, authorities in California said on Thursday.

An intoxicated King summoned officers to his home in Rialto, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, on Wednesday night to report he had been shot, said Sgt. Don Lewis of the Rialto Police Department.

"He had some minor pepper wounds that looked like they were from bird shot," said Lewis, who described the injuries as "extremely minor."

Lewis said King told police the shooting took place while he was riding his bicycle in neighboring San Bernardino. King rode his bicycle home after the incident and it was not immediately clear who fired the shot, Lewis said.

"(King) and the whole house were very intoxicated and very uncooperative," Lewis said.

Drunk? Uncooperative? Say it ain't so?!?

Posted 11/27/2007 05:54:00 PM by Douglas

Ever wonder where that man-hole cover came from? It ain't Pittsburgh.

Eight thousand miles from Manhattan, barefoot, shirtless, whip-thin men rippled with muscle were forging prosaic pieces of the urban jigsaw puzzle: manhole covers.

Seemingly impervious to the heat from the metal, the workers at one of West Bengal’s many foundries relied on strength and bare hands rather than machinery. Safety precautions were barely in evidence; just a few pairs of eye goggles were seen in use on a recent visit. The foundry, Shakti Industries in Haora, produces manhole covers for Con Edison and New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, as well as for departments in New Orleans and Syracuse.

Also interesting about The New York Times story? Double click on any word in the story, and dictionary.com pops up with its definition. I had no idea it did that, but pretty cool.

Posted 11/27/2007 05:32:00 PM by Douglas

When the United States was looking for a place to drop their first nuclear bomb, there's a reason they chose New Mexico: It's a pit. Worthless scrub deserts peppered with thousands of un-employed welfare recipients looking for a ride to the next casino. Anyhoo, New Mexico decided that Bill Richardson wasn't doing a good enough job putting his best foot forward (in his mouth) promoting New Mexico, so they came out with a new ad campaign that's got some people's drawers full of trinitite:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Instead of highlighting New Mexico's picturesque desert landscapes, art galleries or centuries-old culture, a new tourism campaign features drooling, grotesque office workers from outer space chatting about their personal lives.

One thing's for sure: The ad wizzards that came up with this one have definitely been to Albuquerque.

Another great way to get people to travel to New Mexico? Be sure and tell the public that if you're a resident of another state in New Mexico on business for any length of time, you owe New Mexico State income tax, even if you're just changing planes in Albuquerque, get ready to file, suckers! [yes, I was actually told that by a water-cooler dictator in the NM State tax office.]

Posted 11/26/2007 05:22:00 PM by Douglas

Your lame motto sucks.

Impactful or not, does a college really need a motto? Quick: What's the slogan of your alma mater? An extremely informal and decidedly unscientific survey indicates that many people don't know.

But mottos do matter, at least according to the branding experts who get paid to think them up. The problem, these experts say, is with slogans that try to say everything and end up saying nothing.

Most slogans play it too safe, according to Andy Valvur, a senior brand strategist for Igor, a naming and branding agency with clients like Nokia and Cisco Systems. His agency has been working with a college, which he declines to name, that wants a new motto and a new name. The college's brand identity is "too generic," he says, and fails to "capture what they do well."

Motto: the first bastion of the small minded.

Posted 11/26/2007 05:16:00 PM by Douglas

This story has been making the rounds during my Thanksgiving hiatus, but let's just settle one thing first: She's not a person that got sterilized to save the planet: She's an attention whore looking for some ink

Because when Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet.

Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible "mistake" of pregnancy should never happen again, that she begged the doctor who performed the abortion to sterilise her at the same time.

He refused, but Toni - who works for an environmental charity - "relentlessly hunted down a doctor who would perform the irreversible surgery.

Finally, eight years ago, Toni got her way.

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to "protect the planet".

I don't think anyone from the Sierra Club on down will say that it's people's interactions that are destroying the planet, so it doesn't take much to extrapolate from that that less people would make a smaller human impact on the planet. OK, fine. That's total bullshit, but whatever, it got your name in the paper. But wouldn't it follow that if you're less concerned with human life, more specifically, your children's human life, that's you're willing to abort your baby for the sake of the planet, why stop there? Why not kill yourself and hope other follow that lead? It sure would solve a lot of my parking problems.

But here's the line that shows that this attention whore doesn't give a shit about the planet.

We feel we can have one long-haul flight a year, as we are vegan and childless, thereby greatly reducing our carbon footprint and combating over-population.

So that's what a baby's life is worth? One long-haul jet ride? Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me, and idiot got what she deserved. If only her mother had been such a visionary.

Posted 11/25/2007 05:41:00 PM by Douglas

I've known this for quite some time:

Posted 11/25/2007 05:38:00 PM by Douglas

Cat conversation: Priceless:



It's almost like you're eavesdropping.

Posted 11/17/2007 07:56:00 PM by Douglas

Ever wonder where your band came up with that name? Wonder no more. Wow, some of these are really, really lame.

Posted 11/17/2007 07:50:00 PM by Douglas

Stupid internet list of the top 100 moments in food. Sadly not represented: Twinkies, fajitas and kolaches.

Labels: dumb internet lists

Posted 11/17/2007 07:50:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting trends of google searches. Turkey comes at the end of November, "Gifts" two weeks later, and "Diet" right at the new year.

Posted 11/15/2007 05:38:00 PM by Douglas

I saw some interesting video of this on one of the Houston news sites, of course I can't find it now because all TV news web sites suck but still, an interesting story:

A video given to police appears to show a figure inside the Crowne Plaza Hotel moments before it was imploded last week, officials said.

The video, police said, is very short and inconclusive, but appears to capture what may be a figure running on one of the upper floors just before the explosion and seconds before the structure collapsed.

"It seems to show movement just prior to the implosion," said Sgt. Nate McDuell, a Houston Police Department spokesman. "But that hasn't been confirmed to be human."

First of all, I can't believe the demolition wasn't more widely publicized. I'd have gone to see it. Secondly, is it the wind blowing the door shut? Who knows, but that's gotta be one of the least publicized forms of suicide: sneaking into a imminently imploding building.

Posted 11/15/2007 05:18:00 PM by Douglas

In Texas, if you shoot someone breaking into your home, after dark, I think the governor gives you medal of freedom. That's not the case here. Listen to the 911 tape. Listen to the 911 operator try to talk some sense into this guy. Listen to the guy cock his shotgun so the operator can hear it, as he runs outside to his neighbor's yard to kill those two guys. He's going down.

In the minutes before the fatal shootings, Pasadena police said the man called 911 and reported that he had heard glass breaking next door and saw two men entering the home through a window. Still on the phone with police, the man, believed to be in his 70s, saw the suspects leaving from the back of the home.

"I'm getting my gun and going to stop them," the neighbor told the dispatcher during the 2 p.m. call, according to Vance Mitchell, a spokesman for Pasadena police. "The dispatcher said, 'No, stay inside the house; officers are on the way.'

"Then you hear him rack the shotgun. The next sound the dispatcher heard was a boom. Then there was silence for a couple of seconds and then another boom."

After the shotgun blasts, the telephone line went dead. But the neighbor called police again and told a dispatcher what he had done.

When police arrived moments later, they found two dead men in the 7400 block of Timberline Drive. One was across the street, and the other had collapsed two houses down behind a bank of mailboxes in the Village Grove East subdivision.

That's not defense. In Texas, we call that capital murder. Texas law is pretty clear in that you can use deadly force in defending your life or your property. What you can't do is play judge, jury and executioner when someone breaks into your neighbor's house and is no threat to you, your safety, or your property.

Capt. A.H. "Bud" Corbett said the neighbor told investigators that he knew the next-door residents were not home. The man told investigators that he encountered the pair when they exited his neighbor's through a gate leading to the front yard.

Corbett said the neighbor asked the men, one of which was carrying a white bag, to stop, but they did not.

So he had to kill them? I can't imagine an unarmed burglar not crapping his pants if some guy gets the drop on him with a 12-gauge and puts a shot in the dirt: At that point you know he means business. But to kill one guy, and the other guy across the street? That's excessive.

Labels: Joe Horn

Posted 11/14/2007 05:49:00 PM by Douglas

Keep in mind, a Texan never retreats, but does that apply to your neighbor's house as well? I don't think we've heard the last of this one.

A Pasadena homeowner this afternoon fatally shot two men he believed were burglarizing his neighbor's house, police said.

About 2 p.m., the homeowner in the Village Grove East subdivision heard noises he thought sounded like broken glass, said Capt. A.H. "Bud" Corbett, with the Pasadena Police Department. The man determined the noise was coming from next door.

The man, who police have not identified, knew the owner of the house in the 7400 block of Timberline Drive was not home, and that the noise could possibly be a burglary, Corbett said. The man then called police to inform them he thought his neighbor's house was being burglarized.

The man then saw two men coming through a gate in the backyard of the neighbor's house.

"He confronted them with a shotgun," Corbett said, and asked them to stop. They did not and he fired two shots, striking each man once, Corbett said.

One man was found dead about two houses from where the reported burglary occurred. The other was found dead across the street, Corbett said.

Dead, across the street? That's a bit fishy, but still, I think the new law is meant to defend your own life or property against threats. Sounds like this guy and his shotgun went outside looking for trouble.

Still, it would make me think twice about breaking into any house in Texas. It also explains why Law & Order is filmed in New York, and not Houston.

Labels: Joe Horn

Posted 11/14/2007 05:34:00 PM by Douglas

More on the cat shooter. Apparently, he'd never have done it if he'd known the feral cats were being fed.

A prominent naturalist would not have killed a stray cat had he known that it was being fed and cared for by a toll-booth worker on the San Luis Pass Bridge, his attorney said Tuesday.

Jim Stevenson, 54, a well-known bird watcher and founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society, told the grand jury that indicted him on animal cruelty charges that he sincerely believed he was killing a feral cat that was preying on endangered species of birds, defense attorney Tad Nelson said.

"If I had known this man owned it, I would never have killed it," Stevenson told the grand jury, according to Nelson.

News flash, dude. You don't own a cat that lives under a bridge just because you give him some crunchies. Also, just because a feral cat is getting some crunchies, that doesn't mean he's not going to also eat a bird. An endangered bird at that.

So your defense has as many holes in it as that cat you shot. That well fed, feral cat. That you shot and killed.

Posted 11/14/2007 05:11:00 PM by Douglas

Meet the Airbus A380, just like this guy didn't.

Most of that ugliness is the fault of the plane's bulging forehead, a trait that resulted from an engineering decision to place the cockpit below the upper deck. It is useful to think of a jetliner as a sort of horizontal skyscraper. To recall the words of architecture critic Paul Goldberger, writing in a 2005 issue of the New Yorker: "Most architects who design skyscrapers focus on two aesthetic problems. How to meet the ground and how to meet the sky -- the top and the bottom, in other words." With airplanes, as with office towers, the observer's gaze is drawn instinctively to their extremities, and their attractiveness, or lack thereof, is personified through the sculpting of the nose and tail sections. Not that the A380's tail is anything special either, but it's hard to get past that forehead.

Other than size maybe, most people can't tell an Airbus from a Boeing, nor a 737 from a 767, except from size. But just as the signature 'hump' gave the 747 its signature look, the front view of the new Airbus looks like a frontal view of the Elephant Man with a tight fitting skull cap. Or a dolphin with Down syndrome.

Still, that's not why I'll never set foot on the godamned thing. There are 400 to 600 other reasons for that, depending on seating configuration.

Posted 11/14/2007 05:03:00 PM by Douglas

If you ever wondered how kids get wrapped up in the seething underbelly of the porn world, just read this one.

Five eighth-grade Alvin students were suspended from school after one of them took a photo with a cell phone of a 13-year-old female classmate coming out of a shower and then sent it to a boy, who sent it to another friend, who sent it to yet another friend.

"All of the pictures have been deleted from the phones," said Alvin School District spokeswoman Shirley Brothers. "We don't think it spread any further," she said.

The incident began recently when a group of female students at Alvin Junior High School were having a sleepover at one of the girl's home. One of the girls borrowed a cell phone from another of the girls and took a picture of yet another girl getting out of a shower.

The student who took the photo later sent it via cell phone to a boyfriend, Brothers said. Later, in school, the boy sent it to another friend, who sent it to a boy.

Am I the only one wondering why this is any of the school's damn business? Yeah, lascivious and disturbing, coming as it does from 14 year olds, but still, are parents so ill-equipped to deal with anything that they let the state take care of this kind of shit?

The two girls with the cell phone, both cheerleaders, were given three days in-school suspension, Brothers said. The three boys were each given two days of out-of-school suspension and three days of in-school suspension.

And are we really surprised that a cheerleader was involved? I mean come on. Some guys pay big money for this kind of thing. . .

Posted 11/12/2007 05:55:00 PM by Douglas

Cat-killer going on trial. I know I've blogged about this one in the past, but I'm not sure where I stand with this one. Is an endangered bird's life worth more than a stray cat's?

A prominent naturalist will try to convince a jury being chosen today that he should not be convicted of animal cruelty for allegedly killing a feral cat.

Jim Stevenson, 54, a well-known bird watcher and founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society, is accused of killing a feral cat Nov. 8, 2006, with a .22-caliber rifle.

Stevenson has defended the killing of feral cats as necessary to protect birds preyed upon by felines. "What really bothers me, this cat was down there killing endangered species of birds and others protected by law," Stevenson said in an April interview with the Chronicle.

Anyone that's been to the San Louis pass bridge knows it's LOUSY with stray cats, and if they're not being fed by the tool booth guys, then there should be NO birds in that area at all.

Still, I don't think taking your gun out and taking animal control into your own hands is the answer, but two years in prison for killing a stray cat may be a bit much.

Posted 11/10/2007 06:45:00 PM by Douglas

I've always enjoyed admitting when I'm wrong. It's just that it happens so rarely, but apparently last week I hit a nerve with some of my readers about my disdain for frozen pizza. Not content to bang my high chair idly, I threw out the challenge: recommend a frozen pizza that wasn't complete crap, and I'd eat it. After several recommendations without any repetitions, I decided I'd just buy one and try it.

It's not important what kind I got, because the variance of the recommendations reinforced the opinion I developed the last time I ate a frozen pizza, back when I lived at home and my mother didn't love me. But I digress. . .

Short answer, there's no reason anyone should ever eat these things. I think even the very hungry and the very stoned could do better, but that's not going to put a dent in their sales. These things are horrible, require your oven, which is oh so enjoyable to have on in South Texas when it's 95º outside, and still taste like ass. I can't imagine actually going to the store to buy one of these things when most pizza joints offer a "pick-up special" for a real pizza for less than ten bucks. If I'm going to go to the grocery store to buy crap (and shut up, because they are crap) that requires me to cook it for 15 minutes, why not make it yourself?

So I give to you the recipe for Enthalpy's Best™ Homemade Frozen Pizza (note: substitutions not recommended:

1. An eight inch diameter of corrugated cardboard. Substitution: Shoe leather
2. Three fluid ounces of industrial ketchup. Substitution: One ounce tomato paste and three ounces food-grade diesel.
3. Ten ounces of caulk. Preferred color: Mozzarella
4. One ounce plumber's putty that, when heated, could be confused with some meat-like substance.

Honestly, I defy any frozen pizza connoisseur to distinguish the difference of my concoction to anything that is currently commercially available.

But as a footnote, frozen pizza has extracted its revenge on me, as the steaming turd I pulled out of my oven this evening was in fact, steaming, and burned the crap out of the roof of my mouth. So I guess you had the last laugh after all, frozen pizza, but it's going to be another 20 years before I try you again.

Posted 11/10/2007 05:57:00 PM by Douglas

Amtrak: what have you done for me, lately? I don't think the freight revenue is having trouble maintaining the country's rail lines, so why do passenger rail lines need government welfare when they can't even break even?

Congress created Amtrak in 1971 to save a dying industry. Americans had abandoned rail travel for highway cruising in mattress-ride automobiles. Then came cheap jet travel for the masses. Amtrak begged annually for federal subsidies, and in recent years, has fought efforts to dismantle it. Now, thankfully, the outlook for rail is brightening.

Customer satisfaction is up, revenues from ticket sales are up, and ridership on the nation's first high-speed train – the Acela, which serves the Boston-Washington corridor – is way up (20 percent over last year).

All of this has impressed lawmakers, or at least US senators, who last week easily passed a bill that significantly increases Amtrak funding and accountability. It deserves support from both the House and the president, who has been no great friend of the rail service.

Resistance stems from the fact that Amtrak has never made a profit, despite a requirement that the service be self-sufficient (cover the cost of operations) by 2003. It hasn't been able to meet that target.

I'm having a problem following the logic in this one: Amtrak's very existence is totally dependent on government money, yet just because their losses have decreased, that's an indication they need more money? And why is their ridership increasing? Are there that many people traveling that are so scared of the TSA (Thousands Standing Around) that they don't want to go through airport security, or is it just people traveling with weed?

Posted 11/10/2007 04:47:00 PM by Douglas

What's worse, dying when your parachute doesn't open, or dying when your parachute doesn't open and nobody notices 'till the next day?

An employee of a popular skydiving facility in Brazoria County was found dead Friday afternoon, apparently killed after his parachute malfunctioned during a jump earlier this week.

Scott Bell jumped alone in the last jump Wednesday but wasn't noticed as missing because he is the person who checks people in before they jump and accounts for them after they jump, said Houston attorney Lee McMillian, the legal adviser for Skydive Spaceland in Rosharon.

When the 35-year-old didn't return to the hangar Wednesday night, people assumed he had simply walked home. Bell lived in a trailer on the facility property.

When Bell didn't return to the facility for a staff meeting Thursday morning, other employees were concerned but thought he had gone to a girlfriend's house and simply missed the meeting, McMillian said.

On Friday, a pilot noticed what looked like a parachute in tall grass about 200 yards beyond the facility's drop zone, McMillian said.

Talk about being the "last one" off the plane. . .

Posted 11/10/2007 04:36:00 PM by Douglas

At 18, you can drive a car, vote, stand trial for your life, join the military or own property, as long as that property doesn't contain an ethanol molecule. Apparently, the Marine Corps thinks that's silly and wants to allow their 18 to 20 year old Marines a drink if they want before or after their deployment. Of course, MADD is choosing to be total douche bags about it:

A dispute currently pits the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton, California, against MADD. The Corps wants Marines serving under the age of 21 to have the right to consume alcoholic beverages. MADD is steadfastly opposed, and is spear-heading efforts to block the Corps from accomplishing this feat.

The issue at the heart of this confrontation extends far beyond the base limits of Camp Pendleton and the borders of California. It needs to be addressed nationally, and as soon as possible for the benefit of the men and women serving in all the U.S. Armed Forces.

Why is it that everyone else discovered that prohibition doesn't work almost 75 years ago?

Labels: prohibition

Posted 11/10/2007 04:28:00 PM by Douglas

Fair and balanced my ass:


Don't miss the footage at the end when they're discussing the serial killer with the bikini contest footage in the background.

Posted 11/09/2007 04:44:00 PM by Douglas

Japanese scientists develop a revolutionary way for mice to get eaten by cats.

Fear may be linked to the sense of smell, and can be switched off simply by shutting down certain receptors in the brain, Japanese scientists have found.

In an experiment with mice, the researchers identified and removed certain receptors on the olfactory bulb of their brains -- and the result was a batch of fearless rodents.

To prove their point, the scientists showed pictures of a brown mouse within an inch of a cat, sniffing up its ear, kissing it and playing with its predator's collar.

Or maybe it's just a way to make cats into total pussies.

Wait, do we still have cancer, or did they already fix that?

Posted 11/08/2007 05:38:00 PM by Douglas

Get ready to get your drink on, Childress!

Seven votes separated the yeas from the nays on Tuesday when residents of Childress County decided to go wet. It will be several weeks before any alcohol is sold and people are cautious about what it might mean for the county.

The vote, 789 for and 782 against, opened the door to the sale of beer, wine and liquor in stores, restaurants and bars in the previously dry county.

Gotta give it to Childress for building a bridge to the 19th century! The money quote:

Sheriff Mike Pigg doesn't know what difference the wet vote will make in his county, except alcohol will be more convenient to purchase.

"I've never worked in a city where the full county was wet. I know sheriffs in neighboring counties. They didn't see an increase in criminal activity, just little minor stuff," Pigg said.

Let's not forget, the Baptists and the bootleggers always vote the same way on this issue.

First off, the sheriff's name. . . is Pigg. No shit. Secondly, do they really think people are going to start drinking because it's now legal to sell it there? It just means they don't have to drive to Estelline or Tell to get it. OK, in all honesty, maybe there's ONE Childress resident that's been wondering what a beer tastes like his whole life, and after 70 years, he's going to fall into the depths of disparity of alcoholism because Childress legalized hooch. Oh wait, that is the Baptist's position. Sorry.

Luckily for the tea-totaling residents of Collingsworth county, you now only have to drive 30 miles to keep Texas beer away from your citizens.

Posted 11/08/2007 05:34:00 PM by Douglas

America's greatest export, soon to be America's ONLY export: It's pervasive culture of narrow, unenlightened self-interest.

Is this just the latest example of American cultural imperialism? Or is it the triumph of planetary feminism? Neither. The globalization of the SYF reflects a series of stunning demographic and economic shifts that are pointing much of the world—with important exceptions, including Africa and most of the Middle East—toward a New Girl Order. It’s a man’s world, James Brown always reminded us. But if these trends continue, not so much.

This long, rambling piece floats somewhere between the "yawn" and "duh" buoys, but still interesting in that you don't really think about crappy TeeVee shows having that much influence, and they don't. But sometimes they get blamed for it.

Posted 11/08/2007 05:25:00 PM by Douglas

Swelling ground on a volcano. That's gotta be good news.

Yellowstone National Park, once the site of a giant volcano, has begun swelling up, possibly because molten rock is accumulating beneath the surface, scientists report.

But, "there is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption," said Robert B. Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.

Is there any evidence of no volcanic eruption? Of course not. That's why it's in my news, scaring old people.

Posted 11/07/2007 05:40:00 PM by Douglas

League City to the city council about their proposed tax hike: suck it.

Voters Tuesday struck down a proposition that would have raised the sales tax rate by a quarter-cent, despite efforts by a group of more than 100 business owners to promote the idea.


A winning vote would have created a municipal economic development district that would have used the extra sales tax for incentives to attract businesses to the city.

Of the 3,232 ballots cast, 57.6 percent of voters rejected the motion, compared with 42.4 percent who voted in favor of it, according to complete, unofficial results.

[ . . . ]

Burrows said that some residents opposed the sales tax because they saw it as an increase in what they would pay. He said his group tried to educate residents that it could eventually help residents pay lower property taxes.

Catch that? Vote to raise your taxes, and maybe we'll lower your taxes. Sometime. Maybe. Fucking thieves.

Posted 11/07/2007 05:10:00 PM by Douglas

The voters of Pearland have spoken, and they don't want you to smoke in their restaurants. Fine, I don't really, either, but this is out of hand

Junior high students cheered and gobbled pizza Tuesday night as they learned a smoking ban ordinance drive they started last spring cruised to victory.

"I'm going to go home and put my head in my pillow and just scream," said 12-year-old Savannah Owen. "It's amazing that kids like us can start something like this and people will listen to us."

Elizabeth Campo, 13, was more pragmatic. "I can go into restaurants," she said.

When did we start looking for our public policy from Jr. High girls? Isn't there generally a really good reason not to listen to them? But for expert misinformation regarding public health risks, you need to consult a policeman.

A police officer's presentation about substance abuse grew into a class discussion and investigation of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.

Why do you need a cop to tell you this? The money quote:

That parent told Hoffman that the opponents "don't like the government telling people what to do."

Well, that's what you get for disagreeing with pubescent females: Cancer.

Posted 11/07/2007 05:00:00 PM by Douglas

Rivalries: Not just for college football and East Coast/West Coast rappers. Sometimes legendary heart surgeons be disrespectin' each otha:

It's considered one of medicine's best-known feuds: two brilliant and egotistical doctors on the frontiers of cardiovascular surgery, whose falling-out divided a community and became the stuff of legend.

Immortalized in a Life magazine cover story, the rift persisted for decades. Although the competition spurred them to achievements that transformed the Texas Medical Center into the world's heart treatment center, the former collaborators avoided each other and barely spoke.

But recently, Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley buried the hatchet.

"I'm glad the rivalry may have passed by," Cooley said on Oct. 27, presenting DeBakey with a lifetime achievement award at a meeting of Cooley's Cardiovascular Surgical Society. "I hope this is not just a temporary truce or cease-fire (but) ... a permanent treaty between us."

Did they settle it with a "heart-surgery off?"

Posted 11/07/2007 04:55:00 PM by Douglas

Who ever heard of a pit bull eating a kid? Oh yeah, it happens all the time. The question is why.

An 11-year-old boy has died after being bitten on the neck by his family's pit bull, police said.

The Killeen Police Department said the dog jumped from the couch at Seth Lovitt when the boy was running through his home with his little brother Tuesday evening. The dog knocked Seth to the ground and bit him.

If there was a story in the news once a week about my vehicle eating a kid, I'd get rid of it.

Labels: pit bull attacks

Posted 11/07/2007 04:46:00 PM by Douglas

Joe Bob's back on the net, finally:

Hey guys, I need you to swing by and check out the new Wittenburg Door website, which I've been working on for the past few months and which I'll be contributing to regularly. It launched on Halloween, exactly 490 years after the event it's named after. (Read my column, you'll see what I mean.) The Door is the pretty much only magazine of religious satire, nailing the church since 1517. I've been one of the Doorkeepers for years, as many of you know, but I was picked to be the head Online Doorkeeper and, since I had very little background in web ventures, it turned out to be sort of a combination website/newspaper/gossip sheet and, I'm proud to say, made people angry even at the beta stage. The parchment scroll below will take you to the homepage. If you like anything, or even if you don't, leave a comment, sign up for the newsletter, subscribe to the feed, and hopefully you’ll come back often.

Joe Bob Briggs, Renaissance Man

It's about damn time, Joe Bob. I was running out of hilariously misogynistic writings.

Posted 11/06/2007 05:46:00 PM by Douglas

Who could have possibly imagine that a building like this might have some trouble keeping out rainwater? The braintrust at MIT didn't, because they're now suing the architect.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up.

The suit says that MIT paid Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners $15 million to design the Stata Center, which was hailed by critics as innovative and eye-catching with its unconventional walls and radical angles. But soon after its completion in spring 2004, the center's outdoor amphitheater began to crack due to drainage problems, the suit says. Snow and ice cascaded dangerously from window boxes and other projecting roof areas, blocking emergency exits and damaging other parts of the building, according to the suit. Mold grew on the center's brick exterior, the suit says, and there were persistent leaks throughout the building.

Well MIT, I say you got what you wanted. A square roof would have held back rain and mold for hundreds of years, but you wanted a cute, kitschy building with a brand name on it. Enjoy!

Posted 11/05/2007 05:48:00 PM by Douglas

Forget about the Big Mac Index and say hello to the supermodel index:

The world's richest model has reportedly reacted in her own way to the sliding value of the US dollar - by refusing to be paid in the currency.

Gisele Bündchen is said to be keen to avoid the US currency because of uncertainty over its strength.

The Brazilian, thought to have earned about $30m in the year to June, prefers to be paid in euros, her sister and manager told the Bloomberg news agency.

Who wouldn't? The dollar is crap now. It's even enough to get Pat Buchanan spun up. If only I had any idea what to do with the two nickels I've saved up through the years. Lord knows I can't melt them down. Maybe I should trade them for 10 pennies.

Posted 11/05/2007 05:22:00 PM by Douglas

Your F-15 doesn't have a "check engine" light.

A mandatory grounding of Air Force F-15s has been expanded to cover those flying combat missions over Afghanistan after a crash in Missouri last week, Air Force officials said Monday.

The F-15Es in Afghanistan can fly only in emergency situations to protect U.S. and coalition troops in a battle, according to Maj. John Elolf, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force Central Command.

Maj. Cristin Marposon, an Air Force spokeswoman, told The Associated Press the country's fleet of 676 F-15s, including mission critical jets, was grounded on November 3 for "airworthiness concerns" after the crash of an older model F-15C on Friday.

Ooops.

Posted 11/05/2007 05:16:00 PM by Douglas

Somehow, I want to go get some fajitas in London.

Today a lot of Texans consider their state a country, but from 1836 to 1845 it actually was a country called The Republic of Texas. The Republic set up an Embassy right here in London. It currently is the Berry Brothers wine store on St James Street.

A plaque still marks the spot where boisterous Texans and the reserved British struck up an unlikely friendship that continues to this day.

English Tex-Mex. What could go wrong?

Posted 11/05/2007 05:11:00 PM by Douglas

Republicans: Wake up! There's a candidate you're like to see disappear, but he's raising more money than any of you.

If Texas Republican Ron Paul's Web site fundraising meter is to be believed, the Libertarian candidate, who has lagged in the polls but raised as much money as top-tier candidates, passed $3 million in online fundraising in less than 24 hours.

Honestly, I didn't think Paul would make it this long in the race. But it's quite telling that he's got a message people are interested in, a message the mainstream parties are trying desperately to ignore, yet he's raising more money than he can spend. Stay tuned. . .

Labels: Ron Paul

Posted 11/05/2007 05:07:00 PM by Douglas

I'll admit I enjoyed Meerkat Manor for a while. It was kinda interesting, but then in season three, they jumped the shark. Or at least the meerkat.

But in its third season, this self-described soap opera has turned into the last act of Hamlet, with corpses littering the stage. After the deaths of several supporting meerkats, Flower--the show's matriarch and protagonist, a furry female Tony Soprano--died of a snakebite defending her pups. A few weeks later, Flower's long-suffering daughter Mozart--a fan favorite who was abandoned by her mother and lost several pups--was killed off camera by an unknown predator. Grief-stricken fans held online vigils, created Diana-style tributes, even suggested the deaths were faked. (Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance--they hit every stage.) Manor is a study of animals, but it's become a study of humans. How much reality do we want from reality TV? And when nature, producers and providence fail to provide justice, how do we step in?

It's a TV show, folks, and a bit overwrought. But leave it to people on the internet to take it to full bore crazy.

And it goes on like that. . .

Posted 11/05/2007 05:06:00 PM by Douglas

For an increase in your credit line, press one.

Turns out some 43% of the firm's equity is tied up in subprime-related assets, including $43 billion in headache-inducing credit derivative products. The additional write-downs would come on top of more than $3.8 billion in losses in the third quarter.

Massive exposure on the consumer credit front, where defaults are rising, also remains. Citi specializes in making loans to borrowers with weaker credit. It set aside $2.9 billion in the third quarter alone for problem consumer loans. So much for diversification.

Pretty sad when the overlords of our credit card debt are spending money on bad purchases, just like we are.

Posted 11/04/2007 03:30:00 PM by Douglas

In light of the previous post, let's just be clear that I have no idea what's going on in Pakistan. Power grab or putting down an insurrection. I have no clue. My only assessment is that that kind of instability in a country with nuclear weapons isn't a good thing, prahlee. But for the record, I love his own comparison between Lincoln and himself.

“I would at this time venture to read out an excerpt of President Abraham Lincoln, specially to all my listeners in the United States. As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion during that time of crisis, and this was to preserve the Union… towards that end, he broke laws, he violated the Constitution, he usurped arbitrary power, he trampled individual liberties. His justification was necessity and explaining his sweeping violation of Constitutional limits he wrote in a letter in 1864, and I quote, ‘My oath to preserve the Constitution imposed on me the duty of preserving by every indispensable means that government, that Nation of which the Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the Nation and yet preserve the Constitution?’”

Yeah, suck on that, democracy worshipers! From the "It's not bad when WE do it" file. So does that mean a half a million Pakistanis are going to die to keep a region from achieving their own autonomy?

At least Lincoln didn't have nukes. I bet he'd have no problem letting Sherman nuke Atlanta.

Posted 11/04/2007 02:20:00 PM by Douglas

Guess which of the world's nuclear powers declared martial law last night? If you said France, guess again.

Police detained hundreds of Pakistani opposition figures and lawyers on Sunday as military ruler President Pervez Musharraf tried to stifle the outcry over the imposition of emergency powers.

The United States and other Western allies condemned General Musharraf's decision to announce emergency rule on Saturday.

Musharraf said he acted in response to rising Islamist militancy in nuclear-armed Pakistan and what he called a paralysis of government by judicial interference.

Most Pakistanis and foreign diplomats believe his main motive was to prevent the Supreme Court invalidating his October 6 re-election by parliament while still army chief.

This isn't going to end well.

Posted 11/03/2007 05:19:00 PM by Douglas

More nefarious motivation behind our draconian drinking laws.

After the Downie trial, Dr. Simpson obtained the actual data from Dr. Dubowski’s 1985 report. In applying the same analysis to the data that Dr. Dubowski used, Dr. Simpson discovered a major error. The incidences when breath analysis overstated actual BAC were not 2.3 percent of the tests, as Dr. Dubowski had testified to in the Downie case, but rather 23 percent of the tests – a wandering decimal point!

How on earth could a little 'ole decimal be important when you're talking about throwing someone in jail?

Posted 11/03/2007 05:09:00 PM by Douglas

The Shuttle and Station will be making a spectacular overhead pass for most of the Southern US tomorrow morning around 6 A.M. Look for your location here and set your alarm for fun!

Posted 11/03/2007 05:06:00 PM by Douglas

Daylight Savings Time: The silent killer:

After clocks are turned back this weekend, pedestrians walking during the evening rush hour are nearly three times more likely to be struck and killed by cars than before the time change, two scientists calculate. Ending daylight saving time translates into about 37 more U.S. pedestrian deaths around 6 p.m. in November compared to October, the researchers report.

Their study of risk to pedestrians is preliminary but confirms previous findings of higher deaths after clocks are set back in fall.

It's not the darkness itself, but the adjustment to earlier nighttime that's the killer, said professors Paul Fischbeck and David Gerard, both of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Ah yes, another bullshit "study." Does this mean there are less auto-pedestrian accidents when the clocks spring ahead?

Posted 11/03/2007 04:55:00 PM by Douglas

Once again someone falls prey to a marathon.

Top distance runner Ryan Shay died during the U.S. men's Olympic marathon trials Saturday after collapsing about 5 1/2 miles into the race. He was 28.

Shay was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital and was pronounced dead at 8:46 a.m., New York Road Runners president Mary Wittenberg said.

Sadly preventable.

Labels: Marathons

Posted 11/02/2007 05:49:00 PM by Douglas

Hell is quickly on its way to freezing over. A Panhandle county deciding for themselves whether or not they want to come out of the 1920 and allow their citizens to chose for themselves if they'd like a beer with their dinner. Shocking, I know.

Residents of Childress County are deciding the fate of alcohol sales in the county in a wet/dry election.

The turnout has been very good in early voting, said County Clerk Zona Prince. By noon Thursday, 413 had voted.

"Everybody's interested in this, but I don't know why. Quanah's wet, Estelline's wet and Vernon," Prince said.

If passed, beer, wine and mixed drinks could be sold throughout the county in licensed stores, bars and restaurants.

And, yet another reason for residents in neighboring dry counties to drive to Childress and spend money there. As if they needed another one.

Labels: prohibition

Posted 11/02/2007 05:42:00 PM by Douglas

Mac Users Targeted with Nasty Malware. It was bound to happen.

So much for Mac users avoiding bugs, worms, and other security nuisances. A Trojan targeting Macs is on the loose, and it's hanging out on porn sites, according to security researchers.

The incident was first reported by Intego, a Mac security software vendor. Sunbelt Software, the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC), Sophos, and McAfee have confirmed the Trojan. Dubbed "OSX.RSPlug.a," the Trojan changes the Mac's Domain Name System (DNS) settings to redirect unsuspecting users to different sites.

Mac users also targeted with spending three times too much on trendy hardware just so they can bore you to fucking death about how fucking trendy they are. Finally, a reason to trot your ass down to the Apple store and buy another off-white box, the iVirus.

Labels: Mac

Posted 11/02/2007 05:35:00 PM by Douglas

Six good eating habits to ensure a healthy lifestyle:

Excess body weight, even just a little, increases your risk of cancer, according to a study released this week by the American Institute for Cancer Research. But staying active and following six rules for good eating can turn the odds back in your favor, researchers say.

Researchers analyzed more than 7,000 large-scale studies over five years and are now convinced, said Philip James, a member of the report's panel of experts, that excess body fat increases risks for cancer of the colon, kidney, pancreas, esophagus and uterus, as well as breast cancer in post-menopausal women.

And they are:

1. Be as lean as possible within the normal range of body weight
2. Be physically active as part of everyday life
3. Limit consumption of "energy-dense foods," foods that are high in calories, fat and sugar. Avoid sugary drinks.
4. Eat mostly foods of plant origin, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans
5. Limit intake of red meat and avoid processed meat
6. Limit alcoholic drinks to one per day for women, two per day for men
7. Limit consumption of salt. Avoid moldy grains or legumes
8. Aim to meet nutritional needs through diet alone, without dietary supplement

In future news, I'm dead.

Posted 11/02/2007 05:10:00 PM by Douglas

The whining of 20-nothings knows no bounds. You want to eschew a "job" like the one that's oppressed your parents? Fine, but don't start whining when you don't make any money.

Numerous young Washingtonians bemoan the improvisational and protracted career track of the area's public interest profession. They say the high competition for comparatively low-paying jobs saps their sense of adulthood, forcing them to spend their 20s or early 30s moving from college to work to graduate school and back to work that might or might not be temporary.

These wannabe world-changers, ubiquitous in Washington, New York and San Francisco, appear to be part of a larger demographic trend in which this age group is pushing off marriage and kids. The do-gooders' wanderings often clash with the expectations of parents who want them to stay longer in jobs and settle down.

"The public interest sector is a poorly funded one, and its organizations cannot afford to pay highly educated young people anything like what they would command on the open market. That makes it difficult for these young adults in their 20s to contemplate long careers," said William Galston of the Brookings Institution, author of "The Changing 20s," a study published last month. "But that doesn't mean they're willing to forgo the opportunity to work there."

"Changing the world" really isn't a job description, but good for you if that's what you want to do with your 20s. Just shut your freakin' pie hole because no one is willing to pay you for it. Get a job or save the world: don't expect that you can do both.

Posted 11/02/2007 05:04:00 PM by Douglas

Halloween 2007 is really going to be hard to top for these youngsters.

A husband and wife have been found shot to death at their San Marcos-area home.

Hays County investigators believe it's a case of a murder and a suicide.

Authorities say the bodies were discovered late Wednesday by an adult and the couple's teenage daughter when she returned home after Halloween trick-or-treating.

The bodies of 56-year-old Charles Eckford and 53-year-old Susan Eckford were in a carport area.

Officials say a gun was recovered at the scene.

Sheriff's officials say preliminary autopsy results indicate the husband fired the weapon.

Great trick, but doesn't really leave much for the follow-up, does it?

Posted 11/02/2007 05:00:00 PM by Douglas

Turns out it wasn't a chupacabra at all. At least that's what they want us to believe.

The results are in: The ugly, big-eared animal found this summer in Cuero is not the mythical bloodsucking chupacabra. It's just a plain old coyote.

Biologists at Texas State University announced Thursday night that they had identified the hairless doglike creature.

San Antonio television station KENS provided a tissue sample from the animal for testing.

"The DNA sequence is a virtually identical match to DNA from the coyote (Canis latrans)," bioligist Mike Forstner said in a written statement. "This is probably the answer a lot of folks thought might be the outcome. I, myself, really thought it was a domestic dog, but the Cuero Chupacabra is a Texas Coyote."

Oh well. I was kinda rootin' for this one, so imagine my disappointment when these crazy Mexicans are wrong. Oh well, we still have bigfoot.

It's furry and walks on all fours. Beyond that, about the only thing certain about the critter photographed by a hunter's camera is that some people have gotten the notion it could be a Sasquatch, or bigfoot. Others say it's just a bear with a bad skin infection.

Rick Jacobs says he got the pictures from a camera with an automatic trigger that he fastened to a tree in the Allegheny National Forest, about 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, hoping to photograph deer.

Yes! Score one for Sasquatch! Who could argue with this grainy picture?

Labels: Chupacabra

Posted 11/01/2007 05:26:00 PM by Douglas

I've been saying it for years now: Frozen Pizza is shit. Turns out, I'm right.

General Mills on Thursday recalled about 5 million frozen pizzas sold nationwide under the Totino's and Jeno's labels because of possible E. coli contamination.

The problem may have come from pepperoni on pizzas produced at a General Mills plant in Ohio, the suburban Minneapolis-based company said. It said the pepperoni itself came from a separate supplier, not produced at the plant itself, but it declined to release the name of the pepperoni distributor.

Several factors have to line up in just the right proportions for a person to eat one of these things:

• You're incredibly poor
• You're incredibly lazy
• You're incredibly stoned

Either way, if you're not heating it up over a fire in a barrel in an alleyway or with a hairdryer in a college dorm, you shouldn't be eating it in the first place.

Posted 11/01/2007 05:20:00 PM by Douglas

No rain + small town with no money = this. Expect more of this.

The severe drought tightening like a vise across the Southeast has threatened the water supply of cities large and small, sending politicians scrambling for solutions. But Orme, about 40 miles west of Chattanooga and 150 miles northwest of Atlanta, is a town where the worst-case scenario has already come to pass: The water has run out.

The mighty waterfall that fed the mountain hamlet has been reduced to a trickle, and now the creek running through the center of town is dry.

This can, of course, change in one summer, as it did in Texas in July.

Posted 11/01/2007 05:18:00 PM by Douglas

What amazes me about the "Ron Paul" revolution is that the more steam it picks up, the harder and harder the mainstream media try to force the public to ignore it.

It sometimes seems as if someone is playing a cruel practical joke on Ron Paul. He goes to a college and delivers the same speech he's given for the past 30 years of his political career, the one espousing the Austrian school of economics. Only now the audience is packed with hundreds of kids in RON PAUL REVOLUTION T-shirts who go nuts - giving standing ovations when he drones on about getting rid of the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard. After a speech at Iowa State last month, when nearly half the crowd had to stand because there were only 400 seats, a hipster-looking student worked his way through the half-hour-long line to shake Paul's hand. This was surely it - the moment when the straight faces would break and Paul would be wedgied up the flagpole. "When you see Bernanke," the kid said, "will you tell him to stop cutting rates when gold hits 1,000?"

Politics might be rock 'n' roll for nerds, but the nerds aren't supposed to be quite this nerdy. The leader of the disaffected in next year's presidential election - the Howard Dean, the Ross Perot, the Pat Buchanan - is a kindly great-grandfather and obstetrician whose passion is monetary policy. Paul, a 72-year-old hard-core libertarian Republican Congressman who is against foreign intervention, subsidies and the federal income tax, is not only drawing impressive crowds (more than 2,000 at a post-debate rally at the University of Michigan last month) but also raising tons of cash. In the third quarter of 2007, Paul took in $5.3 million (just slightly less than G.O.P. rival John McCain), mostly in small, individual donations. On Oct. 22, he aired his first TV ads, $1.1 million worth in New Hampshire.

Interesting, in that he can mobilize any base, much less college students that want to give him money. I'm sure the GOP is glad they have a candidate out there stirring interest and bringing actual issues to the debate, right?

"His supporters are the equivalent of crabgrass," says G.O.P. consultant Frank Luntz. "It's not the grass you want, and it spreads faster than the real stuff. They just like him because he's the most anti-Establishment of all the candidates, the most likely to look at the camera during the debates and say, 'Hey, Washington, f--- you.'"

Boy, you said a mouthful! It's fairly easy to see how a anti-establishment candidate that would like nothing more than shutting down the money tubes Washington has been sucking on for the last 90 years.

Labels: Ron Paul

Posted 11/01/2007 05:15:00 PM by Douglas

I took this picture in Galveston a few months ago. I think it's a well service company.

But it doesn't have to be!