Posted 2/22/2012 05:52:00 PM by Douglas

NASA's got problems, and no center is feeling it as bad as KSC. What to do with all that launch hardware we don't need anymore?

“I have a lot of facilities that we, NASA, no longer need,” said Robert Cabana, Kennedy’s director and a four-time space shuttle flier. “I don’t have the money to maintain them, I don’t have the money to tear them down. They’re just going to sit and rot.”

Wow, what a lovely sentiment. What a fine coda to the greatest technological accomplishment in the history of the planet. Could it get worse? Sure it could:

To accommodate the rocket, workers have already torn down the big gray tower on one of the two space shuttle launch pads. Cabana said NASA recouped $621,000 from selling miles of copper wire stripped out of the 25-story structure.

Awesome! NASA's selling off parts of the launch center for scrap! How perfect!

Posted 2/22/2012 05:43:00 PM by Douglas

Fans, or should I say ex-fans of the band Sugarland were told that they were partially at fault for being under a stage that collapsed during a concert last year. Ex-fans because they're either no longer fond of Sugarland or they're dead.

Calling the powerful winds that toppled the stage on Aug. 13 an "act of God," Sugarland's attorneys said fair officials and Mid-America Sound Corp. were responsible for the stage setup, and that the fans voluntarily assumed risk by attending the show.

Huh? It's tragic that so many people were hurt and killed, and it's sad that the band is being sued because the event and the venue were mismanaged. But how is it the people's fault? I realize that every person is infinitely more responsible for their own well being than Sugarland is, but what "assumed risk" are they talking about? Is each person at the concert expected to review the structural drawings of the stage and calculate the wind loading to ensure it's stable?

"Some or all of the plaintiffs' claimed injuries resulted from their own fault," according to the band's response. Sugarland attorney James H. Milstone did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment Tuesday.

So let me get this straight: There was an unexpected storm that blew over the stage, and the band's stance is "you should have known better and left?" Wow, what balls. If they had any sense at all, they would not be in Indiana in the first place, much less a Sugarland concert.

So I guess what Sugarland is really saying is that they need smarter fans. Or at least some that can run faster.

Posted 2/11/2012 02:38:00 PM by Douglas

Politicans should stay out of debates about Super Bowl commercials. I saw the one with Clint Eastwood for Chrysler and didn't think much of it. Actually, the only think I did think of was it made me wonder what's worse: A film made by Clint Eastwood in this century, or any vehicle made by the Chrysler company, ever, but that's a debate for another day. No, this debate comes from political strategists and canned ham Karl Rove. He says it's a pep talk for Obama's re-election.

The leadership of auto companies feel they need to do something to repay their political patronage. It is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.

I think he's starting to believe his own bullshit. You could just as easily hear Clint say they need to change leadership, but that wouldn't fit in with Karl's squealing about the Democratic boogeyman he sees lurking in every corner. Someone needs to remind him who authored Detroit's bailout to GM and Chrysler. Hint: you used to work for him.

Posted 2/11/2012 02:32:00 PM by Douglas

I thought this birth control controversy was made up from the beginning. Glad someone finally got down to the root of the problem.

It's not about "access" and it's not about "insurance." It's because Americans, when paying even modest co-payments, choose to spend their money on other things. They prefer a new iPod to a "wellness visit" to the doctor. As the HHS unwittingly admits: "Often because of cost, Americans used preventive services at about half the recommended rate."

Remember, we're supposed to be worrying about skyrocketing health-care expenses. Doubling the number of wellness visits and free pills sounds great, but who's going to pay for it? There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free.

"Access" is political double-speak for "getting someone else to pay for it." P.J. O'Rourke said it best during the Hillary-care debate back in the 90s: "if you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'till it's free."

Posted 2/04/2012 02:17:00 PM by Douglas

Texas is one of 49 states that allow you to carry a concealed weapon in public (suck it, Illinois), and I've thought for a long time that they are pretty silly. If you have a gun in your pocket and whip it out while, or hopefully before, someone goes nuts in the Luby's, no one is going to charge you for carrying a gun illegally. And if you just keep it in your pocket, no one is going to care because no one will find out. Obviously, if you pull it out and start shooting at people, you'll go to jail anyway, and NOT for breaking the concealed weapon law. Turns out it's illegal to shoot at people.

So I've never understood the rationale behind being able to "opt-out" of the concealed carry law. In Texas, as in most states, businesses and public places can effectively opt-out of the law that allows permitted gun owners from carrying concealed weapons on their premises simply by posting an appropriate sign. So what happens, then, if someone is otherwise legally carrying a concealed weapon, but enters a place with such a sign posted, and then shoots a guy with a shotgun pointed at a convenience store clerk? Spoiler alert: he's a hero.

The Aldi customer who shot an armed robber in the store Monday won't face any criminal charges, prosecutors confirmed Friday.

The customer, Nazir Al-Mujaahid of Milwaukee, held a news conference to discuss the incident. Al-Mujaahid, 35, called it nothing to brag about, but that "sometimes you have to do what you have to do."

Al-Mujaahid said he and his wife stopped at the store, at N. 76th St. and W. Villard Ave., for some last-minute dinner items. They'd never shopped at the store before, he said.

He said they had just walked in when he noticed the suspect approach the cashiers holding up a shotgun with the stock cut off and a bag, demanding money in a very agitated way. Fearing for the safety of himself, his wife and others in the store, he said, he unholstered his semi-automatic 9mm handgun, cocked it and kept it down at his side as he motioned another customer behind the robber to move away.

When the robber turned the shotgun toward him, Al-Mujaahid said, he fired six or seven shots from about 20 feet away. He said he hit the suspect in the leg and forehead. The robber then dropped the shotgun and bag, and fled the store. Police arrested a suspect and an accomplice later. They had not been formally charged as of Friday morning.

Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. I'm sure the owner of the store is sorry he put that sign up. . .AND glad this guy ignored it. Wait, he hit the guy seven times from 20 feet away, in the leg and the forehead, and he fled the store? Am I missing something here? Also, here's the part everyone that puts up one of those signs should read:

He said he did not notice the sign at Aldi prohibiting weapons in the store, and that if he had, he would have gone elsewhere. He said since he began to carry a concealed gun, he has stopped from going into other businesses where he did see the sign.

Think for a minute what kind of gun-toting person is going to be deterred by a sternly worded sign. Choose wisely.

Posted 2/04/2012 02:14:00 PM by Douglas

Some people watch the Super Bowl for the most exciting football game of the year. Others claim they watch it for the commercials. Still others watch it for its arcane numbering scheme. Well that may soon change.

The NFL is four years away from its 50th Super Bowl, which means it is already trying to plan around a peculiar self-inflicted marketing nuisance: How can the world's most powerful sports league get around putting a big, fat "L" on hundreds of thousands of souvenir T-shirts?

But come 2016, the Roman numeral for Super Bowl L happens to be the lone letter that most connotes losing.

"Wouldn't that be a nice time to switch over to Arabic numerals?" said Bob Dorfman, the executive creative director for Baker Street Advertising.

This enormous American sporting event is the only spectacle of its kind that takes its nomenclature from the ancient Romans. Former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle never could have imagined the behemoth that is the modern NFL when he resorted to these numerals in 1971 for Super Bowl V. Back then, they helped distinguish between the different calendar years of the regular season and the Super Bowl while adding an air of grandiosity to the fledgling championship.

It's funny to think of the Super Bowl as "fledgling."

Posted 2/04/2012 02:10:00 PM by Douglas

Presidential politics is decisive enough, do you have to throw Jesus out there, too?

Obama said that as a person who has been "extraordinarily blessed," he is willing to give up some of the tax breaks he enjoys because doing so makes economic, and religious sense.

"For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus's teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required," Obama said, quoting the Gospel of Luke.

Come on, Barry. We know your ego is bigger than deduction, but haven't you ever noticed that people really don't listen much to those that claim to know what Jesus "really" meant?

Posted 2/04/2012 02:05:00 PM by Douglas

How adorable. Kids from the concrete empire want to know what Texas is like when you venture more than 100 yards from the offramp so bad, they take a class about it.

On-screen, in the opening scene of The Last Picture Show, the wind whistled through a lonesome streetscape, empty of everything save dust and desolation. As a teenage boy peered through the splintered windshield of a rusty pick-up, an unmistakable voice wailed on the radio.

"I remember this song coming from my brother's Philco radio. That's Hank Williams - the real Hank Williams - singing Why don't you love me like you used to? ," said Young, as the camera panned to reveal a deserted main street seemingly set in the middle of nowhere. "It really captures that country up there. What never stops is the wind."

The students in Young's "Texas Crossroads" course gazed silently at the cinematic imagining of Texas as a place of thwarted dreams and forlorn horizons. The week before, they had viewed a completely different portrayal of the Lone Star State: a scene from the 1956 epic Giant, which paints Texas as the "mighty colossus of the southwest, a land of infinite variety and violent contrasts."

In classrooms from Huntsville to Houston, Abilene to Austin, students are alternately studying, skewering and celebrating the enduring notion of the Lone Star State as a land of mythic proportions and mighty individualists.

Another Sam Houston class, "Texas History 398," deconstructs the concept of "Texceptionalism." A Rice University course, "Kickin' It in Small Town Texas," explores the cultural nuances of life "beyond the hedges."

Geez, what a bunch of pussies. There's more to Texas than watching Giant or The Last Pictures Show. Get your nose out of your own latte art and go try some BBQ in Lockhart, catfish in Alto, or even the Dairy Queen in Chillicothe. You can't get a degree in life experience.

Posted 2/04/2012 01:56:00 PM by Douglas

Sandra Day O'Connor is funny:

At the black-tie steak-and-lobster Alfalfa Club dinner Saturday among political and business elites in Washington, she said that of two GOP presidential candidates, "one is a practicing polygamist, and he's not even the Mormon,"

Ha! But come on, Sandy, Newt divorced his high school geometry teacher he was married to to marry the mistress with which he was cheating on her. All of this was before he married the mistress he was cheating with while he was married to her.