Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Monday, February 28, 2005
 
Book Report Second Opinion

Well, some of you might have read my book report on John Stossel's Give Me a Break. Most of you, gentle readers, were doing something else that day, but you can read it know if ye liste.

You can find a Chris Lawrence's second opinion at Signifying Nothing.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:49 AM   0 comments
Sunday, February 27, 2005
 
The St. Louis Passive-Dispatch Weighs In

Crash kills suspect after two are shot to death

Notice how the actor in this headline is only the direct object. That's just bad epistemology on the part of the Post-Dispatch.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:21 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: The Last Detective by Robert Crais (2003)

I would have better enjoyed this book, like the others later in the Elvis Cole series, had I not read the first ones in the series. That is, if I had not immediately read the books and thought I'd find a series in the tradition of Chandler/MacDonald/Parker. Instead, the books have petered into a rather mainstreamish detective series with writing ticks designed not so much to be true to the character, but to ratchet up the suspense with devices.

The devices, again: Multiple points of view in a book that features a first person narrator. That way, you see, we get into the heads of the character. The same stop-and-restart changing of the timeline that Crais used in Hostage. The personal-as-plot-filler with the relationship with Lucy Chenier and their continuing breakdown. Geez, some Spenser fans have wanted Susan dead for 20 years, but she's a foil for introversion with Spenser. Chenier? Nothing but a foil for Cole's fear of losing her, which is how he's spent the last couple of books.

At least none of the characters, if memory serves, says "There you go." Instead, Cole says Panic kills, which is what the Rangers taught him and what the LA SWAT taught Talley in Hostage. Crais blends these sayings and verbal tics across multiple characters, which I think is sloppy. I don't like when Parker does it, either.

The plot: Lucy's son Ben is kidnapped while Cole's watching him by people who claim to want revenge for something he did in the War in Viet shnucking Nam, man. Point of order, Mr. Chairman. The entire duration of the Elvis Cole novel cycle seems to be a couple of years from The Monkey's Raincoat to the latest novel, but Crais has written the books over the course of almost twenty years now. Cole's not aging, though. Perhaps Crais should have just done the McBain thing and had Cole as a veteran of the war which seems to occur every decade or so (or every two years in George W. Bush's term), because although a young and vital man would have been a veteran of Vietnam, by 2005 those fellows are getting into their fifties and are running unsuccessfully for President.

But by page 74, I had figured out what was going on--mainly because of the multiple points of view. Although the writing style's quick and enjoyable to read, the macro writing things--the devices enumerated numerous times on this blog and in this very book report--keep me from giving an unreserved endorsement of the series. I've got one until I'm caught up with Crais, and after I am done with it, I probably won't seek out others--although I might just be stuck reading them if my beautiful wife keeps giving them to me and putting them on my to-read shelves.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:52 PM   0 comments
 
It's Easier to Ask Forgiveness than Permission

Use your head, Chester:
    A day after opting out of the U.S. ballistic missile defense shield, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin reiterated Friday that Washington must get permission from Ottawa before firing on any incoming missiles over Canada. "This is our airspace, we're a sovereign nation, and you don't intrude on a sovereign nation's airspace without seeking permission," Martin said.
Funny that Martin doesn't chastise nations who would dare conceive of firing nuclear missiles over the sovereign nation of Canada to attack the United States.

I trust our government will do the right thing and destroy such missiles if possible and risking a Canadian retaliation of combustible submarines blockading the St. Lawerence Seaway.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:19 PM   0 comments
Saturday, February 26, 2005
 
Special Shout At

And I'd like to send this little shout at to Netscape, whose 7.2 browser has a setting to block unsolicited pop-up ads, but whose default home page, http://home.netscape.com/, gets around the browser setting and throws a pop-up ad anyway.

That's smooth, fellows. Way to destroy any brand loyalty you might have had from us old-school dogs.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:46 AM   0 comments
 
Eliminate Cost, Retain Value

Proper socialist education yields expected results: Yale students demand financial aid changes:
    Fifteen Yale students staged a sit-in at the university's admissions office Thursday while nearly 100 others rallied outside urging the school to offer more financial aid.

    The 10-hour demonstration ended peacefully Thursday evening when police led the 15 students out of the building and cited them for trespassing.

    Some protesters called on Yale President Richard Levin to reduce by half the amount of money students on financial aid are required to pay. The students said families earning less than $40,000 a year should not have to contribute any money.
So the students are standing up for the lower middle class and demand free educations for themselves. Oddly, though, they're not also championing throwing open the doors of Yale to everyone who completes high school and providing them with educational opportunity to further serve the interests of Man, never mind the smaller class sizes and watered-down talent a larger professorial pool would require. These protestors want to retain the value of the Yale degree; they just don't want to pay for it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:31 AM   0 comments
 
Meanwhile, in the Post-Dispatch Business Section

Standard "Republican Spending Restraint Kills Grandmas" template stuff in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Cuts may leave some out in the cold:
    For Betty Jenkins and thousands of other Missourians, juggling grocery, utility and medical bills on a fixed income is a day-to-day struggle. The task becomes even more daunting when temperatures dip and home-heating bills reach triple digits, she said.

    Jenkins, a retired social services worker in her 60s who lives on Social Security and disability insurance, said the cost of heating her six-room home in north St. Louis County can top $100 a month during winter. To get by, she turns down the temperature every afternoon and occasionally has relied on federal assistance to avoid disconnection of her gas service.

    She and other Missourians who depend on home-heating aid may have fewer resources to draw from next winter because base funding for the country's biggest energy assistance program would be cut by $85 million, or 4.4 percent, under President George W. Bush's proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Missouri would see funding trimmed by $1.9 million; Illinois would get $4.9 million less. The amount of emergency aid available nationwide also would be reduced by a third, to $200 million from $297 million.
I expect these sorts of stories from the Post-Dispatch, which could appropriately be printed in actual red ink. But I don't understand why this is a Business story.

Also missing from the story: calls to private citizens and charities to help out. Because although the Post-Dispatch and its idealogical contemporaries pose as champions of the common man, but it's startling how little faith they have in us helping others without government coercion.

Government coercion where the government takes its vig off the top to pay for its own salaries and costs, and then splits the proceeds among sports facilities and their attendant highly-paid commissions, pay offs to corporations to pleasepleaseplease don't move away, and then, if there's anything left, to replace private charity and its warmth and benevolence with externally-imposed duty and bureaucracy.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:12 AM   0 comments
 
Felix Silla Never Let Us Down

Kenny Baker, the man inside the R2D2 suit, has been busted for driving under the influence in Britain, where he was probably doing something dangerous like driving on the right freaking side of the road.

    Kenny, 70, was banned yesterday for being just over the booze limit.

    The 3ft 8in actor admitted having two glasses of wine before driving home after rehearsals for a play.
With a person that size, it wouldn't take much, ainna?


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:49 AM   0 comments
 
Poetry Hint Of The Day

Homage and fromage don't actually rhyme.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:39 AM   0 comments
Friday, February 25, 2005
 
My Next Flight to Europe is Leaving Never Ever

Remember that Twilight Zone episode about the monster on the wing? Doesn't European regulation make unholy creatures who live to destroy seem tame by comparison?
    A BRITISH AIRWAYS jumbo jet carrying 351 passengers was forced to make an emergency landing after an 11-hour transatlantic flight with a failed engine.

    The fault occurred on take-off from Los Angeles but the pilot declined all opportunities to land in the US and instead continued on three engines for 5,000 miles to Britain.

    The incident happened three days after a European regulation came into force requiring airlines to compensate passengers for long delays or cancellations. Under the new rules, if the pilot had returned to Los Angeles, BA would have been facing a compensation bill of more than £100,000.
That will promote tourism.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:21 PM   0 comments
 
Deploy the Lovecraft

Lileks on people who knock the iPod:
    Let me speak for millions here who just want to listen to music: I don’t care about Ogg Vorbis. If Ogg Vorbis came to my house and waved tentacles at me demanding in a slobbery moan that I kneel and submit, I would shoot it. I don’t know what it is and I don’t care.
Ïa! Ïa! Ogg Vorbis the Infernal Codecs with a thousand bits!

Undoubtedly, certain swarthy cultists are swaying and chanting esoteric eldritch hymns even know. Probably amid a foetor, too.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:58 AM   0 comments
 
Conundrum

Does using the word bollix in an office e-mail create a hostile work environment, or is it merely tacky?

Because I can handle tacky.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:50 AM   0 comments
 
Hunter S. Thompson: Whiny Little Jack

Ann Althouse has more information about Hunter S. Thompson's suicide. It's worse than I thought.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:50 AM   0 comments
Thursday, February 24, 2005
 
Damned If It Don't

The Federal government often gets sued for the legislation it passes and the rules it enacts, but now it's getting sued for not arbitrarily muddling in citizens' lives:
    A consumer group sued the federal government Thursday, saying that salt is killing tens of thousands of Americans and that regulators have done too little to control salt in food.

    Despite advisories to take it easy on sodium, Americans are now consuming about 4,000 milligrams a day -- nearly double the recommended limit to keep blood pressure under control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said.

    So the CSPI renewed a lawsuit first filed in 1983 to ask federal courts to force the Food and Drug Administration to declare sodium a food additive instead of categorizing it as "generally recognized as safe." This would give the agency the authority to set limits for salt in foods.
What's next? Moving Morton's over the counter, limiting me to three cartons at a purchase, and putting my name in the database of users? Who funds CSPI and thinks its works are in the public interest? Why doesn't CSICOP sue the CSPI because there's just the slightest chance of confusion between the organization of scientists who expose crackpots and the organization of crackpots who use junk science?


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:05 PM   0 comments
 
Canadians Cantankerous Over NHL Season Loss

Apparently, the Canadians are still blaming us for the lost NHL season, for they've decided not to let the United States protect them from nuclear missiles:
    Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday that Canada would not join the contentious U.S. missile defense program, a decision that will further strain brittle relations between the neighbors but please Canadians who fear it could lead to an international arms race.
You know, Canada, you'd need to show some spine to warrant enemies who would attack. You're safe.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:02 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Hostage by Robert Crais (2001)

This book finally makes good use of the multiple points of view that Crais has been doing for the last couple of novels. This time, though, he goes a little further and adjusts the timeline, so when one point of view leaves off at a climactic moment, another will pick up a couple of minutes earlier and carries the story through the cliffhanger in the preceding section to the next cliffhanger, where the process repeats. For the most part, it works.

The protagonist, Jeff Talley, burned out as a hostage negotiator in LA and came to a smaller town to hide from the failures in his past and his disintegrating marriage. His undead lifestyle shatters when a couple of young toughs rob a convenience store, kill the clerk, commit a home invasion on their escape, and hold the family hostage after killing a cop. Unfortunately, the house belongs to a mob accountant who has evidence in the house that would put the local don away for life. So Crais ratchets up the tension, with a sort of "Oh, man, what else could possibly go wrong?" suspense that Clancy affords us, and then the story just kinda....disappoints.

Amid the tension, we get a couple of "Why would they do that?"s and a couple of blindsidings added for the sake of a couple pages of mock tension and an ultimate deus ex mobina that left me wondering.

So it was a good read but a disappointing book. Soon to be a major motion picture!, and I look forward to the movie. Not only because Bruce Willis stars, but also because it probably won't be a lot like the book. It will take a similar premise (I hope) and not end badly.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:00 PM   0 comments
 
My Next Flight is Leaving Never

Remember that Twilight Zone episode about the monster on the wing? Doesn't this remind you of that?

Me, too, unfortunately.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:48 PM   0 comments
 
That Will Do The Trick

To combat SQL databases that are free if you could only properly download and install the things, Microsoft announces a SQLServer price cut:
    The company plans to introduce SQL Server 2000 Workgroup, a version for small businesses priced at $3,899 per processor, in the first half of this year. It will also add several features to the upcoming SQL Server 2005 update, which is due in the summer, and extend a reselling relationship with Dell, which will allow its customers to get support from the PC maker.
Yeah, that ONLY FOUR GRAND will surely reel in cash strapped small businesses and startups.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:18 PM   0 comments
 
When All Your Credibility Is Gone, Why Not?

An ABC news special tonight, anchored by Peter Jennings: The UFO Phenomenon -- Seeing Is Believing

Extra special nod, sadly, for the radio commercials who play up that ABC News is asking the things the government won't consider!

Credible. I would say incredible, but I too easily believe ABC News would do this and treat it as a serious matter, since that's what its audience believes, and some beliefs are valid because one believes them. A select few, anyway.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:49 PM   0 comments
 
Renewable Energy Source

Rocket Fuel Found in Breast Milk of Women in 18 States

Excellent! I expect the President to call for increased lactation to help the United States achieve energy independence from foreign sources of petroleum.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:15 PM   0 comments
 
An American Way

Headline in Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Quarry doesn't dig development: Operator fears new residents will gripe about dust, noise:
    In the usual tug of war over suburban development, residents clamor to keep noisy businesses away from their backyards. But in this no-stoplight village, a stone quarry operator wants the backyards to stay away from his business.

    Bill Halquist, the president of Sussex-based Halquist Stone, is objecting to a $30 million development that could bring 220 condominium and apartment units - and, he says, a population of new residents to complain about noise and dust from his processing plant.

    "They wouldn't let us put a plant 54 feet away from somebody's house," Halquist said. "So why are they putting a house 54 feet from our plant?"
He has every reason to fear. Look at how people who have moved into homes abutting highways have agitated for sound barriers when they discover why the properties were so cheap, or residents who have moved into neighborhoods near gun clubs that have forced the existing gun clubs to close.

Some would say it's the American way, since settlers have displaced the native Americans and have remade the country to suit themselves, but criminey, haven't we gotten past that yet?

I guess we have; now instead of smallpox and bullets, now we abuse the power of the majority and the overweaning, controlistic government.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:57 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
 
Spyware Sneaks In Through Blogging Software

CNet reports: Spyware infiltrates blogs:
    Hackers are using blogs to infect computers with spyware, exposing serious security flaws in self-publishing tools used by millions of people on the Web.

    The problem involves the use of JavaScript and ActiveX, two common methods used to launch programs on a Web page. Security experts said malicious programmers can use JavaScript and ActiveX to automatically deliver spyware from a blog to people who visit the site with a vulnerable Web browser.

    Spyware tools also have been hidden inside JavaScript programs that are offered freely on the Web for bloggers to use to enhance their sites with new features such as music. As a result, bloggers who use infected tools could unwittingly turn their sites into a delivery platform for spyware.
Well, when you're not technical and you're cutting and pasting code from unknown Web sites into your blog templates, you're assuming that the code's author hasn't put a little something extra in it.

This is not new; remember when I uncovered that Bravenet counters were delivering pop-up ads when used on blogs?

No? My moment in the investigative sun, and there was a solar eclipse that day.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:09 PM   0 comments
 
Caesar, Render Unto Us What You Have Rendered Unto Us Before

Clergy challenge Blunt's plans to make deep cuts in Medicaid:
    A broad spectrum of big-name religious leaders came together Tuesday to announce their intention to challenge Gov. Matt Blunt's proposed Medicaid cuts.

    The meeting at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown St. Louis came on the heels of a boisterous rally Sunday at Lane Tabernacle C.M.E. Church in St. Louis, which was organized by clergy members of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
I'm saddened that these non-government sources want to make up for the shortfall of Christian charity under their watch by government funds. But then, the government is often the easiest solution for tough problems because it allows the citizenry to wash its hands of effort to do good.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:14 AM   0 comments
 
Something for Cagey

Sure, Cagey throws me a bone and reminds me that the Atari 2600 was only # 9 in MobilePC's The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time, but come on, it's a magazine entitled Mobile PC--who could have foreseen that laptops and PDAs would weigh heavily?

As a retaliatory strike, I say to him: How many of these classic games do you recognize by their screenshots? It should be easy, old timer, since you've probably played at least one of them at an Atari Party sometime and you've played the close sibling of another.

(Link seen on A Small Victory.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:19 AM   0 comments
 
What a Difference a Headline Makes

Governor promises to veto bill on tax limits

No doubt if a the parties of the governor and the legislature were reversed and the bill were profligate, injudicious spending of some sort, the governor would threaten to veto the bill; but as the governor has stated to do something (that the newspaper staff believes is) good for The People, it's the milk-and-honey of a promise.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:41 AM   0 comments
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
 
It's About Time

I was having trouble filling my days without the Scott and Laci Petersen show. Fortunately for me, CNN has already locked onto another target.

My life has meaning again!


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:08 PM   0 comments
 
In Every Search, A Story

Today's search hit from Yahoo:

greeting cards, Can I trust you again ?

Look right next to the I'm Sorry You're A Male Slut cards. Because you know no man wanted to want a greeting card to prompt a reconciliation like this.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:14 PM   0 comments
 
Send Picture Books, Please

Hey, I was not aware of this, but there's apparently a blogospheric challenge to read and review 50 books this year.

Heh. The picture book I reviewed yesterday was my 14th of the year.

I am in good shape, but I won't officially enter into the challenge because I don't want to advertise that I have no life. As long as I mention it on the blog here, it will remain a well-kept, unread secret.

(Link seen on Signifying Nothing.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:37 AM   0 comments
Monday, February 21, 2005
 
Special Shout-At

I just want to give a special shout-at to Atari, Bioware, or whatever genius that decided I need to type

90 characters of CD keys

to install Neverwinter Nights.

90 characters, I kid you not. Three lines of six blocks of five characters of nonsense. In one step, in one screen, in small print on the inside of the manual. Ha ha!

I guess I got them all right, since it installed, but maybe I put a 0 instead of an O and the BSA is helicoptering in right now. Given my track record with games, the four or five minutes represents the most fun I will spend on the game, but they got Heather's thirty bucks, so who cares if they spit on me and exacerbate my mypoia?


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:48 PM   0 comments
 
Book Review: Kittens and Cats In Colour intro by Christine Metcalf (1971)

Well, I've explained that sometimes I cut corners to make my annual quota of sixty or seventy books and that I sometimes count pamphlets as books to make sure I stay on pace. So let me expand my repetwa to picture books. This bit of kitty porn contains a rambling introductory essay about cats through history and then 80 pages, in living British colour, of cats and kittens.

Hey, don't get me wrong, the pictures are colorful and playful and lack inspirational clichés, but I am going to make an admission here that might get me permanently banned from Carnival of the Cats: Pictures of other cats aren't that inspiring.

Part of my appreciation of cats lies in their dynamism, in their movement, and in their activities and play and moods and the particular facial expressions I've grown to know over time. Thirty-some year old stills really aren't my bag. But I inherited this book from an aunt, the former crazy cat lady of Lemay, and I've looked through it and at each of the pictures and will continue to think of her whenever I dust this book on my read shelves. Granted, she only bought it to try to sell on eBay some years ago when I led her down that dark and destructive path, but there you go, and there I go with that damn Robert Crais turn of phrase IN MY HEAD.

Perhaps I am now the crazy cat blogger of Casinoport. Who doesn't particularly like picture books about cats.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:42 PM   0 comments
 
What's the Problem?

St. Louis County cuts a program, and the program performs well:
    A recent survey of Choices reported that 95 percent of its graduates last year remained out of jail and drug free for at least a year. This is good news for a program that was badly hobbled after St. Louis County reduced its funding from $950,000 to $200,000 last year.

    The budget cut forced officials to reduce the number of counselors in the program from eight to two, cut the number of inmates it served from 320 to 147 and shorten the overall program from 120 to 90 days. A midyear grant helped officials add another full-time and part-time counselor.
Sounds like they streamlined the course and targeted those inmates who the program could help. Probably at the expense of people who were looking forward to killing time over the course of 120 days of their sentences and then looked forward to scoring some dope after their sentences were up.

But undoubtedly, this represents a travesty because MORE TAX MONEY COULD BE SPENT!!!! Proponents of spending a million dollars where $200,000 would do have scoured the St. Louis County ordinances to discover that the Law of Diminishing Returns does not apply here.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:53 PM   0 comments
 
Hunter S. Thompson Must Have Hated His Wife

It's one thing to take your life, but this indicates Thompson either hated his wife or didn't even think of her:
    Pitkin County, Colo., Sheriff Bob Braudis said in a brief telephone interview that Thompson was alone in his kitchen of his Woody Creek home when he shot himself with a handgun. His wife was at a gym, Braudis said.
He left her to walk in on his mess. What a jack.

(Link seen on Michelle Malkin.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:53 AM   0 comments
 
Not Another One

Lileks today:
    Wednesday will have a special surprise, and yes, I know I’m sounding like a grade school teacher.
Exclusive speculation: THE BLEAT IS GOING GROUP BLOG.

You read this groundless speculation here first.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:43 AM   0 comments
Sunday, February 20, 2005
 
Meanwhile, I Just Closed the Office Window

Ann Althouse posts some pictures from my beloved home state (Wisconsin, dear Gentle New Readers, if any).

Down here in the relatively tropical Missouri, I just closed the window in the home office. We've had them open quite a bit this spring so far.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:23 PM   0 comments
 
Quiz Time

Free Will links to a quiz called the Moral Matrix.

Here's how I did:



Apparently, that means:

As a Robert Crais character would say, "There you go."


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:08 PM   0 comments
 
A Good Idea, But...

Powerline's Hindrocket suggests:
    Leach's belief that the anti-hunting forces are just getting warmed up is undoubtedly correct; as another hunter quoted by the Times observes, some of the hunting opponents "would protest the opening of a meat pie."

    This is one time when we can say "It can't happen here," and really mean it. America's hunters are too powerful; I suspect they're also better armed than their English counterparts. I think it's time for the NRA to open a branch in England.     [Emphasis mine]
Huh, too bad they don't have a second amendment to defend in England.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:32 PM   0 comments
 
Subsidy Sense Tingling

It starts with an anecdote:
    Lou Emery used to sell donuts and bus rides out of town until a company man came by this month to tell her the Greyhound had made its last stop here.

    He broke the news gently to Emery and the rest of the crew at Daylight Donuts on Interstate 44, about 65 miles southwest of St. Louis. The man gathered up Greyhound's equipment and apologized for shutting down the service. He left the slightly rusted bus sign in the parking lot.

    Now the bus doesn't stop anywhere around Sullivan for miles. And most residents didn't even hear about it.

    "It was never in the local paper or anything that we had lost it," Emery said.
The whole story has the tone of a prelude. These people can no longer get transportation! Greyhound is losing $140 million a year! States have tax money or the ability to get tax money! Certainly, states should support this piece of Americana that allows dozens of people to travel every day!

Stories like this, and the inevitable calls for tax money to help a relatively few people make relatively few trips, confuse an offered service with a duty. If private business won't lose money providing something, the government should. That's asinine, and perhaps it's even a straw man, but isn't that the sense you get?

You know what the government can do to improve Greyhound's business? Stop propping up airlines. When airline ticket prices go up, Greyhound will once again become the idolized piece of Americana because it will compete with train service for people who cannot afford to pay as much for a airline ticket as it actually costs to ferry the person there.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:45 PM   0 comments
 
Upon Watching Pale Rider (1985)

If Clint Eastwood were a novelist and not someone within the movie industry, I would read his books, werd.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:37 AM   0 comments
Saturday, February 19, 2005
 
Keep It In The Raincoat, Professor Hawking

Brightest Galactic Flash Ever Detected Hits Earth


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:31 PM   0 comments
 
Nothing from Nothing Leaves State Taxpayers Paying More

The Montana legislature has a really bad idea: setting a retail minimum wage at $22,000 a year. Friends, Montanans, and countrymen, that's a $10 an hour minimum wage. Rationalizing:
    Wal-Mart pays its workers such low wages that they qualify for state welfare benefits subsidized by Montana taxpayers, people told a Senate committee Tuesday.

    As an incentive for these "big box stores" to pay a living wage to their workers, Sen. Ken Toole's Senate Bill 272 would impose a gross proceeds tax on these companies. They would be exempt from the tax if they paid their employees an entry level wage of at least $22,000 a year, counting both pay and benefits and if less than half of their workers were part-time.
Because legislators would prefer that the workers receive only state welfare benefits, which is the choice that legislators are making.

The socialists chirp:
    "State taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart's payroll," said Kim Abbott, lobbyist for Working for Equality and Economic Liberation, a low-income advocacy group. "It's ridiculous."
and:
    Gene Fenderson of the Montana Progressive Labor Caucus agreed, saying "The Wal-Marts, Targets, Home Depots are not paying their fair share of taxes for the amount of wealth they extract from our states and the services they demand."
Because business is the chupacabra of society, and the government and the 'progressives' who want to forcibly redistribute wealth according to their whims are doing good.

This bill, should it pass, would yet again prove that the government is a Keynesian flat tire, loudly slowing economic progress.

(Link seen on Rocket Jones.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:26 AM   0 comments
 
Ne'er The Twain Shall Meet

The St. Louis Post Dispatch suffers from cognitive dissonance. Every once in a while, they post stories about companies leaving St. Louis, such as this analysis piece from February 5: Does loss of company HQs hurt St. Louis?:
    St. Louis lost yet another homegrown corporate headquarters last week with the announced buyout of Pulitzer Inc.

    And if the swirling rumors about a buyout of May Department Stores Co. are to be believed, an even larger corporate base could quickly follow Pulitzer out the door.

    But while the region's business leaders grit their teeth, they must ponder this question: Job loss aside, does it really matter if a corporation no longer calls your city home?
So they gnash their teeth for a bit, but then they jump on the bandwagon for the local labor whenever a local union strikes. Oddly enough, the Post-Dispatch cheerleads local labor strife and at any given time, the Post-Dispatch has at least one high profile dispute to rah-rah. Why, in 2004, we had:

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Auto dealer mechanics

Newspaper Guild (oddly enough, since that union struck against the Post-Dispatch, the paper was less eager to stick it to The Man)

Boeing Machinists

SBC

Grocery workers (end of 2003, I know, but it doesn't seem that long ago)

So why would a corporation come to or stay in St. Louis, a labor-friendly town that supports entire workforces stopping work for days, weeks, or months on end? Perhaps the tax incentives that the local and state governments favor and the Post-Dispatch lauds.

The climate for business, particularly the manufacturing and blue collar businesses whose employees the Post-Dispatch champions, is difficult, murky, and prone to the whims of organized labor and government largesse. Why would a corporation base its business here?


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:09 AM   0 comments
 
The Other Lost Season

This looks a lot like the NHL, but it's the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra:

Musicians refuse to vote on latest offer

When music returns to Powell Hall, will the players be around to play?

How come no one's floating the idea of a salary cap or tying the musicians' salaries to revenues? Because they're artists? They're artists for a starting salary of $70,000 a year in a break-even or worse venture often propped up by public funds.

Perhaps the musicians' union bosses are onto something. It's just like sports, and perhaps the musicians should be paid accordingly.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:02 AM   0 comments
Friday, February 18, 2005
 
Book Report: Demolition Angel by Robert Crais (2000)

There you go. It's remarkable how, if you read enough of an author, particularly if you read them consecutively, you can pick up on the author's particular speech habits and how they translate into the author's work so that many different characters say the same thing. Robert B. Parker fans know about his particular tics, which are almost inside jokes after thirty years. "There you go" represents Robert Crais's tic. Elvis Cole says it, and in Demolition Angel, a non-Cole character says it, so I expect Crais says it himself.

This book centers on a former bomb-squad detective investigating a case wherein a nationwide hit bomber has struck--or has he? The detective has issues of her own, as she's not been the same since nearly dying in a bomb blast. When an ATF agent comes to help with the investigation, he's not what he seems; when the bomber-for-hire comes to town, his motives are surprising and his relationship with the detective is not too thrilling.

It's a good change of pace from the Elvis Cole novels; although Heather informs me that the characters reappear, the book represents a self-contained entity. Although technical information and extra flourishes of insanity bog the book down, it's not as bad as complete chapters which detract from the central storyline. So I like it better than the last Elvis Cole novel.

I look forward to finishing the remaining three Crais novels so I can get on with the rest of my life.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:54 PM   0 comments
 
Think of It as Invoicing for the Service of Silence

Longtime reader, friend, and now cash cow Cagey writes in:
    I was doing a Google Image search on the simple topic "legs" and there on page 6 of the results was your lovely wife. Looks like she was dusting the hood or something...
Heather had mentioned getting a large number of hits from this particular Google image search, and we speculated about the type of person who would just search for legs and go through lots of pages of hits. Apparently, the answer is a happily-married person with a lucrative engineering career who can afford some hush money if he doesn't want his wife to know what kind of image searches he does.

Now excuse me while I investigate PayPal's policies regarding receiving payment for silence services rendered.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:58 AM   0 comments
 
They'll Get Action, All Right

Pay floor boost goes to council: Supporters say move will prompt state action:
    A Milwaukee Common Council committee voted 4-0 Thursday to support an increase in the city's minimum wage, a move that advocates hope will pressure state lawmakers to OK a statewide increase.

    The measure, which goes to the full council Tuesday, would raise the minimum wage in the city in two steps, first from $5.15 an hour to $5.70 an hour as of Oct. 1. A year later, it would rise to $6.50 an hour.

    The steps are the same as those proposed in March by a bipartisan commission appointed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. That group's recommendations, based on a compromise among business and labor groups, have been stalled in the Republican-controlled Legislature, as GOP leaders have said the proposed increase is too high.

    Critics said the city would be foolish to increase its minimum wage when surrounding communities have the lower state wage. They argued that it would cause some businesses to look elsewhere.
I'm with the critics. You know what's going to happen? Let's examine the unintended consequences:
  • Service will suffer in all city businesses, from restaurants to the Grand Avenue Mall shops, as employers will stretch existing employees to cover more tables, more hours, more customers. How do you think customers will react? There's an Applebee's in West Allis, and if there's not, one's looking for space right now.

  • Young people who might have taken summer jobs to silence their parents will have excuses to not find jobs (which don't exist) and will have to amuse themselves, possibly by participating in the bash mob fad.

  • People who want or need these jobs, whether as primary jobs or second jobs, will have to commute to the suburbs, spending twenty five minutes in an unsafe beater car like my brothers immortal Frankencar (no relation to Al) or ride the White and Green Limosine (the MCTS buses, now celebrating its first homicide ever) for an hour. Either one wastes time better spent on reading, spending time with children, or preparing a meal that doesn't come from a box or a window.
I think the politicos achieve their goals with the boost, though: currently employed people get more money for no more effort, and the politicos get more votes for spending someone else's money.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:26 AM   0 comments
Thursday, February 17, 2005
 
When Canadians Miss Hockey

World's Longest Hockey Game; after 6 days and 2 hours, the score is 1295 to 1159.

It's a charitable event for cancer research, so click on over and donate if you're amused. Also check out the media clips.

(Link seen on Hockey Pundits.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:41 PM   0 comments
 
Northern Border Not Secure, Either

Alanis Morissette Becomes U.S. Citizen.

Cripes, now we can't deport her.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:21 PM   0 comments
 
Hot Sellers in Nigeria

JC T-Shirts: They could be hot sellers in Nigeria!

That's what I assume from this e-mail I received:
    Hello,
    We want to order some product from your store to our store in lagos,Nigeria.First of all,we will like to know maybe you shipp via (USPS GLOBAL EXPRESS 4-5 DAYS DELIVERY SERVICE).And the method of payment will be made by major credit card. Kindly respond to this enquiry as soon as possible.Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
    Best regards.
Accept a credit card payment and drop ship to Nigeria? What could possibly go wrong?

But you, gentle reader, can still order any of these snazzy designs through Cafe Press:
Visualize World Hegemony
Visualize World Hegemony		 Cog in the Machine
Cog in the Machine		 Tao Sharks
Tao Sharks

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:53 AM   0 comments
 
Post-Dispatch Finds Big Government 'Republicans'

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has dug deeply and found some 'Republicans' incensed about Governor Blunt's government cuts:
    Malinda Terreri, a homemaker from Ballwin, contends that Gov. Matt Blunt is ill-informed and pursuing "a path of political suicide."

    Rajesh Shah, a Creve Coeur physician, accuses the governor of displaying "a lack of maturity" and "playing the 'class' card" for political gain.

    Both are Republicans who said they voted for Blunt in the fall. They might not do so again.

    Blunt angered them and thousands of other parents when the cost-cutting measures he outlined with his State of the State address included eliminating the state's First Steps early childhood program.
What kind of parents/Republicans are they?

    The media-savvy parents have held a news conference, packed a Jefferson City hearing room, appeared on television and flooded the phone lines and computers of the governor and legislators with hundreds of calls and e-mails protesting the plan.

    Terreri, the mother of a 3-year-old boy with autism, quickly set up an Internet site - savefirststeps.com. The site has collected more than 40,000 signatures on a petition to preserve the program, and also features a forum where backers regularly post their irritation with the governor's proposal.
The kind directly benefitting from the program they want to save and who are savvy enough to hold a news conference, get some fawning coverage from the socialist St. Louis daily, and collect 40,000 clicks on an Internet petition--which are not signatures, dear Post-Dispatch.

Too bad these people don't have the energy to pursue non-coercive charitable solutions to their problems, but that's much harder, since it requires constant effort, whereas getting a government program requires only an investment to get the program started and then to infrequently fight program cuts.

Although I have to say, it surprises me to see the Post-Dispatch coming down on the side of the upper middle class or lower upper class, but they're taking government handouts, so they're okay:
    Shah, the father of an autistic son, replied that the wealthy pay plenty of taxes and have just as much right to First Steps as they do to drive the state's public highways and attend public schools. "To suggest that the very wealthy should not receive these services is inconsistent with the Republican message," Shah said.
I'm not sure that's the Republican message.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:14 AM   0 comments
 
Putting on a Brave Front

NBC puts on a brave face:
    The suicide of a boxer competing in the upcoming NBC reality series "The Contender" won't derail plans for the program, according to the network and its production partners.
Pardon my cynicism, but I imagine they're at least torn. Sad for the loss, but ecstatic about the publicity. At least, I hope they're torn.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:49 AM   0 comments
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
 
Thanks for Checking In

Former TV critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Eric Mink says:
    Happy birthday, Kim Jong Il!
I think he goes on to say that Bush has failed on North Korea policy or something. I couldn't stomach much past his picture.

Those who cannot do television criticism, edit the Op-Eds. According to the Post-Dispatch, anyway.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:50 PM   0 comments
 
Clarity in Statistical Reporting

A story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:
    David Laslo, director of Metropolitan Information and Data Analysis Services at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, presented his study at a meeting Thursday at UMSL.

    His research showed that St. Louis County's population loss spiked in 1998, but has been on a general upward swing since, although it dipped in 2002 and 2003.     {Emphasis mine]
Graph that in your mind. And then send a copy to me care of this blog, would you? I get vertigo when I try to figure out what that professional journalist means.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:37 PM   0 comments
 
Perhaps Hell Hath A Fury Like That

George Michael, bidding farewell:
    In the 100-minute film, he speaks frankly about losing a lover to AIDS and the death of his mother, of the infamous lewd act in a Beverly Hills toilet and the media fury over his anti-Iraq war stance. [Emphasis mine]
I must have slept through that media fury. Did it rattle your windows?


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:30 PM   0 comments
 
Today's Trivia

From an AP article entitled "WWF Warns on Man-Made Arctic Toxins" that apparently seeks to outlaw everything Gaia doesn't like:
    Only a tiny fraction of the estimated 30,000 to 70,000 chemicals made worldwide are banned, even though many more may be harmful, the report said.
In related trivia:
  • Of the hundreds of thousands of plants grown in American homes, only a tiny fraction is pot, but many more would stink up your house if you dried them and lit them on fire.

  • Of the millions of cars on American roads, only a tiny percentage will be in accidents, although any of them can be lethal if accelerated to their top speeds and run into unyielding objects.

  • Of the gazillions of gallons of water in the world, only a small amount causes death by inhalation, but all of it is potentially lethal unless you're Kevin Costner's character in Waterworld.

  • Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.
Subtitle this piece Subsets for Effect.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:25 AM   0 comments
 
Book Report: L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais (1999)

It's a tough series. I liked the first books, but somewhere my enjoyment peaked, and I've enjoyed succeeding novels less. L.A. Requiem continues the trend. Not only does it have personal life melodrama for the detective, but it also features combinations of point-of-view and narrators that rather detract from the story. Elvis Cole tells the majority of the book in first person, but the book also cuts away to flashbacks in the third person starring Joe Pike and other third person views into what the perpetrator's doing. I understand Crais did this to add suspense, but I think we could have gotten along without it.

The book centers around the death of Joe Pike's former flame and involves a revenge murder framed on Pike. There's some element of foreshadowing in the book, not really helped by the narrative changes, and although the perpetrator was introduced early as a minor character, the climax rather blindsided me. Also, the denouement of the piece lasted several wordy pages and featured a couple of deus ex maquina things I could have lived without.

I only have two non-Elvis Cole books and two Elvis Cole novels (including one released yesterday) to read yet, and I have this sinking feeling that once I'm done, I'll be glad I'm done. And I probably won't read them again.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:16 AM   0 comments
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
 
Red Herring

Does Michelle Malkin oppose competition? It's hard to discern her stance from the sentences in her post entitled The Impact of Immigration of Wages in Arkansas, wherein she frames a link to a Wall Street Journal article. Malkin comments:
    The news side of the Wall Street Journal has conceded that immigration depresses wages among blue-collar workers.
That's not a bug, that's a feature. Competition among workers drives manufacturing costs down and should inspire the best of those employees to aspire to something better--instead of annual or union-driven raises to do the same thing over and over. The competition keeps costs down and makes for cheaper manufactured goods and for easier expansion for business owners. Regardless of from whence the workers come.

I cannot espouse an argument against immigration based on its economic impact to lowering prices. Sorry.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:25 AM   0 comments
 
Missing Hockey

I miss hockey, but that's because the AHL is on its all star break and the River Otters didn't play last night. NHL hockey? Yeah, those were on local television, so I don't get to watch games.

Still, I like this idea: NHL to Settle Salary Dispute with Lawyer Fistfight.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:18 AM   0 comments
 
Taxing Behavior

States Mull Taxing Drivers By Mile:
    It's [a hybrid car] great for Just but bad for the roads he's driving on, because he also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund highway projects and road repairs. As more and more hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of rough roads ahead.

    Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they may be considering a replacement for the gas tax altogether, replacing it with something called "tax by the mile."

    Seeing tax dollars dwindling, neighboring Oregon has already started road testing the idea.
Keep that in mind whenever your government wants to tax a behavior, such as using gas, smoking, drinking, or using a telephone. When that behavior changes, the spending remains, so the government will have to finally demonstrate some creativity--not in cutting spending, but in taxing something else for money to waste.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:21 AM   0 comments
Monday, February 14, 2005
 
Future Trivia Question Answer

Here's your future trivia question answer for the week. Remember it and you'll be the hero of your trivia night in five years:

Flash mob


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:30 PM   0 comments
 
When the Irony-Impaired Illiterates Attack!

A comment on my beautiful wife's blog:
    Dude i dont know who you are but to sit and make evry post about peta is probably the dumbest thing you could do ecpecially since you arnt posting about other animal rights groups like SHARK, ASPCA and so on. DO you not hav anything better to do than blog about something you clearly no nothing about? I am vegan and at the same time I respect peoples opinions they give me bc they are smart educated people and I always have time to listen to their opinions. I would never belive the things you post and write bc there is nothing you can back it up with. You just copy and paste things on your blog making it as though you know what your talking about. Grow up stop judging peoples lifestyles especially poeple you dont know. Dont judge a lifestyle you know nothing about either. You need to learn that everyone deserves respect for wanting to make a difference in the world and make some change. You blog is as pathetic as it gets...
The troll mandates for you.... The troll then says....
Dont judge a lifestyle you know nothing about either. You just copy and paste things on your blog making it as though you know what your talking about.
I respect peoples opinions they give me bc they are smart educated people and I always have time to listen to their opinions. Grow up stop judging peoples lifestyles especially poeple you dont know.
You need to learn that everyone deserves respect for wanting to make a difference in the world and make some change. You blog is as pathetic as it gets...


All this, and the troll was undereducated in the mysterious ways of English. Fortunately, gentle reader, I know you are smarter, better spoken, and have a better grasp of logic. Just in case, though, I do not have comments enabled to spare me my illusions.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:33 AM   0 comments
Sunday, February 13, 2005
 
Book Report: Two Classical Comedies edited by Peter D. Arnott (1958)

I bought this book for a quarter at some long ago yard sale, so I beat the price of the Amazon resellers and I didn't have to pay for shipping. Neener neener neener.

The book includes two classical comedies: The Birds by Aristophanes and The Brothers Menaechmus by Plautus. The first playwright was Greek and the second Roman; the book was designed to give the layman, or perhaps the student, an introduction to the comedies of both civilizations.

The Birds, oddly enough, does not appear to have been the source material for Alfred Hitchcock's movie of the same title--or any other Alfred Hitchcock piece for that matter. Two Athenians lead the birds as they assert their authority over gods and men. They speak highly, in verse, and I don't appreciate much of the esoterica, even with footnotes. As the older play, oddly enough, it would work more as a modernist play; the characters wear masks, and the action is more absurd. If I didn't know an ancient Greek had written it, I would have guessed it was written by a French academic or someone who came through an English program today.

The Brothers Menaechmus deals with the mistaken identity that ensues when a long lost twin brother appears and inadvertently intercedes in a squabble between his brother, the brother's wife, the brother's mistress, and a parasite who lives off of the brother's largesse. The structure more clearly represents the Shakespearean and later comedies of relationships and errors, where the action is more realistic and less stylized. Ergo, I could relate to it much better and enjoyed it more. Also, it's not the source material for The Brothers Karamazov and it's 970+ pages shorter--and that comparison alone makes any book better.

Still, although I was educating myself in the classics but not in the classical languages, I read uncredited translations, so my experience is filtered through the translator's interpretation and vocabulary, but the 1958 copyright date might indicate that the translation preceded the abominable trend of using too much contemporary idiom, which might make a translated work more accessible to the decade's hepcats, but really makes the book useless as a long term backlister--or cheap pickup at a garage sale.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:57 PM   0 comments
 
Answering the Rhetorical

Dear Rhetorical Question Answerer:
When did Motley Crue become classic rock?
                                    Bowling for Soup

Dear Bowling for Soup,
Motley Crue began its transition from vital music makers to the classic rock and oldies market when they released Decade of Decadence in 1991. Any time a musical group releases a greatest hits collection, it gambles. The very name greatest hits indicates that there will be no further hits as good, and a retrospective look at the band also makes the casual fan wonder if the band is done. Even if the album includes new material, its target audience is the cult fan who wants to own everything the band puts out and the people who, years later, decide they want to own a collection of the band's songs.

Looking over Motley Crue's discography, it proves true enough. Between Dr. Feelgood and the two releases in 1994, two complete high school classes matriculated without new Crue, and you could only hear them on album rock stations and other retrospective-looking outlets.

So to answer your question, BfS, the best date we can give is 1991.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:15 PM   0 comments
Saturday, February 12, 2005
 
Ask Not, "How Stupid Can Your Government Be?"

Lasers warn pilots of restricted airspace:
    The U.S. military is planning a final demonstration Friday night of a ground-based laser system designed to warn pilots who have flown into restricted airspace over the nation's capital.

    During the demonstration of the Visual Warning System, a test aircraft will be illuminated with alternating red and green laser lights, said Michael Kucharek, spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

    "It's an attention-getter, but it's not blinding," Kucharek said. "It's not a distraction. So pilots can still focus on flying the aircraft without endangering anyone or themselves."
After warning pilots and law enforcement to watch out for terrorists using lasers to blind pilots and crash jets, the military is going to use lasers to literally light up plane cockpits like a Christmas tree when they enter restricted airspace.

Not a distraction? Whose lives are you betting?


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:11 PM   0 comments
 
Apostrophe Abuse Continues

I first saw this new form of apostrophe abuse on a late night car dealer's add (Yes, George Weber, you're the offender). However, I see that even CNN is doing it now:

CNN abuses the apostrophe


The new abuse: putting 05' to indicate 2005. You schnucking cretins, don't you understand the apostrophe represents what was removed? It ought to be '05, to signify that you, like John Donne and William Shakespeare, have removed something where the apostrophe is.

Oh, but no. Now, in addition to being the tick mark to indicate feet instead of inches, according to the new rules, you can sprinkle an apostrophe any where you want to indicate something in the expression has been truncated. Because readers love puzzles, and maybe they'll click the link or go to the automobile showroom to find out just what the illiterate meant.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:49 PM   0 comments
 
Free Dog Name

Feel free to use this for your own puppy:

Rowdy Rottie Piper


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:07 PM   0 comments
 
Public Schooling Pro and Con

Suggested motto for public schooling, 2005:

Bag 'em and tag 'em.

(First link seen on Cold Fury; second seen directly on KdT's site because I read it every day to make sure his library remains smaller than mine.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:34 AM   0 comments
 
It's Not Overexuberant Government, It's Marketing

The cover story from the latest issue of Integrated Solutions frightened me, since it told me about how the state of Washington was earning money: Imaging Success Is No Accident: The Washington State Department of Transportation improves access to collision reports and earns $4 million in additional revenue with a document capture solution.

However, I skimmed to the end of the article and discovered how the state of Washington is "earning" that money:
    Due to the increased efficiency of this document management system, WSDOT is no longer in danger of losing federal funding. The system also is helping the agency raise extra revenue. WSDOT estimates it is now collecting between $3 and $4 million annually for damage to state-owned property that it was previously unable to obtain. "It used to take a long time to get the paper reports for a specific accident," says Stanley. "By the time we tracked down who was responsible, the insurance case was closed."
They're recovering damages from insurance companies for state property, probably non-vehicular, damaged in auto accidents. So losing less money is really earning money.

Unfortunately, although I don't think whomever came up with that turn of phrase--whether a puffing state employee or the writer who was looking for a marketable spin for his piece--meant to engage in Newspeak, but when it's inadvertent, it's much more disheartening.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:34 AM   0 comments
Friday, February 11, 2005
 
Althouse Speaks The Noggle Secret

We here in the Noggle Household recycle a lot. But instead of paying several dollars a month to have the locally-contracted waste removal company take a select number of items, categorized just so and following these said rules so that the uncaring garbagemen can dump the recycleables into a single truck and drive it to the dump, we separate a our goods and sneak them to another municipality's recycling center. We can recycle a greater number of items this way, for the same cost in gas, and we're further abstracted from the corner-cutting that will bury our recycleables in a landfill.

But Ann Althouse speaks the real reason we don't put our recycling at the curb:
    Good thing we drank a lot of milk this week so there are plenty of bulky milk containers to cover up all the wine and beer bottles that conveniently sink to the bottom -- otherwise the locals might think ill of us -- but then they'd probably think ill of us if we had a lot of diet soda cans -- or even soda cans, period.
I had to buy a pickup truck to ferry my empties to the recycling facility. Even so, I don't expect that the neighbors think the clinking in the opaque black bags is milk bottles.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:26 PM   0 comments
 
How's That Again?

Given the National Hockey League problems, perhaps the writer could have phrased this differently in the story recapping the Milwaukee Admirals thrilling overtime game win over the Houston Aeros:
    In the four-on-four overtime session, it didn't take long for the Admirals to strike.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:04 PM   0 comments
 
Now He Finds The Veto

Bush threatens to veto Medicare changes:
    President Bush on Friday threatened to veto any changes Congress tries to make to Medicare's new prescription drug benefit, which takes effect in January 2006.

    "I signed Medicare reform proudly and any attempt to limit the choices of our seniors and to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto," Bush said at a swearing-in ceremony for Mike O. Leavitt, the new secretary of Health and Human Services.
Yeah, I voted for him. So now he threatens to veto any attempt to rein in the profligate spending-to-buy-votes. As his first veto in five years in office.

With great power comes great irresponsibility, perhaps, but at least he's not as bad as the other guy would have been, and his foreign policy will allow us to live in a world safer than the alternatives so we can enjoy a future of financial collapse. But man, sometimes I have to work at convincing myself.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:19 PM   0 comments
 
You Thought of It, They Did It

Eleven arrested after police find keg party in moving truck:
    Police officers broke up a 21st birthday party and charged 11 people with underage drinking after pulling over a U-Haul moving truck with the revelers inside, officers said.
The most encouraging fact:
    Officers allowed the partygoers to call for rides and no one was arrested.

    But those who weren't yet 21 were charged with underage drinking. If found guilty, each person could face a $255 fine or 30 days in jail.
Fortunately, though, none of the underage drinkers were elementary school kids with butter knives, because that would have been a different story.

Unfortunately, as I make juxtapose the behavior to prove the outrageousness of the zero-tolerance policy in schools yielding felony arrests, some might think the proper way to put balance into law enforcement would be to riding in the back of a rental truck a felony.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:43 AM   0 comments
 
How Are Those Radioactivity Detectors Working For Ya?

Missing Halliburton shipment of radioactive material found in Boston:
    A Halliburton Co. shipment of radioactive material that landed in New York in October was lost en route to Texas, and was not found until Wednesday, when it turned up in Boston.

    The material two sources of the element americium, used in oil well exploration was found intact at a freight facility after an intense search by federal authorities. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was not alerted to the missing shipment until Tuesday.
Boston was under a heightened state of alert in January and didn't uncover this unexplained radioactive shipment with its radioactivity detectors and whatever other means it employed to investigate the dirty bomb threat.

Sleep tight.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:24 AM   0 comments
 
The End is Nigh

SCI FI Renews Galactica.

Yea, verily, and the angel opened the eighty-second or eighty-third seal (for lo, I had lost count by then), and the number of Battlestar Galactica episodes where the Starbuck was a woman exceeded those where the Starbuck was actually, you know, a buck who roamed the stars. “By this,” the angel said, “will you know the end is nigh.”

(Link seen on Signifying Nothing.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:10 AM   0 comments
 
Perspective for Hockey Owners, Players

Courtesy of Vodkapundit:
    The last time the NHL failed to award Lord Stanley's Cup, it was due to a global flu epidemic that killed 20 million people. This time, millionaire owners and millionaire players can't agree on a few contractural issue.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:32 AM   0 comments
Thursday, February 10, 2005
 
Acknowledgement

A special tip of the WTF hat to the advertising genius who centered the JC Penney's Valentine's Day ad campaign around the song "99 Luft Balloons".


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:07 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Indigo Slam by Robert Crais (1997)

This is another book in the Elvis Cole series, and as with the last one, it's moving quite to the series. Entire chapters and subplots do not relate back to the main plot of the book and carry on their own see-you-next-book cliff hangers. While my beautiful wife likes this sort of thing, I find that it bogs down the action.

But it's a pretty good book, once more pitting Elvis Cole against organized crime. This time, a Russian mob wants a counterfeiter who's disappeared and has left his kids looking for a private detective to find him. The Russians want to kill him, Elvis wants to return him to his happy home-in-flight, and Vietnamese revolutionaries want him for their own ends. So Elvis Cole has to dodge bullets, former Spetsnaz, and teenage crushes as he sets it as right as possible. When he can squeeze it in between being in love with the lawyer from the other LA and mooning over her.

So he does, eventually, and the final plot twist was obvious from early in the book. Perhaps I,the writer and the paranoia shidoshi, can sniff out a plot like this early, but I flatter myself. It was obvious. I explained it to my wife last night how it would end, and I was right.

Still, a cut above in writing and whatnot. I'll continue the series, and not just because they're on the bookshelf.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:03 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
 
The Recognition I Crave

MfBJN: Your number one Yahoo! hit for:
brian looks like long term methamphetamine

Thank you, thank you. But I must confess, it's only the two pots of flavored Gevalia Kaffe coffee I drink every day, not crystal meth.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:46 PM   0 comments
 
Misleading Headline of the Day

End to Amtrak funding unpopular:
    Wisconsin's top transportation official Monday blasted President Bush's budget proposal to eliminate all federal funding for Amtrak.

    "I think it stinks," state Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi said.
Who joins this apparatchik in bemoaning the loss of federal funding for a railway used by a few but employing many?
    Similar comments came from Amtrak management, the National Association of Railroad Passengers and the United Transportation Union, which represents Amtrak conductors.
Oh, yeah, the cool kids.

A more accurate headline more likely would have been End to Amtrak funding met with general apathy by majority, but that hardly tells Journal-Sentinel readers what to think, ainna?


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:06 PM   0 comments
Monday, February 07, 2005
 
Steinberg Limited to Paper Obits

Neil Steinberg says today:
    I never knew the name of the actor who played Dean Wormer in "Animal House" -- John Vernon -- until he died this week, at age 72. While the obituaries didn't mention it, he uttered one of the great lines in movie history -- "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son." At least to those of us who struggle with all three.
Obviously, he does not read blogs every day; that line was mentioned in almost all of the blog memorials I read last week.

Steinberg, like many of other commentators, does Vernon disservice by not remembering Vernon's role in Terminal Exposure and Sledge Hammer!.

A good fellow who looked a little too much like John Lithgow for true immortality.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:14 AM   0 comments
Sunday, February 06, 2005
 
Book Report: Quotations from Speaker Newt
edited by Amy D. Bernstein and Peter W. Bernstein (1995)

I bought this book from the Bridgeton Trails branch of the St. Louis County Library for a quarter because I am a good Republicanesque fellow who remembers fondly the Contract with America and the disbelief of a Republican House of Representatives occurring for the first time in my lifetime.

The book collects and groups a number of contextless quotes and bon mots that Newt Gingrich said or wrote in any number of forums, including his own books. By his own admission, Gingrich decided early to run for Congress and to do whatever it took to put the Republicans in power. That admission makes the choice of quotes interesting. Gingrich defending Social Security and shrieking that Bill Clinton wanted to reform it. Newt saying on the same day that Panetta was a scoundrel and that Gingrich could work with him. Newt Gingrich in 1984 attacking someone juxtaposed with Newt Gingrich in 1994 loving that person. I agreed with Gingrich on some of his positions as neatly encapsulated in these sentences, but I disagreed with him on many points, including the politically expedient (at the time) defense of social security from a Chief Executive who would ravage it.

As such, the book doesn't really build Gingrich up, but perhaps that's not the point. The treatment's even enough, and although it doesn't leave me witha complete view of Gingrich's thinking, it does make him more resemble a politician than a visionary.

But that's what you'd expect from a book that's just a collection of soundbites.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:21 PM   0 comments
Saturday, February 05, 2005
 
Hockey Season Continues

Listen, fellows, you won't miss hockey if you go to Sports Juice, which carries Internet streams of many AHL hockey games, including those from the Milwaukee Admirals and the Worcester Ice Cats.

Because it amalgamates the streams from their sources, you get an interesting hodgepodge. For example, a Christian music station carries the Milwaukee Admirals, so you get the commercials and promos you would expect on a Christian station. The stream for the Worcester IceCats (formerly the farm team of the St. Louis Blues before the NHL collapsed) carries the live feed from the mics on the commentators instead of the radio feed, so you get to hear what the commentators say to each other during the breaks.

For example, tonight the commentator expressed belief that you would think the Missouri River Otters would be doing better than they are because of the players they have after reporting the signing of the former Blues defenseman Barret Jackman.

You know, we should cross the river to see a UHL game before the season is over....


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:45 PM   0 comments
 
Paradox Warning!

When my beautiful wife and I were in the grocery store, a disparate pair of magazine headlines intruded upon the sane world in which we live:

A Tabloid Paradox
Click for full size


So Brad Wants Jen Back! and Jen Fights to Get Brad Back!? Yeeks, these are direct opposites by implication. Tabloids should be careful since their regular readers, who seem to care about the state of Bradnifer's marriage, might suffer from brain implosions when trying to comprehend how Brad is fighting for Jen and Jen is fighting for Brad.

Fighting whom?

Yeah, I know, I bought the magazines and only encouraged them. Shaddup.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:02 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Sunset Express by Robert Crais (1996)

This book is where the Elvis Cole books become an obvious series, and that's not a good thing for a standalone novel.

The plot revolves around Elvis Cole's experience as part of a high-profile defense team of a wealth restauranteur whose wife's body is found after she was beaten to death. Although investigators find the murder weapon on the estate of the husband, Elvis Cole uncovers proof of a kidnap plot the husband asserted. Or perhaps he's being made a patsy by the nationally-reknowned lawyer heading the defense.

Unfortunately, Elvis has the evolving love with Lucy Chenier, which means that we have to deal with passages and chapters which deal with the series storyline, which detracts from the novel storyline. As a matter of fact, the middle of the book features a section where Cole has apparently solved the murder and is being feted as a hero but when Lucy grows distant. So the reader, or at least I, had to bridge this bit of emotional baggage with only the hope that something else would happen in the remaining 150 pages. Of course, as I am a glutton even for bad writing, I waded through the chapters until another problem/mystery presented itself, but that's a hard fjord to cross, brother, and might poor practice.

I admit, I prefer series that are less sequential and where the books are self-contained units where the characters' growing/aging/lives don't represent a chunk of individual books. But then again, I prefer not to need to read books in order to get the most of them.

Still, it's a fairly good book. Worth a couple bucks used. Even better when it's a gift.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:49 PM   0 comments
 
Warning

Attention other husbands out there: Les Miserables is not an up-and-coming blues band. Your wife is tricking you to see a singing play. Don't fall for it, or you, too, might find yourself having nightmares about living in a world where everyone communicates by singing, and you only understand one word in four.

Or so I heard.

UPDATE: Another band geek weighs in.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:14 AM   0 comments
Friday, February 04, 2005
 
It Could Be Worse

Professor Bainbridge muses on Donald Rumsfeld's reluctance to go to Germany:
    So Donald Rumsfeld is afraid to go to Germany because he might get arrested on war crimes charges. So much for the NATO alliance, eh?
Well, that's only on the good end of the spectrum. There's always a chance that German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and some of his other leather clad apparatachiks might firebomb his motorcade or beat him to death with a brick.

Because that's the caliber of leaders to which some would have America aspire, or to whom America should kowtow.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:50 AM   0 comments
Thursday, February 03, 2005
 
Keeping Costs Down

As Farrah explains at Cam Edwards.com:
    To run an effective, popular blog takes a significant amount of time. Time that is taken away from revenue generating activities (like a day job) and that money needs to be recovered somehow.
Here at MfBJN, we keep our costs down! Our secret?

We run an ineffective, nonpopular blog!

And we pass those savings on to you!

(Link seen on Michelle Malkin.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:22 PM   0 comments
 
Spot the Errors

Trek fans, spot the error in this story about the end of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Here, let me help:
    Enterprise, the fourth spinoff of the 1966-69 flagship, and the first prequel, contributed 98 episodes to the institution when it signs off on May 13. That's the shortest run since the original series was axed by NBC after only 80 adventures; it's the first spinoff series to last less than seven seasons.
Let's count the spin-offs, in reverse order:
  1. Star Trek: Enterprise

  2. Star Trek: Voyager

  3. Star Trek: Deep Space 9

  4. Star Trek: The Next Generation
That's for, by golly. You damn kids! You always, always forget:
  1. Star Trek (The Animated Series)
Which lasted only two years, so it's the shortest Trek series yet and it illuminates that there has been hot new Trek action in every decade since the 1960s, which somehoe coincides with the same decades in which Cher has charted hits..... Hmmm....

(Link seen on Signifying Nothing.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:20 PM   0 comments
 
Make Your Prediction

So, gentle reader, what do you think will result from this crime?
    As the store's alarm rang, thieves made off with 32 rifles and handguns from a Fremont gun shop early Wednesday, less than two weeks after police announced they will soon ignore burglar alarms unless there was a confirmed crime.

    Irvington Arms owner Martin MacDonald was livid over the break-in at his shop, where burglars used an aluminum baseball bat to break the front door and smashed display cases with a crowbar before making off with $20,000 in weapons.

    MacDonald blamed the break-in on the Police Department's policy -- announced last month but not effective until Feb. 18 -- that officers won't respond to burglar alarms unless they are told there is evidence of a break-in or security breach.

    "I think they basically invited crime into the neighborhood," said MacDonald, 35. "It's on every channel and in the newspaper. They might as well have said, in bold print, 'Commit robbery in Fremont,' because the PD won't respond. This was unacceptable."
Will the community of Fremont:
  • Scale back its police non-intervention program, ensuring that perhaps someone should drive by places with their alarms ringing.

  • Ban the sale of guns in Fremont, because if it ain't in Fremont, it can't be stolen in Fremont, and when only outlaws can put guns for sale that other outlaws can steal, those other outlaws will have to steal the guns for sale from someone else, preferably in a different jurisdiction.
If you're here for anything but a weird Google search involving hot pix of one sort or another, you know which one I think Fremont will implement.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:01 AM   0 comments
 
Finally, a Timeline and an End Strategy

Global warming: scientists reveal timetable:
    A detailed timetable of the destruction and distress that global warming is likely to cause the world was unveiled yesterday.
Excellent. I ask of you, gentle reader, if you're brave enough to make it to the bottom of this article, please e-mail me the exact date of the end of the world because of global warming.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:16 AM   0 comments
 
The Montessori Method is for Sissies

I'm involved in some personal study on Visual Basic.NET and have picked out an appropriate text, but sometimes it's hard to sit down and actually read and study. So last night, I developed the Noggle Method of education:
  1. Open a beer.

  2. Read a chapter or two of the book.

  3. Watch an episode of The Simpsons.

    4. Repeat.
Last night, I read almost a hundred pages. Sure, I can't remember much of what I read, but that's another feature of the Noggle Method--apparently, not only is the learning quicker, but so is the forgetting.

Also, my self-esteem is pretty high.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:48 AM   0 comments
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
 
The Upside of the Down Dollar

Story in the San Francisco Chronicle: Delighting in the dollar's decline: Foreign visitors find bargains abound in S.F, other tourist areas:
    While Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is worried about the weak dollar, it has been a boon for foreign visitors and San Francisco's tourism industry.

    The precipitous drop of the dollar against the euro and other major currencies has increased the buying power of foreign tourists. Hotels are seeing more overseas guests, and business at shops and restaurants has picked up.
I'm no economist, but having people want to buy your goods and services sounds good to me.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:29 AM   0 comments
 
Post-Dispatch Headline of the Day

From the morning's Law and Order round up:

    Man is killed in crash after police attempt to stop him

    An Alton man was killed late Monday after he drove off at high speed from an East Alton police officer and crashed a few blocks later.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say Man dies in crash while fleeing from police?

Well, not in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whose unofficial motto is "It's always the police's fault."


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:24 AM   0 comments
 
Book Report: In the Shadow of the Bear by Michael Sheehan (1990)

I bought this book from the Bridgeton Trails library for a quarter. Why? I don't know.

This book is the worst piece of pulp writing I've read in a long while, if not ever. Check it out:
    Behind him, Burke heard footsteps clambering up the winding staricase to the left of the catwalk. He sprang up and dashed toward the guard he just killed. Scooping up that man's weapon as he moved past him, he continued to the end of the catwalk and paised at the top of the second winding staircase. He turned and crouched, an AK-47 clutched in each hand.

    At the far end of the catwalk, a face appeared as a guard reached the top of the steps located there. Burke squeezed the trigger and his weapon chattered out a message. The face fell from views, a shriek rending the air. Burke began to back down the first few stairs. He crouched there, just below the level of the catwalk.
Oh, boy. It's 180+ pages of this edge-of-your-seat-because-you-want-to-put-the-book-down excitement. A DEA agent, Burke, investigates a drug mastermind who has kidnapped a professor to help him transubstantiate drugs into other materials for easy smuggling. Why someone with the power of transubstantiation would need to smuggle drugs instead of just making drugs out of, say, sawdust and packing peanuts, is a question left unanswered. So Burke investigates.

My, I don't know why this book is so bad. The writing is hypermasculine, but it doesn't fit together. The main character is a bottle of actions and vague generalizations about how drugs are bad. At about page 90, I started finding the writing style amusing enough to carry me through the other half. Skimming helped.

The pacing? Ill. We get to the climax, where the bad guy has fled his laboratory to a secret helipad in the Canadian wilderness, the normally explosive climax plods. The DEA finds the helipad by intercepting signals from a Russian spy satellite--the one dedicated to watching the Canadian wilderness, apparently. During the course of the bad guy's quick escape, Burke goes back to headquarters, gets equipped, and then spends just under thirty minutes assembling a hang glider so he can sneak up on the secret escape base which lies in a ledge in a sheer cliff--the perfect fortress!

Burke crashes his hang glider and has to rappel down the cliff, and the author spends three or four pages of the text describing rappelling technique. When the bad guy finishes up killing all of his henchmen but not the professor and his daughter, Burke is outraged at the carnage even though his body count at least doubles the butchery of the bad guy. Apparently Burke lives with himself because his mayhem has the rule of law behind it.

Then the bad guy is eaten by a grizzly bear, and the professor's daughter serves a pastry called bear claws to the triumphant Burke and her father. Haw, haw.

I know, I have fallen in among the cabal of conservative commentators who reveal the endings without warning the audience, but think I'm okay here because:
  • Of my regular readers, only my beautiful wife has made it this far; even John D. has bailed by this point

  • I'm doing you a favor; the ending is only as good as it could be, which in a book like this, isn't worth getting to

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:43 AM   0 comments
 
Breaking



Groundhog Sees Shadow

Developing...

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:59 AM   0 comments
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
 
Celebrate the Centennial

Cathy Young writes about Ayn Rand on her 100th birthday.

A very good piece which captures all of the beauty and all of problem that is the capital O in Objectivism.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:56 PM   0 comments
 
What's the Point?

Britain: U.S. Must Help Avert Climate Catastrophe:
    Britain, arguing that climate change is now unstoppable, urged the United States on Tuesday to sign up to life-saving cuts in greenhouse gas emissions as environmentalists warned of approaching Armageddon.
Well, if it's unstoppable, what can we do? Hurry up and cut down in the Amazon because I want some fresh rainforest lumber for a new deck.

And please have an SUV tow it straight from the interior of Brazil.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:13 PM   0 comments
 
Government Ownership Society

Your land doesn't belong to you, citizen, except at the government's leisure. Story:
    Every month for 20 years, Gentle "Jim" Day mailed his $1,222.22 mortgage payment on his business, Royal Auto Repair.

    He finally paid if off last year. But now Day, the son of Arkansas sharecroppers, faces losing his land and business.

    An agency backed by the city is preparing to take Day's business by eminent domain to make way for something called a "Media Box."
A development group gets to take a commercial business owned by a private citizen for a mostly TBA addition to the "arts district."

I don't know about you, but I always suspect that government officials love these underused and underserving "arts districts" as personal come-ons to easy living and easy loving artists and wealthy, divorced or surviving spouse patrons of those arts. Arts districts don't tend to serve the entire community, contrary the Utopian wishes of their proponents. Arts districts serve the upper crusts of society who go to the theatre, the symphony, or the opera. Sorry, but save for school field trips, that doesn't tend to include the majority of Americans.

So now the city of St. Louis will forcibly seize the land of a working man to make something for the benefit of the well-to-do. Typical.

On a final note, I must include that this is a triumph for the Democrats who run St. Louis. I thought the Republicans were supposed to look and act like Mr. Moneybags from Monopoly Chance cards. I guess it's just whoever's in power.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:04 AM   0 comments
 
A Final Word on Vietnam

From John Cole:
    "Vietnam? You mean the Democrat conceived, Democrat initiated, and Democrat run war that is widely regarded as the only war the modern United States has ever lost? That Vietnam?"

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:56 AM   0 comments
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."