Because they fear a violent backlash from Muslims, Yale University Press has removed cartoons from a forthcoming book about those very same cartoons [!!!], which were originally published in a Danish newspaper in 2005 and triggered protests.
And a local news source won't publish mugshots because they might contribute to "hurtful stereotypes" - never mind identifying the people in your neighborhood who are threats to you and yours.
And I was ticketed for disorderly conduct by a Racine police officer for taking pictures in a public park of punks drinking, because I "should have known" that doing something legal (taking pictures) would "make" thugs do sometning illegal (attack me).
I really think it's time for a general list of dos and don'ts to be made available to the public so that those of us who abide by the law will know how not to offend those who steal, rape, rob and murder. I am very concerned about stepping on the toes of those who want to injure and kill others.
How can we kowtow to and further enable criminals? Please, let us know.
This past Thursday a friend of mine and I went to Washington Island.
I have never been to Door County, holy bajesus what a tourist trap.
Anyhow, on my way home I saw a store, which sells cherry pies and jellies. I had to stop and get something, seeing the area is renowned for their cherries.
Well I bought a pie and a couple jars for jelly and took along one of the mail order forms.
Once home, a good friend stopped over so I offered up a piece of cherry pie.
I took the box out of the refrigerator and my friend just busted out laughing...not only was it a cherry pie, but it is a HO-MADE PIE.
Sure enough, even their mail order form is from HO-MADE.
I have to admit, they sure can make a good pie!
Madam Bea has a whole staff of dedicated employees!
On September 1, Madison's City Council voted to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird. It was done to honor a 30 year old college prank.
Gee, I wonder if Mr. Tousis' BP station on Douglas Ave will have anything to say about this on his outdoor overhead sign? He relished taking public potshots at Mitch & Marty's Citgo station across the street from him for the Chavez connection. Think he'll be man enough to post messages that his suppllier supports terrorism and freed a convicted mass murderer?
No, that's not the way we do business in Racine, is it?
The last thing we want to deal with is the truth, right, Mr. Tousis?
I go in on Tuesday early with the sun rise an get a pace maker. The procedure will NOT happen at St. Mary's Hell Hole. I'll be going to the VA hospital which may have some students fumbling the procedure itself, but the staff an care on the floors is miles above the crap at our local butcher palace. I hope to only be away for a few days as I've been told it is a pretty much two day thing and no big deal.
Usually, your pet is an animal. But your pet could be anyone, or anything.
Send a picture of your pet to thesheriff@jtirregulars.com and we'll post it in this blog. Be sure to include your pet's name and what name (if any) you want to use for yourself.
Below is OrbsCorbs' cat, Charlie, watching the birds:
Here's Harley, drewzepmeister's dog:
Carol S.' cat, Miss Jasmine {The Queen}:
This is Karrie's dog - Gracie:
kkdither's pet rock:
Lizardmom's lizard, Sly, climbing Anna's balnket:
From Beejay, here's Maggy, the teacup poodle:
Why Not? sent in a picture of Dusty, her pet dust bunny:
Hale-Bopp says, "Here is Hale-Bopp (the large black and white main battle cat) Alamo (the small rapid attack cat) and PC (the stealth cat) as they attempt to render harmless a new entertainment center."
Our local pubic television station had a five minute segment on Arizona Illustrated this week. I am not on camera, but I was the "set designer" for the segments that took place at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. If you look close, you can see my Saturn pic I took through the Galileoscope on one of the computer screens in the background. You also get a glimpse of Photon Engineering, the firm that did most of the optical design.
Unfortunately, their embedding code starts it playing automatically every time the page loads. To keep from annoying you too much, you can click here to watch it.
Jupiter is famous for its four bright Galilean Moons. These are visible through any amateur telescope. You can watch them move and change positions over the course of a few hours with even a modest telescope (such as the Galileoscope, hint, hint).
You don't always see all four Moons, however. Sometimes they pass in front Jupiter or behind it. It's fairly common for Jupiter to have three or even two visible Moons. A few times each century, however, all of the Moons either pass in front of Jupiter or behind it at the same time. Tonight is one of those times. From 12:43am EDT to 2:29am EDT (a more civilized 9:43pm PDT to 11:29 PDT) all four of Jupiter's Moons will be gone leaving a strangely naked planet. I have been observing Jupiter for decades and never seen this (I have seen it with only one Moon which was strange enough). You can check out an animation of what you will see with a telescope tonight or use Sky and Telescope's Jupiter's Moon's Utility to find out what you will see at any given moment.
Unfortunately, it looks to be cloudy here in Tucson tonight. My telescope is sitting at home on the tripod ready to go outside a moment's notice should we get abreak in the clouds. I hope others have clear skies for this rare event.
Hello, my delicious caramel apples! How are you? Whatever happened to our so-called summer? A friend told me that she doesn’t need to get out her winter clothes because she never put them away from last year. It’s not hard to predict an early fall – some trees are already starting to turn color.
I apologize for the confusion concerning my whereabouts last week. Unfortunately, Mr./Ms. Sheriff got his/her facts a little tangled. I was not in the Bahamas – I was with the Obamas. We had such grand time that I simply overstayed the deadline for my blog. I am so sorry. I realize that I have an obligation to you, my dear friends, but I also felt obliged to bask in the presence of our President for as long as possible because of his historic significance as the first black President of the United States of America. Having grown up during a time of civil rights marches and murders, I am very proud of that achievement.
Which brings us to an email I received from our friend, Mr. SER, which he entitled “Differences of Opinion:”
Dear Madame Zoltar,
The Pilgrims came to America to flee from taxation without representation.
We have had a Civil War because of differences of opinion.
Gathering all your skills together, do you foresee a revolt against the government in the near or close to near future and give the government back to the people?
Dear Mr. SER, forecasting the future is a difficult art not just because the future is shrouded in mystery, but also because there is more than one future possible. Many forces and nuances affect each moment in time, which, in turn, affects the next. Given our country’s prevailing sedentary culture and our politicians’ tendency to mutate quicker than chameleons, I don’t think an uprising is likely in the near term. Of course, the economy is the biggest unknown, and if enough people take a hit to their stomachs, all bets are off. What I feel fairly safe in predicting is that our representatives will continue to represent themselves and their special interests to the best of their personal profit.
As long as we’re talking about differences of opinion and discrimination, here’s an interesting little video featuring Madonna, speaking out a week ago in Bucharest on behalf of Gypsies:
You tell them, honey.
Finally, here is a link to “Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900:” http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm. Two of my favorites: “Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors. “Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.”
I do not know what the guy did so I cannot spread any good rumors. I do know the police wanted him real bad because there had to be at least 15 offices looking for him.
I don't know why, but that song popped into my head today. It was shortly after I saw a guy about my age (ancient) riding on his own little John Deere tractor/mower, cutting the median on Hwy. 32 just north of KR. I don't think that had anything to do with it, though.
Unlike Huck, my head jukebox doesn't go off much first thing in the morning. During the day, though, it can kick in viciously without notice. For three days, I've been humming and singing Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto." I did not hear it anywhere, nor was I discussing it or Presley with anyone. I do not like the damn song. Why has it been infesting my brain for three days? Please, Cyndi, save me.
So says an op-ed piece by Randolph D. Brandt in the Racine Post: http://news.racinepost.com/2009/08/op-ed-health-cares-hidden-agenda-big.html
And thus end our chances for productive discussion of, well, just about anything. If you oppose something proposed by the current administration, you're a racist.
I am so sick of this shit. So sick of it. A few weeks ago, a car blasting music pulled up next to my truck. I asked the guy to please turn it down. His response was, "Fuck you, honky." When I asked what race had to do with it, he again replied, "Fuck you, honky."
I am so insulted. My very first sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous, a man I literally asked to help me save my life, was a black man. I never once considered the color of his skin, or anyone else's, in my time of need.
It is impossible to have an intelligent conversation with someone who is paranoid. Screw you bastards for poisoning our attempts at healing our nation's wounds. It is not the color of your skin that defines you, but your filthy, black hearts.
The expression Jump the Shark comes from the old television series Happy Days. In that series, Fonzie literally jumped over a shark on water skis. Well, the show went downhill quickly after that and was never the same. Hence the phrase jump the shark applies to something that just isn't what is used to be.
Of course a website grew up around this concept. It was simple, but fun. You could look up old shows and read everyone's comments on when they jumped the shark. I could spend hours on the site laughing about old shows I used to watch.
I hadn't been back to the site in a LONG time. I went back tonight and was dismayed to find the site was taken over by TV Guide. The fun is gone, it is all corporate now. Jump the Shark has jumped the shark.
"Regulators ignored red flags while woman ran lucrative day care business"
"A Jaguar convertible sits in the driveway of Latasha Jackson's million-dollar mansion in Menomonee Falls. Built on a hill with a sprawling back deck overlooking a pond, the 7,600-square-foot home features an indoor swimming pool and indoor basketball court.
"Jackson is not an Olympic swimmer, a professional basketball player or a celebrity of any sort. She is a day care provider in the city of Milwaukee.
"She built her fortune with taxpayer funding from the Wisconsin Shares program.
"And although documents show regulators had many reasons to believe the 32-year-old mother of three was billing the state for kids not in her care, providing false information and otherwise defrauding the system for more than a decade, they continued to pay her.
"That ended Thursday, but only after the state learned the Journal Sentinel was preparing to publish a story on the case. And only when Jackson turned herself in - a day after the newspaper confronted her."
So the Journal Sentinel is now the organization that oversees how public money is squandered? How many people do they have to bust before the State of Wisconsin does something about this?
Woman Falls from Hotel Window By Melissa McCrady MT. PLEASANT - A 23-year-old woman suffered head injuries after falling from a third floor hotel window.
It happened at the Marriott Hotel at 7111 Washington Avenue early Sunday morning. Police say four people returned to their hotel room after a wedding. An argument broke out. Ashley Kronwall walked over the window, opened it and pulled out the screen, as if she was going to jump. A friend tried to grab her, but she slipped and fell three levels onto a metal grate on the ground.
Kronwall was found lying on a grate unconscious but breathing.
Kronwall was rushed to Wheaton Franciscan Hospital in Racine, and later transported by helicopter to St. Luke's in Milwaukee. Investigators say she is in stable condition with minor head injuries. Kronwall is from Lake Geneva.
The friend who to grab Kronwall, Jeremiah J. Jacob of Burlington, was upset about the fall and smashed a hotel window causing injuries to both his arms.
Historic Mount Wilson Observatory in California is being threatened by wildfires. The mountain staff have been evacuated as the Station fire closes in.
Mount Wilson is a great old observatory. It is home to the historic 100 inch Hooker Telescope. It was the largest in the world when it was built in the early 1900's and played pivotal role in Edwin Hubble's observations that proved the universe is expanding and led to the Big Bang Theory. Mount Wilson houses several other telescopes as well, including the CHARA array which does some very high resolution interferometry.
One of Gery Woelfel's sports columns in the Journal Times received a response from the Los Angeles Times which labeled his report "not only outdated, but absolutely inaccurate."
It has been suggested that perhaps Rick Parrish, publisher of the Journal Times, will want to contact his attorneys to see if there has been a copyright violation.
Personally, I think it's OK to say anything you want as long as you don't call someone a skank.
I say yes. If I had money, I'd bet on it. Lame duck Judge Simanek will rule the search of the hard drive illegal and toss out all of the charges except those related to asking a city employee to fix a personal computer.
That is the way it must go down in order to save face and protect the guilty. And just like sex predators preach to their prey, we will be told that it is time to let it go, move on, get over it, etc. Deny the past and bury it. That is what pervs do and what Racine has done for generations. Then it explodes in rage and perversion of its own, and everyone stands around mouthing, "Why?"
Party on!
----------
UDATE: Becker's motions to have charges dismissed because of an allegedly illegal search of his computer's hard drive were denied by Judge Simanek today. The judge also denied Becker's request for a jury from outside of Racine county.
Denying the jury request could come back to haunt us. They should let him have an out-of-town jury, or, better yet, just change the venue, to protect against any charge of impropriety. Anyone who sees the evidence, and isn't on the take, would convict him.
This had been circulating the internet, author unknown. I found it at Dvorak's Blog and will repost for fun.
Dear Tech Support,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelery applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.
In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1.
Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system.
Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.
First, keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system.
Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme. html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.
However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6. 1 is a very bad program that will download the Tooting and Snoring Loudly Beta.
In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.
In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend: Cooking 3.0.
If so, stop and introduce yourself. Id love to meet ya in person! Village Hall at 11:15. Be early. Should be interesting. If you need directions, let me know!
NOTE: Madame Zoltar was caught in some wind shear while astral projecting yesterday off the shore of a Bahamas island. She suffered no major injuries, but thought it best to wait another day or so before attempting to return to the mainland. She was unable to write her blog for us this week and sends on her deepest regrets. I know that I speak for all of the JT Irregulars when I say that we wish Madame Zoltar a speedy and full recovery, and we look forward to hearing from her as soon as possible
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) continues to return spectacular images. The one featured today might seem like an odd choice as it is almost totally black.
This is Erlanger Crater near the Moon's north pole. It's diameter is about 10km (6 miles) Unlike Earth, the Moon's axis is tilted only about 1.5 degrees. Therefore, the Sun never gets more than a couple of degrees high in the sky near the poles. If you have a crater with nice high walls, there are places where the Sun never shines. The bottom of these craters have temperatures that hang out around -375F (or about 50 Kelvin).
Why do we care about dark spots? In these very dark craters that do not receive Sunlight, water ice can happily sit and wait for oh, say, humans to land nearby and have a ready source of water. Exploring crater such as this is one of the reasons we launched LRO.
Do you want to get an A meaning you are very good at stupidity or an F meaning you are lousy at it? Occidental College offers a course in stupidity. From the catalog...
Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine. This course in Critical Psychology follows the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and most recently, Avital Ronell, in a philosophical examination of those operations and technologies that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending. Stupidity, which has been evicted from the philosophical premises and dumbed down by psychometric psychology, has returned in the postmodern discourse against Nation, Self, and Truth and makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beevis and Butthead. This course examines stupidity."
I don't think so. We see the news that we're rounding the bend but when you look at reality, things don't add up. Sure, after a three billion infusion for used car trade ins at the dealerships, it "looks" like we've gotten over that hump. Now that the glut of unsold new cars is pared down, will we see the factories start back up churning out more? I think not as it would only create another glut. We didn't create jobs with this give away, we got rid of a portion of the glut.
Home sales. HOME SALES ARE UP! shout the headlines. WOW, this is good thing we say... that is until we look at the home prices of the sold houses. Oh my, but that is not a good thing to do. I did a search of MLS listings and the house prices on the unsold units are in free fall. It is no wonder house "sales" are up. When you list a house for 1/4 to 1/3 of it's assessed value, it will eventually sell. The abandoned house next door sold for 102k four years ago. It has been lowered again and now lists at 49.9k. A house on Blane going for just 52k has the notation "70k under assessed value" yet sits unsold.
Businesses are still laying off. Where people gotthe bucks to buy all the new cars is beyond me. What they are trying to do is fool folks in to thinking times are fat once again and in that way entice them into consuming and spending like we did. Sorry, only governments that print their own money are foolish enough to do so. The rest of us will continue to tighten our belts and hunker down while we wait for the otber shoe to drop. And best believe it, that shoe will drop.
To all authors, especially authors who have sidebar status:
Please begin to use the label feature. (located on the bottom bar of the body of your message)
Readers can then click that label and find all of the previous related posts; A simple, yet neat and useful feature. Helps facilitate finding blogs that you know were posted but have made their way into the archives.
Dire Report Says 50 Percent Infection Rate, Up to 90,000 Deaths Possible This Flu Season From H1N1
"Up to half of the population of the U.S. could come down with the swine flu and 90,000 could die this season, according to a dire report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology."
What I like about these paintings are the combination of the old and the new. What I mean is, the old farm houses, etc and the new kids. Looking at the cloths of the kids some are even wearing “T” shirts.
To prepare for the new healthcare reform package, we felt it necessary to develop a new medical symbol that truly depicts the Health Care Plan you will be getting!
I just found out that the planetarium show Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity is now available on Hulu. This show takes you through a lot of the science behind black holes with some computer simulations of what would happen if you feel in one. I know the effect isn't quite the same on a small computer screen as it is on a big dome with digital projectors, but it is still worth checking out.
I just read a story about a woman in Winona Minnesota that went to a store, and told the clerk she had a goat in her trunk. The clerk went out to look, and she had a PURPLE painted goat with the number 4 carved in it's fur, and was taking it to the butcher. He called Animal Control, and they took the poor goat with them. That's darn near as bad as picking your dog up by the ears.
I was outside as a storm was rolling in and saw a nice rainbow.
I was looking at it with my sunglasses on...I have polarized sunglasses. Rainbows are polarized so you get a very different view of them if you rotate your sunglasses 90 degrees. I should get a polarizing filter for my camera, but I don't have one so I just held up my sunglasses in front of the camera.
So you can see the rainbow nicely. I rotated the sunglasses 90 degrees and snapped the next photo mere seconds later (no visible changes took place in the rainbow if you looked at it with your eyes).
Note how the rainbow almost totally disappears! What's up here?
Okay, rainbows always appear opposite the Sun (this is looking east as the Sun was in the west). Blue light slows down more than red light when it passes into the raindrop and bends more so the blue and red light (and all the other colors) get separated. This process is called dispersion. The light then reflects off the back of the raindrop and heads toward you (and undergoes a second round of dispersion when it leaves the raindrop). The angle of reflection necessary to see a rainbow is about 42 degrees.
When light reflects off of a surface, it becomes polarized. If the angle is right, it can become almost completely polarized. For rainbows, the polarization is about 94% for the primary rainbow (and 90% for the secondary rainbow, when visible). By turning my polarizing filter so it is exactly perpendicular to the angle of polarization of the rainbow, I can block almost all the light at least all that my camera can detect!)
Next time I am at a photo shop, I am buying a polarizing filter for my camera.
Jennifer Fiores was murdered presumably by her millionair husband. This gold digger had a whirl wind courtship by a reality TV star and quick annulment right after. Whoever murdered her, cut off her fingers, and pulled her teeth to stimy identification. The cops had no trouble though.
"Her teeth had been pulled out and her fingers cut off, apparently to impede her identification. Investigators used the serial numbers on her breast implants to identify her, said Farrah Emami, spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney's office."
I wonder why none of the local papers have picked up on this story.
Her body was found by deer hunters hidden in the woods in a rural part of Wisconsin. Nearly one year later, detectives in Fond du Lac, Wis., still have no idea who she is or how she got there. So they've turned to Facebook, even going as far as getting a court order forcing the social networking site to allow a page for the dead girl after previous attempts to post an information page were found to violate the site's policy.
"Our problem is getting this out because if she's not from our local viewing area, people who are missing somebody aren't going to see what we have," Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Detective Charles Sosinski told ABCNews.com.
They have posted not only a composite photo of the woman created by forensic artists, but an exact replica of the clothing she was wearing. The police Web site shows the clothing posed on a mannequin in several positions.
She is known only as the Fond du Lac "Jane Doe." The police believe she may be Caucasian, but an anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin at Madison told police she could be of Hispanic, Asian or Native American descent.
She's believed to be about 5'1", give or take three inches, and between 15 and 21 years old. Her weight was estimated at 110 to 135 pounds. The anthropologist said an exam showed that she may have been knock-kneed or pigeon toed.
Police aren't disclosing how Jane Doe died, but Soskinski said it was a homicide and that the body had been in the woods since at least September 2008.
Soskinski said the department initially had trouble with its Facebook endeavor. After getting the composite photo in early June, detectives set up profiles for Jane Doe on both Facebook and MySpace, but the former page kept getting taken down.
Soskinski said they had exhausted all traditional methods of identification including checking missing persons reports and handing out photographs. Police determined the manufacturers of the clothing found at the scene and the company sent copies to them for use on the mannequin, he said.
Eventually obtaining the court order July 2 from a Fond du Lac circuit court judge, they were contacted by a Facebook attorney earlier this month who helped set up a page that wouldn't be removed.
Jane Doe's new Facebook page, up since Monday, has nearly 70 fans so far and includes photos and information about the case.
Barry Schnitt, Facebook's director of policy communications, told ABCNews.com that the problem wasn't with the content posted by the Sheriff's Office, but that the fact that they wanted to create a profile, something the site reserves for identified -- and living -- individuals.
"For the past several years as I've been traveling around the country, I've been approaching Soldiers in airports and thanking them for serving for us. On several occasions I have noticed that it felt a little awkward for both of us. There are several reasons, some of which I am even just now learning as I produce this film and talk to more Service Men & Women and Veterans. But they have always appreciated being thanked, and I have always felt better having expressed my gratitude.
"I started to think that it would be nice if civilians had a gesture or sign that they could use to say "thank you" quickly and easily without even having to approach. I did some research and found the sign that we are now using.
"Is this limited to the military? Not at all. If you look around you I'm sure that you'll find lots of people who are serving their communities, from local to global. If you appreciate their service, give them a sign. Say 'thank you from the bottom of my heart.'"
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