Sleepless in Midland

Modern internet romance -- with blackmail

Graham Cluley's headline explains it all so succinctly: Boy meets girl. Girl strips on webcam. Tells boy to do the same. Girl blackmails boy. Who could resist clicking on that one?

Alternate ending: Boy kept gigantic prosthesis handy for webcam stripping. Told girl, go ahead and post it. Boy inundated with romantic offers.

National Tradesman Day -- 9/21/12

Today is National Tradesman Day.  And here's a tool company tribute to help get it going.

I've scheduled a Roto-Rooter visit, but you can celebrate in your own way.

Newspaper ad -- Sorry for the innuendo

George Brownridge pleased 15 women for an entire day, and they thanked him with this ad.

George must have been exhausted, too.

However, apparently he had only arranged a shopping trip for those ladies, and they wanted to thank him publicly. But wouldn't you know it, some took it the wrong way. And an apology ad resulted.

From Daily Mail. Via Guy Code via Linkiest.

Those three guys in the Aurora theater raised the bar for gender equality

Apparently a controversy erupted after a tweet by James Taranto about the three men at the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater massacre who sacrificed their lives to save their girlfriends.  Taranto said, "I hope the girls whose boyfriends died to save them were worthy of the sacrifice."

So was he too unsympathetic? Many thought so and hammered him with their own tweets. He responded with a reasonable explanation:

What makes the stories of Jansen Young, Samantha Yowler and Amanda Lindgren especially poignant is that their boyfriends' dying acts simultaneously dealt them an unfathomable loss and gave them an invaluable gift--a gift of life. ...

These three women owe their lives to their men. That debt can never be repaid in kind, because life is for the living and cannot be returned to the dead. The closest they can come to redeeming it is to use the gift of their survival well--to live good, full, happy lives.

A few times a year we hear feminists complain that women are underpaid in comparison to men. These claims generally fall short of persuasion when we acknowledge the gender differences in job danger, hours worked or physical demand.

Forget that. Those brave men at the Century 16 theater set a new standard. We'll have genuine gender equality when there are an equal number of women sacrificing their lives so that men might live.

Meanwhile, if they aren't doing it already, our military trainers need to figure out a politically correct way to get males to unlearn any instinct they might have to save females at the expense of others or the mission.

Today in history -- assassination attempt on Andrew Jackson

This could be the first presidential assassination attempt conspiracy theory in American History. The conventional wisdom was that Richard Lawrence was a crazy lone gunman when he tried to shoot President Andrew Jackson on January 30, 1835. But conspiracy theorists, allegedly including President Jackson himself, thought Mr. Lawrence had been hired by political opponents.

As the story goes, Mr. Lawrence tried to ambush President Jackson as he emerged from funeral, but his gun misfired. Mr. Lawrence got the business end of 67 year old Jackson's cane as Lawrence's backup gun misfired as well. And who came to Jackson's aid? None other than the king of the wild frontier, Davy Crockett, who was serving as a Representative from Tennessee at the time.  More here, here, here and here.

What a history this country has. They should make a movie.

Via Politico.com via Reddit.com.