Sleepless in Midland

Hospital parking

What a mess. The multistory parking garage is almost finished, and none too soon for anyone with the need to visit the Midland Memorial Hospital. Take a look at these photos; astute observers will notice a trend.

 



Did you get it? That's right, No Parking!

The meter maids and meter men have have been very busy ticketing cars parked in the wrong spots. I've been visiting the hospital daily for the past six days, but wouldn't you know, the one time I brought the camera there were no ticketed cars around for photographing.

In the ideal world a city wouldn't stoop to revenue enhancement through parking tickets, but throw $3.1 million annual fine revenue at elected officials who can't say "no," and the parking space contraction isn't a crises, it's an opportunity.

Sunday diversion -- long distance polar bear swimmer

A polar bear with a GPS collar was tracked swimming in cold seas for 9 days and 16 hours for a total of 687 km (426 miles), a very impressive feat. That's according to BBC. Excerpt:

Although bears have been observed in open water in the past, this is the first time one's entire journey has been followed.

They and others use this to make a global warming pitch, of course. But while this seems like a remarkable distance to swim, they really don't know whether that journey was unusual for a mammal that typically lives on ice, has a thick coat and a lot of body fat.  It does provide evidence, however, that the polar bear is probably resilient and adaptable enough to survive even if the global warmists turned out to be right.

Winter's Bone

If you like movies about places you might never see and people seldom seen in the big cities, movies with good plots, suspense, and authentic sounding dialog, then you might like Winter's Bone.

It's got mean men and tough women, strained relationships, missing relatives, hungry children, struggling adults, and virtue against evil. Deliverance meets Little Women minus the archery and sodomy.

The movie received four Academy Award nominations: best picture, best leading lady, best supporting guy, and best adapted writing. Best picture is a long shot, but one of the other awards might come through.

Channeling Joe Bob Briggs, the movie should probably get a few drive-in nominations, too, like scariest swamp crossing, best woman-on-woman beat down, and best shooting lesson for children.

The storyline has a 17 year old girl -- played by 20 year old Jennifer Lawrence -- taking the helm of a hillbilly family with a missing papa, a mentally absent momma and two younger siblings. The family farm is facing foreclosure, and since she won't be going into the family business of meth cooking, the suspense builds as she searches for the daddy. Will the dad lend a helping hand to save the family farm? You'll have to find the answer elsewhere, or just rent the DVD.

Quote of the day

"Their German scientists are better than our German scientists," joked Bob Hope on the occasion of the 1957 Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite, allegedly.

I didn't watch President Obama's speech the other night, but apparently he made reference to Sputnik in an attempt to inspire Americans.

The launch of Sputnik and the space race that followed did prove one thing, and that was that a centrally planned Communist style system of government and economy can do anything, except compete successfully against capitalism.

Marc tomatoes

Red juicy tomatoes grown in middle of winter. Impossible? Naw, not if they are hydroponic and grown at the Marc Inc. greenhouse.

This 501(c)(3) organization is always trying new business ventures to supplement donations to help provide mentally challenged individuals the opportunity to work. A few years ago they had a strip mall shredding shop giving customers an inexpensive place to take papers that needed shredding. And it provided good jobs for the MARC clients. It was win/win for everyone but the bookkeeper, and the venture was eventually shuttered.

Now they are growing and selling tomatoes. Last Saturday they were selling them out of a trailer in the parking lot at the main office at 2701 North "A" here in Midland, TX. A box of four big ones cost $5.50 -- a fair price for a good cause.

They aren't just good, they're Hydro-Licious!

Obama the war president -- take no prisoners

John Yoo makes a good point. President Obama tried to appease the anti-war left by promising to close the prison at Guantanamo, but Congress put a halt to it. So President Obama stopped allowing any new prisoners to be brought there, and that resulted in a take-no-prisoners attitude.

From Drones Mean Lost Intel:

This creates a strong incentive, if not command, to the troops in the field not to capture any more terrorists. Not only does this mean that more people die—not just al Qaeda leaders but nearby innocent civilians—but we lose the information they might provide us. And that is the most valuable weapon in this war, for only by learning al Qaeda’s plans can we take action to preempt their attacks on the U.S. homeland. [Emphasis added.]

Well, Obama did promise change you can believe in.

Oil spill in the parking lot

It's a large oil stain in the parking lot of a local park, and it appears as if someone drained the oil from a vehicle engine. What a mess.

I'm all for do-it-yourself oil changes, but for crying out loud, did they have to let it run out in the parking lot? No they didn't. There aren't as many user friendly oil depositories as there once were, but there are still some around, Auto Zone for one. And the Keep Midland Beautiful website says Avis Lube and the City of Midland Service Center will accept waste motor oil from individuals.

It doesn't take an environmentalist to know that deliberately dumping oil in a parking lot is not a very neighborly thing to do.

Flooding in Australia

Old pal GR resides about 100 kilometers South of Brizzy (Brisbane, Australia), and he forwards this link to a video of some of the flooding the Aussies experienced on January 10, 2011.

The photographer is in an office building in Toowoomba overlooking what appears to be a drainage ditch. The ditch soon becomes a raging river overlapping the parking lot. Click to go directly to the Youtube site.

Toowoomba appears to be 126 highway kilometers West of Brizzy, according to this Google map.

Thanks, GR. Tie your kangaroo down, sport.

One in 540 homeless students

Little Timmy couldn't move as fast has he once could because of his leg injury. It happened only days ago as he left home for school. He grabbed his lunch and leaped for the exit, just as he does every morning.  But this time the dumpster lid didn't hang on the rusty hinge the way it always did, and it came crashing down on his ankle.

As he limped along the sidewalk on his way to elementary school some cars slowed as the drivers scoffed at this dirty kid, tsk tsking in disgust and wondering why his parents didn't move the family to a dumpster closer to school.

But Timmy didn't have any parents, he was an orphan just trying to live the life of a normal homeless student. "I'm just grateful that the Midland Independent School District lets me attend their fine schools."

-----------

OK, all that was made up crap. There is no Timmy, at least not one like this.

But anyone who reads the daily news probably imagined what kind of life the 540 homeless students in the city live. The very next day the newspaper tells us that the jobless rate in the city is the lowest in the state. Here's Timmy's homework assignment: Reconcile those statistics, and spin them in a way that makes people want to spend more money on schools.

In all fairness, the reporter said the school district admitted that the 540 homeless children weren't really homeless but were living with another family or were in the process of moving. But it does create a suspicion about why the district would want to gin up the homeless student numbers. A cynic might be tempted to speculate that they're angling for more tax dollars.

We're number one!

In so many areas the U.S. has been bumped off the top spot in favor of lesser countries. However, here's one area where we're still holding onto the number one spot: spam origination. A Sophos news release provides the list.

The top twelve spam relaying countries for October - December 2010:

1. USA	18.83%
2. India	6.88%
3. Brazil	5.04%
4. Russia	4.64%
5. UK	4.54%
6. France	3.45%
7. Italy	3.17%
8. S Korea	3.01%
9. Germany	2.99%
10. Vietnam	2.79%
11. Romania	2.25%
12. Spain	2.24%
Other	40.17%

This doesn't mean Americans are deliberately sending spam, although some might be doing just that. What it means is that a bunch of computers in the U.S. have been compromised with a Trojan horse virus and, without the knowledge of the owners, are working as zombies controlled by a botnet.

The percentages are in relation to total spam. A more useful comparison might be the percentage of computers within a country that are actually working zombies.

Anyway, as I've said before, remember these four important rules of life: Use virus protection and firewalls. Never shake a baby. Only you can prevent forest fires. And loose lips sink ships.

Everyone else talks with an accent

People in my region talk the way they should. People elsewhere talk with accents.

Check out this interactive map of regional dialects around the U.S. Click on a region and get a list of cities and their dialect representatives.

Listeners can decide for themselves whether Tommy Frank is representative of the typical Midland accent, or Larry Gatlin for Odessa and Clayton Williams for Fort Stockton.

Via Good.is.

He seems to use dialect and accent interchangably.  What's the difference?  Here's a reasonable explanation:

Dialect can have words that are unique to itself and variant grammatical structures; Accents are variations in the way English is spoken.

Y'all come back now, hea?

Famous for falling -- her 15 minutes

We've all seen the video of the lady in a mall walking while texting. Oops, she tripped over the edge of a pool of water and got a good soaking.

You can overhear the boys in the security office yuck it up as they made their own video of the security video for posting on Youtube. It almost seems as though everyone is ready and waiting to make their own viral video at someone else's expense.

Anyway, the lady who fell, Cathy Cruz Marrero, tells her side of the story, and she's a little bit annoyed at the guys in the security office who just sat there watching the whole thing transpire without bothering to inquire about her well being but who didn't waste any time making her the star of a Youtube joke.

Makes me feel a little bit sorry for her.

Via Dave Barry.

Riverside, CA -- Dog trapped between two walls, rescued

Don't you just hate it when you get stuck between two walls? Wally, the Shar-Pei mix, sure did. Just look at that forlorn expression on his face.

It happened in Riverside, California, and somehow Wally wedged himself between two cinder block walls and couldn't get out. Rescuers from Riverside County Animal Services knocked a hole in one of the walls and rescued him.

A Coachella Valley Water District employee gave the dog a bean and cheese burrito, which Wally gobbled up.

Good doggie, good doggie.

BTW, the folks who rescued him must have really felt good about this outcome.  They probably euthanize a lot of animals every year, and it must have been very rewarding to rescue an adoptable animal like Wally and get a little bit of good publicity to boot.

Via Newslite.tv .

Negligent handgun discharge at Gardena High School

The Los Angeles Times tells us that a student came to school in Gardena, California, with a handgun in his backpack and that a police spokeswoman said, "When he placed the backpack on a table in his health class, the gun went off."

But the same article tells us this: "Miguel Lopez, 17, said he was in his health class when a gun went off as a male classmate was reaching into his backpack."

So there are conflicting stories about just what happened immediately prior to the discharge, and there's a huge difference. If the gun discharged when the backpack was placed on the table then there must have been something in the backpack that pulled the trigger or the gun had a major defect. Or if the gun discharged when the kid put his hand in the backpack then he may have accidentally pulled the trigger.

Putting aside the possibility of a mechanical defect, one thing is obvious: The gun was too easy to shoot. I've gone on and on about Glocks and similar handguns that have light trigger pulls and no manual safeties, but according to the LA Times again, it was a 9mm Beretta, and the description, "black, about a foot long and 'not small,'" suggests it was a full size Beretta, all versions of which have manual safeties.

The info we have so far suggests that the kid was carrying the piece in his backpack with the safety off. A safety that isn't used is useless. He might as well have been carrying a Glock.

Finally, let's take a moment to give a compliment to the reporter who was inquisitive enough to learn the make and caliber of the handgun. Too often reporters never bother to seek that information. And it's tempting to speculate that the typical reporter in Los Angeles could probably tell you the year of the wine they had with yesterday's lunch but couldn't tell a Beretta from a Bersa. So here's a hat tip to Los Angeles Times reporter Shan Li for getting that information out to the public.

Civics quiz

Take this 33 question quiz taken from the 2008 Civic Literacy exam and see how well you do.  "The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%..."

Let's help bring that average up.  I missed four, and surely you can do better than that.

Gun running at the border

How do the Mexican cartels get their guns? We've all seen photo displays of weapons confiscated from arrested cartel members, and some of the guns probably did come across the border from the U.S.

Case in point -- an old fashioned traffic stop in the border town of Hidalgo, Texas. "During the officer's routine inspection of the vehicle, they identified suspicious activity." Link. They called in ICE, and in the search that followed, 15 AK47 rifles were found hidden in the gas tank. The driver and passenger, Antonio Ibarra, 41, and Edwardo Ibarra, 37, were arrested on state charges for firearms smuggling.

[Aside: One has to wonder what "suspicious activity" would trigger the dismantling of the gas tank. But never mind.]

Hidalgo, by the way, is near McAllen, Texas, and is directly across the border from Reynosa, Mexico. About Reynosa, check out what purports to be an account of narco warfare there last year.  Excerpt:

In what moment did our teenagers in Reynosa stop looking up to and admiring their fathers or an uncle and decide to instead jump into this organized crime labyrinth of no return? Maybe all this happened when their fathers or uncles started becoming involved in these businesses, thus it is fair, my conclusion: being a narco in Reynosa is almost the same as being a hero.

It's a murderous business, and it's fueled by the dollars people are willing to pay for drugs.  Little wonder that the cartels were dead set against the legalization of marijuana in California last November.

Holes in the virtual fence

Good fences make good neighbors, or so the saying goes. In the case of Mexico and the Southern United States the federal government maintains that being a good neighbor means having no fence.

So for an alternative, Boeing's hi-tech SBInet was funded to the tune of a billion dollars. SBInet consisted of 15 sensor towers, 13 communication towers, 400 ground sensors, and 11.6 miles of roads to cover 23 miles of border. Source: DHS.

But it didn't work. And InformationWeek tells us that last Friday Janet Napolitano announced that the program will be terminated. From the article:

Going forward, DHS will replace SBInet with a new plan that uses existing technology "tailored to the distinct terrain and population density of each border region," Napolitano said in a statement. This will include the use of UAVs, mobile surveillance, thermal imaging, and remote video surveillance, as well as some successful elements of SBInet, like stationary radar.

The traditional government way would have been to pump more money into the project, so let's give Ms. Napolitano credit for shutting down an expensive experiment, a move which must have met considerable resistance from Boeing and its supporters within the government. One has to wonder whether the project would have been shut down if the contractor wielded more political clout than Boeing.

And still no fence.

Funniest dog picture on the internet

I laughed so hard at this photo I just had to download it. That was before Christmas, and looking at it again today it still makes me laugh. I hope you can get a chuckle out of it, too.

It came from an article at omg-facts.com about a smart Border Collie named Chaser who is supposed to be able to recognize the names of over 1,000 items. The genius in the above photo isn't Chaser, and I don't know where this chess playing canine came from originally. Dog Mensa, maybe.

Speaking of smart dogs, watch Tucker the Schnoodle sing and accompany himself on the piano in this cute video.  Carnegie Hall beckons, Tucker.

Texas' GDP comparable to Russia's

There's a amazing interactive map available at The Economist. Link.

The GDP of each state is matched up with a comparable GDP from a country. The data are from 2009, but the comparisons are amusing. For example, Texas' GDP of $1,144.695 billion was comparable to Russia's $1,231.89 billion. Other interesting match ups are California and Italy. The state of Washington must be proud to be matched up with Greece.

Check it out. Via Carpe Diem.

Nomination for creepiest commercial

A giant green insect flies through an open window and inhabits a sleeping human who immediately grows green insect wings. Science fiction, right? No, it's a commercial. "On the wings of Lunesta" the commercial tells us in this pitch for the sleep aid.

If that's not creepy enough, the disclaimer is read slowly enough that the viewer can actually understand that the reported side effects include, "Walking, eating, driving, or engaging in other activities while asleep without remembering it the next day," as well as " aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations, and confusion."

Makes you want to go right out and buy some, doesn't it? No thank you. There are other ways to get to sleep. Here's a resource: 11 kinds of insomnia.

And by all means, don't fall asleep in a dumpster.

iPhone triggered beer dispenser

China is creeping up on us in just about every way, but they'll never best the ingenuity of a clever American with a thirst for beer. This fellow build a beer dispenser out of a mini-fridge. So what? Well, he triggers it from his iPhone.

Watch a demo at this Youtube video.

And see an inside view of the contraption in operation here.

If we could just sell one to every other adult male in China we might have enough to pay off our debt.

Hillary trips up

Hillary Clinton fell down while boarding a plane, and her spill got caught on video.

These things can happen to anyone, and the proper thing to do is ignore it. But there's this gnawing recollection of how Chevy Chase made an SNL comedy career based on a bad impersonation of Gerald Ford, characterizing him as a stumbling idiot because Ford bumped his head once. But that was back in the day when a favorite liberal tool was Alinsky's Rule #5.

Should we take the high road and give Hillary a break? Sure, let's give the old gal a pass. Heck, she could have broken a hip, and we don't want that even if she does have a Cadillac health insurance plan exempt from Obamacare.

See the spill yourself.

But it would be funny to see a bleached Roseanne Barr update the old Chevy Chase routine into a Hillary skit.

The mouse that roared

Radioactive mice, nuclear bunnies and atomic tumbleweeds are among the various flora and fauna haunting the area near Hanford, Washington. The source of the radioactivity is supposed to be material the critters ingested from the site of a cleanup of a facility that produced plutonium for nuclear weapons from 1944 to 1987. Even the Wall Street Journal is on it.

Mouse hunters are out looking for radioactive mice. And wouldn't you know, PETA wants to save the mice. Rat to Life might be available if they need a slogan.

I'm sure we are all seeking the answer to a burning question. It's fairly well established that a bite from a radioactive spider can create in humans an "arachnid's relative strength and agility plus a tingling 'spider sense' for danger." So what powers might come from the bite of a radioactive mouse? The ability to sneak undetected into dwellings? A squeak that can shatter glass?

Meanwhile, the nuclear waste dump site in Andrews County, Texas, might someday open for business once all the objections are dealt with. But something tells me there will be so much scrutiny that we won't get single glimpse of a glowing jackrabbit. Whoa, what about a bite from a radioactive rattlesnake? Now there's a superhero for the sliver screen.

Google can be sneaky

Be careful when you click a Google search result. In one case I was looking for Cash America in connection with a blog post about payday loans.

I put "cash america" "payday loans" in the Google search box --  quotes and all -- and got back a list of links. The very first one below the obvious ads appeared to be a link to Cash America, the company I was looking for. But once clicked it landed at mycashnow.com, not the company I thought I was getting. Only after clicking around that site did it sink in what Google did. They had redirected me to a competitor of Cash America. On the second try it went to the real Cash America at cashamerica.com.

Let's try another one. This time I'm looking for CERT which is Citizens Emergency Response Team. The search term "CERT" should get the link. The first Google response appeared to be the genuine CERT website. Nope. That one went to shopcompareus.com.

 

The photo on the left is a shot of the search page. The one on the right is what appeared after clicking on that first link.

Everyone wins, except the web searcher and the owner of the site he/she was looking for.

Treat schizophrenics before banning guns

Fortunately, the disease is fairly rare, but if you've ever encountered someone with a serious case of paranoid schizophrenia, you've got a lasting memory. And when one of them acts out and causes some damage to person or property, it tends to get a lot of attention. The shooter at Virginia Tech a few years ago may have had it. And from what we are learning about the shooter in Tucson, there's a good chance he has it, too.

Jared Loughner blasted away at a political event at a mall in Tucson the other day killing six people and injuring 14 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The reports that are coming out about Mr. Loughner, while not exactly proof, provide plenty of anecdotal evidence that he has some serious mental problems, and it sure sounds like paranoid schizophrenia.

This event has provoked a lot of heated rhetoric from people in politics, and unsurprisingly, anti-gun people are calling for more gun control. While some are trying to advance their political agendas with this tragedy, a more worthwhile objective might be to figure out a way to treat schizophrenics so that this sort of thing wouldn't happen.

The old drugs were said to dull the patient so much that it was difficult to get the patient to take them. But there are some new drugs available which are supposed to have far fewer side effects than the old drugs. But there's still the problem of getting an unwilling patient to take them.

Not too many decades ago mentally ill persons were forcibly institutionalized, and while there were probably some abuses of the right to lock up someone who appeared to be crazy, there were probably fewer crimes committed by them. But if the condition is treatable, then there should be a legal remedy in place to compel someone who has been diagnosed to either take the drug or face institutionalization.

Then maybe nutcases wouldn't be out there shooting up the place.

Payday loans -- expensive, but some people need them

There isn't any doubt that payday, car title and pawn shop loans are expensive ways to borrow money. But for some people it's the only way, especially now that banks and other establishment lenders are taking a hard line on lenders.

Who could be behind the current push to get laws restricting those alternate type loans? Whenever there's a push for tougher regulations for a business it's usually safe to assume that the people behind it are attempting to reduce or eliminate competition to their own businesses.

So when we hear that Texas Rep. Tom Craddick and Sen. Wendy Davis want tougher regulations on payday loans it would be nice to know which lobbyists for which industry are spearheading this.

Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, companies like Cash America and Advance America are filling the vacancy created by bank retrenchment. And the banks aren't happy about losing potential customers.

Time for tax reform is now

Those were the words of National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson yesterday in news release IR-2011-2, Jan. 5, 2011: "Time for tax reform is now." She goes on to say 60% of taxpayers pay someone else to prepare the return. [Anecdote: someone told me last year they paid an accountant $400 to find out she didn't earn enough money to pay taxes.] Another 29 percent use tax software. This leave an astonishing 11% who prepare their own returns without the help of tax software. Are they geniuses, or are do they use the simplest form the IRS allows?

The Executive Summary highlights some of the problems. And one haunting section pertains to collections and how, due to IRS inefficiencies, an "audit will just plow along on autopilot without any human being looking at the case or attempting to place an outbound phone call to the taxpayer, until the Statutory Notice of Deficiency is issued (automatically) proposing an assessment of tax. All too often the taxpayer has sent in information that the IRS has not associated with the taxpayer’s case in time to stop the issuance of the (automated) Notice of Deficiency."

Then the taxpayer's bank account gets frozen, and the taxpayer faces ruin.

But what else is new? These problems have been with us so long, and the topic is so difficult, it's hard to imagine lawmakers actually wanting to tackle it given that they get special treatment. But who knows? Maybe the incoming Representatives and Senators will have the courage to try to make some real reforms.

A flat tax would be nice.

Quote of the day

I am proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is – I could be just as proud for half the money. — Arthur Godfrey, entertainer.

Source: Tax Quotes at irs.gov.

When innocent people go to jail

In our criminal judicial system the accused is presumed innocent, every defendant is afforded a reasonably fair trial, the guilty go to prison, and no innocent person need fear wrongful imprisonment. Aw, the ideal world. If only that were true.

In the real world we have people like 51 year old Cornelius Dupree Jr. who is expected to be exonerated today after serving 30 years in prison. He was picked out of a photo lineup and convicted in Dallas on the basis of the victim's testimony before DNA testing was available. But the DNA evidence was eventually tested, and it belonged to someone else. He's fortunate the late Dallas D.A. Henry Wade isn't around to try to whitewash his prosecution team's error and contend the DNA evidence doesn't prove the defendant was innocent.

"Anyone can convict a guilty person. It takes skill to convict an innocent one". That quote is attributed to various prosecutors. But when 21 convictions from Dallas County alone are overturned we have to wonder whether the goal was for justice or convictions.

DNA testing has certainly proven to be a useful tool for both sides of a criminal case. But it's not always available, and the more attention it gets, the more careful real criminals will be.

To get a wrongful conviction turned around without DNA evidence is an uphill challenge. A case in point is the case of Jabbar Collins whose story was featured in the Wall Street Journal over the holiday. Mr. Collins sat in prison for 15 years doing his own legal research, motion writing and investigation. And he was able to get admissions from witnesses that they lied in order to get leniency for their own legal problems. The case spotlighted a remarkable law enforcement overreach.

The best advice on the subject anyone has given recently was from one of the wrongfully accused Duke lacrosse team members who said from then on he planned to always be around others and make lots of cell phone calls in case he ever had to prove his innocence.

Sunday Diversions -- Trick Shots

Move over Harlem Globetrotters. Check out this Youtube video of Kyle Singler shooting some hoops from incredible distances. He makes it look so easy. Via Betsy's Page.

They only show the ones he hit, and skeptics among us might wonder how many tries it took. But never mind. It's fun to watch.

Not a basketball fan? Check out Danny MacAskill do some incredible things on a bike. Such skill. Such agility. Such balance.

Still not impressed? OK, one last try. Watch these guys do some amazing parkour. And if that's not enough, I give up. I aim to please, but you're insatiable.