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According to this chart, gasoline actually costs less, on average, in Los Angeles than here in Denver. That's a first!
Especially considering LA gas cost almost 40 cents more than Denver only a month ago. Denver prices have jumped about 45 cents in the last week. Gads...
The inaugural BlahStuff GGotW Award goes to a co-worker of mine named Matt Holzmann. Why? Well, try this on for size:
I'm heading down there to help rescue people from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
...
Why am I going? Well, I have wilderness first aid experience, boat driving experience, just enough vacation time, and I would hope that someone would do this for my mother, if this sort of tragedy struck Florida.
Even better, Matt somehow managed to arrange to pick up a pontoon boat from someone who works at our new parent company in Little Rock.
Just fantastic. Way to go Holzie!
Moonbat anti-evolutionist: Deepak Chopra This is beautiful. Deepak Chopra seems to be even more of a looney tune than I thought he was, and this article is a wonderful deconstruction of his "Intelligent Design" arguments.
Wow.
Highlight (one of many):
Larry King actually asked this question:
KING: All right, hold on. Dr. Forrest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?
Uh, right. And my ancestors came from Sweden, so why the heck are there still Swedes?
Nice.
---
Oh, then there's this.
Jackasses, all of 'em! (Except the rooster.)
There's a Wikipedia page about the London attacks. See also the BBC's dedicated page. We're keeping the folks across the pond in our thoughts.
The End of the Rainbow -- Ireland is now Europe's second richest country.
... In a quite unusual development, the government, the main trade unions, farmers and industrialists came together and agreed on a program of fiscal austerity, slashing corporate taxes to 12.5 percent, far below the rest of Europe, moderating wages and prices, and aggressively courting foreign investment. In 1996, Ireland made college education basically free, creating an even more educated work force.
The results have been phenomenal. Today, 9 out of 10 of the world's top pharmaceutical companies have operations here, as do 16 of the top 20 medical device companies and 7 out of the top 10 software designers. Last year, Ireland got more foreign direct investment from America than from China. And overall government tax receipts are way up.
This is fascinating. Yet we can only wish that leaders of other countries (Like maybe, the USofA) would/could use this as a model.
In China, cigarettes are a kind of miracle drug
Two-thirds of Chinese men are smokers, and surveys show that as many as 90 per cent believe their habit has little effect on their health, or is good for them.
That's just awesome...
“Quitting smoking would bring you misery, shortening your life.�
Power to the people, yo!
On some days, as many as 25 to 30 condors soar over the canyon area — more birds than were in existence a generation ago when officials decided to capture and breed them.
Peter Forsberg wants to return to the Colorado Avalanche if a proposed salary cap doesn't make him too expensive for the club, his agent says.
Well, it's been nice having him around...
An Illinois woman who stopped to help a family of ducks cross Interstate 90/39 on Wednesday morning ended up in the hospital after she was hit by a car and thrown 60 feet.
A motorcyclist captured on film by German police racing at 251 km per hour (155 mph) on a road near Berlin has set a new unofficial national record for speeding, Bild newspaper reported on Monday.
He'd better watch out for ducks at that speed!
British Medical Experts Campaign for Long, Pointy Knife Control
The researchers noted that the rate of violent crime in Britain rose nearly 18 percent from 2003 to 2004, and that in the first two weeks of 2005, 15 killings and 16 nonfatal attacks involved stabbings. In an unusual move for a scholarly work, the researchers cited a January headline from The Daily Express, a London tabloid: "Britain is in the grip of knives terror - third of murder victims are now stabbed to death." Dr. Hern said that "we came up with the idea and tossed it into the pot" to get people talking about crime reduction. "Whether it's a sensible solution to this problem or not, I'm not sure."
While I am generally on the more "liberal" side of the gun control issue than some of my friends (because guns scare the boogers out of me), start talking about grinding the tip off my Wüstofs and I'll start talking about a revolution. Nevermind the knives I own that are actually meant to be considered "weapons"...
This quote succinctly sums up the total amount of silliness, I think:
Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which supports gun control, joked, "Can sharp stick control be far behind?"
Yes, that's a gun control advocate making fun of the idea of restricting freedoms. Go ahead and bask in that for a while.
Either the beard goes, or I do . . .
Anyone on Camp Vance for more than 24 hours was required to shave. Now, nobody needed to be encouraged to get away from Bagram just as quickly as possible, but usually it wasn't possible to get anything done in a day. If you showed up for supplies or paperwork one day, you'd always be short a signature or a truck until the next. The loophole there was the phrase "on Camp Vance." There was an annex, known as the German compound (because German SF stayed there when they were in Afghanistan), so we stayed there and only ventured onto Vance when absolutely necessary (and preferably under cover of darkness.) That actually lasted several months before anyone caught on, so we considered it a success.
Long, but a great read (check the rest of the site when you have a few spare hours). Gotta love self-contradicting leadership...
The soldier in this photo Andre points out has quite a shrub going.
Shane Corcoran is healing like Wolverine, as we all expected. Good stuff.
Does this man strike a chord with you?
The identity of a man found wandering on a beach in an evening suit and who will not talk but who expertly plays piano concertos for hours is baffling police.
What a bizarre case. It's like a soap opera or a bad movie.
Cambodian Troops Quarantine Quan'sul
After death, this parasite is able to restart the heart of its victim for up to two hours after the initial demise of the person where the individual behaves in extremely violent ways from what is believed to be a combination of brain damage and a chemical released into blood during “resurrection.�
We got trouble, right here in River City, and that starts with T and that rhymes with Z and that stands for ZOMBIE!
Ack!
(Yes, this is totally a hoax, btw. It still messed me up a bit, though. After all, it's not a far leap from mermen to zombies, right? ;) )
Police fear retaliatory attack, vow crackdown on gangs
Police Chief Michael Chitwood said he is boosting patrols in anticipation of a retaliatory attack following the shooting Tuesday of a 58-year-old Denmark man at the Portland Tattoo Shop. The bullet grazed the victim's groin before passing through his leg.
Police believe the shooting was a premeditated attack by members of the Outlaws motorcycle gang on a group believed to be allied with Hell's Angels.
As H.B. says in the latest Soxaholix strip, "... motorcycle gangs? The Outlaws? The Hells Angels? Hello 1970!"
Seriously, though, once your "organization" has gone global enough to include a 58-year-old Dane as an associate, don't you think you should move on from shooting people and dealing meth? I mean, there's "keeping it old school" and "being in touch with your roots" and then there's "being stuck in the Stone Age"...
So the Catholics have chosen a 78 year old German who "has disciplined church dissidents and upheld church policy against attempts by liberals for reforms" as the new pope. (Oh, and it seems he was a Hitler Youth back in the day...) At least he picked a cool name.
Pelicans found with slashed pouches What kind of psychotic fuck would mutilate friggin' pelicans?! I can imagine some jackass maybe killing the birds, but damaging them in a way that would cause a slow, miserable death deserves a flogging.
Two pics of Shane at home that make me very happy:
Shane Corcoran is home in Hawaii and can actually stand upright.We have photographic evidence!
Men accused of tattooing vulgar phrase on teen's forehead arrested
Authorities have jailed two men after they allegedly held down a teenager and tattooed an obscene phrase onto his forehead.
Police in Norwich, N.Y., about 60 miles south of Syracuse, wouldn't identify the phrase, saying only that it was vulgar and offensive.
I'm guessing it was a three-letter epithet for a homosexual, but I could be wrong. The NY Post says the tattoo "is an extremely obscene phrase and a diagram." A "phrase" is more than a "word", so I'm probably not guessing right.
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