Sunny; hot; muggy; but nice Summer day.. with an occasional cool breeze.
"An herb store owner, name of Herb,
Moved to rainier Mt. Rainier,
It would have been so nice in Nice,
And even tangier in Tangier."
Mensan Richard Lederer
01. Crime Wave
Today's Carroll County Times for Westminster, Maryland reported on all the crime that occurred in the past few days in this normally quiet town.
a. A 19 year old with a bad temper, tried to slice his father up with a machete. He also threatened police officers as they arrested him.
b. A drunken 24 year old was holding a bottle of rum and a handgun when confronted by a State policeman.
c. A clerk in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was arraigned for purchasing medical supplies for three years without seeking competitive bids and without requiring written contracts.
d. A 19 year old was arrested for burglary with four accomplices.
e. A 32 year-old violated a protective order.
f. A 28 year-old woman was charged with robbery, theft and assault.
g. A 29 year-old violated a protective order.
h. A 51 year old man was arrested for inappropriate "touching."
i. A 56 year-old sex-offender was arrested for inappropriately touching a 15 year-old.
j. A 34 year-old and a 26 year-old were stopped for a traffic violation; they had marijuana in the car.
k. A 27 year-old was arrested for robbery and assault.
What's going on? Has the Devil been let loose on our town?
02. Nice party
The Carroll County Times did a major story about the PFLAG chapter in Westminster, Maryland. (PFLAG = Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) Well written article and pictures from a cookout/party. I wonder how the "haters" will respond to this story and pictures.
03. Thar she goes
The International Space Station will be flying brightly over the Baltimore area at 9:09 PM Thursday (August 21, 2014) and 8:21 PM Friday (August 22, 2014). The flyover with begin in the Northwest and move Southeast. For more information: spotthestation.nasa.gov
04. Germ of an Idea?
If we are supposed to only have 1/2 teaspoonful of salt each day, how about designing a salt shaker that can open each day to just the proper amount to be used that day?
Elaine, in her usual clear thinking mode says: "What about the salt we get from processed food?"
05. Wisdom of the Elderly
The Grandma in the Family Circle cartoon said it: "I've heard it all, seen it all, and done it all... now I just can't remember it all."
06. All the News...
Last night, the Canadian Broadcast System's remarkable program: "As it Happens", interviewed Alain DeBotton by telphone. Alain is half Swiss and British and lives in London. He has crammed a lot of living into his 44 years, as a writer of several books, director of TV series, director of radio shows; giver of TED talks; developer of podcasts, etc. Alain has had a love affair with the British rag, the Daily Mail, and has created his own news online: The Philosopher's Mail... where he outlines the news that people are really interested in... a lot like the Daily Mail in fact..'
Example of a Daily Mail piece of news: "Armed robbers attacked a British jewelry store with sledgehammers and tried to get money from customers. The customers did not like that, so they subdued the leader and sat on top of him until the police came... a little too heavily though.. he died."
Alain looks at things through the lenses of his philosopher's eyes and supposedly sees things that the Daily Mail only hinted at. (I could have all of this wrong. I need to read some of Alain's books.)
One of Alain's books was The News: a User's Manual which covers 25 news stories, which are analyzed to show the effect of news on modern mentality.
Anyway, Mr. DeBotton quotes Confucius: "The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions."
07. Come on... I want to get rich..
The Dow Jones Average is inching back up to the 17,000 mark. It closed Monday at 16,838.74.
08. Let's get High!
ETR Associates (a non-profit organization) published a booklet with the title: 101 Ways to Get High Without Drugs. Some of these ways are:
Dance
Listen to music
Play with your cat
Watch the sky
Milk a cow or goat
Make up a joke
Buy someone a present
Work a puzzle
Lift weights
Make weird noises
Lie in the grass
Noah Strycker wrote The Thing with Feathers..
Hug someone!
09. For the Birds
Noah Strycker wrote The Thing with Feathers, the surprising lives of birds and what they reveal about being human. I found it very interesting that mirror recognition, found in only a handful of big-brained mammals, shows in only one bird.. the European magpie..Strycker even claims that magpies have been observed holding "funerals" for fallen comrades, laying grass by the body and then standing vigil.
A visit to Wikipedia reveals that gorillas do not recognize themselves in mirrors, and only an occasional chimpanzee does so. One bird test was done on magpies.. a scientist put a yellow tag on a magpie's chest feathers and then let it look into a mirror. Before looking into the mirror, the bird showed no interest in what was on its chest.. but immediately after seeing it in the mirror reflection, it began to peck at its chest.
10. Iraq .. let's get it straight
The Nation, in an editorial, spells out some of the facts about what is going on in Iraq:
1. "... the Iraq civil war is the direct result of the Bush Administration's criminal decision in 2003, illegal under international law, to attack a country that was not involved in 9/11, had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no threat to the United States." This led to the destruction of Iraq's central institutions, including the army , the police and the Baath party. The power vacuum resulted in Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish sections. "The countless dead left on the streets of Iraq's cities, then and now, are on George W. Bush's head."
2. "The decision to withdraw entirely from Iraq in 2011 was signed in Baghdad by President Bush himself in 2008, as the price for that year's Status of Forces Agreement."
"Obama should provide humanitarian relief for the estimated half-million refugees who have fled the ISIS offensive."
11. Pay up now
A columnist for an Egyptian newspaper proposes that Egypt sue Israel in International Court for reparations for the ten biblical plagues cast from Hebrew curses, including boils, lice, locusts and turning the Nile River into blood. (So says Chuck Shepherd in the Funny Paper)
12. Flash! For the Buttocks Challenged
One of the Airlines, I don't know which one, has decided to provide some flyers with "bicycle seats."
Perhaps they will also have exercycles so that your flight will not be all wasted time.
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