Martians?

Why would I link to a web log that includes coarse language and inappropriate humor? Go see. Look! A Baby Wolf!

5 Houshold Tips

Save time, money, and aggravation

• It’s rarely cost effective to wash and reuse paper towels. To save time, throw them away and buy a new roll.
• Put used teabags in the gutter to keep toads away.
• When shopping for Hubbard squash, take along a backpack to carry your purchase.
• To save money, buy stuff when it’s on sale.
• When installing nails, use a hammer. Get the kind with the claw, so you can also use it as a removal tool.

Poet for the ages

C. W. McCall is the man American needs today.

Storyblogging

Storyblogging Carnival XC is up, with eight entries this month.

Links

• Before there were FBI agents the Department of Justice employed “peonage investigators.” In 1908, when they and some Secret Service agents became FBI agents, the peons were “workers compelled by contract to pay their creditors in labour.” This was and is involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment. Before prohibition there were not that many federal crimes, and investigating peonage was a significant part of the FBI’s work. On July 26, 2008, the FBI celebrates its 100th anniversary. The FBI History website has pages about famous cases from John Dillinger to 9/11.
• Doing it by the book: The REAL meaning of the Haynes instructions, from The Information Ditch
  • Haynes: Remove oil filter using an oil filter chain spanner or length of bicycle chain.
  • Translation: Stick a screwdriver through it and beat handle repeatedly with a hammer.
• Britannica Forum: Your Brain Online is a back-and-forth discussion of Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” Thoughtful discussion by optimists and pessimists examining the question has generated too many good quotes to include here.

More inaction by the UN

What will be Teheran’s response? Must the US solve this problem alone? What does Father Phleger think? Will Ann Coulter remain silent? (well, probably not.)

What’s the crisis? A Birthday party snub sparks debate in the Swedish Parliament. An eight year old Swedish boy invited all his classmates to his birthday party, except for two kids he didn’t want to invite. He handed out the invitations in class, and when the teacher found out they weren’t for everyone, she (I sexistly assume) confiscated all the invitations. Okay, she’s the teacher. But then somehow it escalated to some kind of discriminatory civil rights violation.

The last question is, are American trial lawyers even now figuring out a way to profit from this?

Storyblogging Carnival submissions are open

See Storyblogging Carnival LXXXIX if you have some ’storytelling in blog format’ you would like to enter.

Going negative

• A village in Romania voted to re-elect a dead man rather than his living rival. That’s a real vote of no confidence.
• Irish voters rejected the EU’s Lisbon treaty. If new committees and better propaganda are the answer, what must be the real question?
• I don’t take notes. In school I paid attention and listened carefully. This worked great for history and economics, less well for fluid mechanics. Guess what I majored in.
• I have no bumper stickers.

Call the diversity police!

In Skokie, Illinois “Members of the group then kicked and punched the victim while using racial slurs” and so “six people have been charged with felony mob action and aggravated battery for allegedly beating an African-American man,” reports the Chicago Tribune. The alleged perpetrators are George Won Guk Tai, Vuong Quach, Alexander Hernandez, Emily A. Peele, Andrius Spokas, Sarun Thitayarak.

UPDATE: According to the Skokie Review, Aaron T. Moskowitz has also been charged with mob action and battery. — Seventh suspect charged in beating

Might have been, could be, and better avoided

But which is which?

• Change we can hope for? A Madcap Proposal is just what P.J. O’Rourke would have written if he were a completely different man.
• Emergency preparedness is worth re-examining from time to time.
• Mortgage basics, part 1 and Mortgage basics, part 2. I haven’t read these in detail yet, but they look pretty good. There’s a fascinating chart in part 2 that would make a great basis for parody.