Holy Pay Scale!

US Government hiring Catholic Priest(s) at up to $48.32 per hour.

http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/308175300

When the fuck did it become OK to...

I've heard of no-knock warrants using battering rams, crowbars, kicking in doors, getting keys from landlords and the like, but...

When the fuck did it become OK to serve a search warrant by chainsawing through an apartment's door?

The FBI takes the isolated incident into horror-film territory.

[Isolated incident is a sarcastic Radley Balko reference to just how commonly police make truly epic militarized mistakes in serving warrants.]

From a comment by "Jim March" at the same link:

There are very, very few things in this world that would cause me to shoot through my own front door at parties unknown.

Coming through it with a chainsaw? Yeah, that’s pretty much RIGHT AT THE TOP OF THE GODDAMN LIST!!!

Oh, and not to bury the lede too badly, but IT WAS THE WRONG GODDAMN APARTMENT!

Wisdom from unlikely places

In a discussion at Fark.com about a 19 year old babysitter that allegedly had a sexual relationship with a 14 year old boy she was watching (and maybe more), poster Julie Cochrane offered this great advice about how to teach your kids to avoid the draw of dating inappropriately older folks.

The way I explained "older guys" to my daughter, when I talked to her about older guys who come around as boyfriends of high school girls, and they've got cars and money to buy the girls stuff, and they're in college or out working a job:

I told her to think of the boys who were the bottom of the barrel losers in her grade. Think of the 5 skeeziest, creepiest boys. The ones that make the hair on her neck stand up. Yeah them, I told her. Those are the guys who are going to end up cruising the high schools looking to date high school girls.

"When you date the older guys who cruise the high schools, you're dating another grade's rejects. What's wrong with them that none of the girls their own age will date them?"

She shuddered.

She got the point.

Why you don't just go along with robbers

Police: Man Gives Money To Robber, Gets Shot Anyway

Police are looking for a robber who they said shot a pedestrian even though he handed over his money.

The hold-up happened about 11 p.m. Monday as the pedestrian was walking on Spring Street toward Campbell Avenue, according to a press release from police. A masked man confronted him, pointing a dark-colored handgun at his face.

The robber demanded money, which the pedestrian handed over. The gunman shot him anyway, police said. The pedestrian survived the gunshot wound on his arm.

Paramedics revive a 24 week gestational infant

From the UCONN Hospital newsletter comes this story that sounds like a ready made Lifetime movie of the week.

Paramedics from a small town ambulance service revive a 24 week gestational baby born at home that was delivered by a police officer first responder.

24 weeks! Born at home!

Simsbury Ambulance paramedics Barbara Carter and Karin Stewart have a great working relationship. Each usually comes in an half hour before crew change to relieve the other. One Monday evening last month shortly after Carter arrived to relieve Stewart a call came in for “vaginal bleeding.” Stewart accompanied Carter in the fly car to see if an extra hand was needed and to be able to return the fly car to the base should Carter need to accompany the ambulance crew to the hospital. Both their hearts raced when, just before their arrival on scene, came the update “baby born.”

When they entered the house, Simsbury Police Department officer and first responder Tim May handed Carter a profoundly premature dusky 24-week gestational infant. The baby, who weighed only 0.77 kilograms, wasn’t much longer than Carter’s outstretched hand. Call it training, call it education, or call it grace under pressure, Carter and Stewart, mothers themselves, did what EMS responders do. They went to work. They wrapped the child in a towel, used a bulb syringe to clear secretions from its airway, assisted the baby’s struggling ventilations and cut the umbilical chord. While Simsbury EMTs Chris Collins and Erin Komidar stayed to care for the mother with Granby Ambulance responding to the scene as mutual aid, Stewart and Carter quickly moved the child to the Simsbury ambulance and EMT Donna Anderson began the urgent transport to John Dempsey Hospital.

The baby’s oxygen saturation (the SPO2 sensor wrapped around its foot) was in the 80’s. The child was sluggish and cyanotic. Carter noticed its heart rate falling, down to 80, then 76, 72… She began chest compressions with a single finger on the baby’s sternum. Stewart continued ventilating with a neonatal bag-valve mask. Neither paramedic was certain the child was even big enough to be viable, but they were cheered as “the fighter kid,” as Stewart came to refer to the baby, seemed to clench its fists. The duskiness slowly turned to pink.

The crew, who provided crucial early notification to John Dempsey Hospital of the premature birth, arrived at JDH to find an open ED door and the hospital’s NICU team and ED staffs awaiting their precious patient. The efforts of the Simsbury crew ensured the child was kept viable long enough that the team was able to successfully resuscitate and stabilize the child, who now with confirmed pulse and blood pressure, was rushed to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The child survived the critical first 24 hours and continues to grow and make progress.

R.N. Beth Thompson, a member of the NICU team called the EMS crew’s response “remarkable.” John Dempsey EMS Director Richard Kamin cited the crew’s hard work and diligence that paid off when it counted most. “This is what EMS is all about,” he said. Both medics had effusive praise for the hospital response. “I was so impressed with the staff and equipment that was waiting for us when we arrived,” Carter said. “They were great!” said Stewart.

Chevy Logo too much like cross?

An Egyptian sheikh has declared Chevrolet products forbidden because "the Chevrolet bowtie logo looks too similar to a cross."

I don't see it, absent some photoshop magic.

One can only hope that hardliners also find that airplanes look too much like crosses and then boycott flying.

Shame

A man who spent two years in solitary confinement after getting arrested for DWI was awarded $22 million for suffering inhumane treatment in New Mexico's Dona Ana County Jail.

I spent a summer in law school working for a NYS Court of Claims judge. I worked on all manner of prisoner Pro Se claims against NY prisons and learned that many, if not most prisoner complaints are marginal at best.

Man arrested, put in county jail & left there for 2 years with no trial, no medical care, and often left completely inside his solitary cell for months at a time.

Before this judgment came down I don't know if I would have believed such a thing possible in the United States. I'd certainly never heard of anything like this in the U.S. before, and I hope it never happens again.

Evil people did this, whether they wears labels of incompetence or sadism, they are pure evil.

Via Clayton Cramer

Regulation vs Equality

"The easiest way to get everybody on the same level is with a steamroller." -- Me

Refuses to quit!

Stop Pippa too!

Did my part to fight for online freedom

Well, I did my part.

I didn't take a shower this morning.

You know, to help Stop SOAP!

Life is too short to own cheap X

Surprising few unique responses to a Google search reveal fairly consistent believe by internet writers on what you shouldn't cheap out on.

"Life is too short to own cheap" ...

flashlights

cheap, ugly handguns

guns

knives

dogs

tools

Here's an big list compiled by Australians -- Life is too short for...


Which I suppose could be summed up as simply tools, dogs and shoes.

For everything else, I suppose, frugality is A OK.

Original found at Clayton Cramer's Blog.

Better version spotted here.

QOTD

"Cynicism is just a fancy word for pattern recognition."

             -- Commenter "davelog" over at boingboing.com

Thanks, but no thanks, I've already got more problems than I need.

If someone on the other end of a telephone call tells you to not defend yourself with the best means possible, you can pretty much write off everything else they tell you as well. In a situation that stressful (four men breaking into your home), the last thing you need is a delay brought about by trying to satisfy the voice on the phone AND stay alive.

'Do not, while I’m on the phone, do not fire that firearm, OK?' the dispatcher says

'What if another one comes in the house, ma'am?' he asked.

'Let me know, OK, if you see anybody. I will let you know (when a deputy gets to the house),' the dispatcher responded.

I wonder if the dispatcher saying that is in their SOPs or if they went off book?

Spotted here.

Al Quaeda gets its just desserts

 
Latest terrorist treat?
 
            The Molotov cupcake.

Apparently Batman didn't always eschew guns

From this post over at The Batman Universe.

But how many of us know that the original Batman of the comic books started out using guns? As written by Bob Kane, Batman would occasionally make use of a gun to level the playing field against the criminals he faced. It wasn’t until later that the mythos of Batman was revised and he renounced the weapon that was responsible for the deaths of his mother and father.

NOTE: Image not from the Bob Kane era.

funniest tweets and facebook posts of 2011

Tweets

Facebook

Obama lists himself as 4th best President

Obama lists himself as 4th best President.

Must be using Cooley rules.

It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It

Mr. Corzine's testimony seems to be channeling Robert Fulghum, or perhaps President "I inherited this problem" Obama."

"Without adequate time and materials to prepare, I may be unable to respond to various questions members might pose," he said.

I suppose the dog ate his homework as well.

A purse is not a gun when...

TSA Idiocy Continues

Gibbs said she was headed back home to Jacksonville from a holiday trip when an agent flagged her purse as a security risk.

'She was like, "This is a federal offence because it's in the shape of a gun",' Gibbs said. 'I'm like, "But it's a design on a purse. How is it a federal offence?"'

After agents figured out the gun was a fake, Gibbs said, TSA told her to check the bag or turn it over.

Doing a heckuva job there Lu.

Google+ trying to capture the lucrative stalker market

Caught this ad last night on TV.



Its message seems to be that Google+ is the preferred social networking site for stalkers and their materialistic prey.

Google titled this advert "Google+: Circles Love Story".

Love?! Those are some warped folks out there if this is love to them.

It would have been better if the creeper got dumped into circle creeper, never to escape there from. Some other fella should have been the one to advance through the ranks, probably without the circle that qualified boys based on their automotive ownership status.

Those small changes would have shown how easy it is to isolate creeps on Google+, made the female mouse-driver seem less money (car?) grubbing, and left the viewer with the idea that Google+ and its circles gave you power that other sites don't.

Instead I'm left feeling like I wouldn't want to interact with any of the weirdo, stalking and/or materialistic mouse-jockeys hanging out at Google+.

My previous employer relearned this bit of history first hand

Jerry Pournelle on traditional Chinese business practices.

It is a traditional Chinese business practice to establish relations with a customer, then slowly over time degrade the product delivered until the customer complains. This is described in stories out of China dating back hundreds of years, involving both British and Japanese customers. It was not considered unethical by Chinese merchants.

So, combine a low cost country outsourcing program with underfunded inspection and quality departments and you have hundreds if not thousands of companies setting themselves up as easy marks.

We need to stop promoting from within...

Like the score of a cricket game...

From

Courant.com.

To be fair they do cover geographically and climatically different parts of the state, but I thought the juxtaposition of the two was dramatic.

Sometimes paying Net90 bites you in the ass!

Connecticut Light & Power paying out of state emergency crews at Net 90 +?.

Usually not a problem, but Hurricane Irene wasn't so long ago, so now out of state crewed may have been slow to respond because CL&P has been running emergency operations using other peoples' money.

(fwiw, got my power back about 97 hours after it went out on Saturday. Post Irene I was out of power for about 24 hours.)