Mental note: Do not talk to self. If you must talk to yourself, do not do so with a knife in your hand.

Cathy Viera said her husband of 17 years had mental health problems for a long time. Since his release from the Bristol County House of Correction this week after a sentence for drunk driving and breaking and entering, he had exhibited strange behavior, such as talking to himself.

Apparently driving drunk and pulling a B&E are not strange behavior, but talking to one's self is strange behavior.

I continued to be amazed at the poor contstruction, grammar, word choice and neutrality of the "news" coming out of Boston on the AP-Wire.

This next bit is from a AP wire story about "Mucko", the alleged office shooter:

They will present evidence that he planned the shootings as revenge for the company's plan to garnishee his wages to pay back taxes he owed to the IRS

Like Bill Waterson said, "Verbing weirds language." Not quite duckspeak or newspeak, but perhaps an attempt to fulfill the following: (from the above linked essay)

Two of my favorite philosophers, Calvin and Hobbes were discussing language one day. Calvin said, "I like to verb words." "What?" asked Hobbes. "I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when 'access' was a thing? Now it's something to do. It got verbed. Verbing weirds (sic) language." Hobbes commented "Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding."

I'm currently working on my first longer essay for the blog, for now titled "So, you want to be an armchair media critic." Stories like these take the challenge out of punditry.

Russell Madden does a great job taking down a nitwit judge in Central New York.

On Screen: Depleted Uranium Bad, America Worse (Lying "news" with a not-so-hidden agenda)

Once again forces unknown greatly exagerate the toxicity of DU to further
their anti-US causes.

See this article from Jane's Defence News for a brief but thorough analysis.

Response (highlights from Jane's)

Depleted uranium is only very weakly radioactive, and virtually all of the
observed or expected effects are from nephrotoxicity associated with deposition
in the kidney tubules and glomeruli damage at high doses.

...

The total radiation dose to the lung from even relatively high exposures to
airborne depleted uranium particles is not remarkable.

...

There is no known or expected leukemia risk associated with small amounts of
U-238 in the bone because the marrow is not efficiently irradiated.

...

As to its "heavy metal" toxicity, the closest analogy is lead. However,
metallic lead has considerably higher toxicity than metallic uranium. Compounds
of lead are much more hazardous than compounds of uranium since uranium tends to
form relatively insoluble compounds which are not readily absorbed into the
body. Also, lead within the body affects the nervous system and several
biochemical processes, while the uranyl ion does not readily interfere with any
major biochemical process except for depositing in the tubules of kidney where
damage occurs if excess deposition occurs. Glomeruli damage has been reported at
high doses as well. The kidney damage is dosage dependent and somewhat
reversible. Lead bullets are probably more dangerous than uranium bullets.

(Emphasis mine)

French Eco-Terrorist Shoots 19 Bureaucrats, Kills 8

Even allowing for any mistranslation or loose translation of the quoted officials in this story, the Frenchies really seem to have a collective screw loose. My favorite comment from the article comes from Christian Demercaster, a municipal official from the Green Party. He sought to disassociate himself from the shooter by pointing out that the shooter was not a member of the Green Party. How bizarre. He just survived a mass killing and he takes the time to comment that the deranged lunatic perpetrator was not a member of his political party. I won't directly criticize the words of French rightist presidential candidate, Alain Madelin. Let's just say that his screw is the loosest.

According to Article 19, Chapter II, Section 3 of the ministry's Resolution No. 383/2001: "The sale of computers, offset printer equipment, mimeographs, photocopiers, and any other mass printing medium, as well as their parts, pieces and accessories, is prohibited to associations, foundations, civic and nonprofit societies, and natural born citizens.

Wired is reporting that Cuba has banned the sale of PC's to all but government and "approved" users. Their stated reason is a "shortage" of PC's due to the U.S. embargo. Ideas and the flow of information being their weakest point, tyrants hate free expression an open communications. The thought of countless Cubans exchanging their real thoughts on how they feel about the government must keep Castro awake at night.

Well, like the Agitator says, the "The only people that have freedom of the press are the people who OWN A PRESS."

So, the guy heading up the new Federal Airport Security System is leaving his job, after two months, for personal reasons. Curious how his "personal reasons" line up perfectly with a report just out about how much airport security still sucks since 9-11.

How much longer until Norman "The Loser" Mineta follows him out the door?

Hey all you Bush-bashers, guess what? Bush did not wave at Stevie Wonder as was widely reported a few weeks back. But hey, why let the facts get in the way of story that matches all your pre-conceived notions. Hell, why read any blogs at all, much less my little corner of the web, when you could crawl back over to your mainstream comfort.

Joe Lieberman is eyeing the Democratic nomination for 2004. While not exactly "news," this is a pretty good article detailing the baggage, ghosts, and traps that will adversely impact Joe's run. He has been traveling quite a bit, hitting South Carolina and New Hampshire. I wonder which Lieberman will be running; Senator Joe, Imus favorite or VP-for-Gore boot-licking flip-flop piss-on-the-constiution-and-piss-on-military-voters Joe Lieberman.

Sometimes the news is just intuitive.

Governments of the world got together and promised that genocide would "Never Again" happen. It has, it is, and it will again.

HOORAY! Sanity prevailed in the government run schools of Texas. After expelling an honor student for having a bread knife in the bed of his pickup truck, the school system has reversed its decision and will allow him back to school. I guess sometimes the zero in "zero tolerance" does not really equal zero. I would further guess that ZERO != ZERO when a school administrator receives thousands of complaints over his stupid decision.

Well, Google caved to a DMCA request from the Scientologists to pull all links to a scientology criticism site. Maybe enough links by bloggers will push xenu into the blogdex today.

Newsflash: Hate crimes only happen on a one-way street. What, other than spiking, could account for the lack of coverage on this murder spree?

[UPDATE:]

Zero tolerance insanity continues in public schools, strange enough this time in Texas. Summary: 17 year-old honor student suspended for a year because of a bread knife left in the bed of his pickup truck after helping move his grandmother over the weekend.

Clearly a lose-lose situation here: If the school doesn't back down and cancel the one year suspension the honor-student has a permanent mark on his record. If the school does back down then the poor kid has to go back to a school run by sycophants and idiots.[IMO]

I am amazed that a school so paranoid about one type of weapon would allow so many other obvious weapons on school grounds without complaint. Likely each car on the grounds could be used as a weapon to run over pedestrians.[Hyundai's excepted] Further, each vehicles comes supplied with an arsenal in the form of a tire iron, antenna, battery acid, fan belt, keys, and several possible garrotes. Students' hard shoes, belts, fingernails and books also could serve as improvised weapons.

This poor kid is being sacrificed on the alter of bureaucratic political correctness. I can only hope that he winds up better for having been rescued from such a school system.

This item just makes me sad. Add clean water to a bucket of dirty water and you just wind up with more dirty water.

I recently had the occasion to take apart some HP products at work to see what makes them tick. HP's products and engineering are second to none. I fear that getting involved with Compaq can do nothing but harm to HP.

When I first saw this, I thought for sure it had to be a joke. I was expecting something along the lines of Mad TV's "Lowered Expectations". Instead it just turns out that the Onion has an affinity site for The Spring Street Networks.

Thats too bad. I think there is potential here:

(Bad example) Area Man seeks Area Woman for dating, devil worship, square dancing.

Oh no, some whiny Yale English major cannot find "suitable employment". Somebody alert Ross Perot!

Do you want fries with that whine?

Stephen Den Beste wants the world to solve its own problems.

Further, the submission of more letters to the editor is verboten.

Especially about human rights.

Philip Greenspun has had all his personal info (and I do mean ALL his personal info) up on the web since before it was called the web.

I bring this up because he once said on his website that only once had publishing all his opinions and information up on the web lead to an unexpected phone call.

My wife's fear of such contacts is why I have chosen to use a pseudonym on this blog.

I suppose she does have at least the semblance of a point. About six months ago I had a letter to the editor published in the local rag. Five months passed by and the only feedback I received was when my old roommate said, "I thought you were out of town." But then, it happened, some crank tracked me down and was upset about what I had said in the letter to the editor.

Sadly I was not at home to take this call. My wife, god bless her, had to deal with a caller whom my wife described as sounding like "a thousand year old woman".

I was not only amazed that my letter lead to a contact, but I was even further amazed that anyone remembered it 6 months after I wrote the damn thing.

So, with the fear of having to deal with further kooks firmly implanted in my wife's noggin, I now have to blog-anonymously, or at least pseudonymously.

Configuring.....

Blogger requires at least one post be made before it allows you to publish.

Want a link to kill some time, check out this images.google.com search that is making the rounds right now...(Funny with mature content filter on, funnier with it off)