$1.8 million spent to guard Detroit schools chief

DETROIT (AP) The chief of Detroit's public schools has received at least one-point-eight (M) million dollars in round-the-clock security protection in the last five years.

The state's largest school district has 140-thousand students and has been struggling with declining enrollment and large-scale budget cuts.

Chief executive Kenneth Burnley has announced the closing of 34 schools to help erase a 200 (M) million-dollar, two-year deficit.

The ``Detroit Free Press'' says his security detail consists of three armed officers who rotate driving and protecting him while he is on school business.

It says a second team of officers stays at his home around the clock.

Wow, Detroit's schools must really suck.

Some fun signs from my weekend toodling around Southern New England.

At first I hoped this was an anti-Rowland sign (just a few miles south of the official Welcome to CT sign on Route 32 South), but instead it's just some kook with a personal axe to grind, sort of "front yard blog."

I guess this sign in Hazardville, CT is likely painfully truthful.

Scum.

SND Marketing dot com is a scam. It registered its domain name by proxy to hide it's real address & identity. It uses a mail drop in Texas to hide the fact that it is an Ontario, Canada based company.

If you found this page because you were searching for information about an unsolicited invoice that you received, DO NOT PAY THE INVOICE.

Without any prior contact it simply lifts company information out of the public domain, generates a fax addressed to "Accounts Payable," then it waits for the cash to flow in.

I'm not saying that they don't do the services that they promise, though I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they don't perform as invoiced.

Reminds me a bit of the "directory" scam that runs out of Plattburgh & Champlain, NY. Maybe it is even the same folks...

 

Jeez, you'd think that after all these years it would have been promoted to Head Honcho.

[Backup Joke: If the owner of the Honcho sees a lot of "action" then maybe it already earned the title "Head" Honcho. Given its age I figure it's more likely a "Cuddle Honcho".]

A few quotes from watching too much TV this weekend.

"This chorus is the feces that shame produces when it eats too much stupidity." -- Dale Gribble

"You don't get to choose the people who need your help." -- Francis on Malcolm in the Middle

Anger Management!?

Tim Johnson knew where to hit her where the injuries wouldn't show, Tamara Johnson said in an order of protection she took out against her husband last August.

Tamara Johnson said her husband had boasted he learned how to hit her from tips he received during an anger management course he was sentenced to take.

Maybe the teacher at the anger management class graduated from the same program as the cop who taught public school kids how to make meth.

A few years back, at the suggestion of R Schultz, I read Eric Hoffer's The True Believer. Lazily following up on that I just started reading Mr. Hoffer's The Passionate State of Mind, a collection of aphorisms reflecting upon modern life, modern man & the quest for self-esteem -- and that's just in the first 8 pages.
I'm read just a small fraction of the book, but I hit upon a thought that I want to excerpt, feeling it carries great insight about the desire to have a "big time", high traffic blog.

EVERY intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are. Hence probably the imperiousness of the desire for fame, which is a desire for a self utterly unlike the real self.

Clayton Cramer writes about those who refer to participants in Minuteman Project as vigilantes.

But they aren't doing any of those things. They are calling the Border Patrol and reporting the presence of illegals. If this makes them "vigilantes" then Neighborhood Watch is vigilantism.

I understand that some people want cheap labor. It is certainly good for some businesses and those Americans who want cheap maids and gardeners--and not so good for citizens and legal residents whose wages are depressed by illegals. But that does not excuse falsely labeling the Minutemen as vigilantes.

Sure, they love cheap labor, except when it is being used to help further the goals of law enforcement.

Dada da.

San Jose Man Creates Backyard Helicopter

San Jose Man Creates Backyard Helicopter
SAN JOSE, Calif.
Romeo Linn is currently building a prototype for something called the “Multi-Fault Tolerant, Ultra Energy Saving, Ultra Fast, Triple Rotors Vertical Take-Off And Landing Heli-Linn” – or “Heli-Linn” for short.
Although Linn is currently recovering from a broken neck, he believes he will have a prototype completed by June 8, when he will display it at the INPEX invention trade show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Umm, just how did the maker of a "backyard helicopter" break his neck? Related to flight testing or not, I think the reporter should have bothered to mention how the neck was broken.

Tina Fey on "Baby Panic"

The cover story of New York Magazine this week is Baby Panic.

This goes perfectly with the other magazines on my coffee table - Where Are The Babies? Why Haven't You Had A Baby? And, For God's Sake Have A Baby.

Thanks Time Magazine, this is just what I need: another article so depressing that I can actually hear my ovaries curling up. According to author Sylvia Hewlett, career women shouldn't wait to have babies because our fertility takes a steep drop-off after age 27.

And Sylvia's right- I definitely should've had a baby when I was 27,
living in Chicago, over a biker bar, pulling down a cool 12 grand a year. That woulda worked out great. But Sylvia's message is feminism can't change nature, which is true. If feminism could change nature, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be all oiled up on the cover of Maxim.

Ladies, there's no reason to panic though, it's out of your control anyway.

Either your cooter works, or it doesn't.

My mom had me when she was 40, and this was back in the 70s when the only fertility aid was Harvey's Bristol Cream.

So, waiting is just a risk that I'm going to have to take. And, I don't think I could do fertility drugs, because, to me, six half-pound translucent babies is not a miracle, it's gross. I'd rather adopt a baby - I don't need a kid that looks like me.

I was not a cute kid.

I looked like a cross between that chick from the Indigo Girls... and
the other chick from the Indigo Girls. Not a cute kid.