Twisting the Knife in Woundwort’s Belly
The Top Ten Moments In Yankee Hating History. Now if only the new BonJovi album happens to suck, my October will be off to a pretty damn good start.
Yankee link via Kyle Still Free Press
Archive for October 7th, 2002
Not Opera Fans
I usually surf my blogroll with Opera, a little known, less used but fairly well respected browser. I like it for its ability to open numerous windows all at once to different sites. One click of a button and 30 seconds later all my daily web comics are available, or 30 different blogs. Every now and then I run across a site that just refuses to work with it. I can read everything, but the links simply don’t function. Clicking on them produces nothing. I have to load the site into IE to get it to function. Doc Weevil is one example, as is the new site for the Rottweiler. Has anyone else run across this?
Journalism Strikes Again
The Daily Evergreen would like to sincerely apologize for an injustice served to the Filipino-American, Spanish-speaking and Catholic communities on the front page of Thursday’s Evergreen.
The story “Filipino-American history recognized” stated that the “Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza,” the galleon on which the first Filipinos landed at Morro, Bay, Calif., loosely translates to “The Big Ass Spanish Boat.” It actually translates to “Our Lady of Good Peace.”
Dumbasses. Everyone knows that “El Barco de La Senora Lopez” is what “The Big Ass Spanish Boat” translates to.
Link via The Country Store
I’ve discovered two things that bother me a great deal. One, potty training the Ngnat is affecting my mind. Two, I know way more Broadway songs than is normal for a heterosexual male.
West Side Potty - Song Two - Urea
TODDLER
(spoken)
Urea . . .
(sings)
The most beautiful sound I ever heard:
Urea, urea, urea, urea . . .
All the bountiful pee in me to the bowl transferred . .
Urea, urea, urea, urea . . .
Urea!
I’ve just filled a pot with urea!
And suddenly my aim
Is winning great acclaim
for me.
Urea!
I’ve just pissed away my urea,
And suddenly I’ve found
A bug that has been drowned
By me!
Urea!
Squeeze out hard and there’s lots of spraying,
Let it drip and it’s almost like playing.
Urea,
I’ll never stop making urea!
The most beautiful sound I ever heard.
Urea.
No, it’s not my ego
Biggest object since Pluto found in solar system
The scientific duo named the object Quaoar, pronounced KWAH-o-ar, after the creation god of the Tongva people, a Native American tribe in Southern California.
My apologies to the Tongva, but good god that is a stupid name. Besides, KWAH-o-ar is how Alabamians pronounce “homosexual”.
With all the trouble there is getting grants these days, you’d think they would have sold the naming rights.
“Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the newest discovery in our solar family, ‘Pepsi Blue!’”
Another four people were injured, Palestinians said, when the Israelis fired at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where most of the wounded had been taken. The military said the shots were in response to mortar gire.
Those kids with the laser pointers aren’t annoying little bastards after all. They’re annoying little civil libertarians.
The report the NYT mentions on blinding video surveillance cameras is available here.
Ok, so you can blind a camera, temporarily. First you have to find it, and cameras are getting less and less obtrusive every day. Secondly, there’s no technological reason why cameras couldn’t be networked so that if one records a image bloom, two others immediately film the area the first one had been pointed at. People need to get over the fact that they’re going to get filmed and start agitating to make sure everyone else does, as well.
Gay Scandal at Liberty University???
A report of a scandal involving a pastor and students at Liberty University has surfaced on the net, and yes, I do realize that it comes from the National Enquirer. Perhaps it is not true, but it did get me thinking about the topic. I have to admit that part of me smiled when I read it, and almost wished it were true. This is not to suggest that I like reading stories well-suited for gay porn or for religious figures to be toppled, but Falwell is a little different.
For so long Jerry Falwell has preached that homosexuality is a sin, the message being that we can be kind to gay people, but they will inevitably burn for eternity for this choice in lifestyle. Part of me wishes Falwell would have to worry about cleaning up his own backyard instead of trying to tackle the gay issues of the world. If this story were true, he would have bigger problems to worry about than Tinky Winky.
Falwell?s stance on homosexuality is that it is a sin and that we should love the sinner but not the sin. If I was gay, I would be inclined to tell Falwell to kiss my flaming ass!!! Perhaps now I have also unintentionally offended the gay population. I would think that homosexuals would not care to be loved by him or the religious right who adhere to the same beliefs. People are so quick to point to others and say, ?This is a sin,? as if they are free of problems and somehow better than those whom they criticize.
I am not gay and do not assume that I know what it is like to be attacked by Falwell or the religious right, but the God I believe in loves ALL people, not just some of us, and I expect, if allowed to join heaven (for which I have quite a lot to apologize for first), that I will be sitting amongst those who were gay here on Earth. The only difference being that up there they will not have to lie about who they are in order to avoid harassment and prejudice. I will not be putting a rainbow sticker on my car anytime soon, nor will I pick up a flag and march in the next parade, but I do get tired of hearing in the same breath how we are supposed to love our gay neighbor yet view him/her as a sinner traveling quickly on the highway to hell.
Yes, I smiled when I read the story (true or not) that Falwell is having to deal with this crisis at his university. I imagine somewhere little Tinky Winky was also laughing his ass off.
There’s been another shooting in Maryland, at a school. The teen shot is in critical condition There’s a strong indication in the news stories that the sniper is back. This would seem to rule out most scenarios other than a spree killer or terrorism, if the shooting is tied to the 7 previous ones.
Other coverage;
Police fear Maryland sniper has struck again
Schoolboy Shot in Wash Suburb, Sniper Link Mulled
Child shot in Maryland suburb in same general area where sniper killed 5
Update: I imagine this will shut the schools down for the day, if not longer. If this is tied to the other murders, I figure at least some parents will refuse to send their kids back to school until this guy is caught. I blogged about a terrorist attack on daycare centers a while back, and some of the economic consequences that might occur. Michelle, of a small victory, pointed out that the same thing could happen if schools were attacked. The only bright side to this is, if it is determined to be a terrorist attack, it’s not coordinated at all, which would indicate that we have put a hurting on in-country AL-Qaeda. Three or four of theses guys around the country would wreak damage all out out of proportion to their actual numbers.
Update: Yahoo says the shooter is being profiled as a thrill seeker. Cut on the Bias developed a profile last week. I haven’t compared them yet
CNN is updating this story about every 5 minutes. There are reports of shots fired at a nearby shopping center.
Update: Newsday talks about geographic profiling in its coverage of the shootings.
Police have begun to use a geographic profile submitted by investigators that uses crime locations to determine where the killer feels comfortable traveling and may live. Moose said police also were awaiting an FBI psychological profile of the shooter.
Geographic profiling is a fairly new investigative tool, used first in 1990 in Canada, said Kim Rossmo, who compiled the latest profile and is director of research for the Police Foundation, a nonprofit research organization.
If a series of rapes, for example, occurs over a 10-square-mile area, geographic profiling can often narrow the area in which the attacker is likely to live to within half a square mile, Rossmo said.
The purpose of the tool is to determine “if there is a pattern there,” Rossmo said. “If we can understand the pattern, we can decode it.”
No one has mentioned that it might be a copycat killer as well. There’s no evidence for that theory, of course, but there is precious little evidence of anything.
Update: The Star-Tribune reports that the reported shootings at a shopping center were in fact at a Wal-Mart, but that police have not found any victims.
Police also investigated a report of a shooting this morning at a Wal-Mart near the school. But Cpl. Robert Clark of the Prince George’s County police department said officers could not find anyone who had been shot and there was no evidence of a shooting there. Officers remained at the scene and were still investigating, he said.
Update: Fox News has a map with the new incident added. I’ve been looking at it, in case the shooter is trying to draw a picture on a wide scale, something akin to what the smiley-face bomber did. So far it looks like it could be either a “W” (political) or a pyramid (just plain nuts). Yes, I realize I’m reaching.
Update: The Sky Blog also posts about the economic consequences of an terrorist attack on schools
Think about it - a major goal of the attacks of 9/11 were to cripple our economy. They did some damage, but Americans have been resolute and recovery has been slow but sure. Think about what would happen if these types of “urban warfare” attacks started happening in major cities simultaneously. Parents would not send their children to schools, meaning they would not go to work. Many people wouldn’t go to work in places that could be considered “easy targets.” People wouldn’t be going to malls, Wal-Marts, gas stations, etc. Think about what that would do to the economies of those cities. They could achieve a virtual work stoppage and a virtual stop to consumption of goods and services. What would it take for you to keep your kid home from school and call into work?
Instapundit agrees with him that it feels like terrorism. I dunno. I’m still leaning towards spree killing nutjob, if only because I would expect a terrorist attack to be better coordinated. Either way, this will continue until someone catches this guy in the act. Both types aren’t going to leave much in the way of a trail of clues.
Update: I don’t know how long it will last, but Google news has a thumbnail picture of what looks like it might be a picture of the teenage victim, linked to a story on the shooting from WMAR. The picture on Google doesn’t appear in the story, which makes me wonder if someone yanked it from the site after they realized that they had identified the victim before they are allowed to. Since he is a minor, that could lead to all kinds of repercussions.
Update: The thumbnail has been removed from the Google news site, though it still exists on the Google servers. After considerable thought, compressed into about a 30 second timespan, I’m not going to link to it.