- It remains a mystery (not really) why, as police tactics get harsher, pre-raid investigation and planning is ever more carelesss. “Sorry m’am. Wrong house.”
- Scott Greenfield adds his take on the NYT’s wet dream of having banks monitor our politically incorrect transactions.
- The North Korean government owes $501 million to the Warmbier family for torturing their son to death. S’pose they’ll pay up?
- Think FEMA is incompetent? FEMA knows it is. (But central planning wouldn’t improve one iota if employees were better trained.)
- American Colin O’Brady has become the first person ever to cross Antarctica solo and unaided. He’s now waiting for his British rival to catch up to him so they can celebrate together. (From the mileage given, I don’t think these guys are crossing the continent at its widest part. But still …)
- Is the moon doing weirder things to attract attention, here in the Selfie Age? Or are astronomy geeks the attention seekers? Next month they say we’re going to have a “super blood wolf moon eclipse.” I’ve lived a long time and never heard of such a thing.
- I seriously doubt, even in this narcissistic day, that selfie wrist is a worrisome medical condition.
- Because you asked: The world’s greatest expert on this subject (yes, there apparently actually is one) explains why American Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas.
- Whodathunkit? Add Dennis Quaid to the short roster of normal, sane, tolerant human beings in Hollywood.
It looks like the explorers picked the shortest possible route that went through the South Pole. Clearly, it would have been insanity to do otherwise. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/2018/12/antarctic-explorers-enter-no-rescue-zone/
It’s also a very good human interest story. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/2018/12/explorers-colin-obrady-louis-rudd-race-south-pole-antarctica/
Maybe the character Quaid played in Enemy Mine had more meaning to him than just another movie part.
Enemy Mine One of my all-time favorites.
So I have a friend who runs the backstage operation at a college arena. A while back FEMA “established” a shelter there for hurricane refugees. (Where established means FEMA said, “you are a shelter.” Then my friend and her crew got help from the ROTC cadets and set up bunk areas and other facilities, the refugees arrived and settled in, and two days later FEMA personnel arrived. They got offices on the third floor, and mostly stayed up there filling out forms, or snooped around.)
Several days later my friend went up to the third floor and cornered the Chief in charge.
Friend: “I know you borrowed one of our mops. Where is it?”
(Checking On Stuff is apparently an important disaster activity; FEMA does a lot of it. So Chief took it seriously.)
Chief looks around at mostly blank stares. Finally the lowest-ranking person says “I put it in that closet.”
Chief: “It’s in that closet.”
Friend: Opens the door and looks at the mop. “Just like I thought.” She pops the mop-head off the handle.
Chief: “You broke it.”
Friend: “I just removed the head. I’ll wash it with all the other mop-heads and bring you a clean one.”
Chief: “You wash mop-heads?”
Friend: “When you mop, they pick up dirt. When they get dirty they just spread the dirt around. You have to wash them so they can pick up dirt the next time. Throw them in the washing machine and they come out good as new.”
Chief: “Are you sure about that? You don’t need a new one?”
Friend: “We’ve been doing it that way for years.”
In regards to the Warmbiers getting paid, I highly doubt it. NK still owes Volvo $322 million for 1000 Volvos they bought in the seventies and never paid for (mostly interest at this point) https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/04/547390622/how-1-000-volvos-ended-up-in-north-korea-and-made-a-diplomatic-difference