- Here’s a Hawaiian who had a plan in case of nuke attack. Not a great plan, but still.
- “Am I a bad feminist?” asks Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale. Seems so because she — gasp! — believes in due process even for men.
- Guess we should have figured that. The jihadis who tried to shoot up that “Draw Mohammed” contest in 2015 were egged on and even accompanied by an undercover FBI agent — and apparently neither the FBI nor the DoJ warned attendees that the U.S. government was sending wannabe murderers their way. Thank heaven for armed Texans!
- First Hawaii, now Japan. It’s a veritable epidemic of false nuke alerts.
- Serial swatter who got a Wichita man killed has been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Now, let’s see about the cop he used as a triggerman and the emergency system that failed to consider that the swatting call didn’t come from the local area.
- George Will blames “progressivism” for Oregon’s dumb gas-pumping law.
- Want to be happier? Change these four beliefs.
- Lessons in solitude (and suffering and deprivation): Admiral Byrd’s five months alone at the South Pole.
It looks painful, possibly injurious. So why is it still so funny?
From: 38 Minutes in Hawaii: My Family and the False Missile Alarm
I watched as he did a U-turn and drove his truck back toward what would probably be Ground Zero. Back toward his wife.
I would have done the same thing! If I died trying to save my wife, so be it!
I used to get upsot with buying gas in NJ for precisely that DIY reason. But then I realized this provides employment to many people who would otherwise (and possibly only to a lesser degree if they take these jobs) have been eating from the hand that feeds them – the same nanny-state that would have been dipping into my pocket in order to feed them. I’d prefer paying a bit more for gas to employ these folks over just having my lunch money taken by The Nanny.
In regard to Byrd: I’d love to try a 5-month expedition in solitude, but not in Antarctica. I don’t believe the solitude would bother me at all but the cold would be deeply depressing, not to say dangerous – how did he even keep his toes?
As to the dog: Had I been there I’d have laughed myself sick – while feeling myself a very bad person. Dogs can do suicidally foolish things in a headlong manner no drunken redneck could ever hope to approach.
Hard rock Gold mines can be as good as any cave but it will take me an hour to get there. So the 2nd best place IMHO is a basement with plenty of plastic over all windows, doors, etc. Plenty of food & water for a few weeks, and pray the wind blows the other way.
Of course if you are at ground zero it helps to be a stoic methinks.
Unfortunately, you can’t blame the emergency system for not flagging the call. It’s a flaw in the way the American (and probably other nations’) phone system.
It’s simply not designed to expose that kind of information to recipients of phone calls. The phone system should be designed better, but I don’t have a good answer as to how to fix that – it’s not even close to my area of expertise.
Kurt
I read Byrd’s book some years ago. My strongest recollection involves a time when he had to go on the roof of his hut during a particularly bad storm. While he was on the roof, the trap door fell shut, and he knew he could die of exposure in short order. He managed to get back in and his comment after falling to the floor was (I believe) “wonderful, just wonderful.” If I could have found the book I could have quoted the excellent passage.
Regarding humor and the dog video, I started looking for an explanation, came across schadenfreude, and realized to investigate much further I would have to go down a rabbit hole. So here are a couple of links:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-name-love/200901/why-are-we-pleased-others-misfortune
https://www.menshealth.com/health/schadenfreude-is-healthy
I don’t think schadenfreude fits well here.
Schadenfreude is what we feel when Hillary Clinton nearly faceplants into her van. Hahaha, deserved it, you b*tch. Now maybe people will see the real you. As your linked Psychology Today article says, it takes malice to feel schadenfreude.
With the dog, we don’t enjoy the prospect that it might be hurt. In fact, we hope it’s NOT hurt. We certainly don’t feel malice. The gif is funny despite the possibility that the dog could be injured.
The dog video reminds me of a dog that tried chasing me when I was on my bicycle. I had some speed going, and the dog, at full speed, ran into a hole, about 6 inches deep, with his front legs. It face-planted into the ground, and I cracked up laughing.
I’m sure glad we have the FBI to keep us safe from Islamic terrorists. They always have our safety in mind.
“I would have done the same thing! If I died trying to save my wife, so be it!”
Amen. Even if I couldn’t save her, at least we’d be together at the end.
There is a pretty amazing article by Pamela Gellar at https://pamelageller.com/2017/03/fbi-wanted-dead.html/ that describes the situation at the cartoon contest in Texas. Her take on it: “the FBI wanted us dead.” The article contains a transcript of a 60 Minutes story on the event, in which 60 Minutes tries to make the case about “how hard it is to prevent such an attack — even when one of the terrorists is well-known to the FBI.” We would never know about the FBI’s involvement if the agent had not been nabbed trying to drive away from it. It probably would not have been very hard to stop it if they actually wanted to stop it.
From the 60 Minutes story as reported by Gellar: “Dan Maynard: I can’t tell you whether the FBI knew the attack was gonna occur. I don’t like to think that they let it occur. But it is shocking to me that an undercover agent sees fellas jumping out of a car and he drives on. I find that shocking.
Anderson Cooper: That he didn’t try to stop–
Dan Maynard: He didn’t try to stop ‘em. Or he didn’t do something. I mean, he’s an agent, for gosh sakes.”
You can probably see the 60 Minutes story if you are willing to register with their website, but I was not willing to do that.
The FBI had nobody there to try to stop the attack, just somebody to film it. Now, all they seem to be interested in doing is chasing white rabbits from Russia, like the song from Jefferson Airplane.
I came across this pic when looking through a sponsored site with multiple ads. Since the eyes are in focus and the logs aren’t, it might be an original shot that hasn’t been photoshopped. I still think it’s not bad either way. http://livestly.com/close-call-unbelievable-photos/50/?utm_content=48c166&utm_campaign=LIV_DSK_UnbelievablePhotosRightBefore_103017&utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=lifebuzz-lifebuzz&ss=1
Yikes. Living where I live, I fear exactly that. Dunno whether the photo is real (though I agree it looks genuine), but that’s definitely happened a few times in this part of the world.
The problem with flagging the 911 call as not from the local area is that alot of folks these days hold onto cell phone numbers even after moving across the country. This screws with quite a few systems that try to use the cell # as a location ID. Maybe they need to improve systems that ID where exactly the phone is located when the call is made? Except that I can see all sorts of potential privacy problems there.