Great Moments in Domesticity

Yikes! There are some scary domestic disputes around here these days:

Man decapitated after domestic dispute in Yorktown

Deputies and firefighters went to the scene and approached the burning trailer, attached to a Ford Explorer with the driver still inside.

Deputies tried to persuade the driver to get out of the vehicle, but the man refused.

A fire officer noticed a line extending from a nearby tree was wrapped around the driver’s neck. When deputies tried to get the man out, he hit the gas pedal and was pulled out of the Explorer by the line and decapitated, the release says.

Currituck sheriff: Man aiming for dog shoots, kills girlfriend

O’Malley and Mackey were arguing when the dog, a German shepherd-Doberman mix, bit O’Malley on the arm. O’Malley aimed a gun at the dog, according to witnesses interviewed by police. Mackey was shot in the chest when she tried to keep the dog from getting shot, Voorhees said. The dog was not injured.

Well, thank goodness the dog is okay.

Excellent Observation

I found the following in the comments section of this post:

This East Coast hurricane should put the death nail into (and be a death knell for) public transportation: after the country has invested billions if not trillions into laying track, buying trains, and encouraging people to give up cars, New York's mayor ordered an evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, and simultaneously turned off the trains those without cars will need to get out the storm's path.

If we can't use public transportation in an emergency, to possibly save lives, then why have it?

That's a good question, right there.

Good question

My 5 yr old: What if everything were free?
Me: They kind of tried that already, it was called Communism. It didn't work out too well.
My 5 yr old: No you made that up!
Me: No, no I didn't.
My 5 yr old: Yes you did
Me: You'll learn about it in school someday...

.....My unsaid thoughts, "unfortunately his teachers will probably tell him what a great failed experiment it was..."

Global Warming Invites Alien Attack

Man-made global warming skeptics don't really need to discredit scientists any more. Just point to this report, in which they discredit themselves. I would have dismissed the whole thing as a parody, but the link goes to the Cornell library website, and there's the report, available for download in PDF format. Feast on this intellectual tour de force:

The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilisations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth. In the most extreme scenario, aliens might choose to destroy humanity to protect other civilisations.

"A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilisation may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions," the report states.

"Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write.

Oh-kay. We are implored to cripple human civilization to ward off attacks from "green" aliens. And they call this nonsense "science." I call it batshit crazy.

The Blame Game

At the suggestion of Rush Limbaugh, I did Google search for "obama blames." There's a lot of blamin' goin' on at the White House, and some of the results are a bit startling. Here's some of the top hits:

Obama Blames Arab Springs And Tsunami In Japan For Lack Of Jobs ...

OBAMA BLAMES 'DEMOCRACY' FOR HIS FAILURES

Obama Blames ATMs for High Unemployment

Obama Blames 'Splintered' News Media for Lack of Compromise

Obama Blames Bush, Wars & Tax Cuts…

Obama: Immigration reform stalled by GOP

Obama Blames China

Obama Blames Europe, Japan for US Economic Woes

Obama Blames Oil Companies For Lack Of Drilling

Obama Blames Congress For Jobs‏

Obama blames speculators for oil price rises

Obama Blames Lazy Oil Companies for America's Energy Shortfall

Great Thatcher quote I saw today...

Margaret Thatcher, in a TV interview for Thames TV This Week [[1]]on Feb. 5, 1976, Prime Minister Thatcher said, "...and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them." from wikiquotes