Not Sure About This...

So, a guy gets arrested for possession of a firearm in a Planned Parenthood parking lot.

Except, he was wearing the sidearm in a holster, clearly visible. He has a permit for the gun. In fact, he has a concealed carry permit. And he wasn't near the building, he was in the parking lot.

I'm good on the whole "It's private property, you can't have a gun here without permission." He should have been asked to leave. TOLD to leave, in fact, and arrested if he resisted or made any threats.

But he was just straight up arrested.

And then there's this bizarre story that he was looking for a woman, a woman for whom he has neither phone number nor address. And he "forgot" the name of the web site they communicate on. AND he has met the woman for coffee. He just has no idea how to get in touch with her.

The evidence that he was up to no good? He had MAPS in his car, ammunition, and binoculars. The foul fiend! Wait...I have those things in MY car. That must mean I am up to no good, right? (What it means is that it's hunting season, here in NC)

The coolest part? He is a Minnesota state legislator. Really. He was going to chair a key committee, but not now.

Man, those armed rednecks up north freak me out. Thank goodness I live here in good ol' civlized Dixie.

(nod to @LauraLeslie)

Anvil Shooting

I see this in my future, right after deer season ends.

NRC! NRC!

The unbelievably delayed NRC rankings will be released tomorrow, Tuesday, 1 pm EDT.

If you care about stuff like this, you MAY be a wienie. I mean, these are 2005 data....

And I have to admit that I care....

Another burning question

People, has Mungowitz bought a motorcycle??

It's Good to Have a Hobby

We all need a hobby. The EYM's hobby appears to be damaging himself.

Last year: L'affaire chair.

This year: Stress fracture in his left foot, quite an ouchy one. He ran home, down the mountain, from UDD to the apartment. That's about 8 km. Not that hard a run, 15 deg C, downhill most of the way, sunny. But he apparently caused a stress fracture, and then, for good measure, showered and changed clothes and went to Metro and then walk to the home of poet Pablo Neruda. He walked at least another 7-8 km, wearing very flat minimalist Keds loafers.

We got him some good crutches. I hope that if he stays off the foot for the three or four days, REALLY staying off the foot, no weight on it, it will heal up enough so that he can walk a little, at least.

In the meantime, he is crutching away. This is very useful, actually. It is hard to cross at Santiago cross walks. (locally known as "The Kill Zone"). Juan Pablo and I push Kevin out into the intersection, and the cars stop. Even Santiaguenos won't hit a kid on crutches. We are thinking of renting him out to groups, to help with the crossing. You can get him cheap!

And this way when we fly back, we'll be able to get on the plane early. "Look, Tiny Tim here and I need some extra time. Do you mind?"

there ain't a horse that can't be rode

and people, here (thanks to KPC friend Shawn) is the perfect rider for yesterday's tiger-bike:

Don't forget to click the pic for an even better look at the gbike Mr. Leopard is riding!

P-Krug: Neither Liar nor Quack

P-Krug is likely neither a liar nor a quack. So what gives?

Two examples of quotes: Is P-Krug confused? No. And he's not dumb. He must just think WE are dumb. And the people who read him, and quote him, ARE dumb.

Bailouts

1. Workouts, Not Bailouts - New York Times, Aug 17, 2007 Many on Wall Street are clamoring for a bailout -- for Fannie Mae or the Federal Reserve or someone to step in and buy mortgage-backed securities from troubled hedge funds. But that would be like having the taxpayers bail out Enron or WorldCom when they went bust -- it would be saving bad actors from the consequences of their misdeeds... Say no to bailouts - but let's help borrowers work things out.

2. Is saving our Fannie enough? - Seattle Times, Sep 9, 2008 The just-announced federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant mortgage lenders, was certainly the right thing to do - and it was done fairly well, too... So Fannie and Freddie had to be rescued...

Deficits and interest rates

1. Deficits and interest rates - New York Times, Aug 14, 2009 It turns out that there's a strong correlation between budget deficits and interest rates - namely, when deficits are high, interest rates are low ... On reflection, it's obvious why...

2. A fiscal train wreck - New York Times, Mar 11, 2003 But we're looking at a fiscal crisis that will drive interest rates sky-high. A leading economist recently summed up one reason why: ''When the government reduces saving by running a budget deficit, the interest rate rises.''

There is a lot more where this came from.

(nod to Mel H)

what if Yakov Smirnov had been from North Korea?

I think things would have gone much like this.

Here is my favorite:

Chang Man Yong works on a collective farm in North Korea. He goes fishing, gets lucky, and brings a fish home. Happy about his catch, he tells his wife: "Look what I've got. Shall we eat fried fish today?"

The wife says: "We've got no cooking oil!"

"Shall we stew it, then?"

"We've got no pot!"

"Shall we grill it?"

"We've got no firewood!"

Chang Man Yong gets angry, goes back to the river, and throws the fish back into the water.

The fish, happy to have had such a narrow escape, sticks its head out of the water and cheerfully yells: "Long live General Kim Jong Il!"

Hat tip to LeBron!

The EYM Gets His Tooth Back!

A year ago, from Germany, I told the story of how the EYM, dancing on a chair, tried to break that chair with his face. An on-looker described the resulting sound of tooth fragments hitting the floor as "like someone was playing Yahtzee."

Here is the EYM recently.
Here is the EYM after the dentist performed the adatoothtome. (Three operations, total).
He looks good! Of course, being the EYM, he then promptly got a haircut, apparently from someone using a weedwhacker.

The 100 days

100 days of chairmanship left.

2400 hours.

Just under 8.7 million seconds.

Not that I'm counting....

that's the facts, jacks!

Why 3k?

Tomorrow night, Thursday, at 10:30 pm EST, the clock will go below 3,000!

That is, I will have less than 3,000 hours of remaining Chairitude.

Please do raise a glass of your favorite adult beverage, even if it is milk, and remember back with Oliver Wendell Holmes: Three terms of an imbecile is enough.

A Valentine Quiz

A short (one question) Valentine's quiz on level of marital understanding for men. Your wife comes downstairs in the morning, pours the tea (which, thank God, you made for her), and stares over the cup at you with a look of pure hate.

Your internal warning bells go off. Still, it will be worse if you don't ask. "Good morning dear, is everything okay?"

Still staring through slitted eyes, she spits out the words, "I had a dream. You were 'The Bachelor,' and you wanted to be with me AND another woman, two of us."

So, do you:

A. Say, "Dear, that could never happen! I'm not a bachelor; they wouldn't let me on the show. Otherwise, though, that sounds good! Maybe we can call someone?"
B. Raise your eyebrows, nod your head slowly, and stare out the window, in deep contemplation.
C. Say, "C'mon, it was only a dream. You know you are the only one for me!"
D. Pretend to have a gran mal seizure and flop on the floor in a coma, doing your best to swallow your tongue.

Now, it is obvious that A is the wrong choice. But now I have direct empirical evidence that B is also a pretty bad choice. In fact, choosing B causes lots of small-fist-sized bruises to appear on your upper arm. So, if this happens to you, go with C and hold D in reserve in case it doesn't work.

Glen Beck is Afraid

Wow, Glen Beck is pretty much all upset about Scott Brown. "A dead intern...."? Really? That's pretty extreme.

My wife, the good LMM, has expressed....let's call it "admiration," since this is a family blog, for Scott Brown and his photo. Fine with me: doesn't matter where you get your appetite, as long as you eat at home.

(Nod to Anonyman, who also has a yummy "treasure trail." Or, that's what I hear)

Book 'Em, Danno!

Oh, so now it's "Who has the bigger bookshelf?", is it. It's not the size of your books, it's how you USE them, or something like that. Anyway, let's do this. Side wall....

















The back alcove....






















Finally, the window wall. And, yes, the fridge has beer in it, some fine hefeweisse and a couple of local micro-brews.


And, let me share this: in grad school, Angus and I shared an office. The office had four desks, but because I was "elected" Prez of the Grad Student Association, I assigned offices, and I felt like the two of us in an office for four would mean we would be more comfortable.

Angus at one point attempted a coup, by ballot stuffing. But I Chavezed all down his leg, by declaring the election to be void, and announcing I would be President for life. Since that meant he got to keep the office, Angus converted to being a Mungista again.

Anyway, I remember one day I came back from the bookstore, with about 10 or 12 new Poli Sci books. Angus went through them, increasingly incredulous. "Stupid...stupid....REALLY stupid (A Gary Jacobson book, I think)...stupid...." Not one of the books impressed him as worth having.

Angus didn't realize that political scientologists don't actually READ these books. We just use them as an excuse for ending conversations: "It was here somewhere...let me look for it and get back to you...I know I JUST saw it...." With all the books I have, I almost never have to talk to anyone.

On the "here's my office!" meme....

From the door....






















Cute Hayek painting, and my view of a roof...



















Best part: The Gothic window, facing southest, looking out over the main quad! Lots of the exterior shots of Dawson's Creek, the old TV show, were shot looking up at this window. It was supposed to be "Worthington University" on the show....

A Little Lunch at Nello's....

Russian billionaire Abramovich drops $50k for a nice lunch.

The Ward Boss writes, "Look, I had the Milanese, and the water. I'm not submitting receipts to be reimbursed for anything else...."

Good. I am not sure that the $7k+ "tip" would have made it through Duke's accounting office.

(A copy of the bill....) (Click to enlarge)
















Now, you are thinking, "3 bottle of wine? For $1,500? WOW!" But wait, check again, you missed a zero....Plus, tax is more than $3,200, and the tip is more than $7,300. Nice tip...

WOW! I almost get creamed in a drug bust.

So, I walk to the service station where we have our car worked on. It's 4.2 miles, but it's pretty, and today was a nice day. So I walked to go pick up the Lincoln, which had had some battery cable work.

Here is the route I walked.

Between 3 and 5 minutes after I passed this spot, this happened. Here is the raw video footage, after the white van ran over the "stop strips."


Note how after two cops are holding him down a third cop comes and puts a knee on his neck. If the guy is not resisting, that is likely to make him try to resist, just so he can breathe.

Also, watch when the camera pulls back at the end. At least 20 cop cars. That is what I saw, though of course at earth level, when I came out of the McDonalds across the street, and saw that cop world had opened in the middle of Creedmoor Road at rush hour.

I wish I had been three minutes later. It would have been cool to see.

Your Hugo Chavez update

As academics around the world emerge from the holiday and shuffle back to work, I know that one question is foremost in their minds: What's Hugo Chavez been up to lately?

Well here you go:

1. Chavez ordered that a Venezuelan judge, who released a prisoner that the Chavez government wouldn't put on trial or grant bail for two years, be sent to prison for 30 years. He helpfully suggested that she was lucky that he didn't have her shot.

2.  He put international automakers with plants in Venezuela on notice that they would be next on the nationalization list if they didn't start making the "right" kind of vehicles and stop worrying about profits.

3. He accused Colombia of sending drone aircraft into Venezuelan airspace as a preparation for invasion. When the Colombian defense minister said that it was probably just Santa Claus that the Venezuelans saw, Hugo didn't see the humor.

Meanwhile, Venezuela continues to deteriorate.

GPS: Doom, or Lifesaver?

What is it with these people in Oregon? It happened again, like it happened before. 100 years ago this sort of behavior would have meant the end of that strain of the human family. After all, there are no lifeguards in the gene pool. And men are idiots.

On the other hand, I have mostly had the opposite problem, about using GPS. Usually it happens when I am riding with a woman (either the LMM, usually, but during the campaign my manager, Barbara, wife of frequent commenter Tom). I can't get the women to trust the thing enough.

The problem is that (many) men think in terms of a grid, with the car being a point in two dimensional space. North, South, East, West, that sort of thing. Women (many, not all) think in terms of executing a sequence of instructions: Go to Red Lobster, turn right, then go a ways and turn left before you get to that BP station with the giant yellow tire. Women (many, not all) seem disturbed if you violate the sequence of instructions, to take a "short cut." Men (basically all) love the idea of short-cuts, and are (almost always) wrong about it being shorter. So the skepticism of women, as in the two Oregon cases above, is well founded. Not saying one is better, just saying there really is a difference between man directions and woman directions. Like here.

Still....let me give an example on the other side. After the Charlotte debate on Oct 15, Barbara and I were heading back to our hotel rooms. "Bertha" (my name for the female GPS voice) said to turn left on a particular road, call it Smith Road. Barbara refused, because she didn't know that way. ("We have to go over to the Roy Rodgers, then cut behind the Bojangles, and go past the Kroger, and then take the next left...Course that Kroger isn't there anymore. But it used to be.")

After 20 minutes, we pass Smith Road again, this time coming in from our left. It had cut straight through, while we did a ten mile loop. Clearly, it would have been much shorter to blindly follow the GPS. Barbara: "I know, I know. It would have been shorter, but I didn't know that way!"

Bottom line: when it comes to campaign managers on the road, or wives anywhere, anywhere at all, just do what they say. You will all be happier.

(Nod to Anonyman for the Oregon link)