Saturday 17 August 2013

The Tile Story

Years ago....working in the intelligence field....I was detailed one day to go and help some folks unload a truck out front, and bring some items into the vault.

I get out front, and it's a truckload of acoustic sound absorbing tiles.  There's some project to redo a conference room, and make it absolutely sound-proof.

I was thinking the tiles would be the same as regular ceiling tiles.  I was wrong.  They were a bit heavier, and this tote-job took up most of the morning, and made this Bama guy sweat a fair amount as I helped the other guys carry in hundreds of these tiles.

Days would pass, and the room would be rendered sound-proof. As it was completed, I walked in and stood there with five or six other folks.  To be honest, for some odd reason....I got feeling dizzy.  Sound just didn't carry right.  I left the room after two minutes.

I bring this story up because out of DC this past week....they had this acoustic tile episode to occur.

At some fancy musical auditorium.....in the midst of some serious jazz music....heavy acoustic tiles from the ceiling just let go, and came crashing down on the audience.  The authorities note that eight folks got taken away by ambulance to the local hospital with varying injuries.

You can imagine this chaos.....folks laying there.....other folks screaming.....and some security guys thinking it was a jihad attack or something.

The only thing now that the auditorium folks will say is that the tiles loosen up and just fell.  I'm suspecting lawyers will sort this out, and every guy taken off to the hospital will get an initial offer of $5,000.  No one will accept that, and eventually most will get $50,000.  Me personally?  I wouldn't mind getting whacked in the head with a ceiling tile....for $50,000.

The NSA Bama Analyst

Based on news comments this week....it's apparent that a massive amount of our emails and telephone calls, are being browsed or checked by some NSA analyst.  I sat and pondered upon this.

Around eight in the morning....Ben arrives at his NSA job and clocks in.  He's the Bama analyst, and has the job of checking through traffic and calls from the previous day.

So Ben starts with emails.  First, there's the one between one Auburn football enthusiast and a University of Alabama enthusiast.  There's a bit of aggravation by the Auburn guy, and this guy says that he thinks Muslim radicals have taken over the football program.

Then the second email is read.  This is commentary from one Bama guy to a cousin about the local Dollar General Store being taken over by Chinese Islamic folks.  He writes on and on.....roughly five pages....of mostly incoherent stuff.

The third email?  It's from some agency in Florida who was contacted by a Bama guy to provide a go-go dancer for the guy's buddy and his bachelor party in two weeks.  The company says they can't provide Wanda....she's busy.  But they've got Trudy, who did some go-go dancing in the late 1990s.

The fourth email?  It's a difficult to read email from some Baptist minister to members of his congregation over the consumption of alcohol.  There's about forty verses cited, but none of the verses have anything to do with drinking booze.  Ben is a bit frazzled at this point and takes a NSA-approved ten minute break.

Upon returning....Ben now goes to the phone recordings.  The first one is from some concerned wife over her husband listening to Islamic ministers on some AM station out of Mobile.

The second call is from some guy complaining about his transmission job.  He thinks the guy is a Muslim and did a lousy job because of the "Vote Obama" sticker on his car.

The third call is a 30-minute conversation between two Red Bay women and the possibility of aliens existing.

The fourth call is a six-minute talk between one meth user, and another meth user.  There are a total of twelve words spoken over the six minutes by the two guys.  Nothing makes much sense over what was spoken.

The fifth call is from a Dothan high school kid and his school teacher.  It's fairly intimate and the NSA guy listens intently as various fantasy talk is discussed between the two.  For a brief moment, the NSA guy would like to give the kid some advice but remembers the forty-four standard NSA rules of non-interference.

The sixth call is from a astrology gal from Athens to her customer.  She's advising him of some woes coming up this week over NCAA football, a black dog, a storm cloud, and George Bush.  The guy is worried, and the astrology lady advises him to come by for a more personal reading.  She mentions the cost of $75.

The seventh call is between a guy from Birmingham who is set up for a blind-date with a gal from Guntersville.  He wants directions, and keeps asking about her looks.

The NSA guy takes lunch at this point.  To be honest, he's a bit burned out, and would like to be transferred to the Florida division.  There's too much of nothing chatter....too much NCAA football....too much wrestling updates....too much gossip....and too much talk over Bible interpretation.

After lunch, the highlight of the afternoon is a seventeen line text message that some Bama guy sent to his daughter about the evils of smoking, the evils of drinking, and the evils of carousing.  The daughter has responded back that she is forty-six years old and knows all the various evils, plus another seventy-two newer evils.

The NSA guy clocks out at 5PM, and gets into the car.  He's never been to Bama in his life....having grown up in Queens, New York and attended a fancy-pants university in New Hampshire.  He had higher aspirations in life when he joined the NSA.  He thought he'd be going after the bad Islamic guys, but he spends forty hours a week....focused strictly on Bama folks.

To be honest, this NSA guy would like to pack up, and move to Florence, Bama....where he's heard a good bit about their great golf courses, and low cost of living.  He's got a list of sixteen different Baptist Churches he could attend, and already has the phone-numbers of a dozen eligible single ladies with the right educational background and already knows their personalities.

Tomorrow?  A new and fresh day, with fresh phone calls, and more emails.

Wednesday 14 August 2013

Church (Club) of England

The Church of England has worked itself up into an interesting discussion on God, his holy planet, and fracking.

It's hard to figure how you'd make this discussion work.  The idea laid out by the Church of England....is that God has given us a planet with limited resources, and we should not destroy the work of God.....in his creation of this planet.

Naturally.....fracking is the work of the devil (not said but you can't avoid missing that connection).

When you go over to their site....there's an entire page where the ministers of the church have written up a simplified version of what fracking is about and how it does harm.  At one point, they note reports of fracking contaminating US wells....yet there's isn't one substantiated case where this has ever been proven and no court has ever acknowledged this and given a claim to anyone.

The ministers then go to note pollution created by transport trucks involved in fracking, and the leaking of storage tanks on fracking sites.  Again, no state or federal authority has ever identified leaking tanks that were connected to fracking sites.  As for the pollution of transport trucks?  Well....you could make the case that people driving their cars to a church service.....create as much or more pollution.

I looked over the Church of England's web site.  There's a flurry of activity connected to oil, natural gas, global warming, global cooling, and climate change.  

Naturally, all of these issues relate to man's own fault.  If God wanted the Earth to heat up....he'd just make it happen, without the help of man.  If God wanted to chill the Earth....he'd just wave a hand and make it happen....without the aide of man.  If God wanted the fracking oil to special and precious, and never be used.....God probably would have dumped all this specially blessed oil a great deal deeper and made fracking a terrible pain.

It would seem that souls and blessings....come second to the Church of England....where they worry a bit on man, science, and climate episodes.  Would they pray to God to stop global warming?  My humble guess is no.  Would they pray to God to push the holy fracking oil deeper into the Earth to prevent man from using it?  No....I doubt it.  Would they pray that God lays down a mighty tidal wave to wash away all of the whale hunter ships from Japan?  Well....no.

I'm not sure what the ministers for the Church of England really pray for.  And I'm probably going out on the limb for this comment....but I doubt if they are capable of praying for much...except for the health of their membership.....ever dwindling each and every year.  Dying off?  Well....due to climate change and some newly discovered suffering called "age-change".....it is drastically affecting the church.

Yes, age-change is hurting the world and we probably need to elevate it to a worldly problem.  And sadly, it was probably the one thing that God just figured was right to inject into our society.  Fracking?  Well....if you ask me.....God must have handed it down to the right guys....and has no intention of interfering.

Sunday 11 August 2013

Sometimes, Things Twist More Than You'd Expect

Normally, it'd be a Arlington story that went national, and then just ran out of steam after five days at the national level.  Air Force officer....heading up the Air Force office at the Pentagon over sexual assault.  Lt Col Jeff Krusinki....out drinking late at night in Arlington.....does some kinda pat on the butt of some gal in a bar parking lot.

It was a big deal nationally, and got tons of attention.  Just so terrible.....over and over....the journalists could not get enough of the episode.

Well....quietly (it won't be covered nationally now).....the Arlington charges have been changed.  They won't run sexual assault charges now.  Explanation....it's not exactly clear.  The local guys are only saying it's going to be assault charges only.  You could still get a year for that.....but it draws some questions why it can't be sexual assault.

Then, you start to notice a strange thing about the location of this parking lot.  There are a couple of bars within distance of this area where the 'event ' occurred.  One of them?  It's a cross-dresser gay bar.  Yeah, the kind of place where guys dress as women, drink, party, and have a good time.

So this has gotten some folks to wondering.  This woman who complained and called the cops on Lt Col Jeff Krusinski?  Was it a real woman or a fake woman?

If it's a fake woman....sexual assault charges in a Virginia court become awful hard to establish and prove.  Plain old assault?  Well....even fake women have their day in court over this.

But you have to grasp this....so far....no one has said it's a fake gal.  The national news folks?  Well, they'd prefer not to get into details like this.....because it spoils the original story they wrote.  And it's screwing up the agenda.

For the officer?  Well, it starts to be more of a mess if it was a fake woman, and it's best to start planning on some second career path.....maybe as a Sears manager, county agricultural agent, or dairy farmer.

The Other Eden

There was a piece over at Al.Com.....entitled: Alabama the Beautiful (by Magic City Writer) that caught my interest this morning.

Few people come to grasp this.  Bama actually ranks fifth in the nation....in species diversity.

Bama has over sixty types of terrestrial ecosystems.  It provides twenty-five forests to the nation.  It offers eleven wetlands.  It even offers up seven glades/prairies.  All of this, and over 75,000 miles of rivers, streams, and creeks.

Hunters would rattle off at least a hundred animals within the state that you could spend a Saturday afternoon looking for.

Fisherman would shed a tear as they described the dozens of fish that they've caught over the past thirty years.

A pine tree enthusiast would chatter for an hour over the various pines that you could see out in Limestone county.

A Bankhead Forest resident would need four hours to conclude his description of the local surroundings.

A Dolphin Island resident would drag out some digital notebook with fourteen thousand pictures of birds, fish, crabs, and weird creatures that they'd seen over their lifetime.

A farmer would sit and spend an entire afternoon at the local gas station noting the sixty-six different garden variety items that he's got growing this summer, and how proud he is over this year's successful pea crop.

On and on....even NASCAR freaks and NCAA football folks would pause and describe the abundance of diversity in nature within the borders of Bama.

Then, you'd come to some minister, who'd round this up in typical fashion.  Yes, it would be deserving of a Sunday sermon.....that Bama is in effect....the "other" Eden.  God blessed Bama....giving it more nature than a state really deserves.  God then directed animals to expand in abundance.  The end of the sermon?  We need to give thanks for such an Eden, and live our lives in appreciation.

Somewhere in the back of the church....some guy would be sitting there and pondering.  Eden ended up going off-track and spiraling out of control....once folks gave up their naive nature and got some bit of understanding of their surroundings.  It's best to just accept what you got, not brag too much, and hope heavily for a dynamic NCAA season.  In that case, we rank number one already, and don't need much discussion, or preaching.

Thursday 8 August 2013

Those Sneaky Americans

We were devious plotters....from the very beginning.

We plotted to take down the banks of the world.

We plotted to bring crappy television shows to third-world republics.

We plotted to make the world's population addicted to our tobacco.

We plotted to hook everyone into the internet....eventually to spy on their every single move.

We plotted to commercialize pain-killers to such a degree, that people from around the world would become addicted to them.

We plotted to expand violence into entertainment.....so that that the world would be a terrible place to live in.

We plotted to expand out racism, and everyone is part of the overall strategy.

Yes, all of this.....and no one ever caught onto our master plan.

A Dead Topic

USA Today rarely goes out and does five-star old-fashioned journalism....with investigative reporting.  This week, they published one of the more fascinating articles of the year.

What they figured out after requesting information from the Federal Election Commission....was that dead Americans had contributed roughly $600,000 to candidates since 2009.  We are talking....absolutely dead, with a death certificate to prove so.

It was a nifty little article, with only one issue.  I would have liked to known their thinking, but the journalists can't really go back and ask these dead guys what they were thinking when they wrote the checks.

The odds here?  Most all of these were folks who got hyped up and wrote out some $100, or $3000 check to some candidate....Republican or Democrat....and died the next day.  They died via heat attacks, heat stroke, car accidents, chain-saw accidents, food poisoning, snake bite, drowning while fishing, or died under suspicious circumstances.

I should note here that USA Today says that roughly $250,000 of that money came to Democratic candidates, with the Libertarians safely in the second spot.  Dead Republican enthusiasts were the least likely to donate money.  What this says.....most dead Republicans just are plain stingy with their money, and it's better off spent in some other fashion.

Simply Observations

There was a travel association meeting this week in San Diego.  One of the topics that came out....was this wild suggestion of allowing you to buy half of the third-seat in a row.  Instead of making three guys fit into a very tight space....you'd have two guys sitting in an ample area.  The problem with the idea?  They said right off the bat....you'd have to pay fifty percent of what the seat currently costs.  The positive?  Well....if you had six rows on a plane that you converted to the two-seat scheme, then you'd have fewer passengers on the plane, thus less weight, and fewer bags (less weight too).  So the airline would save money, while making money.  The reaction by the airlines?  They didn't really want to touch the subject....thinking folks just won't pay fifty percent more for what amounts to a 75-minute flight between city A and city B.  To be honest, I suspect that half the public would be willing to stand for an entire flight of sixty minutes, and you could squeeze another extra sixty passengers onto a plane that normally carries 120 passengers.

The Pentagon has said that gay military couples have to be married....to get these military benefit packages.  So they've hustled up this deal....if you are gay and not married to your partner....they will give you (give is really stretched here) a 10-day pass to get married in a state that allows gay marriage.  Ten days.....free....to get married.  You can sense that some anti-gay folks will get frustrated with this deal.  Non-gays won't be offered the ten-day deal, and I'm guessing it will be noted at hundreds of staff meetings around the Air Force.  How many folks will run out to get married?  Maybe a hundred to two hundred couples.  I suspect some folks will review their arrangement and just not feel comfortable marrying their partner, preferring single-status.  And the number of divorces from this get married quick deal?  Well, it's best not to bring up this topic.

Zillow does real estate estimates as part of their gimmick.  So they took on the White House and say it's worth $319 million at the current real estate pricing. It's hard to say it's accurate or a fair value.  Some would say the White House is worth a billion.  Some would say it's worth $500,000 because of the neighborhood around it.

Jeff Bezos, after buying the Washington Post, has said in public comments that newspapers will generally all be dead in twenty years.  The only way they survive in his imagination....is digital form.  He may have a point, and maybe his intention of handling the weak Post's profit margin....is to dissolve it from paper print, and require everyone to get a subscription to get a copy.  He might also be able to move half of the journalists of the newspaper out of DC, and into some cheaper surroundings....like southern Virginia, to avoid some of the cost issues.

Finally, while I generally avoid discussing baseball topics....this Alex Rodriguez suspension announcement of the last couple of days....is a major episode.  He will sit and challenge baseball management over this, while still playing and collecting a pay-check.  My humble guess is that no real court decision will be handed down until April-May of 2014....a few weeks into next year's season.  It'll go against him, and the 200-odd game suspension will go into effect.  For the Yankees, it means picking out your replacement third-baseman by the end of spring training, and just have him sitting in AAA until X-day.  This new guy gets roughly 130 games of the 2014 season, and at least half the games of the 2015 season.  He will be a permanent asset of the team.  Rodriguez?  Well....how do you come back eighteen months later and play at any decent level?  The team will likely use him only as a DH, and he won't hit for any value.  Yet, the Yanks are stuck with this guy for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.  He may not make anything during the 200-odd game suspension but they have to still pay him for the remaining years.  The big loss here?  I'm guessing Alex has a hefty monthly allowance and living cost situation, and he's probably not prepared for eighteen months with nothing coming in.  His agent?  Same deal.....he was likely getting five-to-ten percent of Alex's monthly income.  If you had to pick a major-league with player with zero value and five years of remaining contract.....this guy is the 'king'.

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Detroit Math

In public information....the city of Detroit will admit that they have around 2,030 cops hired for the city.  But the city also admits.....that roughly only one-third of this group....actually patrols the city....day and night.

So you sit and do the math here.

Roughly 630 guys are around, doing day, night, and weekend duty.  At any one time....there might be one hundred cops moving around the city.  I doubt if there's more than eighty to a hundred guys actually on patrol at night.

The remaining 1,400 guys?  Well, that's not clear.

Some are likely detectives.  Some are management.  Some are HR.  Some are payroll clerks.  Some are jail management folks.  Some are doing duty at the city hall.  Some are pulling hours over at various schools.

The problem with this math equation for Detroit....is that half of these 1,400 'other' folks....probably aren't doing anything worth discussion.  They attend meetings, check up on new cops, and spend time talking to the city council.

For years and years....New Orleans had fake cops on the force, and checks going out monthly.  For some reason, I have the feeling that Detroit has the same issue.

The Norwegian Story

Back in July 2011.....Norwegians went through a mass killing with Anders Breivik....seventy-seven folks dead....the vast majority being teenagers at a island retreat for a particular political party.  The intent of the murders?  Breivik claims he took out an entire generation of this dominant political party, and that the country will drift to the right in the coming years.

The competency of Breivik?  That was challenged, and he passed every single evaluation with flying colors.

The cops quickly took possession of the guy, and the country went through a one-year process of a court case.  The most they could give him?  Twenty-one years.  Justice was served as best as the law is written.  The judge did one slap on the hands of the guy in the end.....no use of the internet for the twenty-one years.

This week, Breivik has sent an application form to the University of Oslo.  There's a bit of anxiety over this.  Some Norwegians don't want him to have access to public resources.  Some don't want him to have any public view.

For the university, it's an odd problem.  They have encountered jail requests in the past, and worked around the issues by using internet access and having an occasional visit by an instructor.  In this case, someone would have to approach the court and have the lack of internet access revoked.  I'm taking a humble guess here that no one with the university cares to challenge or force a change to the judge's order.

What would he study?  Breivik hasn't indicated that part of the deal.

Normally, the public doesn't ever challenge who should or shouldn't go onto university in Norway.  Some comments in the press indicate that people have a particular opinion in this case that such resources used for Breivik....would be a total waste.  In the end, I suspect they have to allow him access to the internet, and maybe that was the original intent of pushing for a university application.

Sunday 4 August 2013

Pamplona-American Style

When I was a kid.....growing up in Bama....I would sit and watch the evening news....usually with CBS.  One evening, they had an international piece on, with the Pamplona bull run.  I was probably eight years old and fairly fascinated with the episode.

Course, as the years went by....I also ran with the steers.  Once a year on the farm, you'd have vaccination day, and I'd have the task as the 'runner' to chase the steers down the chute area.  Ninety percent of the time....things went well.  Usually out of forty steers....you'd always have three that did something you didn't expect.....turn, and chase you down.  It was the Pamplona-effect.  The thrill of the unexpected.  Kinda like going to a NASCAR race, or some WWE-wrestling event.

Over the years, I've continued to watch the reports of Pamplona bull runs, and been kinda interested.  Even up until the late 1990s....I had this curious idea of going down to Spain and at least watching.  Participation?  Well....yeah, I probably had some interest in being stupid like the rest of them.  These days, I'd probably just like to have a rooftop position and watch from a distance.

This week....reports came out via the news that there's going to be some bull runs in the US, starting out in Richmond, VA.  Atlanta will have one a few weeks after that.  Several other runs will follow after that.  To note with interest.....none are schedule in Bama yet.

Legal?  Well.....presently, there's no laws against it.  I'm guessing dozens of animal-rights folks are working hard to stop each one of these.  The courts will be reviewing paperwork and trying to determine if there is some piece of the Constitution or state laws affected.

I imagine it will catch on....although some states will make anti-bull run laws.  In fact, I'd say that California and New York will quickly move on this and have such a law in effect by the end of November.

It'll continue on.....maybe even become a reality TV series.  I could see some washed-up TV stars coming out.....doing a bull-run with some sluggish bulls.  It might be worth watching if this were some former WWE-wrestlers doing the bullrun.

The Pamplona folks will claim this is all fake and that only real bull running occurs in Spain.....this American stuff is just fake wussy stuff.

It's hard to say where this goes....except a bunch of guys will be looking around the south for some really tough mean steers, and some cattle guys have got the perfect steer to sell them.

Saturday 3 August 2013

The New "Home" Folks

The statistics folks have been busy.  They say that there are 21 million Americans....of adult age....living with their parents.  The perception is that they finished high school....maybe finished college....and success has not be attained yet (meaning: they just don't have a job capable of paying for an apartment, or they really screwed up and got heavily into debt).

Yeah, these are the guys who spent two years at the community college studying acting, and owe $22,000 on tuition.  These are the ladies who spent four years at some private college studying French literature, and owe $72,000.  These are the guys who discovered the best job they could get after four years....was chief of a shift at some car rental place at the airport.  These are the young ladies who drifted around and wasted three years of college, then quit, and now work twenty hours a week at JC Pennys.

It's hard to say if this is such a bad thing or not.  At least the parents are giving them a roof over their heads.  They get two square meals a day.  There's always advice to be given by dad, or cooking instructions by mom.  There's likely a master mechanics garage set up by dad to help with minor car repairs.  And if the toilet is broke....you don't have to argue with landlord.

The news media perception?  It'll be curious.  They probably can only see it as a negative thing....telling of the various woes involved in this.  I'm guessing various experts will appear on CNN to tell of the mess that this creates in life.  Oprah might even dedicate an entire week with folks who fell into this 'pit'.

The funny thing is that this used to be the norm....say fifty to seventy years ago.  We seem to have forgotten that part of the story.