Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Say hello to my little friend

I'm sure the following is indelibly etched into the memory of anyone who watched the movie, or a clip of this scene:


I now have my own little friend, although it isn't an old M-16 with an M-203 grenade launcher attached.  Mine looks like this:


The one on the right goes with me anytime I leave my home.  Sometimes I have to take two of them with me, as they only last a little over three hours.

Foolishly, when first told I met the criteria for "home oxygen," I refused the tanks.  I was insistent that I could do just fine without it.  That was just dumb.  I only need the help with I, as the doctor says, "ambulate."  The truth is, I can now walk longer distances than I could before I got my little friend, although I'd prefer a backpack rather than the over-the-shoulder pack I am using at the moment.

I guess I'll get used to it, unless my condition improves enough to where I no longer need it.

* * *

I have a question.  How does doing anything other than peaceful protesting in Ferguson, MO accomplish anything positive?  Looting, burning, throwing Molotov cocktails at the police and any behavior other than peaceful protest actually worsens the situation.

It gives law enforcement justification for ratcheting up their response.  It gives cover to the ongoing militarization of the police in the U.S. by giving them surplus equipment from the Defense Department.  It gives fame whores like Al Sharpton a way to beat their own drum and raise their public profile.

It won't bring Michael Brown back.  It won't prevent future Michael Browns.  To loot and burn is an exercise in futility.  This is a lesson taught by history.  The Watts riots of 1965.  The Liberty City riots of 1980.  Los Angeles after the 1992 acquittal of the men who beat and abused Rodney King.  The destruction that was caused by these events did nothing to help solve the problems that incited the violence. 

Marquette Frye's mother never got her car back.  He died at the age of 42.  Proposition 14 was found to be unconstitutional and later repealed.  Arthur McDuffie is still dead and African-Americans in the Miami area are not any safer when stopped by police officers.  Rodney King got paid and eventually died, probably of his own excesses with his windfall. 

Now Michael Brown is dead.  Every dollar that will have to be spent to repair the damage wrought by those who won't simply protest in a peaceful manner is one dollar that could have gone to improve the area's situation.

Looting and violence make no sense.

* * *

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times is critical of those taking part in the ALS Ice Bucket challenge.  Not because they are doing something foolish, or refusing to donate.  In fact, donations to the ALS Society are way up.  Mr. Hiltzik's objection is that ALS isn't as important as other illnesses because it is rare, and the money could be donated elsewhere.

Let me quote him directly, so I am not accused of taking his comments out of context:  "Even taking the ALS Association figure, the disease is rare, far outstripped by many other conditions requiring research funding. These include Alzheimer's (an estimated 5.2 million patients in the U.S.), and diabetes (25.8 million).  Stunt philanthropy like the ice bucket challenge doesn't accommodate these sorts of distinctions and comparisons--it just feeds whatever charity hits on a catchy device and treats all causes as essentially equivalent, distinguished only by their claim on public attention. The result is that "the most successful charities will be those that are best at soliciting funds, not those that are best at making the world a better place," as the British philanthropic organizer William MacAskill puts it."

Kind of a cold, dry way to look at how people choose the charities they support.  There may be only 12,000 people in the U.S. currently afflicted with ALS as opposed to diabetes and Alzheimer's, but people are free to choose how to donate their own money.  Moralizing about the relative value of charities because of the numbers impacted by the research sounds a little frightening.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

Dwayne Wade's ex-wife got the Chicago house and assumed the mortgage in their divorce settlement.  She hasn't paid and the house is now in foreclosure.  So why is the media saying it's his house being foreclosed upon?  Because he's worthy of a headline and she's not.

While I adore Julianne Hough, her acting career hasn't gone well.  So it's a good move for her to go back to Dancing With the Has-beens...er Stars, as a judge.

I can't believe he's gone.  Don Pardo, dead at 96.  Saddest part was I couldn't find a good clip of his intro for SNL that wasn't a parody or impression, or of lousy quality.

Michelle Duggar is apparently deluded enough to think that a sexual predator would go to all the trouble of being recognized by the state as being transgendered just to get access to the women's restroom.  If ignorance is bliss, she must be one really happy camper.
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I'm thinking that the ice water challenge is a great fundraiser, but maybe not so much when California is in a severe drought.

Showing up for the taking of your mug shot wearing a t-shirt showing your mug is inspired!

Does anyone really care who is the top-earning model of any given year?  Do the models who make the top 20 but can't crack the top 5 plot to take over?

Wonder if William Hung sang "She Bangs" at his wedding reception?  Factoid:  Hung released three albums, which sold 200,000, 35,000 and 7,000 copies respectively.

After an e-cigarette burned a hole through a piece of checked luggage, it's time to ban them from airplanes.

Why is the Obama administration turning down requests for interviews about claims that insurers are slowly restoring policies and procedures that discriminate against "sick" people?

If you want to back out of the wedding, just say so.  Don't fake your own death.

* * *

August 19th in History:

295 BC – The first temple to Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility, is dedicated by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges during the Third Samnite War.
43 BC – Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, later known as Augustus, compels the Roman Senate to elect him Consul.
1153 – Baldwin III of Jerusalem takes control of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from his mother Melisende, and also captures Ascalon.
1504 – In Ireland, the Hiberno-Norman de Burghs (Burkes) and Anglo-Norman Fitzgeralds fight in the Battle of Knockdoe.
1561 – Mary, Queen of Scots, who was 18-years-old, returns to Scotland after spending 13 years in France.
1612 – The "Samlesbury witches", three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury, England, are put on trial, accused of practicing witchcraft, one of the most famous witch trials in British history.
1666 – Second Anglo-Dutch War: Rear Admiral Robert Holmes leads a raid on the Dutch island of Terschelling, destroying 150 merchant ships, an act later known as "Holmes's Bonfire".
1692 – Salem witch trials: In Salem, Province of Massachusetts Bay, five people, one woman and four men, including a clergyman, are executed after being convicted of witchcraft.
1745 – Prince Charles Edward Stuart raises his standard in Glenfinnan: The start of the Second Jacobite Rebellion, known as "the 45".
1759 – Battle of Lagos Naval battle during the Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France.
1768 – Saint Isaac's Cathedral is founded in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
1772 – Gustav III of Sweden stages a coup d'état, in which he assumes power and enacts a new constitution that divides power between the Riksdag and the King.
1782 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Blue Licks: The last major engagement of the war, almost ten months after the surrender of the British commander Charles Cornwallis following the Siege of Yorktown.
1812 – War of 1812: American frigate USS Constitution defeats the British frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada earning the nickname "Old Ironsides".
1813 – Gervasio Antonio de Posadas joins Argentina's Second Triumvirate.
1839 – The French government announces that Louis Daguerre's photographic process is a gift "free to the world".
1848 – California Gold Rush: The New York Herald breaks the news to the East Coast of the United States of the gold rush in California (although the rush started in January).
1854 – The First Sioux War begins when United States Army soldiers kill Lakota chief Conquering Bear and in return are massacred.
1861 – First ascent of Weisshorn, fifth highest summit in the Alps.
1862 – American Indian Wars: During an uprising in Minnesota, Lakota warriors decide not to attack heavily-defended Fort Ridgely and instead turn to the settlement of New Ulm, killing white settlers along the way.
1895 – American Frontier murderer and outlaw John Wesley Hardin is killed by an off-duty policeman in a saloon in El Paso, Texas.
1909 – The first automobile race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
1914 – The Ottoman-Bulgarian alliance is signed in Sofia.
1919 – Afghanistan gains full independence from the United Kingdom.
1927 – Metropolitan Sergius proclaims the declaration of loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Soviet Union.
1934 – The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio.
1934 – The creation of the position Führer is approved by the German electorate with 89.9% of the popular vote.
1940 – First flight of the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber.
1942 – World War II: Operation Jubilee: The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division leads an amphibious assault by allied forces on Dieppe, Seine-Maritime, France and fails, many Canadians are killed or captured. The operation was intended to develop and try new amphibious landing tactics for the coming full invasion in Normandy.
1944 – World War II: Liberation of Paris: Paris, France rises against German occupation with the help of Allied troops.
1945 – August Revolution: Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh take power in Hanoi, Vietnam.
1953 – Cold War: The CIA and MI6 help to overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and reinstate the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
1955 – In the Northeast United States, severe flooding caused by Hurricane Diane, claims 200 lives.
1960 – Cold War: In Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage.
1960 – Sputnik program: Korabl-Sputnik 2: The Soviet Union launches the satellite with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, two rats and a variety of plants.
1964 – Syncom 3, the first geostationary communication satellite, was launched.
1965 – Japanese prime minister Eisaku Satō becomes the first post-World War II sitting prime minister to visit Okinawa Prefecture.
1980 – Saudia Flight 163, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar burns after making an emergency landing at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 301 people.
1981 – Gulf of Sidra Incident: United States fighters intercept and shoot down two Libyan Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jets over the Gulf of Sidra.
1987 – Hungerford massacre: In the United Kingdom, Michael Ryan kills sixteen people with a semi-automatic rifle and then commits suicide.
1989 – Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski nominates Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be the first non-communist prime minister in 42 years.
1989 – Radio Caroline, the offshore pirate station in the North Sea, is raided by British and Dutch governments.
1989 – Several hundred East Germans cross the frontier between Hungary and Austria during the Pan-European Picnic, part of the events that began the process of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Ukraine.
1991 – Crown Heights riot: Black groups target Hasidic Jews on the streets of Crown Heights in New York, New York for three days, after two black children were hit by a car driven by a Hasidic man.
1999 – In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, tens of thousands of Serbians rally to demand the resignation of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milošević.
2002 – Khankala Mi-26 crash: A Russian Mil Mi-26 helicopter carrying troops is hit by a Chechen missile outside Grozny, killing 118 soldiers.
2003 – A car-bomb attack on United Nations headquarters in Iraq kills the agency's top envoy Sérgio Vieira de Mello and 21 other employees.
2003 – A suicide attack on a bus in Jerusalem, Israel, planned by Hamas, kills 23 Israelis, seven of them children, in the Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing.
2005 – The first-ever joint military exercise between Russia and China, called Peace Mission 2005 begins.
2005 – A series of strong storms lashes Southern Ontario spawning several tornadoes as well as creating extreme flash flooding within the city of Toronto and its surrounding communities. In Toronto, it is also dubbed the "Toronto Supercell".
2009 – A series of bombings in Baghdad, Iraq, kills 101 and injures 565 others.
2010 – Operation Iraqi Freedom ends, with the last of the United States brigade combat teams crossing the border to Kuwait.
2012 – A plane crash kills 32 people in Sudan.
2013 – A train accident in India kills at least 37 people and injures over a dozen.

Famous Folk Born on August 19th:

Marcus Auerelius Probus
Bernard Baruch
Orville Wright
Coco Chanel
Ogden Nash
Lewis Sargent
Philo Farnsworth
Dick Simmons
Ring Lardner, Jr.
Malcolm Forbes
Gene Roddenberry
L. Q. Jones
Frank McCourt (the author, not the idiot that once owned the Dodgers)
Debra Paget
Renee Richards
Joe Frank
Diana Muldaur

Johnny Nash
Jill St. John
Fred Thompson

Bill Clinton
Dawn Steel
Tipper Gore
Gerald McRaney
Jonathan Frakes
Mary Matalin
Peter Gallagher
Adam Arkin
Darryl Sutter (Yeah Coach!!!)
John Stamos
Kevin Dillon
Kyra Sedgwick

Lee Ann Womack
Matthew Perry
Mary Joe Fernandez
Erika Christensen
Reeva Steenkamp
Romeo Miller