Shtuff I Shouldn't Know, Part 1

We've finally settled with the other party's insurance for our car wreck last year. I wrote out my essay on what I learned while going through the process. I'll post it as soon as I edit it. So far it's 15 double spaced pages in a steno book. Hopefully it'll help someone else who has a car wiped out by an idiot.

Came in the mail today...

I thought this was funny:

Ahhhhh. The power of an education degree.

Big mill fire in my home town last Tuesday. Spewed debris that could possibly contain asbestos all over town. School administrators decided they better cancel school for the rest of the week to allow time for the cleanup.

Did the good parents keep their children indoors and away from the contaminated debris?

Of course not. The kids were outside frolicking in the asbestos like shipyard workers transported in from the 1950's.

That's MUUUUCH better than keeping them in air conditioned and filtered schools.

I survived my mom's abortion attempt and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.

Girl In UK sues hospital after baby survives abortion to full term with no ill effects. Story Here.

I guess that makes answering the inevitable, "Mommy, do you love me?" question pretty cut and dried.

Another winner of a study...

At first glance this one seems obvious. "Child Abuse Linked to Meth Use, Doctor Says"

I'd figure if you're hopped up on crank you might be more likely beat on your kids.

BUT,

Reading the article, this doctor is not concerned with stoned parents abusing their kids. No. He's concerned about the children of the cooks that produce Ice in their homes. Exposure to those chemicals might be harmful and could lead to asthma.

And Arkansas already has a law forcing ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine containing OTC drugs to be locked up in stores. I guess once they lock the stuff up in NY, enough additional cooks will show upto require the DCS to start tracking the cooks' children for signs of exposure.

Hey! You're not congested. You're Under Arrest!

Heard on the news this morning that New York is about to pass a law requiring that all OTC medications that contain either ephedrine or Pseudo-ephedrine must be put BEHIND the counter. Seems that people can buy lots of this stuff and use it as a base to manufacture crank.

They're also talking about making it a felony to possess the stuff.

I wonder what Bristol-Meyers-Squibb thinks?

Here's a great study.

Day Care May Lower Childhood Leukemia Risk screams the headline. Story Here.

I read this seeming idiocy and thought for a very short while. HOW can anyone actually think there is a link between any of this stuff?

Then I thought about it logically. I expect that Day Care use over the last 35 years has increased significantly. Therefore, according to these morons, childhood leukemia should have correspondingly decreased sharply. Then I looked up the actual statistics. Here's the graph:



So, according to REAL DATA, childhood cancer has increased significantly over the last 35 years.

We better get these kids into Day Cares even earlier. 'Cause everyone knows that screaming in a crib next to other screaming babies is a sure-fire leukemia vaccination. Maybe a better study would have linked the effects of mothers dumping their kids in daycare to rising cancer rates. NONE OF IT'S RELATED PEOPLE!

Sheesh.

Sounds like my kind of guy...

Benedict XVI must be exceptional. The media is describing him with terms usually reserved for W, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft.

It amazes me that people seem surprised that the Pope is, wait for it, Catholic.

I had the misfortune of reading a letter to the editor of the Hartford Currant yesterday. From a girl debating whether to continue with her confirmation because the new Pope would probably not elevate women to the priesthood or recognize homosexuality as anything but an abomination. She even went so far as to state that the inability of priests to marry was the root cause of the sexual abuse scandals within the church. (I didn't think homosexuals could marry legally anywhere, so how allowing priests to marry would reduce the homosexual abuse within the church is beyond me.) I've got some advice for her. You want wed queer female clergy? Join the Episcopalians.

Here's how to tell if Benedict XVI is doing an appropriate job. If I start returning to the Church, he's on the right track. Let's wait and see, shall we?

Here's an interesting way to spend a minute.

Click on the "Search Database"link, find your town and see if you know anyone.

Click here.

National site, here.

Old school movies

Just saw that AMC is showing Steven Spielberg's first movie, "Duel" this evening. The story of a poor salesman in a Dodge Dart being chased through the desert and mountains by a crazy gasoline tanker. "Saving Private Ryan" it's not, but it's still pretty cool.

How'd that old song go?

They say for every boy and girl
There's just one love in this whole world
And I know I've found mine
The heavenly touch of your embrace
The gunfire from your parents' place,
Shrapnel tearing through my heart

Young Love,
First Blood,
Fueding is true commotion.

Click here for explanation.

Sonny James would be proud.

Another long week.

Been on nights again for work. Not too much to say.

Nice that the weather's getting better, though. Finally got to wash the car for the first time in about five months. Plus I cleaned the garage, summerized the snow blower and got the Cub out and ready to start mowing the lawn.

That should guarantee that we get a foot of new snow within the next week I think.

Who'd a thunk 'Deliverance' could've been filmed in MD?

My alternate title for this post was, "I thought Wanker County was in Wisconsin."

Story Here.

Here's one I didn't have to write.

I've been thinking about tying the current euthanasia idiocy to the holocaust in an essay. George Neumayr says it better than I could have at The American Spectator Website. Link to Article Here.

Here's the best segment. I wonder if there can be a turning back?

"Could a liberal humanism which sanctions a million-plus abortions a year and presses for a widening culture of euthanasia be Hitlerite? No, many in our society would scoff. But read the words of Leo Alexander, a doctor who assisted the chief American counsel at the Nuremberg Tribunal, about the beginnings of Nazi society and he is describing our own:

Whatever proportion these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitudes of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually, the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted, and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which the entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude towards the non-rehabilitative sick."

A tasteless joke and a thought.

Here's the joke:

"Doctors have been recently telling us that starving and dehydrating to the point of death can be described as 'euphoric'. Well. All I know is that somebody is using a non-standard issue dictionary. Those bloated kids in Africa with the flies walking on their eyes and Sally Struthers in the foreground trying to get me to donate money to some charity didn't look like they were my definition of euphoric."

Now the thought:

It seems that the Pope is about to pass into eternity. I've read that he has been described as "extraordinarily serene" even as his organs are shutting down. I'm betting that this is not the euphoria that the doctors were talking about. The finality of understanding that must come with the realization that everything you had taken on faith is right and you don't have to worry anymore. Terri Schiavo had, as the Pope has been given the Sacrament of Last Rights so we can safely assume that she will be there at the door when John Paul 2 arrives.

Now that's a definition of euphoria even I can look forward to.