Okay, as if the crustacean crime wave weren’t enough to lighten the dog days, here’s Nora, the piano-playing feline. & there’s an encore performance as well.
I dare you to watch either without cracking up.
What I don’t understand is how Nora’s humans managed to make the video without gales of laughter in the background.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Crustacean crime
So, the WSJ reports that crayfish rustlin’ is big business across many states (& Oz), both farmed & in the wild.
Now, this is interesting because it’s kind of unexpected to those of us who only encounter crayfish in a bouillabaisse along with a rather nouveau Beaujolais. I mean—I didn’t even know crawdads were big business, much less major crime. (I also wonder where you fence hot mudbugs?)
But the interestingness doesn’t stop with Astacidae. Drift on down the story & see where, “Maine lobstermen and Alaska crabbers have been said to shoot at people who pull up their pots. In June, a San Diego Superior Court judge handed down a 90-day jail sentence to a man who was found smuggling contraband lobsters in his pants.”
Well, damn—now, that’s what I call a crime story.
Seems that, just before lobster season commenced last October, Binh Quang Chau, 33, was apprehended by San Diego Fish & Wildlife wardens with six lobsters stuffed down his pants. Chau, a serial poacher, caught the wardens’ attention when they spotted “odd bulges” in his trousers.
(Obviously, Chau wasn’t wearing the skintight jeans you see around West Hollywood, where you can see whether the wearer has a penny or a dime in his back pocket.)
I was somewhat relieved to find that the critters were wrapped individually in newspaper before filling his pants. (Hey—keep that in mind when you’re reading your news online: if you ever want to smuggle contraband crustaceans in your attire, you can’t do that with electrons.) Even so, I wonder if PETA is getting on his ass—that has to be lobster abuse.
Chau got 90 days in the clink—this wasn’t his first offense, after all. & the story goes on to recount lobster thievery on a grand scale--& that’s just in La Jolla.
Well, this story reminded me of something I’d seen in one of those emails some time ago—a pet shop thief trying to hide stolen snakes in his (you guessed it) trousers. So I went on a Bing & found one story about a guy making off with a python crammed into his jeans from a Florida pet shop.
But pants-related purloining is not limited to the Serpentes suborder of Reptilia, or even to the male of the homo sapiens crowd:
A suburban Houston pet shop caught a thief on surveillance video jamming a tortoise in the pocket of his jeans & absconding.
& then there’s the woman who went into a Lansing, Mich., pet shop, cased the joint & then stuffed a young boa constrictor down her trousers.
& that’s only the first page of the search results.
I guess desperate times do call for desperate measures. & baggy trousers.
Now, this is interesting because it’s kind of unexpected to those of us who only encounter crayfish in a bouillabaisse along with a rather nouveau Beaujolais. I mean—I didn’t even know crawdads were big business, much less major crime. (I also wonder where you fence hot mudbugs?)
But the interestingness doesn’t stop with Astacidae. Drift on down the story & see where, “Maine lobstermen and Alaska crabbers have been said to shoot at people who pull up their pots. In June, a San Diego Superior Court judge handed down a 90-day jail sentence to a man who was found smuggling contraband lobsters in his pants.”
Well, damn—now, that’s what I call a crime story.
Seems that, just before lobster season commenced last October, Binh Quang Chau, 33, was apprehended by San Diego Fish & Wildlife wardens with six lobsters stuffed down his pants. Chau, a serial poacher, caught the wardens’ attention when they spotted “odd bulges” in his trousers.
(Obviously, Chau wasn’t wearing the skintight jeans you see around West Hollywood, where you can see whether the wearer has a penny or a dime in his back pocket.)
I was somewhat relieved to find that the critters were wrapped individually in newspaper before filling his pants. (Hey—keep that in mind when you’re reading your news online: if you ever want to smuggle contraband crustaceans in your attire, you can’t do that with electrons.) Even so, I wonder if PETA is getting on his ass—that has to be lobster abuse.
Chau got 90 days in the clink—this wasn’t his first offense, after all. & the story goes on to recount lobster thievery on a grand scale--& that’s just in La Jolla.
Well, this story reminded me of something I’d seen in one of those emails some time ago—a pet shop thief trying to hide stolen snakes in his (you guessed it) trousers. So I went on a Bing & found one story about a guy making off with a python crammed into his jeans from a Florida pet shop.
But pants-related purloining is not limited to the Serpentes suborder of Reptilia, or even to the male of the homo sapiens crowd:
A suburban Houston pet shop caught a thief on surveillance video jamming a tortoise in the pocket of his jeans & absconding.
& then there’s the woman who went into a Lansing, Mich., pet shop, cased the joint & then stuffed a young boa constrictor down her trousers.
& that’s only the first page of the search results.
I guess desperate times do call for desperate measures. & baggy trousers.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Healthcare state
Ah, let me add to the gaseous mass swirling the blogosphere regarding the UK as a model for healthcare. The BBC has skimmed some of the lib-con rhetoric & mounted an extremely understated defense of the Nation Health Service (NHS).
The cons are spitting foam, fulminating in overdrive that Obama’s proposed “public option” will be exactly like the NHS, & therefore we’re all doomed. Q.E.D.
What’s really interesting is their use of a “fact”—if Stephen Hawking lived in the UK, he’d long since be pushing up daffodils because the NHS wouldn’t have budged to keep even his brilliant ass alive—a fact, I point out, that is patently & easily proven completely false. Hawking is a British subject, lived all his life there, presumably with the help of the care provided by the NHS. Although of course, being an international celeb & having appeared on Star Trek: The Next Generation, he presumably is covered by private insurance, & thus able to tap into specialists without having to wait in the NHS queue.
(Now, the Beeb cites the Guardian & the Telegraph as quoting Hawking that he “wouldn’t be here if it were not for the NHS”. But that doesn’t mean the NHS has provided all Hawking’s care throughout his lifetime. & the quote doesn't mention the private option.)
The libs of course are having a field day shooting down the cons’ fallacious warheads, which, frankly, the cons are making really easy targets. Still even if the missiles aren’t armed that doesn't mean they don’t cause damage. The hordes of polyester-clad citizens storming Congressional healthcare town halls ranting about Obama’s death panels because they heard about them on Fox is proof that a rallying point doesn’t have to be true to be effective.
(Think back to Hitler’s “stab-in-the-back-by-the-November-criminals”. Whacking great porky pie, but irrefutably successful.)
So let me weigh in, since I happen to know something about the NHS. It was a revolutionary idea back in the 1940s: make healthcare available to the entire population on an equal basis, regardless of income or class. (Keep in mind that in both world wars Britain had a bit of a problem finding cannon fodder hale enough to schlep a Sten gun in rough terrain, so there was a geopolitical as well as social underpinning to the program.)
&, back in the 40s, it was probably state-of-the-art medical care.
But when I came upon it in the late 1990s it was pretty rickety. The coverage for various procedures varies by council area (what the Brits call “postal code healthcare”), so that if you live in one area you’re not covered for fertility treatments (or there’s a long queue waiting for treatments) but if you live in another you’re in like Flynn.
You’re assigned a doctor (a General Practitioner) according to the practitioner’s catchment area. & when you move, you’re expected to get treatment from the practice serving your new location. When I moved from Maidenhead to London, but Maidenhead was still more convenient because it was near my office, the entire system practically ground to a halt because I refused to have to break in a new GP.
If your GP orders routine blood work, you have to make an appointment for another visit—either in that same practice or in some other location because they’re not equipped for it. (When was the last time you visited your primary care doc & couldn’t get blood sucked out of you by one of the nurses or a lab tech?)
When I told my GP that it had been about a year since my last mammogram, so I wanted to schedule one, she looked quite puzzled. Why would I want that? Because it’s been a year since my last one. But here we do it once every three years for cost reasons; because (wait for it) only one in ten women is at risk.
Uh, that’s a double-digit percentage & there would be riots in the streets here if peri-menopausal women were told that their doctor thought it okay to spin the wheel with their chances of getting breast cancer.
I also recall news stories (in the broadsheets, not the tabloids) comparing the NHS unfavorably to healthcare in Europe. There was one example of two women, one in Britain & one in France, both with dodgy mammograms. The next day the Frenchwoman was in hospital getting a biopsy; the Brit waited a couple of months to see a specialist & some more time to get the biopsy.
There was another story that really imprinted on my mind: this one guy with heart trouble. He was on the NHS waiting list for some procedure (might have been bypass, or stent—at this distance I can’t recall), but died before his turn came. Here’s the kicker: his relatives intoned, “Well, he had the money to go private [get non-NHS care], but it was a matter of principle with him. He was entitled to NHS service so that's what he was going to get.”
I don’t have any answers to the broken system we have here—God knows I’ve rolled the dice going without insurance in the past, hoping I would just stay healthy; I know what a harrowing feeling that is, like continually walking a tightrope. & I’ve had “coverage” by Anthem, the worst insurance company you can pay premiums to.
But regardless of whether the NHS kept Stephen Hawking alive, I wouldn’t have the NHS on a platter. So it’s a good thing it is not what Obama is proposing.
The cons are spitting foam, fulminating in overdrive that Obama’s proposed “public option” will be exactly like the NHS, & therefore we’re all doomed. Q.E.D.
What’s really interesting is their use of a “fact”—if Stephen Hawking lived in the UK, he’d long since be pushing up daffodils because the NHS wouldn’t have budged to keep even his brilliant ass alive—a fact, I point out, that is patently & easily proven completely false. Hawking is a British subject, lived all his life there, presumably with the help of the care provided by the NHS. Although of course, being an international celeb & having appeared on Star Trek: The Next Generation, he presumably is covered by private insurance, & thus able to tap into specialists without having to wait in the NHS queue.
(Now, the Beeb cites the Guardian & the Telegraph as quoting Hawking that he “wouldn’t be here if it were not for the NHS”. But that doesn’t mean the NHS has provided all Hawking’s care throughout his lifetime. & the quote doesn't mention the private option.)
The libs of course are having a field day shooting down the cons’ fallacious warheads, which, frankly, the cons are making really easy targets. Still even if the missiles aren’t armed that doesn't mean they don’t cause damage. The hordes of polyester-clad citizens storming Congressional healthcare town halls ranting about Obama’s death panels because they heard about them on Fox is proof that a rallying point doesn’t have to be true to be effective.
(Think back to Hitler’s “stab-in-the-back-by-the-November-criminals”. Whacking great porky pie, but irrefutably successful.)
So let me weigh in, since I happen to know something about the NHS. It was a revolutionary idea back in the 1940s: make healthcare available to the entire population on an equal basis, regardless of income or class. (Keep in mind that in both world wars Britain had a bit of a problem finding cannon fodder hale enough to schlep a Sten gun in rough terrain, so there was a geopolitical as well as social underpinning to the program.)
&, back in the 40s, it was probably state-of-the-art medical care.
But when I came upon it in the late 1990s it was pretty rickety. The coverage for various procedures varies by council area (what the Brits call “postal code healthcare”), so that if you live in one area you’re not covered for fertility treatments (or there’s a long queue waiting for treatments) but if you live in another you’re in like Flynn.
You’re assigned a doctor (a General Practitioner) according to the practitioner’s catchment area. & when you move, you’re expected to get treatment from the practice serving your new location. When I moved from Maidenhead to London, but Maidenhead was still more convenient because it was near my office, the entire system practically ground to a halt because I refused to have to break in a new GP.
If your GP orders routine blood work, you have to make an appointment for another visit—either in that same practice or in some other location because they’re not equipped for it. (When was the last time you visited your primary care doc & couldn’t get blood sucked out of you by one of the nurses or a lab tech?)
When I told my GP that it had been about a year since my last mammogram, so I wanted to schedule one, she looked quite puzzled. Why would I want that? Because it’s been a year since my last one. But here we do it once every three years for cost reasons; because (wait for it) only one in ten women is at risk.
Uh, that’s a double-digit percentage & there would be riots in the streets here if peri-menopausal women were told that their doctor thought it okay to spin the wheel with their chances of getting breast cancer.
I also recall news stories (in the broadsheets, not the tabloids) comparing the NHS unfavorably to healthcare in Europe. There was one example of two women, one in Britain & one in France, both with dodgy mammograms. The next day the Frenchwoman was in hospital getting a biopsy; the Brit waited a couple of months to see a specialist & some more time to get the biopsy.
There was another story that really imprinted on my mind: this one guy with heart trouble. He was on the NHS waiting list for some procedure (might have been bypass, or stent—at this distance I can’t recall), but died before his turn came. Here’s the kicker: his relatives intoned, “Well, he had the money to go private [get non-NHS care], but it was a matter of principle with him. He was entitled to NHS service so that's what he was going to get.”
I don’t have any answers to the broken system we have here—God knows I’ve rolled the dice going without insurance in the past, hoping I would just stay healthy; I know what a harrowing feeling that is, like continually walking a tightrope. & I’ve had “coverage” by Anthem, the worst insurance company you can pay premiums to.
But regardless of whether the NHS kept Stephen Hawking alive, I wouldn’t have the NHS on a platter. So it’s a good thing it is not what Obama is proposing.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Women in cammies, part II
Following up on yesterday’s post, here’s more from the NY Times on military women on the frontlines in Iraq.
It’s interesting to me (having suffered through 20 years of narrow-minded arguments why women shouldn’t 1)serve in the military at all or 2)fill combat roles) how pragmatic all the systems are when it comes down to it.
Accommodations for privacy and some semblance of safety turn out not to shatter a fighting force from within. Sex goes on yet women aren’t getting knocked up and leaving in droves. Supply officers order devices from REI to allow women to pee on the run (figuratively speaking).
And nowhere in the three pages of this story is there mention that PMS factors into any activity, from command decisions to operating the turret gun on a Humvee.
Back when the Navy was first bruiting about the idea of assigning women to sea duty, I well recall the reaction from Navy wives around Norfolk was embarrassing: you can’t have women with men on ships! The mixed sexes will have, you know, sex, and it’ll be the female sailors’ fault! (No notion that their husbands might be expected to keep it, you know, zipped.)
But it turns out that, while there has been fraternization, the women are there (and in Afghanistan and Iraq and at other duty stations) to do a job.
Just imagine!
It’s interesting to me (having suffered through 20 years of narrow-minded arguments why women shouldn’t 1)serve in the military at all or 2)fill combat roles) how pragmatic all the systems are when it comes down to it.
Accommodations for privacy and some semblance of safety turn out not to shatter a fighting force from within. Sex goes on yet women aren’t getting knocked up and leaving in droves. Supply officers order devices from REI to allow women to pee on the run (figuratively speaking).
And nowhere in the three pages of this story is there mention that PMS factors into any activity, from command decisions to operating the turret gun on a Humvee.
Back when the Navy was first bruiting about the idea of assigning women to sea duty, I well recall the reaction from Navy wives around Norfolk was embarrassing: you can’t have women with men on ships! The mixed sexes will have, you know, sex, and it’ll be the female sailors’ fault! (No notion that their husbands might be expected to keep it, you know, zipped.)
But it turns out that, while there has been fraternization, the women are there (and in Afghanistan and Iraq and at other duty stations) to do a job.
Just imagine!
Monday, August 17, 2009
Women in cammies
The NY Times reports that the exigencies of a six-year war in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in the increasing deployment of women in combat.
This etches cracks in one of the biggest taboos in the country. Both the military and Congress have clung to the double standard that not only demeans women and reinforces the idea that they’re incapable of fulfilling all the obligations of citizenship (therefore relegating them to permanent second-classdom); it prevents the armed forces from tapping into the broader resources of the nation.
Of course, the Navy integrated women into combat missions in 1993. Today women are among the senior pilots of F-14s, the quintessential symbol of machismo on screen and off, and they serve on all manner of ships—including (now) submarines.
But the land and air forces have held back. Although they’ve put women in combat support roles, the distinction being that you go in harm’s way but just aren’t equipped to defend yourself.
Even now, the Army and Marine Corps are using semantics to disguise the fact that they’re sending women to perform combat duties. That’s to spare the sensibilities of Congress, who would much rather rail about protectin’ American womanhood 8000 miles away than providing them with comprehensive and affordable healthcare here.
So it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
This etches cracks in one of the biggest taboos in the country. Both the military and Congress have clung to the double standard that not only demeans women and reinforces the idea that they’re incapable of fulfilling all the obligations of citizenship (therefore relegating them to permanent second-classdom); it prevents the armed forces from tapping into the broader resources of the nation.
Of course, the Navy integrated women into combat missions in 1993. Today women are among the senior pilots of F-14s, the quintessential symbol of machismo on screen and off, and they serve on all manner of ships—including (now) submarines.
But the land and air forces have held back. Although they’ve put women in combat support roles, the distinction being that you go in harm’s way but just aren’t equipped to defend yourself.
Even now, the Army and Marine Corps are using semantics to disguise the fact that they’re sending women to perform combat duties. That’s to spare the sensibilities of Congress, who would much rather rail about protectin’ American womanhood 8000 miles away than providing them with comprehensive and affordable healthcare here.
So it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
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