It’s odd the presidential primary stuff you can find through Google
I live in Missouri. Just for fun, I Googled the name of a nearby tourist trap -- I mean tourist ATTRACTION, sorry -- and it was really odd what I got. What I searched for was "Branson Missouri," an odd little town that's become a huge tourism magnet in Southwest Missouri.
Near the top of my search at the Google News site, I found a Reuters News service "FACTBOX" about Missouri and its role in the Super Tuesday presidential primary shindig tomorrow. I discovered some political/presidential facts of interest in this little Reuters page. For example, Missouri voters have gone in favor of the winner in every presidential race in the last 100 years except 1956. (Don't know what happened to those good folks in 1956, but they didn't get it right.)
Then, the next to last paragraph about Missouri and presidential primaries said this:
"The country music resort town of Branson in the Ozark Mountains has become one of the top tourist destinations in the United States, drawing 8 million visitors in 2006."
How truly odd is that? If they were doing a piece about Branson rentals, tourism in general, Branson tourism in particular, or any number of things related to country music, I could see including that paragraph.
I can only assume the good business and tourism folks of Branson, Missouri, paid to have that inserted as sort of an "infomercial" to draw people to Branson. Good job, Branson. We'll keep getting all those dollars from folks wanting to gawk at "hillbillies" for years to come.
Ah, well, what do I know. I'm just a guy who reads the papers.
[tags]Missouri presidential primaries, Missouri tourism, Branson Missouri, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
Imagine that: A real, historic Davy Crockett document for sale on eBay
Yes indeed, friends, step right up and place your bids. Here we have (had) a genuine Davy Crockett Almanac. Right there for sale on an eBay auction. (The Crockett almanacs were a series of pamphlets written by the Tennessean who died at the Alamo.)
The one problem, however, is that you have to (had to -- the auction was halted when the seller was arrested) be willing to bid on illegally obtained historic documents. The man responsible, a New York State employee, was found out when an alert history buff noticed the Crockett documents and some other stuff the guy was selling at the popular auction site. Read the story of this crafty historical archives thief here. All told, he seems to have stolen around 400 historic documents to sell on eBay, including a letter dated to 1823 written by Vice President John C. Calhoun.
Happily, the eBay people cooperated with authorities to track the guy down and stop him, though the story indicates he may have sold a number of items.
My question would be this: How can someone out there buy something like that in good conscience on eBay? I don't know what line of B.S. the guy used to persuade buyers, but, DUH, does an honest person really think he's getting a legitimate deal buying historical documents from some no-name individual on eBay?? Wake up and get serious, people.
Ah, well, what do I know? I'm just a guy who reads the papers. (And most of what I know about Davy Crockett I learned in the 1950s courtesy of Walt Disney and Fess Parker.)
[tags]historic documents on eBay, thief steals historic documents, eBay auction swindles, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
For all you pet lovers out there: Would you go for one of these ‘Perfect Pets’?
I posted a discussion of this "Perfect Pets" story on one of my other blogs geared specifically to news about pets and to pet lovers. (Feel free to take a look around that blog. It's new and I could use the traffic!)
Are you a pet lover? Do you suffer pet allergies, or have problems with the "inconvenience" of pets like cats who need litter boxes, dogs who need pooper scoopers and daily walks, fish who need aquariums cleaned?
Then this woman's "Perfect Pets" may be just what you're looking for: Very realistically done pet paintings, custom placed around your house and property to look very real. I'll admit the idea has a clever charm to it. Some of the painted pets shown in that story are nice.
But, really, are they PETS? Do we need a reality check here? Am I the only one who thinks pets need to be LIVING??
Ah, well, what do I know? I'm just a guy who reads the papers.
[tags]Perfect Pets, pet paintings, living pets, pet lovers, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
Tip for clerks — don’t try to resist and risk dying over someone else’s money
We seem to have a guy in our city making a bid for notoriety as a serial convenience store robber. The police released photos of him today, following his suspected seven robberies and one attempted robbery in the last nine days.
If you go to the link above, be sure to view the video. It appears the guy wasn't ready in last night's attempt for a clerk who decided she wasn't going to put up with him robbing her store -- she took a broom she was sweeping with and whacked the guy twice in the neck and head. He didn't rob her store; he went down the road a few blocks, however, and robbed a different store. (We've got dozens of 'em here in good old Springfield, MO.)
The moral to this story, however, would be this: PLEASE, if you are an overnight clerk working in any public place subject to robbery, DON'T follow this woman's lead and resist. It isn't worth it. Standard police advice here would be to always cooperate with the robber. That seems like a good idea to me. I'm sure that, for every humorous story of a clerk chasing away the bad guys with a broom, we could find more tragic stories of the bad guys injuring or killing the clerks.
It makes good video when it works, but too much of the time it turns out that someone gets killed or at least hurt over someone else's money. That's why convenience stores and other businesses carry insurance. Don't get yourself killed over money, especially not someone else's money.
[tags]overnight robberies, serial convenience store robber, clerk beats would-be crook with broom, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
When I was a kid, we didn’t need no stinking rechargeable batteries
Back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid, many years before Al Gore invented the Internet, we never needed no stinking rechargeable batteries -- which would be a good thing now, because the Department of Transportation (DOT) has now issued guidelines banning some rechargeable lithium batteries on airline flights.
Before you get too alarmed, you should read this story and realize that we're talking mostly about spare batteries, not batteries installed in your phone or laptop. And even some of the spares are allowed, depending on how they are transported.
I thought about this new ban and realized how fortunate I am to be able to work from home on my little laptop, instead of having a job that required me to carry it around the country and work from airplanes, airports, and hotels. (Though my wife and I really could use a vacation right now if any kind souls out there would volunteer to "gift" us with one.) Given my situation, I rarely use the battery in the laptop.
But for you weary road warriors of the written word, or business junket, I feel your pain. You, however, will feel it more if you should happen to be the victim of one of the "burst into flames for no apparent reason" batteries that prompted the ban. So be careful out there -- and watch it with those spare batteries.
[tags]rechargeable batteries, laptop batteries, battery fires, Department of Transportation, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
Are you up to speed (UTS) on the wonderful wide world (WWW) of acronyms?
Human beings may or may not be the only creatures on the planet who use language. But this much is a sure bet: Humans are the only living beings on the planet who use acroynms, and usually they use acronyms to excess.
Admit it, you aren't sure what an acronym is, are you? Simply put, it's a word that has been created from the initial letters of other words. Examples would be NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and ZIP (Zonal Improvement Plan) Code.
But acronyms are far more and better than that, because some people -- especially people at large corporations and government bureaucracies -- love to create acronyms from virtually everything. What are some of your favorites? What acronyms are unique to your life, your company and way of doing business?
The government has given us FBI, CIA, BLM, TSA, HSA, USDA, FDA, ATC, and the list goes on.
In the business world you have such tongue twisters, like business performance management software, for example, that they sometimes defy acronyms -- yet other business acronyms are so obvious they become a trademarked company name and we rarely use the real or "full" company name they represent: HP, for example, or IBM. (I once worked for a company doing business for HP and discovered that the HP people love acronyms so much that they invent them faster than our trainers could understand and teach them.)
The military, too, is loaded with slang that started as acronyms. Classic case in point: FUBAR. For the sake of keeping this blog PG rated, I'll express that one as "Fouled Up Beyond All Repair," but the military people reading this know what "Fouled UP" REALLY is in the expression.
Share your favorites with us. Tell us the acronyms you find most useful, or the ones you find especially clever, those that make you laugh, or especially the ones that irritate you.
[tags]acronyms, business slang, government abbreviations, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
Who knows? Maybe this is guy’s recovery is sort of a ‘Christmas miracle’
I fell off my bike a lot when I was a kid -- which is nothing much, especially compared to the New York City window washer who plummeted about 500 feet down the side of a skyscraper and is now alert and able to talk with his family. And now neat: He first started talking again on Christmas Day, 18 days after his horrible accident.
Such a fantastic story, and I'm just now hearing about it? I recall the day CNN showed the accident, with the crumpled scaffolding lying in the Manhattan street. The man's brother died in the accident, and Alcides Moreno, 37, was on a ventillator for almost three weeks. But on Christmas Day, he spoke to his wife for the first time since the accident. The story says he's facing further surgery and rehabilitation, but he's expected to recover and even walk again.
"If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one," said the hospital's chief of surgery, Dr. Philip Barie.
Those were the doc's words, not mine. So maybe miracles do happen. And how nifty for Moreno and his family that it was on Christmas Day.
Every time I try to remain a cynical skeptic about so many things, something like this comes along.
Ah, well, what do I know? I'm just a guy who reads the papers.
[tags]New York City window washer recovers, Christmas miracles, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
Odd zoo story — director admits tiger’s enclosure fence was too low
I suppose I must applaud the honest of San Francisco Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo -- he told a press conference yesterday that the wall surrounding the tiger's enclosure was lower than "industry recommendations."
It's not only disturbing news to hear, it could open the zoo, I suppose, to some serious civil action, i.e., lawsuits, from the families of those killed an injured in the tiger attack.
But Mollinedo's admission certainly is refreshing to hear. It would have been easy to drag out the investigation for months with no admission of responsibility or failure of any kind. I wish him and his zoo well. I personally have concerns about the usefulness or necessity of zoos these days, but I spent many good times going to zoos in past years and taking my kids to see the bears/elephants/gorillas they would not otherwise see.
I hope the whole tragic story ends as well as possible, given the teenager's death. Perhaps the San Francisco Zoo and others around the world will take even more care about access to wild and dangerous animals.
Ah, well, what do I know? I'm just a guy who reads the papers.
[tags]tiger enclosure, zoo death, San Francisco Zoo, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
Of zoos and tigers — we must remember that these are wild animals
Over the years, I've read all sorts of bizarre stories of people jumping into zoo pens/cages/whatever to be with the animals. Not long ago, I think I read of someone dropping into a pen with polar bears, or perhaps it was just black bears (JUST black bears??), or something.
In every case I've heard of, I don't recall a happy ending for the people nutty enough to do such things. Almost always the person is injured, sometimes maimed.
Yesterday's tiger incident in San Francisco was a bit different. The Siberian tiger somehow got out of it's habitat, killed one teenager, and injured two others. Police are investigating how the tiger got out of the enclosed, protected habitat, into an area where it could attack anyone. That's scary to me, the idea that someone would for any reason release a 350 tiger into a public area. But that's another story.
My biggest concern is this: People who go regularly to zoos tend to forget that these are WILD animals, not pets. They may be conditioned to depending on people to get their food, but they also have innate, inbred instincts to thrive, survive, and behave as wild animals.
I won't get into all the varied and valid arguments against the whole concept of zoos. I would just say this -- pay attention and be sensible when you're around wild animals. Don't let yourself or those you love become victims of bizarre zoo horrors in any case.
Ah, well, what do I know? I'm just a guy who reads the papers.
[tags]zoo death, tiger escapes at zoo, San Francisco zoo death, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
Need brain surgery? DON’T GO HERE, would be my best advice
I've never had brain surgery (that I remember?), nor have I had any immediate family or friends who have had brain surgery. But I would think, if I needed brain surgery, my top priority would be a surgeon and hospital team with a record of doing the surgery right.
Nevertheless, there's a hospital in the country which has a record of sorts that would make me go elsewhere -- they seem to have perfected the concept of "wrong-site brain surgery": Three times in the last year surgeons at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, R.I., operated on the WRONG parts of patients' brains. If you read the article, you'll see the problem stems from surgeon arrogance, carelessness, and intimidation of nurses and other surgical team members.
My highly unscientific suggestion for you if you need brain surgery and live in Providence might be -- move to Connecticut! Or New York! Or California! Or Nebraska! Or … just about anywhere else.
I used to joke around and say the one thing you never want to hear a brain surgeon say is, "Oops!" I guess I’ll add to that: "Where?"
All kidding aside, how can anyone excuse or explain such horrible accidents? If the brain surgeon involved is so arrogant as to intimidate those he works with to the point they won't correct him or stop him in such cases -- he has no business doing surgery, and such cowardly, care-nothing assistants have no business working in surgery with him. We ought to have a medical system in this country that 1) allows for serious civil and even criminal penalties for such people, and, 2) turns such brain surgeons immediately into "former" or "retired" brain surgeons.
Ah, well, what do I know? I’m just a guy who reads the paper — and tries to protect his brain!
[tags]wrong-site brain surgery, hospital mistakes, surgeons, arrogant surgeons, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
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