Some women choose the bear.
Some women choose the gator
One will eat you now,
the other will eat you later.
A photo shoot of a college graduate probably wins this year's contest for cool graduation photo shoots.
The New York Post: Glamorous coed takes insane graduation pics of her kissing 14-foot alligator
The graduate in the picture, in addition to graduating college, is a trained alligator handler and animal rehab worker.
Don't try this at home folks.
On a rather scenic route in northern Michigan, a rather large set of gallows has been setup:
Daily Press: Gallows built along M-28, generating controversy
Tom Pegenau, owner of Pegenau Builders, set up a wooden gallows structure with a noose outside of the Pegenau Builders business on M-28 in Chocolay Township, later painted with the words “bureaucrats,” “justice” and “freedom,” along with a banner reading “United States of America 1776-2026 250 We the MFin People.”
Kind of a bureaucrat, rope, gallows, assembly of one of each approach to things.
Mr. Peregnau, per the article is rather unhappy (as many people are) with government at the moment, and he stated he was rather frustrated with both sides of the aisle in many areas so he built the gallows as a matter of protest.
Chocolay Township, where the gallows are located, is unamused.
The Detroit Free Press: Marquette-area township orders gallows along major U.P. highway moved
In short the setting up of gallows along the roadway is claimed to be a zoning violation in the area. This may indeed make Mr. Peregnau even more annoyed with bureaucrats, but it is most likely that the gallows are headed for the gallows so to speak.
Saw this and couldn't stop laughing out loud:
It's by Dead on a Sunday. The full song is here and it's damn catchy and rather appropriate for Friday the 13th.
A very nicely done parody cover of an 80s Pop classic.
A 97-year-old man in Grand Haven, Michigan, lost his balance and fell off a pier six feet into the water into Lake Michigan.
This was a life threatening emergency.
Luckily enough, he happened to do it at exactly the right location:
The Coast Guard Festival
ABC13: Coast Guard member treads water for 20+ minutes to rescue man, 97
He was quickly rescued by a Coast Guardsman who, without hesitation, leapt into the water and saved him, treading water and keeping him safe for 20 minutes until they both could be retrieved from the water.
These Coast Guardsmen save lives before their craft even leave the pier. Very well done.
Heavily, and in some case majorly, funded by traffic tickets and penal fines.
I had figured that library mileages on property taxes were responsible for the bulk of the funding. Apparently not.
Nor did I know, but I should have guessed, that Wayne County would manage to screw up the accounting and distribution for that funding. Badly.
The Detroit Free Press: Accounting errors have cost Wayne County libraries millions
Over the last decade, 18 libraries in Wayne County have been shorted as much as $1.9 million, while 11 saw an influx in cash, all because of staff turnover at the county level and subsequent accounting errors.
The money at issue flows through the state and comes from penal fines, which are paid to courts in criminal and some civil violations, including most traffic fines. County treasurers collect and distribute the fines to libraries. This funding is baked into state law and it can account for anywhere between 3% to 70% of public libraries' annual budgets, according to the Library of Michigan.
Wayne County lost the employee who calculated penal fines and the county did not replace that position, according to a report the Library of Michigan prepared for public library directors and boards.
So interesting to know that a goodly amount of the fines from court goes to the state's libraries, hopefully helping the True Crime shelves be well stocked, and that Wayne County can impressively mess up the distribution of those funds.
Was over faster than the time it takes for you to spell Acipenser fulvescens.
OutdoorLife: Michigan’s Shortest Fishing Season Lasted Just 17 Minutes This Year, a New Record
With a maximum of 7 fish allowed to be caught, the season closed in 17 minutes as the limit was reached.
Some of the fish caught were huge, with the biggest weighing a whopping 78.3 pounds.
That's quite the fish.
The Detroit News: Rare coin left in St. Clair Shores Salvation Army red kettle
An anonymous donor has been putting a Krugerrand in the kettle each year.
A Krugerrand is a very nice donation, as its a valuable one-ounce South African gold coin worth around $2,700. That the donor has been doing this for 12 years is highly impressive on the donor's part and very generous too.
But Krugerrands, while valuable, are not particularly rare, nor even scarce. In the 70s and 80s, millions were minted per year. In the 1980s Krugerrands were 90% of the gold bullion coin market with millions minted. In 2010, the most recent year with mintage figures being available, over 520,000 were minted and almost 750,000 the year before.
If you want to invest in gold, a Krugerrand is likely not a bad way to go. After all, you get to posses a very beautiful coin you can appreciate as it appreciates in value.
Just because a thing is valuable doesn't mean its rare, nor is rarity a synonym for valuable, and the headline writer should know that.
The Detroit Free Press: Arkansas airport executive shot during attempted search warrant, police say
The executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Arkansas was shot at his home Tuesday while authorities were attempting to serve a federal search warrant, according to Arkansas State Police.
Bryan Malinowski, 53, was injured with gunshot wounds around 6 a.m. Tuesday in Little Rock, while the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was serving a federal search warrant, Arkansas state police said in a statement. He was treated on scene by paramedics before being transported to a local hospital, and his condition is unknown.
It is unclear who shot Malinowski, but Arkansas State Police are calling the incident an "officer-involved shooting."
So, what was he about to testify about regarding Hillary?
Widener's has a neat post up as to will a Cell Phone Stop A Bullet?
In proper Widener's fashion, they scientifically smacked cell phones with a variety of calibers: 7.62x39mm, .45 ACP, 9x19mm, and .22LR and report on the results, complete with video.
As you likely may have guessed, the result is unsurprising:
Don't rely on cell phones for ballistic protection. Just don't.
The upside: Once you're sufficiently frustrated with your phone and you replace it, you can send off the old model to Valhalla with a .22lr. Just be sure to clean up the range, and leave no pieces behind when you're done.
Mosiac: Ecstasy and Amnesia in the Gaza Strip
The article gives quite a good explanation as to the Arab mindset and how we got to the present conflict. It's not just that, as Abba Eban said, "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity", it's more and more clear that they don't want the opportunity in the first place. Unfortunately, they keep getting bailed out of their continuing string of bad choices, leading to the conflict continuing ad infinitum.
Daniel Greenfield: How Hamas Became an Environmentalist and Gun Control Cause. If you're not regularly reading Daniel Greenfield, you should be.
In this article he explores how the strange leftist bedfellows came to be through intersectionality. The weird case of LGBTers standing up for Hamas - the same Hamas that gives LGBTers flying lessons off rooftops as standard practice. Also the case of environmentalists for Hamas, (one would think Hamas' rockets harm the environment and lead to global warming and all that). That gun controllers are demonstrating for Hamas is also rather impressive - Hamas' attack shows the horrible outcome of gun control where defenseless people get massacred by armed monsters, but gun controllers never really act from logic anyways.
Hot Air: Hamas Keeps Violating Ceasefire Agreement.
Totally unexpectedly, of course.
CDR. Salamander:American Naval Forces (with a Japanese assist) Capture Pirates
If you're not regularly reading CDR. Salamander, you really should as you're missing out on some masterful analysis of world naval affairs.
Here we have Yemeni pirates hijacking ships that have connections to Israel, and the US Navy once again taking on anti-piracy operations in the region. We also have the Houthis launching ballistic missiles at a US Destroyer - no forcible response from the Biden administration to this attack so far, which seems to be par for the course.
More than 111 years after she sank, we have a new and impressive view of the Titanic as she now rests on the ocean floor.
The Detroit News: First full-size 3D scan of Titanic shows shipwreck in new light
Using submersibles Magellan / Atlantic scanned the entire wreck, and over 700,000 images were then put together. The images included scans of the ship itself and an area around it of 3 miles to capture debris that had fallen from the wreck - shoes and even watches are visible in the composite image.
The BBC has a portion of the video of the composite image and it's pretty darn amazing what this technology can do.
The wreck of the Titanic is slowly rusting away and collapsing upon itself on the seafloor, 12,500 feet down.
Apparently MeeMoo the Emu decided to make a break for freedom form the farm where he was living in Tennessee.
This led to the owner seeking assistance from the police and while the aviation unit was apparently not involved, it became a police car chase of an avian.
USA Today: 'He took off down the highway': MeeMoo the emu escapes owner, starts police chase in Tennessee
Thankfully MeeMoo was returned to his farm without incident after 8 hours being on the lam.
The score is thus Harriman PD 1, Emu 0.
As such, the Harriman PD did better than the Australian Army, as they're 0-1 against Emus.
While at the conference last week, I was able to see a presentation by Chris Voss.
Mr. Voss is the former top hostage/kidnapping negotiator for the FBI. To say he has been there and done that is an understatement. He has a wealth of techniques for effectively communicating and negotiating as well as lots of captivating stories that demonstrate each of his points.
He's a riveting speaker with a great manner, sense of humor, and immense knowledge that he imparts in a very effective teaching style.
He notes that kidnapping is a business, with the commodity being human bodies and generally follows a business approach in many ways. Effective negotiation techniques do carry over to not just business but everyday life, whether talking with a spouse, child, opposing counsel, or potential client.
He's also the author of Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.
To say it is a great book is an understatement. The techniques he discussed on the presentation are outlined, exemplified, and expounded upon in the book.
Yes, I got an autographed copy:
I've already read it once, and am reading it now for a second time as the book is full of material and techniques to be absorbed and tried. Yes, the techniques do work, especially with practice.
One amazing idea is to not make the other side say yes, but instead to have them say no. Seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it?
But, as he explains, it really does work and leads to effective negotiation, rather than a "yes" that really means "quit bugging me" or "quit being a manipulative salesman".
An absolutely fantastic presentation, and the book is top-notch, and highly recommended. I've already learned a lot and changed some of my methods in response to the techniques in the book.
Even if you think you never do any negotiation, everything you do in life does contain elements of negotiation - whether with you spouse, kid or others, and this book helps you communicate more effectively.
The book is very much worth reading and you'll more than recover the time invested in it in improvements in your communication and results.
One other interesting anecdote from the Covid testing experience.
At the facility we went to, you have to register as a patient, as one often does.
Instead of simply signing up and giving your drivers license and health insurance to take the test you have to give a pretty full health history.
Note - Photo ID is required for Covid testing - interesting isn't it?
Now, at least it was electronic history so you didn't have to write things out in quadruplicate as at other medical offices.
But it was a very invasive medical history that was requested, especially for simply getting a Covid test. Quite a few question asked had nothing to do with your medical condition at all, especially this one:
How is having guns present in your home a part of your medical history, exactly?
Sadly, there is no "None of your business" or "Stay in your lane, Doc"option to select. So, I simply skipped over it, as I did with most of the intrusive and non-applicable questions, which meant the medical history was rather quick to do. But, as usual one spends more time doing paperwork than actually having the test itself performed.
The progressives in the medical establishment are certainly not giving up their false and inapt gun control as health/epidemic model anytime soon.
Why not take Smash Mouth's All Star, translate it into Aramaic, and then translate it back?
Isaac Mayer did so, and the result is pretty awesome.
Newshub: Smash Mouth's 'All Star' translated to Aramaic and back becomes 'beautiful poetry'
Yes, yes it does:
There was one who said unto me that the universe was going to cause me to tremble,It's worth clicking the link and going and RTWT, and I think Smash Mouth could give this version a whirl.
That I am not the sharpest cutting implement in the storehouse.
She had the appearance unto me as a stupid one,
With her finger and her thumb
In the frame of a Greek gamma upon her forehead.
Doing a deed for a client to put her husband on the title to the property, and I came across a rather unusual restriction in the prior deed.
The property is here in Oakland County in southeast Michigan and has the following reservation of rights:
Excepting therefrom all rights to uranium and other fissionable material reserved by the United States of America, as recited in instruments recorded in ......, Oakland County Records.
Certainly not a reservation of rights that you come across in deeds everyday, and its the first time I've seen it.
Well, Southeast Michigan is rather famous for radon gas issues, and since radon is from decaying uranium, it makes sense that there may be some decent uranium deposits lurking underneath the property, and the Feds have got first dibs on it if needed.
So, don't be going off digging up the uranium and then building your own reactors at home, ok?
Just got a message from Abby's pediatrician that when the antibody test for Covid-19 is available, she'd like Abby to come in and get tested for the presence of the antibody.
You see, Abby in December came down with a flu-like illness that threw her for a complete loop lasting almost 2 weeks. It was diagnosed as an upper respiratory infection, and was not influenza as the influenza test at the time came back negative. Apparently her high fever, cough, and shortness of breath are consistent with a case of coronavirus.
Leah got hit with it as well and was sick, but not as badly as Abby, and both Tash and I also popped fevers, coughs, and were feeling lousy then as well.
Since Abby goes to a pretty international school, and, get this, she has and sits together with a friend who had actually traveled to Wuhan to visit family. Her friend came back from that trip with quite a cough in December, all before this had made the news.
I'd say the chances are pretty fair to middling that we've already been exposed and had this thing.
Be interesting to see what an antibody test will show.
What do these cities have in common, aside from being the worst for bedbugs?
The Detroit Free Press: Here are the worst cities for bedbugs, according to Orkin:
1. Baltimore
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Chicago
4. Los Angeles
5. Columbus, Ohio
6. Cincinnati
7. Detroit
8. New York
9. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose
10. Dallas-Fort Worth
Take a guess as to which party is running all of them.
A little aviation database oddity to open the new year.
While there are a plethora of airfields you can land on in the USA, and you can even land on military airfields in case of an emergency. You'd likely have to do a fair bit of paperwork if you did land at a military airfield in an emergency, but it's far better in a real emergency to declare it, land and do a bit of paperwork rather than not declare, fly on, and have someone else do the paperwork reporting your demise due to your stupidity.
But, there's one airfield in the continental US where you definitely cannot land.
This prohibited airfield however now happens to be in quite a few civilian aviation GPS databases.
KXTA, is otherwise known as Homey Airport and even better known to the world and especially the tinfoil hat brigade as Area 51.
It's an interesting story as to how it managed to get an ICAO identifier and get accidentally added to civilian GPS airport databases.
That error remains in lots of databases still used today, creating some humorous results:
Yes, thanks to this lasting database entry error, you can book your own private jet charter from Area 51.
Good luck with that.