Showing posts with label lumpen antics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lumpen antics. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Another surfin' safari

Entrepreneur or con man? I admire this guy's industry and creative spirit, but it seems that he's a magnet for trouble too. [Seattle Times]

American Caste: A critique of Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, by Kay S. Hymowitz [City Journal]. Single mother-based families just are not able to make a go of it in post-industrial America.

"Solid-state revolution: in-depth on how SSDs really work" [Ars Techica] SSD's reduce latency between the CPU and the data storage tier.

Washington, D.C. city government needs to stop being a one-party monopoly if it wants to make any progress on its problems says Colbert I. King @ the Washington Post. I've been saying the same thing about Ann Arbor for a while now myself and largely for the same reasons as King.

Dogs use humans as their tools [Scientific American]

Friday, May 25, 2012

Surfin' the net...

Inventive criminal converted a toy Super Soaker™ water gun into a functional single-shot 20 gauge firearm. [The Gun Nuts]

Movement under way among some police agencies to begin arming aerial drones with non-lethal weapon systems. (Non-lethal that is, for now). [io9]

Working-class white Americans are deserting Democratic Party?  Go figure? I came to the conclusion that I wish a pox on both their houses as far as the two major parties are concerned. Both of them deserted us a long, long time ago. [Washington Post]

Remembering the price of empire this Memorial Day: Read the terse death notices the Pentagon's website posts each time a U.S. service member is KIA.  Right around 1900 and counting and that's just from Afghanistan. [TomDispatch]

California Tech executive busted for stealing thousands of dollars worth of Lego™ toys kits in order to build his own Lego-Land display in his rumpus room. Sheesh. [Wired]

Ann Arbor's unemployment rate is 5 percent it is reported. Rest of Michigan's is 9 percent. I figure it's way higher but the BLS definitions about who is and who isn't employed are pure fantasy. [Ann Arbor.com]

Ann Arbor's homeless tent city is the subject of a short video project by a UM instructor. I found it interesting. [Vimeo]

Upper Peninsula forest fire burns 17,000 acres so far.  [Lansing State Journal]


Monday, May 21, 2012

Friday, May 18, 2012

Street brawl in Ypsilanti last evening

What can you say? It's Ypsilanti and that's how they roll.


Friday, May 4, 2012

Whatever

* Teenagers are now using 3-D printing technology to fabricate brass knuckles says Popular Science. This does not surprise me. Me and my buds used to make dope pipes, bongs, brass knuckles, shivs, and pipe bombs, and other instruments of mayhem with the skills we learned in shop class back in the day too.

* I had thought BloggingHeadsTV was dead but apparently this is not so. I never liked to watch/listen to that site very much myself. It was like C-Span without the depth and Crossfire without the passion. I had understood that BHTv went on "permanent hiatus" when founder Bob Wright was hired as a regular blogger over at the Atlantic and so I took it off of my favorites list. Sure didn't miss it much, either.

* You can now lock down your computer so others can't use it when you aren't around by using an encrypted flash drive as an on/off key.

* Religious and political websites have more malware and other bad shit infesting them than do most porn sites says a report by the computer security firm Symantec.


Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Nuggets gathered from the Internet today

* A Cnet blogger explains his reason for dumping Microsoft's Word™ for Google Docs™permanently.

* Daily Mail poll says (some) English doctors support denying NHS treatment for smokers and the obese. (H/t: to STR for the link.)

* Trading dog poo for Wi-Fi access. What a concept!

* The site of the  lumpen shit hole watering hole and perennial trouble spot  The Fifth Quarter bar in downtown Ann Arbor has been sold. Good news for downtown Ann Arbor IMHO. I just hope that this isn't a scam by the previous owners to open another joint using a different DBA.

* The FBI has been breaking up its own terror plot sting operations, says the NY Times. Go figure?


Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The English sure have become pussies

A decade plus run of horrendously anti-social behavior toward his neighbors and no one ever thought to pull on a ski mask and some gloves, grab a baseball bat and give this bloke the beat-down of a lifetime? Sheesh. Whatever happened to  English society that they would let this kinda shit go on for so long? [h/t: Claire Wolfe's blog for the link]


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

A lefty academic tries to explain why Americans don't riot more

To be fair I have not read professor Katz's book but the reviews of it from the left-leaning pundits in the mainstream media sound almost wistful about the lack of rioting in America. I wonder why? Cui bono? Katz explains his motivation for the book in an interview podcast which you can listen to here.


Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The wisdom of the pundit class redux

Megan McArdle and Noam Scheiber talk about the drawbacks of being poor in a half-assed welfare state like modern America.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

City of Ann Arbor vows to crack down on graffitti

They hope to so by cracking down on property owners who don't clean it off within two weeks! That is their ass-backward solution. I shit you not. That is how they treat us property owners around the People's Republic of Ann Arbor. How about if the city also makes a stronger effort to arrest these spray-paint happy little creeps and have the community service portion of their sentences be to remove it maybe?

Monday, October 17, 2011

The upper-income McMansionvilles that surround Ann Arbor have their problems too

"Vandals" reports Ann Arbor.com, "struck two entryways at Saline Middle School between Sunday night and early Monday morning, uprooting plants, spray painting on doors and walls and throwing a rock through a window, according to a police report." [emphasis in original]

The only difference between the bad apples and punks in Ypsilanti, Willow Run, Lincoln and all the other schools districts that draw so much opprobrium and the ones who live in McMansion-ville-on-the-Raisin (Saline) is that the last named have more money.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Vandals attacking Greater Lansing Food Bank vehicles

First their refrigerated van was stolen and burned and now someone has thrown a steel pipe over the fence and through the window of one of their trucks. Why would anyone attack an organization set up to help people through hard times? (Lansing State Journal)

Friday, August 12, 2011

Wayne county circuit court's "catch & release" policy for convicts

Person's who have been convicted of serious crimes and are facing hard time (i.e., more than a few years in prison) are being allowed to roam loose on bail after being found guilty at trial but before their sentencing says this story in the Detroit Free Press. And then some of them (about one in ten) decide to blow off court and run. Go figure? If you can't trust a convicted rapists, child molesters or attempted murder convicts to show up for court who can you trust? Wait. What now?

Friday, August 5, 2011

Weblog

Man shot by Pittsfield Township police last January commits suicide (Detroit Free Press)
Devin Reddick's short, troubled life ends at 30.

Built in the 1920s.
Historical society seeking to fix up crumbling Irish Hills landmarks (Jackson Citizen-Patriot/MLive)

"The original tower was built by the Michigan Observation Co. on half of a hilltop purchased from Edward Brighton. The 50-foot structure opened amid fanfare in 1924 when U.S. 12 was still a dirt road. Admission was five cents."

The towers are landmarks but it'll cost $300K to fix them up.

ACLU of Michigan takes up causes of those jailed because they can't pay fines (Detroit Free Press)
"Can't" or "don't want to" is the real question. But fines backed up by the threat of jail is the main cudgel that the state wields to bend people to its will. Without that club who keeps the lumpen in line? Just like people that are "judgement proof" are largely immune from private torts tend to become rather feckless what will be the likely consequences if they become "jail proof" too? 

Hillbilly Handfishin' reality TV show on Animal Planet (Huffington Post)
Also known as "noodling" the sport consists of getting into the water near the shore and shoving your arm into the mouth of a big (20-70 lbs.) catfish and wrestling it to the surface. Sounds like some big fun, eh? (Hat tip: Detroit Metro-Times)

America's secret wars in 120 different countries (Tom Dispatch)
Contra the advice of the founders nowadays America does go abroad looking for monsters to destroy.

Living your life: Chicago versus rural Indiana (David Masciotra@ Front Porch Republic)
"Big money and big power cast their shadows over every deal and cloak their silence over every interaction in Chicago. Step outside on the stoop for a cigarette, and the City is with you. Wait on a train platform, and the City is with you. Sit an hour in traffic, and the City is with you. Walk down the street of a gentrified neighborhood, and the City is directing you. Pull a receipt or paycheck out of your pocket and the City is there to take its sizable Per Diem."

Friday, July 22, 2011

Weblog

You just need this degree and you'll be rich!
University of Michigan business school to offer  Master’s in Entrepreneurship graduate degree (Michigan Daily)
Random thoughts: Can you really teach entrepreneurship though? Is it really worth $36-$50k for a degree like that? Bottom line: A currently hip and cool degree program that will end up being a career non-starter and a student loan debt suck hole after the shiny wears off.


Hitler associate's bones exhumed, burned, and cremains scattered 24 years after his death (Lansing State-Journal)
All because certain undesirable sorts were making Rudolph Hess' grave site into a "must visit" neo-Nazi shrine. Go figure?

Successful robbery of Detroit armored car thwarted because "mastermind" had to boast, brag, strut, tweet, post pictures on Facebook showing off his loot (The Smoking Gun)
Stupid mofo. Should have beat it out of town. Sheesh.

Boing boing blogger tries to help Troy, MI save its public library system (Cory Doctorow)
I fear it won't be enough though. This is truly sad.

Fred Reed says we should all expatriate or failing that move out to a shack in the woods. Again.
And which is kinda what he always says, but whatever. He's fun to read just for his writing style. (Via Lewrockwell.com)

An interesting profile of the billionaire mayor of NYC Michael Bloomberg (Village Voice)
Third terms in executive offices tend to be disappointing legacy killers.

Maintenance and up-keep of household ceiling fans (Popular Mechanics)
Interesting. Soap and water works as well keeping them clean as expensive specialty products. Go figure?

MA man says he's  cracked the Zodiac Killer's coded messages (Belmont Patch blog)
He seems to have done it.

Metal Thieves: Vultures of a Fallen Empire (Taki's Magazine)
"Pecking at his rigid corpus [of the American Empire] are an unsavory assortment of human buzzards, scavengers, pack rats, hyenas, and scroungers—nearly all of them on meth, crack, or meth/crack cocktails—who busily pick apart the remaining sinew and marrow from his bones."

Yep. All that but it's still a decent way to pick up some easy extra beer or gasoline money too. Just don't take it too far, eh?

Ten things I hate about the right (wing) (Gavin McInnes, Taki's Magazine)
Spot on.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Weblog

Macomb county jail inmate suing over porn access (Robert Snell, Detroit News)
While serving time for assault, assault & battery and awaiting sentencing for an armed robbery Kyle Richards spends his time filing lawsuits. Richards latest suit wants the state of Michigan to order Macomb county jail authorities to let him have porn, have a private TV, radio and electronic entertainment devices. All of Richards suits have been dismissed ( at least so far).

Motorcyclist protesting helmet laws crashes, hits head, dies (USA Today.com/)
Oh the irony.

Electric cars the future? Some bet on returning to the horse (Jason Peters, Front Porch Republic)
"I said in conversation recently, to my auditor’s utter bafflement, that I fully expect horses to be the technology of the future and that learning to drive a team would be good work for our rising youngsters.
This isn’t cheek. I mean it. What we did when we discovered how to use oil was build a Hot Wheels world with no thought for its limits. We backed the horseless carriage, and now it is coming up lame in the final turn."

The author's screed is about how clueless the New York Times is these days. But what he uses for examples of their cluelessness is interesting too.. Those electric cars like the Volt, Prius and the rest need to run on has to come from somewhere too,  just like the oil we burn now.  And that's a path that leads us all right back to the nuclear power plants and coal mines we're currently trying to phase out, eh? Just saying.

The atavistic appeal of the double-barreled "coach gun" even in modern times (Popular Mechanics)
"Although repeating rifles held more rounds and had a greater range, only in Hollywood does one score consistent hits on moving targets from the bouncing box of a fleeing stagecoach. The multiple-shot charge from a smoothbore was far more likely to score, and since only hits counted in that situation, shotguns were the choice of savvy stage guards. There were some repeating shotguns available that could hold more than the two rounds of the double barrel, but their mechanisms were rather delicate and not up to the rigors of stage travel. That made them less than reliable. The sturdy little double barrels suffered no such ills. They were virtually indestructible, and even if heavily fouled they would fire as long as shells could be rammed into the chambers and the action closed."

In fact, the term "riding shotgun" is still in common use today.

"...I heard yesterday that the jurors [in the Casey Anthony trial] will have spent about seven weeks for this government trial. The judge is paid; the lawyers are paid; the court clerks and guards are paid. They are all there voluntarily. Jury 'service' should be paid, and voluntary, too. How about a per diem equal to the judge's?"

Seems fair to me. That's a long time to be putting your life on hold in the service of the state without any compensation. Even draftees back in day got paid something.

The American nosedive (Jim Goad, Taki's Magazine)
In moral courage anyhow.

"Reading the Declaration of Independence 235 years after it was written, it’s kidney-punchingly obvious that the United States government has become precisely the sort of bloodsucking tyrant against which the Founding Fathers revolted."

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Weblog

An example of a typical case of metal theft (Jackson Citizen-Patriot/MLive)
"Officers were called about 3:40 p.m. to the home, which is for sale, by a real estate agent.The realtor found copper that had been cut from the plumbing of the home, and was laying on the basement floor, police said. The real estate agent called the homeowner, who in turn called 911.Police suspected the crime had taken place recently."

What makes these crimes especially damaging is that thousands of dollars in damage are done just to get a few hundred dollars worth of copper.

Detroit Tiger's ticket sales soaring as  season progresses (Lynn Henning, Detroit News)
Funny how a winning season will do that, eh?

Say goodbye to Los Angeles. Say goodbye to California. (Pat Buchanan, American Conservative)
I already have.

LSD alleviates pain and frequency of cluster headaches (Science)
Do we need to have "medical LSD" clinics now too?

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Same old story...

Ann Arbor residents are now very concerned about street crime. They bitch about having too few cops due to layoffs and that AA is also becoming a police state in the same breath. Go figure? They despise the ideas of surveillance cams in high crime areas but want to build a wall around the city to keep "out-of -towners" out? Welcome to the People's Republic of Ann Arbor! A high-crime, low common-sense zone surrounded by reality in southeast Michigan.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

A commenter on Ann Althouse's blog in re the amazing ability of the PEUs and their allies to mobilize some large demonstrations and sustain them for so long and son well last February.

"The problem with any largish college town is that it supports a population of 10,000 flakey losers. That's one of the reasons I have not returned to Austin in the twenty-something years since graduation."

That "flaky loser" demographic (which Ann Arbor has as well) is definitely a big plus for flash mob demonstrations.