Here’s a big dump of links I’ve been noticing around the web and not able to get into posts lately.
- Today’s Daily Journal story about the Oxford hostage situation has a good chronology of the events.
- When Barbour announced he was entering an executive order cancelling state funding for Acorn, I thought: “Right, like there is any.” Initially, only the Jackson Free Press bothered to follow up on that thought, and reported there wasn’t any. Today, the Clarion Ledger catches up and reports the same thing, headlined “Governor’s Order to Shun Acorn May Mean Little.”
- Speaking of the JFP– Adam Lynch reports in the JFP about Hood firing back over the Mississippi Medicaid director’s barbed remarks. The JFP cites Hood as identifying the $24M fraud with Tri-Lakes Hospital. I posted this the other day after a tip from a reader.
- This Commercial Appeal piece about Ole Miss’s unfortunate trip to South Carolina was interesting. About suddenly waking up to using McCluster as a running back in the 4th quarter, “Offensive coordinator Kent Austin said that too many long down-and-distance situations kept him from using McCluster at running back earlier. ‘We put him a tailback to see if he could give us something and spark us,” Austin said. “You have to understand when you are consistently in third-and-long yardage, there’s a not left open in your playbook.’ “
- A Georgia contractor got 21 1/2 years for fraud in ripping off folks seeking home repairs in New Orleans after Katrina. He entered a guilty plea to taking over $500K from the victims.
- This story from Natchez weirdly brings together two themes of prior post on the blog– shooting deer in the city limits, and police misuse of disorderly conduct charges. A woman found an injured deer in town, called the police, and asked the police officer to put the deer out of its misery. Somehow, in the course of her pleading, she found herself arrested for disorderly conduct.
- Dr. X is right: This video of Glen Beck– who will not explain what he meant when he referred to Obama and white culture– is totally creepy. Oh, and Katie Couric is (once again) really great at being persistent and not letting him duck.
- I’m completely dubious about this one (also h/t to Dr. X), that researchers have concluded that it may be possible to sort liars from truth-tellers by asking them to draw pictures. What do they think liars more likely to do? Draw a picture from above rather than their point of view in the room. If I’m asked to draw a picture of a room where I’d been, I’d draw it like a plan or diagram of the room, which means from above. It conveys more information about the room, and is easier to draw accurately. The researchers found what they’d sought to find, and it sounds like junk to me. I hope the suggestion that this will become part of police practice isn’t real.
- A New York judge dismissed a motion for a default judgment in part because the motion was improperly stapled. “‘[T]he poor stapling of the papers was so negligent as to inflict, and did inflict repeatedly, physical injury to the court personnel handling them,’ Supreme Court Justice Charles J. Markey wrote … ‘Such negligence on the part of counsel shows a lack of consideration.’”
‘[T]he poor stapling of the papers was so negligent as to inflict, and did inflict repeatedly, physical injury to the court personnel handling them.
The good judge shoulda fired all the court staff who were too stupid handle “negligently stapled” papers, or for recognizing a hazard and failing to take curative action and/or warn others.
Bad stapling happens.
http://www.panolian.com/content.aspx?module=ContentItem&ID=153648&MemberID=1180
“A Georgia contractor got 21 1/2 years for fraud in ripping off folks seeking home repairs in New Orleans after Katrina.”
…And State Farm, who ripped off hundreds and hundreds of hapless homeowners, got off free.
How can this be…
I watched that Glen Beck video and hurt for our civilization. That people take someone like him seriously when they could turn to McNeil/Lehrer or The Wall Street Journal for news (or comfort) shows how weak we have become. If someone is/wants to be conservative, that’s fine… it’s only insulting when people take the Glen Becks and Ann Coulters (modern American ghouls) seriously (and choose them over the George Wills and David Brooks).
And then I turned to npr.org and see the front-page headline that William Safire has died. I’ve disagreed with Safire since he worked for Nixon, but I always was sure to read his conservative opinion pieces and his Sunday On Language column in The New York Times Sunday Magazine is a week’s highlight. I remember the Sunday in -I think- 1994 that Safire responded in the Times to a reader from Water Valley that it is always wrong to abbreviate Mississippi as “MS” except on something going through the U.S.P.S. I loved him for that.
I may have disagreed with him about Watergate and Reagan’s Star Wars, but he was a hero nonetheless. In a world where Tim Wildmons and Matt Friedemans exist, William Safire was a treasure.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113255309
Chico, thanks for bringing up Safire’s aversion to the use of postal codes as proper abbreviations of state names. Why anyone would use the ham-handed postal designation “MS” (which is also shorthand for multiple sclerosis) on anything other than an envelope, rather than the elegant and proper “Miss.,” is beyond me.
Hear, hear, Dragoman. I do admit, though, to a chuckle when I see a beat-up old work truck with something on the door like “Palmer Brothers Pulpwood, Troy, Ms.”
My bad: double post.
Chico: Mr. Palmer is likely using a signpainter who charges by the letter. I wish I could attach pix to these posts … I’ve got a little collection of Mississipi … I mean, MS … (mis)signage. Nobody does signs better (or worser, depending on your value judgments) than Mississippians. Or MSians.
Oh … one more MS note: the Coast Guard requires, and provides, Hull Identification Numbers [HIN] for all boats in the US … it’s the marine world’s equivalent of automobile VINs. But the Coast Guard’s system abbreviates Mississippi as MI. Look on the bow of any boat registered in Mississippi. Go figger.
My local favorite odd handlettered sign was on the road from Highway 6 to the dam at Sardis. It was on a ramshackle fence on a very rough gravel road and said
KEE
POUT
I always enjoyed handpainted signs that read “do not blok driway” or “private dryway.”
NoMiss: I can show you one between my house and town that says (I wish I could copy the hand-scripting): DONT BLOK CARPORCH