Headline AP: Dr.: No Regrets Helping World’s Oldest Mom

Way back in August, the downtown Pittsburgh library closed in order to move a few blocks. The sign on the new building said that it would open in the fall. I’ve been keeping an eye on it to see when it would open again, but the fall wore on into the winter, and it remained closed.

Today, over the lunch hour I went for a walk to check again on the library. As I walked by the William Penn Hotel, I noticed that there were numerous news trucks with parked all around the hotel. Strange. That usually means there is something big going on in town. Something news worthy. I noticed that one of the news trucks was from Rhode Island. I took a wild guess. Perhaps there is a major sporting event in town. But college football is over. Baseball hasn’t started, and the Pirates don’t have big games anymore. It can’t be the Penguins since hockey is in lockout. (What would happen to a sport if they canceled their season and no one noticed?) Well, whatever.

When I got to the library today, I found that it was finally open. The place is nicely laid out, with lots of new furniture and equipment. I walked around the two floors, checking out everything.

There were lots of new computers, and I was amused to see they had a small sign that said, “A library card is required to use this computer.” I guess the people I saw using those computers were doing so on behalf of their library cards.

All in all, it was a great walk, and I am glad that the library is open again.

Last year there was lots of news on the invisible front. We posted about invisible UFOs and invisible aliens. Also, a bishop hit an invisible man, and Vice President Cheney somehow recovered his visibility.

Now we learn that vagrants are also dipping into H.G. Wells’ elixir.

Headline Reuters: Homeless Mostly Invisible as Washington Celebrates.

Perhaps after the inauguration, Cheney can share the secret for restoring visibility with these vagrants.

It the same old story. You open your inbox to find an e-mail declaring that you have won another million dollars. Yawn. You know what comes next. All you have to do is send a certified check to handle the administrative costs. Or send your credit card or bank account number to “identify” you.

As you delete this nuisance spam, you wonder, “Why do they bother to send this junk? Who would fall for these transparent attempts to swindle them?”

Well, your question is answered. Meet G.H., the man who personally is responsible for encouraging scam artists world wide. G.H. is so good at falling for fraudulent get-rich-quick schemes that he has decided to share his story with the world and so the Pittsburgh Tribune Review writes about how gullible this man is. (Fortunately, they don’t give his real name, realizing that as gullible he is, this article would just be inviting more people to swindle him even more.)

G.H. likes to play foreign lotteries through the mail. Never mind that this is illegal (and usually fraudulent). He just likes to play them. What motivates him is how often he wins these foreign lotteries. It is almost unbelievable how often he wins these foreign lotteries. It is enough to make you suspicious. But of course, it isn’t enough to make G.H. suspicious.

G.H. first “won” $815,950 in a Spanish lottery. All he had to do to claim his winnings was to wire $750 to someone he didn’t know. Where alarms would be going off for normal people as they smelled a scam, G.H. gladly wired off his $750 while dreaming of how he would spend the winnings.

Of course, there were no winnings.

As Scottie tells us, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Amazingly, G.H. continued to play foreign lotteries, and guess what? This man is really good at this, because (you’ll never believe this) he “won” again. This time he “won” over $500,000 in an Australian lottery. But our boy G.H. is wising up. He doesn’t fall for the, “Send me money to process your claim” scam. No way. He’s far to smart for that. This time, he didn’t have to risk any of his money. They sent him a check for $4,800. All he had to do was to deposit the check, wait until the check cleared (proving that it is all on the up and up), and then wire $4,400 of that money, to cover the processing fees.

Does this sound suspicious to anyone out there? Guess what. Shame on G.H., because he did it. When the check cleared, he knew that this time everything was legitimate, and he really was going to get the half a million.

Well, the check was counterfeit and the payment was reversed, leaving G.H.’s account overdrawn and G.H. responsible to cover the debt. He’d wired the money out of country and it is almost impossible to get it back, so G.H. is stuck.

But the good news is that soon G.H. will be a millionaire, because a few months ago he joined the Millionaire Web Club. He has given them $30,000 to set up a web site for him that the Millionaire Web Club claims will earn him $25,000 a month, although all he has gotten from them so far is a check for $450. But that is a good start on his $30,000 investment, don’t you think? Maybe next month it will pick up to $25,000 a month, and he can quickly forget the losses on the foreign lotteries.

But not to worry. If his web site doesn’t pick up soon, G.H. is sure to “win” another foreign lottery shortly.

So, if you ever wonder why these scammers bother to send out their ridiculous e-mails promising how you can be rich beyond your wildest dreams if you just send them money, you now know that G.H. (and the few people like him) are the reason.

Ireland is going metric in their speed limits. But since the current limits are rarely enforced, most people don’t believe the new metric limits will be either.

Here’s the money quote from the article:

“They can list these speeds in watts or grams or, whaddya call ‘em, megabytes — I still won’t get a ticket,” said Pat Cullinane, a Dublin taxi driver….

By the way, my van can do 0 to 64 megabytes in under ten seconds.

The government schools might not be doing a very good job of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, but they certainly keep finding more things to occupy their time and attention. Since they consider themselves as the keepers of the children, they constantly increase their interference in the lives of families.

In the interest of the children’s health, Texas is considering measuring students’ body fat.

Headline WOAI San Antinio News: S.A. Lawmaker Wants to Grade Children on Weight

A Texas lawmaker filed a bill Tuesday that would require school districts to measure the body mass index of students and include the information in regular report cards, 1200 WOAI news reported today.

“We should be just as concerned with students’ physical health and performance as we are with their academic performance,” said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio. …

It sure is nice to know the Nanny State is out there looking out for the children. If the government schools do as well at teaching the kids how to be skinny, we will have lots of illiterate, chubby graduates.

One way to make the children skinny not discussed in the article would be to link funding for the schools to the percentage of body fat in the students. When the schools don’t measure up, just like with other measures, they can lower the standards, declare everyone skinny, and take the money. The students get skinny without any change and feel good about themselves, and the school gets the money. Everyone’s happy. Except the taxpayers who have to foot the ever increasing bill. And the parents who realize what a waste the government schools are. But back to the article.

Most parents don’t need to be told their child is overweight, said Eric Allen, a spokesman for the Association for Texas Professional Educators.

Hmmm. Do you really think so? Is it possible that the parents might be able to know what is going on in their children’s lives to the extent that they notice if they’re overweight? If the parents didn’t care before the school told them in the report card, why would they suddenly care after being told? I suppose it could be the first time some of these parents realized that their child eats too much and doesn’t exercise enough, and they could intervene to change the life patterns of their child. But I have to think that most likely the child is just doing what the parent is doing, and nothing will change.

But the patronizing attitude of the government is offensive. The assumption that parents aren’t aware of something as obvious as whether their child is overweight is just astounding to me.

But here’s what really caught my eye in the article. (Note: The article talks about how Arkansas has already instituted a policy where the schools have to measure the student’s body fat and report it to the parents.)

“I know they’re trying to tie academic success to a healthy body and healthy mind, but it doesn’t have a place on a report card,” Allen said.

That was a big concern of parents in Arkansas, too, said Martha Hiett, chair of the Child Health Advisory Committee. One newspaper cartoon even showed an overweight child with his head in hands sitting on the curb, she said. The caption below: “Oh no, now my parents are going know I’m fat.”

Via: Drudge

At a meeting at Circle-M this morning, the person running the meeting started by sharing some facts about how many international employees work for Circle-M. After telling us how many employees were at several countries, he then told us there are 63 employees in Dublin, Ireland.

Someone who loves a pun as much as I cut in, “Of course, since its Dublin, next year there will be 126 employees.”

Frequent commentor, Vinnie, recently requested that I post the official mj review of the newest Collective Soul release, Youth. I haven’t forgotten the request. I’ve just been trying to figure out how to do it. (I don’t want to let Vinnie down. He alone is over half of our regular mj readers.) There isn’t a Musical Review Division here at mj. Most of our staff are in the Making Fun of Headlines and Dopey Picture Caption divisions with a few to spare for the Snarky Political Comments and Serious Religion departments. Since I can’t figure out how to delegate this task, I’ll have to do it myself.

But I hesitate to try this. Musical reviews aren’t my strength. OK, I’ll be blunt: I’m lousy at this. In attempting to do this, I feel like a hockey player who is asked to figure skate. I’ll do my best, but if anyone says I don’t know a lutz from a salchow, I’ll take the easy way out: I’ll break my stick across them and go sit down for two minutes. In other words, I’m a ham-handed, make-fun-of-things kind of guy. Subtlety and refined insights aren’t my strength. I know what I like, but I can’t say why. I don’t have any musical insights but I’ll give it a try.

To set the background: I like Collective Soul. I generally enjoy their music. However, I find them to be a band that has one or two songs on an album that really grab me the first time I hear them. I love those songs, but I love them too much. In a couple months, I find that I’ve tired of them. Whereas there are other albums that don’t grab me like Collective Soul on first hear, I find that they grow on me, and I am listening to those other albums months and years later after I’ve set the Collective Soul aside.

In other words, for me Collective Soul doesn’t stand up to a lot of listening. Perhaps that is because I find that most of their songs are built around a catchy guitar lick and it feels like the guitar lick was their primary goal with the rest of the song being added on to make it marketable.

With that as a background, I like the new album. My son has stated that Youth it is one of Collective Soul’s six best albums. (That’s a joke. They only have six studio albums.) I’ll go further and rank it among Hints Allegations & Things Left Unsaid and Collective Soul as one of my three favorite Collective Soul albums, with Youth possibly being the first. (I need to give it a little more time to settle in its true position.)

As with most Collective Soul albums, the first song is the real grabber. I mentioned Better Now in an earlier post as a great song to listen to while running. I haven’t yet tired of the song, but from my experience with the other Collective Soul grabbers, I’m expecting it to happen, and so I am purposefully not listening to it as much as I would otherwise. When I hear it, I’ve got to stop what I’m doing, listen and sing along, especially the “Yeah, yeah” responses. It’s a great song, and I’ll feel bad if/when I get tired of it.

There really aren’t any songs I dislike on the album. All are standard Collective Soul fare. Heavy guitar driven rock. Some catchy phrases: “I’m happy as Christmas all wrapped to be seen.” — Better Now. “Cause you’re beautiful my love, when I close my eyes. Yeah you’re beautiful my love, under heaven’s skies.” — Under Heaven’s Skies. “Sing, like a bird that is now released. Like an angel with clip-on wings.” — General Attitude.

Overall, I’d say Youth has a mellow but hardy patina that begins with a full somnambulant ambience and moves on to a rich and full finish. (I warned you I was no good at this reviewing stuff.)

And with that I’ll throw a few punches and be out of here with a game misconduct.

Headline Pittsburgh Tribune Review: Notebook: Littlefield still desires a right-handed bat

Dave Littlefield still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. I can’t help him in his search for a right-handed bat. The best I can do is point him to a left-handed moth.

Ravelli [Chico Marx]: Hey, Captain. It come to me like a flash! This painting wasn’t stolen. Ha! You know what happened? This painting, Captain, disappeared, and yes, it disappeared. And you know what make it disappear? You’ll never guess, Captain. What do you think-a make-a this painting disappear, huh? Moths! Moths eat it…Left-handed moths.

Captain Spaulding [Groucho Marx]: Go away. Go away. I’ll be all right in a minute. Left-handed moths ate the painting, eh?

Ravelli: Yeah, it’s a-my own solution.

Spaulding: I wish you were in it. Left-handed moths ate the painting. You know, I’d buy you a parachute if I thought it wouldn’t open.

Ravelli: Hey, I got pair-a shoes. (Spaulding cringes)

Spaulding: Come on, let’s go down and get the reward. We solved it, you solved it. The credit is all yours. The painting was eaten by a left-handed moth.

–Animal Crackers

Q.15. By what sin did our first parents fall from their original condition?

A. Our first parents’ sin was eating the forbidden fruit.

Genesis 3:1-7

¹ Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” ² And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, ³ but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” ⁴ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ⁶ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. ⁷ Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.