The protestors are picketing outside a Las Vegas Wal-Mart in 100-degree plus heat for $6 an hour and no benefits. (The average hourly rate for Wal-Mart workers in Nevada is $10.17, and the stores are air-conditioned).
Why?
Because the working conditions at non-union Wal-Mart are so bad, I guess.
Read the story here. HT: King Banaian.
A report that just appeared on WebMD today offers evidence that suggests babies cry while in womb:
A baby’s first cry may happen in the womb long before its arrival in the delivery room.
New research shows that fetuses may learn to express their displeasure by crying silently while still in the womb as early as in the 28th week of pregnancy.
Video-recorded ultrasound images of third trimester fetuses show that they appeared startled in response to a low-decibel noise played on the mother’s abdomen and display crying behavior, such as opening their mouths, depressing their tongues, and taking several irregular breaths before exhaling and settling back down again.
Researchers say the results show that crying may represent a fifth, previously unknown behavioral state for human fetuses. Previously recognized behaviors in unborn fetuses include quiet sleep, active state, quiet awake, and active awake.
The article notes that researchers say this behavior would require complex development:
They say documenting crying behavior in third-trimester fetuses may have developmental implications because crying is a complex behavior that requires coordination of various motor systems. It also requires reception of a stimulus, recognizing it as negative, and incorporating an appropriate response.
Go here to read the entire article.
The Mall Diva’s treatise on gun safety a few days ago reminded me of when we took a DNR gun safety class together five years ago, and of our subsequent trips to the shooting range after she was certified.
Her first time with live ammunition she was 50 feet away and put her first shot in the upper left corner of the target – and her next four shots tightly in the black. I wasn’t too surprised because she seems to pick things up pretty naturally.
For example, when she was the same age as the firearm training she also wanted to learn how to throw and catch a football. She has good coordination and picked that up pretty fast, so we moved on to trying to catch the ball while on the run. On about her third “catch” or so the ball hit her hands…and then bounced into her nose. Oh, the agony and gnashing of teeth.
The indoor shooting range we were going to also had handguns for rent, and my daughter soon laid eyes on a Desert Eagle, a .50 caliber handgun that her instructor had talked about a couple of times and had even brought to class once. She wanted to shoot the Eagle. This may or may not have had to do with the time we were plinking with a .22 rifle at the same range and a couple of guys had shown up in the stall next to us with a .44 caliber pistol. Even with ear protection we could feel the concussion from each shot and the vibration through the cement floor and up through our feet. So then we’re at the counter and she’s saying, “Dad, let’s get the Eagle!”
“My child,” I said, “think ‘football and nose.’ Think ‘football times about 50.’ Think that maybe a gun that can stop a rhino can also lead to rhinoplasty.”
“Cool. So are we getting it?”
I could answer that, but I think I’ll just let the boys out there keep guessing for awhile.
CNN wasted no time in reporting that the Shaw Group, which has been awarded a couple of $100 million contracts to rebuild the Katrina disaster area, has ties to the Bush White House. In its haste to create another Halliburton-type conspiracy (Halliburton has also won Katrina-related contracts, btw), CNN’s unnamed correspondent either overlooked or under-reported a crucial detail, as Michelle Malkin notes:
The Shaw Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, is headed by Jim Bernhard, the current chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. Bernhard worked tirelessly for Democrat Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s runoff campaign and served as co-chair of her transition team. Another Shaw executive was Blanco’s campaign manager. Bernhard is back-scratching chums with Blanco, whom he has lent/offered the Shaw Group’s corporate jets to on numerous occasions.
Politics by its nature has always indulged its precocious step-children, Preference and Privilege, and this certainly didn’t start in Louisiana. Louisiana does have, however, a celebrated reputation for not just winking at such antics but even romanticizing them. New Orleans especially has cultivated the term “lagniappe,” a French-American word generally meaning, “something extra”. It imparts a wry and cultured cynicism to the transaction, as if to say, “Why, cher, cronyism is such a harsh word, and one must be mindful of one’s manners. After all, it’s really just a matter of perspective.”
I suppose a lot really does depend on how you want to look at something. Right, CNN?
HT: Bogus Gold.
cher ' to Del.icio.us" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to Del.icio.us" />cher ' to digg" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to digg" />cher ' to reddit" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to reddit" />cher ' to Stumble Upon" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to Stumble Upon" />cher ' to Google Bookmarks" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to Google Bookmarks" />cher ' to Ask" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to Ask" />cher ' to FaceBook" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to FaceBook" />cher ' to Barrapunto" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to Barrapunto" />cher ' to MySpace" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to MySpace" />cher ' to Twitter" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to Twitter" />cher ' to Social Bookmarking Reloaded" alt="Add 'It’s called lagniappe, cher ' to Social Bookmarking Reloaded" />Most reporting on the Federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina describes it in terms ranging from flatfooted to negligent to even criminal. Jack Kelly takes a detailed look at the facts instead of the perception here. An excerpt:
Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:
“The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.”
For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.
Read the entire article for an illuminating report of logistical achievement. HT: Hammerswing.
Medical attention was available but couldn’t be delivered. Death by starvation and dehydration was imminent as the days dragged by without relief. Everyone knew what was going on yet no one seemed able to do anything about it. In an unprecedented, emergency session the President and Congress of the U.S. acted decisively to preserve life.
And critics loudly protested this federal intervention as a usurption of state powers and unwarranted intervention into personal rights, the local authorities refused to act on the federal mandate, and Terri Schiavo died.
Now many of the same voices are blaming the federal government for not overriding the authority, responsibilities and policies of the city or state government to protect its citizenry. Certainly some of these citizens who refused to evacuate in advance of Katrina voluntarily accepted the consequences of their decisions just, as some claim, as Terri Schiavo did. Others who were weak, vulnerable or incapacitated had no choice but to be at the mercy of the actions or inactions of others. That, too, should sound familiar.
So, how was your Labor Day weekend? You might say, “Oh it was a blast, we got together with family and ate some food.” Or, as I have heard since the holiday, “We stayed in and let everyone else get drunk.”
Oh! Ummm…ok. I’m glad you had a good time.
Anyway, I’m betting that most of your weekends weren’t nearly as interesting as mine. It started off as a normal enough trip to Oklahoma, and ended in a fight for survival!
Ok, ok. It was more of a “hunker down and pray that we don’t get hit by any stray bullets for survival” kind of thing.
Yeah, I said bullets!
Stray ones!
You see, my dear grandmumsy lives in one of the most … interesting … neighborhoods in Tulsa and sometimes the good folks down there just get their dander up. Here’s the dilly-o:
Sunday night, about 11:30, I heard gunshots. First there were five or six, then there was a lull, and then there were three more. Well, the third one hit something. I was up off the floor (actually, I was on an air mattress) and looking out the window just as fast as you can say “Sweet Onion Chutney!” I couldn’t really see anything, so I went to the room where my mother and sister were sleeping. They informed me that the bullet had come through their window. Yeah. We turned on the light and looked around, and found that the bullet had not only gone through the window, but had also gone through a wall on the other side of which was the bathroom. The bullet then ricocheted off the opposite wall in the bathroom and finally came to rest beside the toilet.
We called the police (obviously), and they sent someone over. The policeman asked us several questions, one of which was, “So, are you ready to pack up and move down here?” You’ve got to be kidding me. Anyway, a detective was on the way, but he was taking so long that I told the officer to call him and have him pick up some donuts for us, as by this time it was morning, and we might as well have some breakfast. He laughed at me. Hey, no harm in trying. While we were waiting for the detective, I did my nails. He was taking forever! Once, he got there, though, the rest went pretty fast, he took some pictures, bagged the bullet, and left.
On his way out, the officer told us what had happened:
Two girls were trying to break into a car at the apartment kind of across the way from us. One of them sliced her hand on the broken window, and the other went over to a man who always sits on a chair outside his apartment, and she started “chippin’ her teeth at him,” as the officer said. Well, he just ups and pulls out his pistol and starts shooting at nothing in particular. I guess he just wanted to scare them; hence the window-busting bullet. What makes me really mad is his total disregard to one of the most important commandments of gun safety:
Always know your target and what lies beyond it – especially if it’s me!
So, yeah! My Labor Day weekend was a blast, too!
Update:
The Mall Diva is my teen-aged daughter, making her blogging debut. She knows the rules of gun safety, having earned her DNR Firearm Safety Certificate five years ago.
– Night Writer
It’s been a distracting couple of days. I’m right in the middle of the annual budget process at work, which is always a challenge for a numbers-averse guy such as I but is now complicated further by being in the middle of a changing over to a new laptop and operating system. On top of that, Wednesday night was my Fantasy Football draft requiring study on Tuesday night and, as I’m the commissioner, extra duties afterwards.
Then real life its ownself got a little fantastical, as my wife and daughters returned Tuesday night from a trip to visit family in Oklahoma and had to report on braving Hummer-sized cockroaches and sharing their bedroom with a speeding bullet. The Mall Diva has promised to describe her version of the events here in the next day or two, but in the meantime, Tiger Lilly has this account.
I showed up last night at the official MOB event at Town Hall Brewery at 5:20, and there were no bloggers to be seen on the patio or in the bar. I just figured everyone was being fashionably late. No, actually, what I was thinking was this was some kind of rookie initiation prank to see who can be fooled, similar to the “free turkey” giveaway prank the Vikings vets pull on the rookies each year.
Since it was a nice evening I decided to park it on the patio anyway. While waiting for bloggers to show I heard someone at a nearby table asking why the military couldn’t have just dropped food and water from helicopters to the people near the SuperDome. The juxtaposition of the question so close to my thoughts of turkeys immediately reminded me of the WKRP in Cincinnatti episode where the station decided to put on a Thanksgiving promotion by dropping turkeys to people in a parking lot – from a helicopter. I can’t remember for sure if the turkeys were live or frozen, but the result was disastrous either way, and the scene was perfectly played because the television writers knew the power of radio; they showed the cast sitting in the station listening to the broadcast of the “drop” as narrated over the air by newsman Les Nessman, “Oh, the humanity! The humanity!” The writers left the scene to the viewers imagination, as I have just left it to yours. Also for your imagination is what I may or may not have said to the person at the nearby table.
Anyway, it was but a few moments before I was joined by the eponymous Martin Andrade and Barry from Water Cooler Wisdom and Larry from…actually, I don’t know if Larry has a blog, but he’s not short on opinions. Minutes later Learned Foot and V-Toed Bill showed up to represent the Kool-Aid Report, though their shirts made it appear as if they were about to start representing Hawaiian Punch instead. Soon Swiftee from Pair O’Dice and his wife Trisha (Tricia?) were there as well. It was the first time I’d met Swiftee, and, well, he looks pretty much like I’ve always imagined him, except he wasn’t wearing a pirate bandana around his head.
There was still no sign of our hosts, Mitch or the Fraters, but our patio group was growing and having a great time, especially when David Strom and Margaret Martin showed up from Our House. David was carrying a case that looked as if it held his 8-track tape collection. Instead, he was packing heat – a wide selection of cigars, from which he offered me one. It was great – and I was so honored that I’m not going to wash my hair for a week! Once I managed to keep it lit and my eyes stopped watering I saw Sandy from the MAWB Squad, who introduced me to Peg from What If, who I’d never met.
Then the non-blogging conservative radio host Bob Davis arrived and shortly after that Mitch Berg came out; it appears a small MOB group was gathered in the back room of the bar, wondering where everyone else was. Well, sorry, but there wasn’t a sign or anything pointing out where to go (which, given our proximity to the U, was probably a good thing from a security standpoint), but you can’t really expect an independent group like this to automatically go where they are expected anyway.
The announcement that a beachhead had been established on the patio brought King Banaian out. He wanted to usher everyone back inside – until Stromie gave him a cigar, and the Hennepin County Smoking Ban succeeded in changing behavior after all.
My brain is still in holiday weekend mode so this is as good a time as any to dispose of this music meme that’s been going around listing the top songs from the year the writer graduated from high school. One thing I’ve been sad to see is that everyone else’s list is at least two years more recent than mine. So let’s climb into the Way Back Machine for a trip to 1976.
Here’s some background: part way through my junior year in high school our family moved from a big city to a small rural town in Missouri, 21 miles from the nearest of even the most basic teenage creature comforts such as a McDonalds. This was not a pleasing development for me. I’ve always figured I just didn’t like small town life; looking back at this list of the top hits and through thirty years of perspective it may be that I just didn’t like the music.
This meme calls for me to strikethrough the songs I hated, boldface the songs I liked and do nothing with the songs that were neutral. I’m also supposed to underline the best and worst, but I don’t have an underline function on my toolbar, so I’ve used asterisks. While there were a lot of bad songs to choose from for worst of the year, I’m going with Show Me the Way by Peter Frampton.
By itself it’s not any worse than the others, but it has a strong negative association. You see, my senior class left on a chartered bus immediately after our graduation ceremony for the Senior Trip to Daytona Beach. The bus had a tape deck and we started out with, I think, three different tapes. Within the first six hours, however, two of these had either broken or developed that tell-tale 8-track flutter. All we were left with was Frampton Comes Alive — over and over and over. Why didn’t we buy another tape at some point in the week-long trip? Well, Missouri had a 21-year-old minimum drinking age. Most of the states we were driving through had 18-year-old limits. Our resources were almost exclusively dedicated to buying beer, and — being high school graduates — we knew that the cheaper the beer, the more you could buy. So to this day I can’t hear Peter Frampton or see a can of Old Milwaukee without a sense of revulsion.
Best song? That’s easy, too: Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Remember the scene in the movie Wayne’s World where Wayne, Garth and two friends lip sync in the car to this tune? I lived this, decades before it was captured on film. Otherwise, 1976 was a pretty dismal year for music, overall. If I sometimes seem a bit crabby on this blog you simply have to remember my early influences.
Anyway, here’s the list. If you want to play along with the year you graduated, here’s the link to the Music Outfitters site that has the lists.