• From the “Dumbass” Department – A man in Colorado was arrested hours after he allegedly robbed a bank wearing a shirt with his name on it.  Reports are that he will be clothed in jail with an “I’m with Stupid” shirt, only the arrow will pointing up.
• From the “Been There” Department – A woman in Washington was arrested recently when she failed to stop for a police officer.  What drew the officer’s attention was her boyfriend taking a flying leap out of the car to avoid arguing with her.  All I can say is that I know the feeling.
• From the “Demon Rum” Department – A man in Washington was arrested when he broke into a home and refused to leave, all while taking drinks from a bottle of whiskey.  It appears that Otis thought he was at a a friend’s house, but missed his turn and was 10 miles away from his expected destination.  I’m assuming that he brought the booze with him, since I expect that a teenager seeing someone drinking his father’s whiskey would have put that knife to good use.
• From the “ChooChoo” Department – The Obama administration has decreed that railroads must use stronger rail cars to transport flammable liquids such as crude oil.  Railroads will have two years to comply with the new regulations, which mandate phasing out older cars, added armor on new cars, and bags of kitty litter strapped to the sides.  If only there were a way to move mass quantities of liquids from one part of the continent to another. You know, like a line of pipes, with these stations that have pumps.
• From the “Oopsie” Department – A woman in California had a surprise recently when a large advertisement banner fell on her house.  It appears that the banner, which was advertising for an insurance company, broke free from the plane towing it.  No word yet on casualties, although there are unconfirmed reports that the pilot was found badly bruised and covered in gecko bites.
• From the “Callback” Department – In my last roundup, I talked about the vials of smallpox virus that were found in a defunct lab. Now, the same scientist who found that cache of doom has repeated the feat.  Over 300 vials of pathogens were found at a NIH facility in Maryland, and the government has promised swift action to make sure such things never happen again.  New federal guidelines forbidding the cleaning out of storage rooms have already been drafted and published.
• From the “Knowledge is Power” Department – A Pennsylvania woman is facing jail time after being arrested in New Jersey for having her gun on her with hollow point bullets in it.  While I believe that the law is garbage, I have to side with New Jersey on this one.  If the law is on the books, then she ought to have known it and planned accordingly.  Your concealed carry license is only good in the states that recognize it, and you have to follow the law when you travel.  If her concealed carry instructor didn’t tell her that, then shame on both of them.
• From the “Conundrum” Department – A judge in California has found that state’s death penalty unconstitutional due to the long wait that condemned prisoners go through while their multiple appeals go through.  You see, it’s cruel to execute them immediately after trial because they have the right to appeal their conviction, but it’s also cruel to make them wait until all of the appeals that they initiate wend their way through the governor’s office and the courts.  Wait, what?
• From the “Self-Inflicted” Department – A woman in Florida has been awarded $23 billion in a lawsuit against a tobacco company.  It would appear that her father never bothered to read the side of a pack of cigarettes, read the newspaper, or watch the TV news after 1952, so he did not know that cigarettes were bad for you.  While he did try on multiple occasions to quit, he was never successful.  While I feel for her, and I believe that at least a few generations of tobacco company executives were slime, nobody put a gun to his head and told him to light up.
• From the “NIMBY” Department – A shooting range in New York, which had been in business for 73 years, was recently shut down after the utility company that owned the land terminated its lease.  It appears that pressure on Con Edison had mounted over the years as homes were built next to the range.  My question is this:  If you don’t want to deal with the noise and such that such a facility brings with it, why did you build a McMansion next to it in the first place?  Then again, I was raised right and have common sense, so maybe I’m asking too much here.
• From the “Hypocracy” Department – First Lady Michelle Obama, taking a break from her hectic schedule of spot checking the consistency of the gruel fed to school children, recently had a bit of cognitive dissonance.  During a speech when she decried the influence of money in the political process, she asked her audience to “write the biggest, fattest check” they could.  In follow-up comments, Mrs. Obama decried the violence in Ukraine, then asked the audience to “kill a Commie for Mommy”.  She also suggested that they support the Palestinian movement by keeping kosher, and to help the President advance his gun control agenda by joining the NRA.
• From the “Hubris” Department – A man in Maryland was arrested after talking trash on social media over whether or not the police could catch him.  Remember, pride goeth before the fall, and, to paraphrase Chris Rock, if the police have to come looking for you, they’re bringing an ass-kicking with them.
• From the “Customer Service” Department – A used car dealership in Florida decided to refund a customer the cost of some repairs, which should have been covered under warranty, with pennies.  The woman had complained to the DMV about the companies refusal to cover labor on the repair, and the DMV had ordered the refund.  While perfectly legal, this shows just how little the company cares about people buying cars from them.   Hopefully making them famous on the web will help others avoid them, and hopefully the owner comes down with a bad case of ocular hemorrhoids.

Numerous reports are coming in about a Malaysian passenger jet that has gone down east of Donetsk, Ukraine.  This is the region of Ukraine that has seen low-level conflict between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists.  Several military aircraft have been downed by the separatists, and the Ukrainian government claims that the separatists shot down this airliner as well.

What we know is that the plane was about to cross into Russian airspace when it went down, and was traveling close to 33,000 feet up.  A Surface to Air Missile (SAM) that can hit a target at that altitude is a serious piece of hardware, and requires trained crew and support personnel.  This isn’t a shoulder-fired piece of lawn tubing with a heat-seeking rocket in the back end, rather it’s, at least, a large tracked vehicle with a radar dish and launcher.  This means that, if the plane was indeed shot down, someone is supplying the separatists with up-to-date hardware and expertise.

But what does a shoot-down of an airliner owned by a third country mean to us?  It’s a tragedy, accident or incident, and I hope you join me in keeping the families of the casualties in our thoughts and prayers.  But is it something that is the business of the United States?  Let’s say the worst case scenario is true, and the Russians provided the equipment that did this, or worse, manned the hardware themselves.  Does it impact our policy and our interests?

I say that it doesn’t.  Yes, if the plane was shot down, then it’s a despicable act and possibly a war crime.  But it’s none of our business.   We’re lucky if we can get our populace and government ‘leadership’ to concentrate on their juice boxes so as to not poke holes in their soft palate.  Diverting their attention away from the economy, our own security, and whatever else they ought to be doing isn’t going to help anyone.

This isn’t our circus, and those certainly aren’t our monkeys.  Let Malaysia, Ukraine, and Russia hash this out.  We have other things that need our time and attention.

Update – In From the Cold has an excellent post up with more details.

• From the “Conduct Unbecoming” Department – Two police officers in Florida are under investigation after a traffic stop.  It seems that ainternal affairs officer was stopped by a patrol officer, and somehow that ended up in fisticuffs.  It is notable that the officer who made the traffic stop has been suspended, not the officer that failed, at first, to stop for him.  I wonder what would happen if I refused to stop for a LMPD traffic officer, then got into a fist fight with him.  I’d probably be safe to say he wouldn’t end up with a suspension while I got to go about my business.
• From the “Darwin Award” Department – A man in Utah died recently when he walked into a burning effigy of a character from “Where the Wild Things Are”, a children’s book and how-to manual on running away from home.  If you’re looking for an example of “tripping balls”, here you go.  Organizers maintain that their staff did nothing wrong and tried hard to keep people from waltzing into a bonfire shaped like a great horned beast.  They say they plan to modify their event, though, and will try to appeal to a more mature audience next year.  Their plan is to move away from effigies of characters from children’s books, and go with Tom Clancy effigies instead.
• From the “Four Rules” Department – A Michigan woman recently shot herself in the face with a shotgun when she slammed its butt into the floor to make a point.  Just goes to show that you have to break two rules (Always loaded, never point) to get someone hurt.  I wish the lady a speedy recovery so that she can continue to be a bad example to others.
• From the “When Foodies Attack” Department – A man was arrested at an upscale grocery store in Massachusetts when he went on a rampage of throwing cayenne pepper at other customers.  Authorities responded to the incident and deployed their tactical ZYDEKO (Zomething You Don’t Even Know Of) squad, who took the man into custody.  The man has been charged under the state’s draconian weapons laws, and may face a long term in prison for use of a chili to cause bodily harm and possession of spicy food without a permit.
• From the “Assault Chiclets” Department – Another Massachusetts man is under arrest after allegedly attacking an employee of a pizza restaurant with a gumball machine.  The man asserts that the attack was justified because the clerk had the temerity to disrespect him by giving back his money and giving him the pizza he ordered.  President Obama has responded by flying into Boston, playing a round of golf with Deval Patrick, sitting down with both men to drink a Narragansett, and decrying the proliferation of assault bubblegum machines in our country.  Bazooka Joe Biden was not available for comment.
• From the “Time on His Hands” Department – A man in New York has spent half a million dollars to convert the basement of his home into a mock-up of the starship Enterprise.  When I first read the story, my first thought was that he had to be single, but it seems he does, indeed, have a wife.  Amazingly enough, reports from confidential sources lead me to believe that the happy couple has succeeded in consummating their marriage, a rare accomplishment for uber-geeks such as this.  I raise my glass of Romulan ale to you, master of the U.S.S. RootCellar.  May the dilithium crystals in your sump pump never fracture.
• From the “Call to Glory” Department – 14,000 men recently received threatening letters, which demanded that they sign up for the Selective Service.  Unfortunately, all of the prospective draftees are dead, having been born in the late 1800’s.  Then again, this may be an indicator of how President Obama will keep our armed forces up to the many missions they do around the world while he guts the active component like a trout.  A division of undead World War I veterans would be pretty impressive.  Heck, maybe they’ll sing some of my zombie cadences.
• From the “Sign of the Times” Department – Authorities in New Jersey are outraged when the memorial for a man who was shot by police after killing a policeman is larger and visited more often than the memorial for the officer he murdered.  I guess ‘keeping it real’ includes mourning a murdering son of a bitch, who told witness that he was going to be “famous”.  I give police a lot of grief, but I still, for the most part, hold them in higher esteem than I do the criminals.  Maybe I’m just not ‘real’ enough.

• From the “Statistical Analysis” Department – Police officers in Memphis have been calling in sick to protest changes to their health insurance.  Apparently hikes in premiums and other measures are causing an epidemic of the Blue Flu.  I see this as an opportunity.  I hope someone is taking the time to compare crime rates of the past few days versus the same time last year.  If 1 out of 4 police officers don’t come in to work and the crime rate doesn’t change, then I think we could safely say the taxpayers of Memphis don’t need 1 out of 4 police officers on the payroll.
• From the “Antediluvian” Department – Paleontologists in the Silicon Valley have unearthed a horde of fossilized remains at the construction site of a new dam.  Reports of what has been found has sent a surge of excitement through the scientific world.  Rumor has it that remnants of a PDP-11, the tape drive from a Commodore PET, and a complete skeleton of a NeXT desktop are included in the trove. Steve Wozniak was unavailable for comment.
• From the “Dafuq?” Department – The Environmental Protection Agency, known more for its harassment of citizens than for working to clean up anything lately, has decided that it has the power to garnish the wages of those who displease it.  Apparently a bullying federal agency with a proven track record of abuse needs just one more tool in its kit so that it can bring about the environmental utopia we all so desperately want and need.  Remember, kids, this is the same federal agency that was coaching people in how to sue the federal government to get things like cattle ranching in places with grass and water declared an environmental crime.  I’m sure this new power will never be abused by, say, garnishing the wages of someone who refuses to roll over and expose their soft underbelly when challenged by the EPA, thereby taking away the resources they could use to hire a good lawyer and sue the EPA.
•   From the “Trendsetter” Department – Kim Jong Un, glorious leader of the DPRK and successor to the talents of the Kim Family Singers, is yet again making waves in society. At a recent gathering, he was seen walking with a slight limp, and he has set the world of the hermit kingdom on fire.  Hordes of North Korean men have been seen in public squares working on their limp, and some have had to be told to tone it down so to not do it better than their dictator.  Reports that those who choose to not limp or are not very good at it are being thrown, along with three generations of their family, into prison camps, have not been confirmed.
• From the “Bad Things” Department – It’s amazing what you can find when you clean out that junk closet in the basement.  Things like old sweatshirts, mix tapes from that road trip to Rome in 1993, and of course, freeze-dried smallpox virus from the 1950’s all seem to turn up.  Apparently several sealed vials of virus were kept in a storage room at a government research facility for decades, and nobody found them until very recently.  Scientists are not sure if the virus is still infectious after so long at room temperature, but we’ve all seen enough movies and television to know that this is how the end of the world pandemic starts.  To me, it’s troubling that not only were these vials unaccounted for, but nobody even knew they existed until 1-800-GOTJUNK found them.  If this stuff is lying around, what else is out there just waiting for some research intern to open it and taste it to see what it contained? (Yes, I’ve seen that happen.  Luckily for him, it was only saline. The things you see as an IT geek.)
• From the “Beatdown” Department – An elderly woman in Texas survived a home invasion by hitting her assailant with a stick and throwing a pot of boiling water on him.  She seems to be doing fine, and police are on the lookout for anyone who comes to an emergency room with bruises and burns.  I kind of hope this guy is not found, because you know he told his fellow miscreants about the incident, and he will forever be known as the guy who got his ass beat and his butt boiled by an old lady.  Some fates are worse than death.
• From the “Catastrophe” Department – A truckload of Red Bull energy drink was lost the other day when its driver got into an accident, spilling the high-test jitter juice on the roadway.   Nobody was hurt in the accident, although one of the drivers was cited.  In related news, wildlife officials in Florida have released video of alligators breaking land speed records.
• From the “Man’s Best Friend” Department – A Georgia man was recently arrested after he told police officers that he left his dog in a hot car with an open can of gasoline because the dog drove him to the store.  Rover was removed from the car with no apparent injuries, but did refuse a field sobriety test and was taken away by animal control.

Louis Zamperini, the subject of the book “Unbroken“, has died.  Mr. Zamperini rose from humble circumstances to become an Olympian before enlisting in the Army Air Corps prior to World War II.  As a member of the crew of a B-24 bomber, he was captured by the Japanese after a harrowing journey across the Pacific in an open inflatable raft, and endured years of captivity and privation.  After the war, he was able to find his way out of a spiral into personal destruction and seemed to dedicate his life to improving the lives of others. His story is one of hope, perseverance, and redemption.

Such men come to us rarely, and he will be sorely missed.

• From the “Time and Place” Department – Somebody brought a 105 to the machine gun shoot, and that probably wasn’t the smartest thing they could have done.  You definitely need a pretty significant set of aiming sticks and one heck of a backstop to make something like that work.  If you’re going to fool around with the God of War, then maybe you ought to make sure of your target and what’s beyond it.  There are places where it’s perfectly safe to shoot real artillery, and there are places where you probably shouldn’t, no matter what precautions you take.
• From the “Balanced Diet” Department – Scientists have announced the discovery of rather conclusive evidence that our Neanderthal cousins had a nice salad with their mastodon filets.  Analysis of fossilized feces shows that ancient man, while eating a lot of meat, also had his share of vegetables.  Makes sense to me.  If you’re living close to the edge of starvation even in the best of times, and your teeth and gut can do it, adding calories and nutrients from the things you don’t have to chase would be a good idea.  And I can now say I learned something today:  Apparently human feces will glow under certain wavelengths of light due to their phosphate content.  Who said surfing the Internet wasn’t good for your mind?
• From the “Pet or Pest?” Department – Columbia has an issue with hippos, yet another fact that I never would have found without goofing off during my lunch hour.  Apparently Pablo Escobar, the late drug baron and collector of animals not from Columbia, had several hippo’s in his menagerie, and after his death they have flourished in their food-rich, predator-free environment.  Since hippo’s go from cute to murderous pretty easily, something needs to be done.  Columbia doesn’t want the expected bad publicity that they would get from declaring open season, because there was a hue and cry from the subset of humanity that prefers their meat grown in a vat and deposited on foam trays when they had to destroy a few problem hippopotami a few years ago.  Failing putting a bounty on every right front hippo foot brought into the ranger station, all I can see is either birth control or learning to live with the new neighbors.  I’ll leave out importing crocodiles as a solution, because I don’t want to play “She swallowed the spider to catch the fly” with my South American neighbors.
• From the “Mad Shatter” Department – An EPA office in Colorado recently had to put out a memo asking employees to not defecate in the hallways.  Apparently someone has been clogging up the toilets and leaving deposits in the corridors.  Maybe it’s a protest against the use of property-rights laws and honest environmental studies as toilet paper.  This might be where you could use one of those blue lights they mentioned in the above BBC article.
• From the “44 Ounces of Freedom” Department – A federal judge has thrown out a New York City ordnance that limits the size of sugary drinks that can be served in restaurants.  It appears that even in New York, you still have the right to eat what pleases you, no matter how bad for you it is.  In solidarity with my New York brethren, this weekend I am going to open-carry a handgun that holds more than seven bullets, while drinking a bucket of soda and thinking bad thoughts about Big Brother.
• From the “Long Legs of the Law” Department – The Russian Interior Ministry has published a directive that the dress code for police personnel has to be enforced, including men not cutting off the arms of their shirts, no mixing of civilian and uniform apparel, and female officers not wearing short skirts and high heels in uniform.  In an indicator of the attitude of the union leadership in Russia, one senior member is quoted as saying that the ladies might be dressing this way so that they can catch a husband.  Things sure have changed in Russia.  The few females in the government that I dealt with in the 1990’s dressed like something out of a 1932 Komsomol poster and were known to chew up and spit out any young lady who didn’t show up to work looking like they were ready to start building tractors.
• From the “Big Damn Heroes” Department – A police officer in Beirut is being hailed as a hero after he died stopping a car bomber on a busy street.  Just how much guts does it take to be the one who says behind to make sure the suspected bomber doesn’t drive away while your buddy goes to get help?
• From the “Politics” Department – Former President Clinton, speaking from his throne of nubile dark-haired young women, has proclaimed that his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is not out of touch with the poor people of the nation.  Drawing from his goblet of refreshing liquor, made from recycled Rolls Royce engines, he expounded on how hard it was to actually have a mortgage and have to work hard to get ahead in a career of living off of a government pension and being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to crack jokes and blame the worlds problems on those who work for a living.  The interview was cut short because Mr. Clinton was late for his afternoon fluff and buff, followed by a quick trip back to the Caribbean, where he could show his folksy roots by taking a walk on a private beach.
• From the “Dumbass” Department – A ‘graffiti artist’ in California caused me to stand up and slowly clap with tears in my eyes after he was arrested for defacing the courthouse in which he was being seen over 60 other counts of, you guessed it, graffiti-related offenses.  You know, it’s not often that we see stupidity crafted with such care and attention to detail.  This ranks with the DUI suspects who show up to court drunk, or the dead beat dads who show up to court wearing Armani and gold chains.  This young man is now the front-runner in the 5th Annual DaddyBear’s Den Dumbass of the Year Award.
• From the “Good Deed for the Day” Department – A group of Boy Scouts in Utah recently aided first responders by lifting an SUV off of a woman so that she could be rescued.  I have the utmost respect for these young men and their leadership.  I can honestly say that I cannot see me and my friends in Troop 425 doing something like this.  For us, scouting was an excuse to run around in the dark, set things on fire, and tie unsuspecting Scouts to trees and leave them in the wilds of northern Minnesota.
• From the “Good Start” Department – The Supreme Court ruled today that a public sector union cannot compel the payment of union dues from certain government employees who do not wish to be part of their club.  From the hue and cry I’m seeing over this, apparently we can expect to see government workers chained to their desks, dressed in rags, and fed only gruel made out of the leftovers from Las Vegas buffets.  How horrible it must be to be told that in order to get people to give you money for your services, you must convince them that those services are necessary and attractive.

• From the “Not Even Shocked Anymore” Department – A politician in Arizona seems to have changed his name from “Scott Fistler” to “Cesar Chavez”.  I’m not sure if I should be surprised at the racist notion that he can’t get votes from the Hispanic community without sounding like a member of that community, or that this is the first time I’ve heard of someone pulling this stunt.  Here’s hoping he goes down in flames and spends the rest of his life cleaning portable toilets with a toothbrush.
• From the “Best Part of Waking Up” Department – A company in Washington is coming out with a marijuana-laced coffee drink named “Legal”.  Finally, something that hipsters and stoners can bond over.
• From the “Going to Hell on a Scholarship” Department – A World War II veteran in Great Britain is looking for the man who stole his war medals on the 70th anniversary of D-Day.  It appears that the nefarious twit talked his way into the gentleman’s home, grabbed the medals, and left.  If he is caught, I will be taking up a collection to hire a couple of Royal Marines to toss the son of a gun out of a C-47 at the next D-Day commemoration.
• From the “Could Have Had A V-8” Department – Scientists in Minnesota have found evidence that rats can feel regret when they make a bad choice over food.  This is not news to me. I’ve seen a lot of two-legged vermin have regrets just before bad things happen to them.
• From the “Faith in Humanity” Department – The janitor at a school in Kentucky was surprised the other day when the student body handed him money for a trip to Italy to see his new grandson.  Nothing snarky to say here.  That’s a wonderful thing for those kids to do, and I wanted to pass it along.
• From the “FFS” Department – The Texas state Republican Party has added a plank endorsing anti-gay counseling to its platform.  Because gay people, whether you believe that how they live their lives is right, wrong, or none of your business, really just need some therapy to straighten up.  Nope, being supportive, understanding, or just tolerant won’t help.  We’ve got to get those gays on the couch and back in the closet.  In the words of my beloved Irish Woman – “Why can’t these people focus on something that’s important for once?”
• From the “Zherebets” Department – A male guinea pig in England is preparing to be a proud father after he impregnated 100 females at an animal park.  It appears that he was mistakenly put in with the ladies at some point, and one thing led to another.  The expecting father has been reported to be kicking back with the other males at the moment, but is making plans for weekend visitations at the little spinning track thing with his 400 offspring.

I don’t watch beauty pageants.  My main reason is that I’m a fat, balding 43 year old guy, and oggling 20 year old women in evening gowns and bathing suits would be creepy.  But of course, reading the news this morning, I saw that there was a big national show in Louisiana this weekend.  Apparently the young lady from Nevada won a new tiara to put above the family mantle, and she seems to have gotten a few backs up while she did it.

When asked about the problem of sexual assault on college campuses, Miss Sanchez replied that getting the problem out in the open and teaching young women to defend themselves are important.  I tend to agree.  No woman should be ashamed to come forward if she is attacked, and no woman should feel she has to be helpless in the attack.  Women should be encouraged to get the training, skills, and equipment necessary to deter attacks, defend themselves, and get away from the attacker.  Like Kathy Jackson says “If you have to fight, fight like a cornered cat.”

Now, it seems that some disagree that teaching young women that it’s OK to fight back and how to do it is the right thing to do.  Some have taken to social media to decry Miss Sanchez and assert that if only men were taught to not rape, then we wouldn’t need to teach women to defend themselves against rapists.  They’re correct, but I don’t think they live in the same world I do.

“If only we taught young men to not rape” is, to me, the same as saying “If only we taught people to not drink and drive” or “If only we taught people to not steal”.  No matter how much you educate, remind, and threaten, there are always those who are going to jump right over boundaries and hurt other people.

But they do have a point.  Young men need to be taught, preferably by people of both sexes, that a woman’s body is inviolate.  They should be taught that there is no exception to that rule, and no excuse for breaking it.  Men need to be a good example to their sons of how to think about women and act toward them.  A boy who is taught to respect women, to protect them, and to treat them as at least equals is less likely to look at them as objects or toys.

We have to cover both bases.  Our young men need to be raised up to believe that rape and rapists are abhorrent, and that they should never come close to the bright lines around sexual assault.  Our young women need to be raised up to respect themselves, to demand that men not use and abuse them, and to defend themselves against those who either don’t get the message or disregard it.

• From the “Feche le Voche” Department – The French railway system has had a bit of embarrassment.  It would appear that their new model of trains is just a tad too wide, and will require modification of the stations along the rails so that the new trains don’t get new dents as they pull up to the old platforms.  I’d like to laugh at this, but my government has also had issues when it comes to measurements, so I’ll let this one go.
• From the “Leather Throat Lozenge” Department – A Florida Congressman, who it should be pointed out represents many people who have fled Cuba and other communist/socialist dictatorships, seems to have decided that communism is just fine as a system of government.  It would appear that he believes that if everyone would just give up and work for the government, then the scourge of crime would disappear.  No word yet on his views when it comes to the millions of human beings killed by Communists in the past 100 years, or the billion or so people around the world who live in fear of homicidal repression if they were to ever voice an unpopular opinion, but hey, at least they have a job.
• From the “Schadenfreude” Department – The Che Cafe, a ‘collective’ coffee shop housed on the campus of the University of California – San Diego, is in trouble and its supporters are as steamed as a soy latte.  It would seem that in its 34 years of existence, the cafe, named after Third World hatchetman and tee-shirt model Che Guevara, has run over $1 million in the red and has become a deathtrap of fire and other code violations.  Now, the student body of UCSD seems to be balking at continuing to fund the cappuccino dreams of their neo-hippie comrades, and the Little Red Coffee Shop might be on its last legs.  To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, socialism only works so long as you can spend other people’s money, and I guess once the other people decide that your little experiment of a collective coffee clatch isn’t such a good idea, it’s time to either give up or mix a little capitalism in with your morning fair trade, shade grown, hand picked dishwater.
• From the “Pride Goeth Before The Fall” Department – DARPA, the defense agency responsible for the series of tubes that brings me news liberally mixed with cute cat pictures and advertisements for baldness cures every morning, has unveiled a new software suite for a quad-copter UAS, which they claim is unhackable.   The claim is supported by exercises in which the HACMS system flew around with a big “Hack Me!” sign taped to its back.  While I applaud DARPA’s efforts to head off another embarrassment like the one in which an American UAV was hijacked by the Iranians in 2011, nothing is unhackable so long as it is connected to a data network.  Instead of saying that the system has no hackable flaws, it would be more precise to say that no hackable flaws have been found, yet.  Given enough time, flaws will be found, and if they prove to be too difficult to exploit, there are always other systems that interface with it that will be easier.
• From the “Your Lying Eyes” Department – The Justice Department has decided to take the awesome technological leap of videotaping interrogations conducted by federal agents.  Imagine that, federal law enforcement is going to start doing the same thing that the Hooterville Police Department started doing in 1986.  This will help to bolster the allegations of what was done and said during interviews with suspects.  Interviews with witnesses, while not mandated, are being encouraged.  I suggest that any interaction between federal agents and the public, including routine inspections done by such agencies as the USDA and the ATF, be videotaped.  That way when the friendly neighborhood ATF agent decides to become abusive with an honest gun store owner or starts making copies of 4473’s, it’s not a ‘he said – she said’ situation.
• From the “Headline of the Year” Department – In what will certainly become a scene in the next Madagascar movie, a Russian alligator is recovering from injuries he sustained after a bus crash last week.  It would appear that Fyodor the crocodile was injured when a 260 pound female accountant was thrown from her seat in the circus bus and landed on him.  Fyodor seems to have sustained no permanent injuries, but was reported to have vomited for several hours afterward.  To be honest, I can’t blame him.  I knew several guys in Moscow who vomited for a while after being jumped on by large Russian women, but that usually involved the bars along the Novi Arbat and quart upon quart of what can be loosely described as vodka.
• From the “Good Kitty” Department – A cat in New Zealand brought home a surprise the other morning, and for once it wasn’t something covered in feathers.  Instead, a present of a baggie full of marijuana was presented to her owner.  The owner promptly called police, who collected the weed and decided to not charge the cat with trafficking.  Since it is common knowledge that a cat brings dead things to humans because it believes that we need to learn to hunt, is this a subtle hint from the feline that her owner needs to learn how to score on her own?

• From the “Games People Play” Department – A young man in Oregon caused a three car pile up when he passed out behind the wheel in a tunnel.  It would appear that he was holding his breath while driving through the tunnel, and the short time it took to transit the tunnel was too long for him to stay conscious.  Police are not giving out many details, but it has been reported that the man is also a suspect in a case in which a pedestrian was hit by a car whose driver had lifted his feet off the floor while going over railroad tracks.  Federal officials are also involved, believing that the young man may be the infamous “Punch Buggy” killer.