• From the “Priorities” Department – The USDA is moving ahead with a pilot program to allow people on government assistance to use their SNAP benefits, commonly known as food stamps, to purchase food through on-line vendors who will deliver groceries to your door.  While this could alleviate the problem of poor people who do not have access to transportation and live further than is conveniently walked from a grocery store, this brings up a couple of question:  If you’re too poor to pay for your own groceries, how can you afford Internet access?  If you have the mobility to get somewhere with free Internet access such as a library or restaurant, don’t you have the mobility to get to a grocery store?
• From the “Tech and Tackle” Department – The NFL is considering putting tracking chips in the footballs used in games.  The technology will be used to track the ball’s location in space, especially during point-after and field goal kicks.  No word yet on whether they will include a pressure gauge.
• From the “Backups Save Lives” Department – A man, who has maintained his Blogger site for almost a decade and a half, recently found that all of this work, along with all of the information he kept in his gmail account, was gone.  It seems that Google shut him down for some unknown violation of their terms of service.  Attempts to find and fix the problem with Google have come to naught.  This is a reminder that when you use the “cloud” for anything, you’re using someone else’s computer and they can do pretty much anything they want with your work.  Backup your data, people.
• From the “Parenting” Department – A Pennsylvania woman is in trouble after she allegedly used the trunk of her Corvette as a car seat for her children.  In related news, I was just reminded of the many times I was used to hold down the hatch on a 1974-ish Ford Pinto when my father needed to go to the lumber yard 30 miles away.
• From the “Home Cooking” Department – A woman in Tennessee had to call the fire department recently due to a fire in her bathroom.  It seems that she had decided that a little barbecue would be good, so she set a fire in her fiberglass bathtub and tried to cook brisket over it.  Now, everyone knows that when you’re trying for that authentic barbecue flavor, you use porcelain-glazed cast iron, but it’s good to try new things every once in a while.  There is no information as to whether she used a tangy, mustard-based fire suppressant on her meat, or if she is of that heretical sweet ketchup sauce splinter faction.

Tonight, we can add Nice to a list of cities that includes Paris, London, Boston, and Madrid.

The people of Nice had gathered to celebrate their revolution, to remember the promise of Bastille Day.  Their peace, bought with centuries of toil and blood, was shattered by men who came not to celebrate, but to murder.  They did not target France’s military, nor her government.  They targeted her men and women, her children, her old people.  They targeted her soul.

The threat is leaving the big cities and branching out to the heartlands.  Nice is not Paris, nor is it Brussels.  It is only slightly larger than St. Louis in population.  In the United States, a city its size would probably not have security as would be expected in places such as Boston or Chicago.  The enemy is learning to strike where their targets are softest.  I fear that it is a lesson that will not be ignored here.

Yet again, innocent blood has been spilled at the hands of an evil growing in our world.

Yet again, we will hear the mealy-mouthed platitudes of the politicians and the pundits.

Yet again, they will tell us that we must not judge, that we must not blame others for these actions.

I have a different exhortation for the people of France, for all of the free world.  I hope that the call is taken up until the world rings with it, until its utterance strikes terror in the hearts of our enemies.

Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

To arms, citizens,
Form your battalions,
Let’s march, let’s march!
Let an impure blood
Soak our fields!