• From the “Really?” Department – Consumer Reports is speculating that, in the event that it actually happens,  insurance would cover damage, both personal and property, caused by a sharknado.  If you’re looking for another reason I don’t subscribe to Consumer Reports anymore, this is a pretty good one.  That’s a lot of ink, paper, and electrons to waste on speculating on how insurance companies would react to a farcical event from a made-for-TV movie.
• From the “Pet Deposit” Department – A historical site in France has decided to get rid of its baboon population due to the damage the primates are causing.   The baboons are housed in the zoo that is part of the Citadel of Besancon, and have been removing stones that are part of the buildings.  I look forward to the first time I can use the phrase “ejected like a French baboon”.  No word yet on where the baboons will end up, but I hear that Detroit is looking for cheap labor to dismantle abandoned houses.
• From the “No Leach Left Behind” Department – The state of California has continued to drag its heels on implementing a system of grading the performance of public school teachers.  Tools like that are useful for parents evaluating whether or not to send their children to a particular school or for administrators to reward good performance and ease poor performers either into positions where they can do better or out of the profession altogether.  I’m shocked to find that the teacher’s union is thought to be one of the main forces blocking it.  I guess having only the best people educating our children and finding things for those who just aren’t that good at it to do isn’t a priority.
• From the “Step In The Right Direction” Department – While the city of Detroit is flailing around in hopes of finding a way of not drowning under a tide of debt and mismanagement, some of its citizens have taken the chaos as an opportunity.  Some are running businesses that try to provide services such as transportation or maintenance in the cities parks that were previously provided by the city.  Here’s to realizing that you’re in charge of your own life and responsible for yourself and your community, not some nebulous “government”.
• From the “Chilling” Department – The IRS Inspector General has disclosed that on up to 8 occasions since 2006, members of the agency have improperly accessed and/or divulged tax information about political candidates or donors.  In all but 1 of those cases, evidence was either not good enough to refer prosecution or was shown to be inadvertent.  However, the Department of Justice refused to prosecute in that one instance, prompting requests for information from the House of Representatives.  Folks, like I said about the NSA thing, this isn’t a Republican or Democrat issue.  If members of the government are targeting anyone because of their beliefs, values, or political leanings, then we are all at risk.  The IRS needs a thorough house cleaning, pretty much on the scale of the Augean stables.
• From the “Oopsie!” Department – A wrecking crew in Fort Worth dropped the ball the other day when they demolished the wrong house.  The house in question was down the street from the correct structure, and thankfully no-one lived there at the time. The family that did own it says that it housed family momentos and valuable antiques. In related news, a building contractor in the DFW area was roused out of his bed the other day by public works officials, who are looking to have a house built paco tiempo.
• From the “WTF?” Department – The California penal system and doctors who worked for it are under fire after it was revealed that almost 150 women were pressured in to getting tubal ligations while incarcerated.  It appears that doctors were using pressure tactics to get the women to sign consent forms or were getting them signed while the women were under sedation for some other procedure.  One of the doctors is alleged to have suggested that doing this was good for reducing the welfare roles.  If these allegations are proven to be true, I hope that those responsible end up on the other side of the bars.  I’m all for people taking control of their reproductive choices, but “choice” is the operative word here.  A prisoner is very susceptible to pressure from authority figures, and if these doctors abused their positions to get more women to get their tubes tied, then they deserve punishment.  Even when incarcerated, citizens are supposed to be treated with at least a little respect for their rights.
• From the “Going to Hell On a Scholarship” Department – Authorities in Michigan are looking for $18,000 worth of hunting gear, including a large ATV, used by a charity that works to get disabled veterans out into the field to hunt.  Apparently the stolen goods were taken along with their trailers, and the charity is hoping that someone who knows something will either turn in the goods or turn in the perpetrators.  You know, there’s low, and then there’s “stealing from disabled veterans” low.  I hope they find these guys and sentence them to a lifetime of cleaning out septic tanks on the Upper Peninsula with a toothbrush for this.
• From the “FacePalm” Department – A doctor in Tennessee is in trouble after he tried to ‘de-technicalize” a diagnosis for a woman and explained that her lower back pain was due to her ‘ghetto booty’.  The doctor, who is apparently not in the running for the 2013 Bedside Manner Award, doesn’t seem to see the problem with his phraseology.  Personally, I will need to see high-definition pictures of the posterior in question before I make a judgement call.  I understand that the good doctor is moving into orthidonture, where he will describe why someone needs braces by saying they have “summer teeth” (Summer here, summer there).
• From the “SPAM in the Can” Department – Elon Musk, the entrepreneur in charge of the Tesla brand of automobiles, has an idea for speeding up travel between San Fransisco and Los Angeles.  It appears that his idea will resemble the old pneumatic tube systems that were popular in department stores, banks, and office buildings in the 1940’s and 1950’s.  Except in this iteration, the capsules will contain not bank candy, but rather they will be filled with people and luggage, then sent hurtling down an almost frictionless tube at over 600 miles per hour.  Nothing can go wrong here, folks.  When asked if the new system was safe, Mr. Musk was reported to have replied “Who knows?  But it sure will be fun to watch from my private jet!”.
• From the “Спасибо, Бабушка!” Department – Imagine that you’re a 19 year old girl.  Your country has been invaded, and your world is falling apart around you.  What would you do to help the war effort?  Would you work in a factory, or tend a farm to make sure there are beans and bullets for the army?  Maybe you work in a non-combat role to support the defenders of your nation.  If you’re Nadezhda Popova, you join a group of other women, who climb into obsolete aircraft with bombs strapped to the fuselage and wings, then conduct gliding night-time attacks on German lines.  Popova completed 852 combat missions in 4 years, and got shot down several times.  As one of the “Nachthexen” (Night Witches), she helped to slow, stop, and reverse the tide of Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.  Mrs. Popova passed away recently, joining the millions of World War II veterans that we have lost in the past few years.  I hope that for the sake of history that she told her stories to someone who had the presence of mind to record them or write them down.

We lost a good man today.

Kentucky bourbon legend Elmer T. Lee, the man behind the single-barrel bourbon that sparked the industry’s revival, died Tuesday at age 93.