This cartoon is a fun reminder of the early stages of relationships, when one is still finding out about the other's haps and mishaps, mistakes and corrections. Click the image to be taken to a larger view on the "Foxes In Love" Web page.
Ah, memories . . . !
Peter
Fellow blogger Eaton Rapids Joe mentioned Republic Ammunition in a recent post, particularly their low-cost primers. I took a look at their product line, and was intrigued to find this.
Er... um...
I can understand wanting to give your better half (?) a Valentine's Day gift that expresses your love.
However...
Is it wise to give your (current) better half a Valentine's Day gift that he/she can use against you if they (or you) decide that he/she/you is no longer their/your better half?
Not the sort of "target market" in which I'd like to participate!
Peter
Well, with a news report like this:
... what other common expression could I possibly use to headline this post?
(Those understanding artillery and/or explosive terminology can doubtless provide other useful terms to describe the situation. Being a family-friendly blog, at least some of the time, I shall refrain - but with difficulty...)
Peter
I went to a local hospital this week to pick up some CD's containing recent diagnostic imagery. I duly reported in, and was directed to a small office, where someone would meet me with the CD's. After a few minutes, a very pleasant young lady came in, handed me a brown envelope, and assured me that everything I needed was inside.
Being a trusting sort (NOT!), I opened the envelope. pulled out the printed records, and glanced at the first line. One word jumped out at me. It read, "HYSTERECTOMY".
I blinked, and looked again. Sure enough, it hadn't changed. I looked up at the nice lady, patted my (over-ample) belly, and said, "I may look pregnant, but I assure you, I'm not - and I've never had this surgery!"
She blinked in her turn, glanced at the paper, and turned beetroot-red. "Oh! OH! I'm sorry! I must have picked up the wrong envelope! Wait just a moment!"
I waited, grinning. The envelope had not had any name on it, so I presume they'd simply filed them in roughly alphabetical order based on the printed records inside. In due course, she returned, still slightly pink, and handed me another envelope. This time, the right records were inside.
I asked, "Do we need to look at the CD, to make sure it doesn't have happy snaps of a hysterectomy instead of my spinal scans?"
Her blush deepened. "Er... I - I don't think so?"
I left it at that and departed, still grinning. When I got home and told my wife, she almost collapsed, she was laughing so hard. We're both looking forward to finding out what images another doctor might see on the CD when he reads it!
Ah, the joys of (mis)filing systems . . .
Peter
It seems Ukraine's secret services (whatever they call themselves) have scored one for the home team against their Russian equivalents.
As far as the Russians were concerned, they had got their man.
Denis Kapustin, one of the most prominent anti-Putin Russians fighting on behalf of Ukraine, was reported dead on Dec 27, assassinated by a drone on the southern front.
He had long been hunted by Moscow and the price on his head reflected this: Russian intelligence services had offered $500,000 (£370,000) to anyone who killed him.
Russia paid this out after news broke of the successful hit this week. But what Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services did not know was that they had handed the money directly to Ukraine.
. . .
Mr Kapustin re-emerged – alive and unscathed – in a video posted by Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR).
“Welcome back to life,” Gen Kyrylo Budanov, head of HUR, said with a wry smile. He congratulated Mr Kapustin and his team on a successful operation to deceive their Russian adversaries.
It turns out HUR, along with the RDK, had hatched a plan to fake Mr Kapustin’s death and claim the $500,000 bounty from Russia for themselves, to be used in Ukraine’s war effort.
There's more at the link.
I wonder how many drones Ukraine will buy with that money? Last I heard, I seem to recall that their locally-manufactured FPV drones were about $4,000 per copy. If so, $500,000 will buy 125 of them . . . enough to administer rather a lot of explosive headaches to Russian forces across the front line. I wonder what the soldiers on the receiving end will have to say about their intelligence service's donation to the enemy? If we could hear them, we might learn some interesting new Russian words . . .
Peter
I can only hope she was hauled away in handcuffs - after being hosed down so that the paint didn't get all over the police cruiser!
I've seen that same attitude in many so-called "porch pirate" videos. They blame the person who put out the booby-trapped package to catch thieves, but never themselves for stealing. I can only blame their upbringing, for never teaching them right from wrong. If I'd tried that as a kid, my parents would have laughed at me, then whaled my ass off for stealing, then taken me back to the scene of the crime to invite the residents to give me another whoopin' - just in case I hadn't got the message by then!
A tip o' the hat to the anonymous reader who sent me the link to that video clip.
Peter
Today's award goes to a particularly dense TikTok user who filmed herself committing a felony. She threw a stolen gun off the Cross Lake Bridge in Shreveport, and then posted the video on social media. That was a bad idea.
You can watch another brief video of the proceedings at X.com. It's giggle-worthy, as are the comments about it from other viewers (you need to be logged in to X to view them).
Peter
Today's award goes to a bank robber in Ohio.
A 42-year-old man was arrested Friday morning after robbing the Huntington Bank on West State Street, marking the city’s first bank robbery since 2010.
According to the Alliance Police Department, Jauan L. Mason, recently moved to Alliance from Akron, entered the bank around 9:20 a.m. and claimed he had a weapon. He demanded cash and fled on foot with approximately $400 in one-dollar bills.
Police responded immediately and searched the area. Patrolman Paul Vesco located Mason walking on South Union Avenue near State Street. Mason had changed clothes and was carrying the stolen money.
. . .
During his arrest, he reportedly asked police to deposit the stolen cash into his jail commissary account.
There's more at the link.
It's weird how many criminals regard what they've stolen as theirs. "If I steal it, it's automatically mine!" - except that the law doesn't see it that way. I've encountered that attitude time and again among prison inmates during my time as a chaplain. I'm sure the police had a lot of fun pointing out to him that his deposit was going to be a big fat zero.
In this case, kudos to the teller who kept several big bundles of $1 bills in his/her drawer. It looks like a lot of cash, but in actual value it's not worth much. The robber simply grabbed the big bundles, doubtless congratulating himself on his score, and ran off with them without counting them.
Peter
The politician in question is Cory Booker. Basically, if it moves, as far as he's concerned it's Fascist, and must be condemned as such. It would help - greatly! - if he actually knew the meaning of the word Fascist, as illustrated a couple of days ago, when he appeared on a podcast titled "The Anti-Cult Club". He came up with this gem of political wisdom:
Yes, indeed. I've never heard of any "old African saying" that "sticks in a bundle can't be broken" - and I'm a damned sight more African (having been born and raised on that continent) than Senator Booker. However, I do know the meaning of the Latin word "fasces". According to Wikipedia:
A fasces is a bound bundle of wooden rods, often, but not always, including an axe (occasionally two axes) with its blade emerging. The fasces is an Italian symbol that had its origin in the Etruscan civilization and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a Roman king's power to punish his subjects, and later, a magistrate's power and jurisdiction.
The image of fasces has survived in the modern world as a representation of magisterial power, law, and governance. The fasces frequently occurs as a charge in heraldry: it is present on the reverse of the U.S. Mercury dime coin, behind the podium in the United States House of Representatives, and in the Seal of the U.S. Senate; and it was the origin of the name of the National Fascist Party in Italy (from which the term fascism is derived).
So, when Senator Booker uses the image of the fasces to illustrate opposition to fascism, he's heading in precisely the opposite direction to what he means. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Far too many of our politicians, on both sides of the aisle, behave in precisely the same way. It's as if election to office knocks several dozen points off some (but fortunately not all) politicians' IQ scores.
Meanwhile, if you're logged into X, go enjoy the whole thread in which Sen. Booker's gaffe is discussed. It's giggle-worthy.
Peter
There's a wonderful video clip on X showing a perfectly healthy young man pretending to be disabled and begging for money . . . until his grandma comes along and catches him in the act. The result is comedy gold.
Peter
As I'm sure most readers know, the term "stool pigeon" is used to refer to an informant who provides police with information about criminals. I've no idea how it came to exist; I can't imagine most pigeons I've seen sitting still on a stool where someone might sit on them!
Be that as it may, a parrot turns out to be the stool pigeon in a British case.
A loud-mouthed parrot snitched on his owner by squawking drug-dealing slang in video footage found by cops — leading to a massive crack and heroin bust in England, police said.
“Two for 25, two for 25!” the feathered rat chirped in the footage, according to cops, who said it was code for the price of dope.
A drug ring of 15 people in Blackpool was taken down by the tiny yellow bird — who was also seen in videos playing with drug money — after police seized gang leader Adam Garnett’s cellphones, according to the Lancashire Constabulary.
Cellphone footage led them to the home of Garnett’s girlfriend and number two, Shannon Hilton, where her phone featured videos that amounted to the parrot squealing.
Videos allegedly show Hilton teaching her less-than-cagey critter to say “two for 25” — apparent payment for bags of the dope — “in front of a child” and “the parrot playing with money, which was gained through their illegal activities,” police said.
There's more at the link, including a video clip showing the bird at its informative best.
Another British slang term is to "do bird", meaning to serve a prison sentence. In this case, once the courts have had their say, that may be a rather more appropriate term than usual for the crooks concerned! On the other hand, I hope the police will find a new (and safer) home for the parrot. Its former owner(s) are unlikely to be feeling charitable towards it . . . What's a witness protection program for birds called, anyway? A bird sanctuary?
Peter
I was interested to read an article about the use of tourniquets in Ukraine, particularly because it contrasts between their use in a rapid-evacuation situation (such as US troops mostly encounter) versus taking hours or even days to reach anyone more advanced than a field medic.
The tourniquet has saved many thousands of lives and limbs in war zones around the world, but misuse of the device is causing huge numbers of excess amputations and deaths in Ukraine, say top military surgeons.
Captain Rom A Stevens, a retired senior US medical navy officer who has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and East Africa, estimates that of the roughly 100,000 amputations performed on Ukrainian soldiers since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, as many as 75,000 were caused by improper use of tourniquets.
“I’ve seen tourniquets that have been left on for days, often for injuries that could have been stopped by other methods. Then [the patient] has to have their limb amputated because the tissue has died,” Captain Stevens told The Telegraph.
Tourniquets are strong bands used to stop catastrophic bleeding by cutting off blood flow, and are standard issue for most modern armies.
But if left on over two hours, they can cause tissue death, meaning the arm or leg which has the tourniquet on is no longer viable and requires amputation.
The device became standard-issue in the 2000s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where rapid air evacuation to military surgical teams was possible in under 60 minutes. If the tourniquet was unnecessary it was removed, and no harm was done.
But in Ukraine, where the skies are infested with drones, injured soldiers are evacuated by land, often far exceeding the safe time window for tourniquet use.
This critical delay has caused tens of thousands of amputations, say experts, many of which were unnecessary because the injuries didn’t require a tourniquet in the first place.
There's more at the link.
I remember our field first aid training in the South African military. We didn't carry IFAKs (Individual First Aid Kits) - just a single field dressing, a bandage that could be tied in place over an injury to absorb at least some of the bleeding and keep contaminants away from the wound. Field medics carried a relatively comprehensive kit, with more supplies available aboard our transports: but none of them were at the level of a medical station or field hospital. If we were lucky, helicopter evacuation might be available, but not always - our air support was frequently hundreds of miles away, and had to thread its way through the most comprehensive Soviet air defense system outside the Warsaw Pact. It might take hours to arrive. For that reason, if a medic applied a tourniquet, he would usually try to note down exactly when it was tightened, and make sure that a record of every time it was tightened and loosened accompanied the patient whenever possible. That way, permanent damage to the limb might be avoided. It didn't always work.
It worries me that I see so many "civilian" IFAKs being marketed today. I have no problem with as many people as possible carrying them; it's far better to have them available on the spot rather than miles away. However, relatively few of those carrying them have had any first aid training at all, let alone how to deal with serious blood loss. The use of blood-clotting powder or bandages is a case in point: another is the use of a tourniquet. Neither is as easy as it looks, and one can inflict a lot of damage by doing the wrong thing. For untrained users, I think of individual IFAKs as being useful supplemental kit for a paramedic or EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) or firefighter or police officer (both of the latter are usually trained in first aid to at least some extent). If he/she runs out of their own supplies (not impossible where more than one or two casualties are involved), they can offer your IFAKs to provide additional essential gear.
The entire article is worth reading to show how a battlefield situation affects what gear may be useful, and what might not. A tourniquet is very valuable indeed under certain circumstances, but as noted in the article, might lead to a much greater injury through cutting off the blood supply to a limb for too long. I hope it motivates those who carry a tourniquet without undergoing training to at least watch a video or two on the subject, or perhaps motivate them to get proper training from local instructors. One could even attend evening classes for a semester or two and graduate with a basic EMT qualification (like, for example, this course), which puts one head and shoulders above those less well trained.
Peter
Texas weather is . . . unpredictable. From the Iowa Park Journal this week:
They planned their roof renovation on the basis of a clear weather forecast. Had they never heard of Murphy's Law???
Peter
I had to laugh at this headline:
Germany passes ‘Bundeswehrbeschaffungsbeschleunigungsgesetz’ law to streamline army
Ironically, the law, which is supposed to make life easier for defence contractors and trade negotiators, is one of the longest words in the German language and difficult to pronounce.
. . .
Running at 43 letters long, Bundeswehrbeschaffungsbeschleunigungsgesetz is one of the longest words in German.
Germany is no stranger to having very long names for laws and business regulations, such as “Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz,” an archaic rule about beef standards which was once the longest German word.
The longest official German word, at 72 letters, is “Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft”, referring to a trade association for steamboats.
There's more at the link addressing Germany's military purchasing reforms (as opposed to its grammar and vocabulary, which could probably use some streamlining too). Meanwhile, if Russia tries to sabotage Germany's military buildup, as it's been doing to its efforts to interrupt the supply of weapons to Ukraine, it now has a new problem: how can it tell its saboteurs to target something they can't pronounce???
Growing up in South Africa, where the Afrikaans language is widely used, I'm accustomed to the problem. Afrikaans is basically a derivative of Dutch as it was spoken during the 17th and 18th centuries, brought to South Africa by the original settlers; and that, in turn, was a derivative of medieval Germanic languages. It led to some very long and convoluted words. Examples:
I want to see how US defense contractors will go about translating that German word (and all its supporting documentation and vocabulary) into English for their sales staff's attention. This could be entertaining . . . and tongue-twisting!
Peter
In Africa, when one digs a latrine for use in the bush, there are different ways of going about it. A "scrape" is literally that - scrape away the surface dirt, do your business, and cover it with the dirt you'd previously removed. If you're planning a longer stay (e.g. overnight), or if multiple people want to use the same facilities, a "short drop" is called for - digging a hole a foot or two deep, using it (with each successive user scooping a little dirt over his or her "deposit" to control odors), and then filling it in before departure next day. A "long drop" is for longer-term use, several days or weeks in the same camp. A hole is dug at least four or five feet deep, sometimes more, depending on whether the soil is firm enough not to collapse into the cavity. It's often surrounded by a thatch shield, so that ladies can use it in greater privacy.
(I could tell a rather embarrassing story against myself involving a long drop, a snake, and a double-barreled 12ga. shotgun . . . but I shall refrain. Ahem.)
At any rate, it seems an unfortunate resident of Mumbai in India inadvertently discovered another meaning to a "long drop". In fact, it's probably the longest drop of all . . .
A 52-year-old man with an upset stomach died after falling from the 18th floor of a building in Mumbai on Sunday while defecating from the edge of a shaft, an official said.
The incident occurred at the 18-storey Matoshree Sadan building, Wadala, in central Mumbai, said the official from RAK Marg police station.
The man, a resident of the high-rise, had been suffering from dysentery for the past few days.
"The victim, who was jobless, lived with his sister on the 18th floor. Someone was using the toilet in their house when he lost control of his bowels and rushed outside," an official said.
He sat to defecate on the edge of a shaft near a lift but lost his balance and plunged into a pit on the ground floor, the official said.
There's more at the link.
A tragic situation, and I'm sure his family is devastated . . . but I can already hear the jokes around campfires the length and breadth of Africa! Unfortunately, Indians are not popular in Africa because they run many of the local stores that are regarded as interlopers and profiteers, so the jokes will be rather barbed.
Peter
I had to laugh at the types of buffet eater identified in this article - particularly when I resembled more than one of them!
The heels are high, the tie knots Windsor, the conversation genteel and nobody has yet started to worry about the babysitter. The wedding reception is going smoothly. But there’s a beast behind the nearby sneeze guards. And, when it’s set loose, the atmosphere changes.
It’s the same at golf-club socials, corporate away-days and resort hotels – because when you put Britons and a buffet in the same room, human behaviour turns from pristine to primitive before you can say “cocktail sausage”.
We’re different from many European countries when it comes to communal feeding. Picture the aperitivo spread in a Milan bar: exquisitely made snacks – arancini, tramezzini, bruschetta – to place, one by one, beside your cocktail glass. This could never work in Britain: too many of us would sweep an armful of goodies into a carrier bag and leg it.
Here, it’s less “eat as much as you like” and more “eat as much as you can before gout kicks in”. So what do our dining habits say about us?
There's more at the link.
The article identifies seven types of buffet eater. The descriptions are often funny, but also a bit uncomfortable when one looks at oneself through their lens and realizes that at least some of their traits can be identified in our own behavior. Humbling, as well as amusing.
Peter
Two (apparently rookie) Chicago cops tried to arrest a fleeing felon (apparently also a rookie).
Looks like the pole was the only competent one there, stopping the bad guy when he ran headlong into it. Certainly, it was more effective than anyone's (allegedly) aimed gunfire!
Go read the comments about the video on YouTube. Some of them are hysterical.
(Oh - and someone please get those cops some remedial firearms training. They desperately need it!)
Peter
Today's award goes to Minnesota's state legislature.
Come July, common keys for houses, cars, boats, and motorcycles will be illegal in Minnesota, save for uncertain intervention from the state Legislature.
That's when the state's ban on the manufacture, sale, or import of keys, toys, dishes, and other common items containing more than a tiny percentage of lead or cadmium goes into effect.
The purpose of that law was to remove dangerous heavy metals from products that come into contact with children. The trouble is that almost all keys sold today have more lead than the new law's 0.09 percent limit on lead content.
Locksmiths have been warning that the state's lead ban will outlaw most of the products they sell. Alternative metals would require lengthy and expensive transition to using less functional materials, they say.
"Approximately 75 percent of all products that we stock have become prohibited for sale," said Rob Justen of Doyle Security Products.
There's more at the link.
So, in their efforts to become "greener than thou", Minnesota's politicians have condemned their electorate to being unable to get duplicate keys for almost everything they use. One might ask why the legislators didn't bother to find out more about what they were so gleefully banning before they voted, but they're politicians. Their minds don't work like that. They belong to the school of "Don't just stand there, do something!" instead of asking "What, if anything, should be done about the problem?"
It doesn't even matter if they were Democrat or Republican. I'm beginning to think that all career politicians mislay their common sense gene at or soon after birth . . .
Peter
On Wednesday I linked to a post at Commander Zero's place, discussing the safe disposal of used bear spray canisters. In my own post, I said:
According to one garbage disposal company in Tennessee whom I had dealings with over another matter, one of the biggest problems is that fires sometimes start in garbage dumps - quite spontaneously, due to sunlight reflected and concentrated through a piece of broken glass, or chemicals mixing and combusting, or old ashes that were not completely extinguished causing a delayed fire reaction. If a partially filled spray can of almost anything is too near those fires, it can (and occasionally does) explode. Complications ensue, particularly if that makes the fire worse.
As if to echo my words, I came across this article at Ars Technica.
2024 was "a year of growth," according to fire-suppression company Fire Rover, but that's not an entirely good thing.
The company ... releases annual reports on waste and recycling facility fires in the US and Canada to select industry and media. In 2024, Fire Rover, based on its fire identifications, saw 2,910 incidents, a 60 percent increase from the 1,809 in 2023, and more than double the 1,409 fires confirmed in 2022.
Publicly reported fire incidents at waste and recycling facilities also hit 398, a new high since Fire Rover began compiling its report eight years ago, when that number was closer to 275.
Lots of things could cause fires in the waste stream, long before lithium-ion batteries became common: "Fireworks, pool chemicals, hot (barbecue) briquettes," writes Ryan Fogelman, partner and vice president of early fire protection in Fire Rover, in an email to Ars. But lithium-ion batteries pose a growing problem, as the number of devices with batteries increases, consumer education and disposal choices remain limited, and batteries remain a very easy-to-miss, troublesome occupant of the waste stream.
All batteries that make it into waste streams are potentially hazardous, as they have so many ways of being set off: puncturing, vibration, overheating, short-circuiting, crushing, internal cell failure, overcharging, or inherent manufacturing flaws, among others. Fire Rover's report notes that the media often portrays batteries as "spontaneously" catching fire. In reality, the very nature of waste handling makes it almost impossible to ensure that no battery will face hazards in handling, the report notes. Tiny batteries can be packed into the most disposable of items—even paper marketing materials handed out at conferences.
Fogelman estimates, based on his experience and some assumptions, that about half of the fires he's tracking originate with batteries. Roughly $2.5 billion of loss to facilities and infrastructure came from fires last year, divided between traditional hazards and batteries, he writes.
There's more at the link.
Two and a half billion dollars of loss incurred in just one year due to fires at waste disposal and reprocessing facilities? That's a very big expense to bear . . . and is undoubtedly one of the reasons waste disposal fees are getting steadily higher.
Intrigued, I called our local garbage dump, which caters for waste from several nearby towns and cities in addition to our own. The person on the other end sighed a long-suffering sigh, and said that they expect at least one fire every week at the dump, and frequently get two, three or more over the same period. He agreed with Ars Technica's thesis that lithium batteries probably cause a good half of those fires, with the rest caused by other dangerous waste. He was a little heated when discussing people who throw away half-filled paint cans, bottles of chemical solvents, etc. inside garbage bags containing standard household waste, where they can't be easily identified before being crushed or otherwise damaged during the handling process. They burn very well, apparently! The company has to provide special training (and ongoing refresher training) to its staff to help them cope with the problem, because unexpected combustion can present a serious hazard to their health.
Perhaps we (including me!) should think more about what we're throwing away before we casually toss such garbage into our bins. I know I've been guilty of some of the things he complained about. I'll try to do better in future.
Peter
... make sure they're fully discharged before you drop them in the bin. That, at least, is the message from a Montana garbage disposal company, as reported by Commander Zero.
I agree with his assumption that some poor garbage man got a snootful of the good bear stuff as he hoisted up a garbage can to dump it into his truck. It must have made for a more interesting circuit than usual!
I've encountered a few similar things with other potentially dangerous substances. People seem to throw them out without any thought for possible consequences. According to one garbage disposal company in Tennessee whom I had dealings with over another matter, one of the biggest problems is that fires sometimes start in garbage dumps - quite spontaneously, due to sunlight reflected and concentrated through a piece of broken glass, or chemicals mixing and combusting, or old ashes that were not completely extinguished causing a delayed fire reaction. If a partially filled spray can of almost anything is too near those fires, it can (and occasionally does) explode. Complications ensue, particularly if that makes the fire worse.
Also, speaking of bear spray reminds me of that good old personal defense standby, pepper spray/gel. It can be very useful stuff. Too many people think that household products can substitute for it. They're wrong. Lawdog shares his thoughts on wasp spray and oven cleaner for defensive use. Go read. (If you're interested, I use and recommend Sabre Red pepper gel. It sticks to your target and doesn't fog the room with pepper spray that will affect you just as much!)
Food for thought.
Peter
