(Little) Things Fall Apart

Rudy Giuliani is widely credited for turning around New York City, taking it from a crime-ridden mess to a relatively safe city. He did this by concentrating on the small things. His police were instructed to stop the minor, "gateway" crimes as well as to hammer hard at the bigger offenders.

My wife and I visited New York City not long before 9/11 and were able to walk from our hotel to see Les Misérables with no problem. The last time I had been in New York City, in the mid-1970s, Times Square was a combat zone. Rudy made a huge difference to that city. Now, however, the city is beginning to slide back.

Does it feel some days as if New York– wealthy, successful, seemingly at the top of the world — is slipping back into the bad old days of crime, noise, dirt, rudeness? Like pentimento rising from an old canvas, the traces of New York's previous misery are appearing on the streets and in the subways — graffiti, aggressive panhandling, open drug dealing, filthy public areas, ear–splitting noise, screeching sirens, a sense of disorder we thought was gone. It's not "Soylent Green" again, but the old Hollywood sense of lawless New York is rearing its ugly head.

Worse, something menacing seems to be happening with violent crime. The newspapers have been filled recently with stories about horribly vicious cases — the trial, for example, that ended last week in a 44–count guilty verdict against the man accused of the brutal rape and torture of a Columbia University student living in Hamilton Heights, a seemingly safe neighborhood.

The new mayor, Michael Bloomberg is very, very concerned with trans fats and the harvesting of organs. Crime? Not so much, it would seem. Quality of life for the taxpaying citizens? Very little. I'd urge you to read the entire article I linked, because the slide is definitely there and it appears to be accelerating rapidly. The author of the article tries mightily to praise Bloomberg but it is obvious that there is something very, very wrong happening in the Big Apple.

Why Would You Jump Out Of A Perfectly Good Airplane?

I've always agreed with that particular complaint about skydiving, never personally seeing the need for that much "excitement" just for fun. But fourteen skydivers in Indiana got to experience the thrill of jumping out of a perfectly bad airplane - one that was on its way to a crash landing.

Fourteen sky divers were forced to jump out of their disabled plane and parachute to safety before it crash landed after developing mechanical problems over Indiana.

The plane malfunctioned at 7,000 feet, its engine cutting out as it climbed and causing oil to spray on the windscreen and limit the pilot's visibility.

He lost manual control but, as the plane levelled off at 5,000 feet, the sky jumpers were able to jump out.

All of them landed safely, including two sky divers who were jumping for the first time.

The pilot also apparently survived, after trying to land the crippled plane on a too-short runway. But he managed to keep anyone else on the ground from being hurt.

I guess they were smart to be wearing parachutes after all.

Top Of His Class

A Montana high school student has managed to graduate at the top of his class. Simultaneously, he also managed to graduate at the bottom of his class. This is no real feat, however, since he IS his graduating class.

GREAT FALLS, Mont. - Jeff Greenwood is in a class by himself.
 
He was the only student to graduate from Opheim High School this year, but the small event Friday drew a big name. Gov. Brian Schweitzer gave the commencement address.

Greenwood, who plans to attend Dickinson State University in North Dakota, said the high school is the "hub of activity" for rural Opheim, a town about 10 miles south of the Canadian border.

"The student-to-teacher ratio is pretty good," said Greenwood, who is the student body president and, of course, the senior class president.

The good news: arranging class reunions will be a snap. Personally, my graduating class was ten times the size of Greenwood's. Literally. And here I thought I graduated from a small school.

Think You’re Having A Bad Day?

Justin Hill of Rock Island, Tennessee can probably top you. First he got into an automobile accident right in front of his house when he turned into the path of an oncoming car. His wife heard the noise and ran out of their home, leaving the kitchen stove burning. The home promptly caught on fire. Hill was flown to a hospital. When he was released, he was met with a traffic citation as a result of the accident.

I'm glad he didn't own a dog.

Pink Loons

Well, since nothing else appears to be working for them, Code Pink is trying to enlist witches to help them protest the Marine recruiting office in Berkeley, California.

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting Berkeley's controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center.

The women's anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for "Witches, clowns and sirens day," the last of the group's weeklong homage to Mother's Day.

"Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we're going to end war," Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com.

The group's week of themed protests, which included days to galvanize grannies and bring-your-daughter-to-protest, appears to have done little to boost its flagging numbers.

A FOX News camera, which has a 24/7 live shot of the recruiting center's front door, recorded little action, and the gatherings have, until this point, been ill attended.

Apparently Code Pink's tenuous grip on reality has gone altogether. Ah, well. The best thing to come out in this article is that the protests have accomplished exactly one thing: increased recruiting.

But if events this week are an attempt by anti-war protesters to remarket their cause, the Marine recruiters in Berkeley tell FOXNews.com that Code Pink's presence outside their office has helped — not hindered — their mission.

"Ironically, it's actually helped us by putting our name out. We're now well known. And people know who we are, and where we are, and they come in to talk to us about enlisting. They've gotten us the publicity that we could've never afforded to pay for ourselves," (Captain John Paul) Wheatcroft told FOXNews.com.

"Just in the last three weeks, 10 people came in looking to apply, looking to become Marine officers, and that's much higher than normal," he said.

It would appear that the witches got burned.

Panic Hoarding

The New York Sun reports on a trend that is not at all pretty. In some areas of the country, rice, flour and cooking oil are in such short supply that retailers are limiting the amount people can purchase. This is happening right here in the United States.

The curbs and shortages are being tracked with concern by survivalists who view the phenomenon as a harbinger of more serious trouble to come.

“It’s sporadic. It’s not every store, but it’s becoming more commonplace,” the editor of SurvivalBlog.com, James Rawles, said. “The number of reports I’ve been getting from readers who have seen signs posted with limits has increased almost exponentially, I’d say in the last three to five weeks.”

Spiking food prices have led to riots in recent weeks in Haiti, Indonesia, and several African nations. India recently banned export of all but the highest quality rice, and Vietnam blocked the signing of a new contract for foreign rice sales.

“I’m surprised the Bush administration hasn’t slapped export controls on wheat,” Mr. Rawles said. “The Asian countries are here buying every kind of wheat.”

Mr. Rawles said it is hard to know how much of the shortages are due to lagging supply and how much is caused by consumers hedging against future price hikes or a total lack of product.

“There have been so many stories about worldwide shortages that it encourages people to stock up. What most people don’t realize is that supply chains have changed, so inventories are very short,” Mr. Rawles, a former Army intelligence officer, said. “Even if people increased their purchasing by 20%, all the store shelves would be wiped out.”

At the moment, large chain retailers seem more prone to shortages and limits than do smaller chains and mom-and-pop stores, perhaps because store managers at the larger companies have less discretion to increase prices locally.

What you have right now are the seeds of a panic being sown. This can be seen on a smaller scale when a bad winter storm is predicted and locals strip the store shelves of bread and milk. But when it is on a global scale, everything is suddenly in short supply as people begin to panic and hoard all they can afford to buy - making the situation even worse. Short supplies rapidly become no supplies. If the US does put on export controls, all hell is going to bust loose on world markets.

It Sucks To Be A Boomer….

Just ask them. A researcher has tabulated results of "happiness research" has found that baby boomers are significantly less happy than their parent's generation are and significantly less happy than other generations historically.

While Baby Boomers struggle with rising mortgages and kids who barely know their hard-working parents, senior citizens are apparently having a ball.
 
About half U.S. residents in their late 80s report being very happy, while the figure for younger age groups plummets to a third or less, a new study finds. Another recent study found depression peaks at about age 44 around the globe.

But things are looking up for anyone planning to hang around: Americans, at least, grow happier as they age.

The new study also found that baby boomers are not as content as other generations in other eras. Other findings:

African Americans are less happy than whites.
Men are less happy than women.
Happiness can rise and fall between depending on economics of an era.

With age, the differences narrow.

"Understanding happiness is important to understanding quality of life. The happiness measure is a guide to how well society is meeting people's needs," said lead researcher Yang Yang, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. The study is published in the April issue of the American Sociological Review.

The research used data from "happiness research" - responses to questions about contentment with overall life gathered in the General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center.

Funny how that works, isn't it? The generation that tuned in, turned on and dropped out turned miserable as time passed. Their parents, however, just got happier with their lives. It makes you wonder how the results will be when the boomers pass into the so-called golden years.

White Punks Coats On Dope

No, not the old song by The Tubes, rather the results of a somewhat unscientific poll of scientists. It seems some 20% of respondents to an online poll admitted they use "brain boosting" drugs. 

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN)  — One in five respondents to a new survey in the journal Nature say they've used drugs to boost their brain power.

"We were putting our finger in the air to see what our reader response would be. And it was tremendous," said Brendan Maher, an editor with the widely read scientific publication. "What it's suggesting is there are a high percentage of adults using these drugs."

The informal, nonscientific survey, conducted online, polled 1,400 people in 60 countries. Most of the responders, the majority of whom said they worked in biology, physics, medicine or education, reported taking the drugs to improve their concentration. 

An interesting question for reporters covering the next breathless scientific news release would be to ask the scientists involved when they took their last jolt. Things like this tend to diminish the reputations of the entire field of science in general. Because, as the article points out, these drugs can lead to real problems and real addictions. Not to mention the real questioning of results of studies.  

Oddly enough, the poll was taken as a result of an April Fool's joke that turned out to be somewhat less of a laughing matter, according to Nature. 

The US National Institutes of Health is to crack down on scientists 'brain doping' withperformance-enhancing drugs such as Provigil and Ritalin, a press release declared last week. The release, brainchild of evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen of the University of California, Davis, turned out to be an April Fools' prank. And the World Anti-Brain Doping Authority website that it linked to was likewise fake. But with a number of co-conspirators spreading rumours about receiving anti-doping affidavits with their first R01 research grants, the ruse no doubt gave pause to a few of the respondents to Nature 's survey on readers' use of cognition-enhancing drugs.

The survey was triggered by a Commentary by behavioural neuroscientists Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir of the University of Cambridge, UK, who had surveyed their colleagues on the use of drugs that purportedly enhance focus and attention (Nature 450, 1157–1159 ; 2007). In the article, the two scientists asked readers whether they would consider “boosting their brain power” with drugs. Spurred by the tremendous response, Nature ran its own informal survey. 1,400 people from 60 countries responded to the online poll.

Could the results have been skewed by the people who were in on the joke? Of course. Does that lessen the negative impact here? Not in the least. 

Charlton Heston, 1923-2008

Charlton Heston, the legendary actor, has died. He was 84 years old.

With a booming baritone voice, the tall, ruggedly handsome actor delivered his signature role as the prophet Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 Biblical extravaganza "The Ten Commandments," raising a rod over his head as God miraculously parts the Red Sea.

Heston won the Academy Award for best actor in another religious blockbuster in 1959's "Ben-Hur," racing four white horses at top speed in one of the cinema's legendary action sequences: the 15-minute chariot race in which his character, a proud and noble Jew, competes against his childhood Roman friend.

Heston stunned the entertainment world in August 2002 when he made a poignant and moving videotaped address announcing his illness.

Late in life, Heston's stature as a political firebrand overshadowed his acting. He became demonized by gun-control advocates and liberal Hollywood when he became president of the National Rifle Assn. in 1998.

Heston answered his critics in a now-famous pose that mimicked Moses' parting of the Red Sea. But instead of a rod, Heston raised a flintlock over his head and challenged his detractors to pry the rifle "from my cold, dead hands."

Like the chariot race and the bearded prophet Moses, Heston will be best remembered for several indelible cinematic moments: playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with Orson Welles in the oil fields in "Touch of Evil," his rant at the end of "Planet of the Apes" when he sees the destruction of the Statue of Liberty, his discovery that "Soylent Green is people!" in the sci-fi hit "Soylent Green" and the dead Spanish hero on his steed in "El Cid."

That's from the Los Angeles Times obituary, which is wonderfully detailed, as you would expect from a newspaper located in the heart of the entertainment industry. Heston is survived by his wife of 64 years, Lydia, and their two children. Rest in Peace. 

UPDATE: Others, via Memeorandum . Power Line, Scared Monkeys, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, Outside The Beltway, The Other McCain, Gateway Pundit, The American Mind, 

You There! Step Away From The Root Beer!

I don't know which part is sillier. A police department raiding a root beer "kegger" and making more than 90 kids take Breathalyzer tests to prove they had been drinking the soft drink or the excuses by the police department when they had to admit that they had done so.

Dustin Zebro, 18, said he staged the party after friends at D.C. Everest High School got suspended from sports because of pictures showing them drinking from red cups.

The root-beer kegger was "to kind of make fun of the school," he said. "They assumed there was beer in the cups. We just wanted to have some root beer in red cups and just make it look like a party, but there actually wasn't any alcohol."…..

……"It was a tremendous waste of time and manpower, but we still had a job to do, and our officers did it," (police chief Daniel)Joling said. "If one kid had come there, even hadn't drank there, but had come there and had been drinking and had left and crashed and burned, then what would the sentiment be? Why didn't the police check everybody out?"

Admittedly, the police had cause to respond to a complaint about cars blocking the road, but it seems a bit of a reach to begin breath testing the people involved since, presumably, the police can tell the difference between root beer and beer. One look at the keg should have simply put the matter to rest. The police appear to have been more than a bit overzealous in this case. I'm also wondering what actual authority the police had to demand breath tests given the situation. Want to bet there is a lawsuit (or a number of them) coming over this? 

You Know You’ve Had Too Much To Drink

When you reach up to brush something off your shoulder and realize it's the floor. You really, really know you've had too much when you wake up in a garbage truck.

William M. Bowen, 27, awoke about 6:30 a.m. Thursday to find that he was inside a commercial trash-collection truck filled with waste.

A Rumpke garbage truck driver had emptied a bin behind the Muncie Eye Center into his truck and was about to activate its trash compressor when he heard someone screaming.

"He looked up and this gentleman was standing out the top of our truck," said Larry Green, market safety supervisor for Rumpke.

Generally speaking, it is a bad idea to go pearl diving when you've been drinking. Apparently, there is a stage between falling-down drunk and dead-drunk: dumpster-drunk.

Not Everything Old Is New Again

Close on the heels of the last post that described the resurgence of some old technologies like turboprop aircraft and mainframe computers comes some news of things which are just plain getting old. Like America's aerial refueling tanker fleet. The average age of the KC-135 tankers is now 47 years. There are 530 of these planes in the fleet and they are not getting any younger.

WICHITA, Kan. — At the main entrance to McConnell Air Force Base, a stately KC-135 aerial refueling tanker manufactured more than 50 years ago sits on display as a museum piece, a tribute to the aircraft that was built to be a pillar of military strategy in the early years of the Cold War.

But inside the base, the old tanker is hardly a relic. Hundreds of personnel toil every day to keep 39 of the Air Force's 530 Eisenhower-era tankers airborne, a feat of tenacity and ingenuity that baffles even the men and women who manage to keep the planes airworthy three decades after commercial airlines retired such planes.

"The KC-135 is like that first girlfriend or your first car," said Senior Master Sgt. Buddy Gerhardt, a fuel systems repair technician from Berwyn, Ill., who at 33 is at least a decade younger than the tankers he works on. "You might always have a special feeling for that first girlfriend or that first car, but eventually you have to move on."

The Air Force announced last month it had awarded a $35 billion contract to a partnership of Northrop Grumman and the corporate parent of the European-led planemaker Airbus to begin replacing the tanker fleet, whose aircraft now have an average age of 47.

But the long-languishing plan to revamp the fleet will likely be further delayed as the competing bidder and manufacturer of the original fleet, Chicago-based Boeing, filed a complaint this month with the Government Accountability Office.

Defense analysts say Boeing's appeal could set back the manufacture of the new tankers by years. At the same time, members of Congress from Kansas and Washington state—where Boeing has manufacturing plants—are considering introducing legislation that would undo the deal.

Commanders at McConnell declined to comment on the politicking, saying only that they hope to have new tankers at their disposal as soon as possible. Air Force officials say they are confident they can keep up the maintenance of the aircraft for many more years, yet there is a recognition among senior officials and squadron leaders that time is not on the side of the aging aircraft.

"We're a catastrophe away from having the tankers grounded," said Col. James Vechery, commander of the 22nd Air Refueling Wing at McConnell.

I have no doubt that the people who are maintaining these downright elderly aircraft are doing everything in their power to keep the planes aloft. I also have no doubt that they are fighting an uphill battle. The key to keeping old technologies alive is to reinvent them, not to keep trying to keep the old goods alive indefinitely. Congress has screwed around enough on this and has to get this resolved right away. These tankers are a vital part of America's defenses and need replacement. Stop playing politics and get this done.

Minnesota Has Some ‘Splaining To Do

There was much screeching and finger-pointing when the Minneapolis bridge collapsed, much of it aimed at the Federal government and the lack of funding for infrastructure. That collapse is a tragedy and should not have happened, mind you. But it appears that the fingers may have been pointed the wrong way entirely. Photos taken in 2003 of the bridge - for a state-sponsored inspection, no less - show deformation of at least two of the gusset plates thought to be the reason for the collapse. Got that? Photos taken four years before the collapse show serious problems in the supports that held the bridge up.

MINNEAPOLIS - Old photos of the Interstate 35W bridge show two steel connecting plates were visibly bent as early as 2003 — four years before the span collapsed into the Mississippi River, killing 13 people.

Minnesota Department of Transportation officials declined to say when the state first knew about the bending in the pieces of steel, called gusset plates.

Two photos, part of a report issued earlier this month by the National Transportation Safety Board, reveal slight bends in gusset plates that hold beams together at two separate connecting points. The plates are in areas believed to be among the first points of failure when the span collapsed.

State officials responsible for the inspection of bridges are not answering phone calls from reporters asking about this. Lawyers representing victims of the bridge collapse are howling mad about the photos. They should be. Someone needs to answer for this and quickly. Both the firm conducting the inspection and the state office overseeing the inspection have real problems here - and will have some very big demands for explanations to answer. I think there is a reason why the phone calls are not being returned. There could well be criminal liability here.

Pundustry, Or A Day In The Salt Mines Of Information Overload

Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post tried an experiment recently. He spent 24 hours in a room surrounded by televisions, two radios and a laptop set up to cycle through a selection of blogs and news sources. It was all in the interest of science - to see what living in total information overload was like. Welcome to the blogosphere, Gene.

THE CRUDDIEST MOMENT OF THE CRAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE ON EARTH happened as I found myself watching five televisions simultaneously, each containing a different political pundit opining on the same subject. When I looked down toward my computer screen to see what the bloggers were saying about it, I noticed that a button on my shirt had come undone.

There I was, literally contemplating my own navel. But I didn't even crack a smile because, in the relentless drone of insipid opinion, irony no longer held any meaning.

I knew then that this whole thing had been a very poor idea, one from which I would not return undamaged. Because the clock on the wall said I still had 14 hours to go.

Weingarten takes more than a few swipes at the folks who practice surfing in this sea of information that beats mercilessly these days. But there is a certain amount of truth in his dark humor about the overload of news, semi-news, punditry and analysis (both paid and freelance) that inundates us these days. Especially those of us who choose to do this on a daily basis. There is so much out there to read and absorb and talk about. It is, indeed, like drinking from a fire hose. I'll let you read the long piece and figure out where the title of this post comes from.

Just doing my bit, Gene. Even if you didn't mention the Crabitat in all your blog name dropping!

An Individual Right

Every press report that I am seeing on the United States Supreme Court hearing on the Washington, DC gun ban echoes what the Los Angeles Times report is saying: There appears to be solid support on the court for upholding that the Second Amendment grants an individual right to keep and bear arms.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices, hearing a historic argument on the meaning of the 2nd Amendment, signaled they are likely to strike down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia and rule that homeowners have a right to keep a gun for self-defense.

But if the oral arguments are any guide, the outcome will not be unanimous. Several justices said they believed the 2nd Amendment was intended to protect the state's right to maintain a "well-regulated militia," not to give gun rights to individuals.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is the swing vote in close cases, said he believed the 2nd Amendment did more than bolster the state militia. "In my view, there is a general right to bear arms" that goes beyond serving in the militia, Kennedy said.

Most Americans believe the 2nd Amendment protects the right of law-abiding persons to "keep and bear arms." But the legal meaning of this provision remains in doubt. The high court has never invoked this right to strike down a gun law nor has it ruled that it protects a personal right to own a gun.

The LA Times seems to think the impact of such an outcome will be minor. I rather suspect that it might be more far-reaching than they do. States like Illinois which do not grant carry permits could find themselves in court, as might states like New York which have a virtually impossible to get carry permits. I've been a bit worried about this case for a while. Today's news is encouraging.