Unconnected thoughts and observations which don’t rate separate blog posts, but when aggregated together might just amount to something:
Tasers:
- This seems like good news, and it comes not a moment too soon: “Police need reasons to believe a suspect is dangerous before firing a Taser and can’t use their stun gun simply because the person is disobeying orders or acting erratically, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Monday.” According to Amnesty International, nearly 400 people in the USA alone have been killed by police using “non-lethal” Tasers.
Northwest Flight 253:
- Media reports and government spokesmen keep implying that the “heroic passenger” who climbed over seats to wrestle with failed terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Northwest Flight 253 somehow saved the day. Bullshit. The only thing that saved the day was the bomb’s failure to detonate properly. The heroic passenger reacted to the fire that started when the bomb fizzled. Had the bomb gone off as designed, it would have bought the plane and all its heroic passengers down on metropolitan Detroit with many additional ground casualties.
- This is not to belittle the fire Umar started in his britches, of course. Fire in an airliner cabin is deadly serious business, but it was flight attendants who put it out, not the heroic passenger.
- Another common media response to the latest attempted terror bombing, particularly in reaction to new TSA rules, has been to belittle the seriousness of other terror plots and attempts since 9/11. You know . . . the shoe bomber was an idiot (and look how stupid he appears in that mug shot they show over and over); and then there were those dopes who were going to take over Fort Bliss with a pizza delivery truck . . . with terrorists like these, who needs new TSA rules?
- Am I alone in remembering that there have been several successful terror attacks since 9/11? There were the anthrax letters, still unsolved. The Madrid train bombings, carried out by Al Queda. The London subway bombings, ditto. Internationally and within the USA, authorities have successfully thwarted several quite serious terror plots. And that idiot shoe bomber could in fact have brought down an airliner over the Atlantic, just as the idiot underwear bomber could have brought down an airliner over Detroit on Christmas day. I don’t think we should be in such a hurry to belittle incompetent terrorists . . . not as long as the only difference between a competent terrorist and an incompetent one is a bomb that works as designed.
- That doesn’t mean I like the new TSA rules. As I reported here two days ago, I’m seriously consider giving up airline travel altogether.
Recreactional reading:
- I’m reading Soul Patch, a Moe Prager mystery by Farrel Coleman. I reserved the book at my local library and didn’t notice until I started reading it that they’d given me the large print edition. I cracked the book open at a salad bar yesterday afternoon and was so embarrassed I almost closed it. But then I realized I was surrounded by old people, as one almost always is in Tucson restaurants. And then I had to admit to myself that when old people look at me they see a fellow oldster. So what the hell, I thought, I’ll read it anyway. But it’s like using one of those elevated toilets with grab bars you find at hospitals and rest homes. You just don’t feel right about it. I shouldn’t joke . . . if I somehow manage to stay alive, large print books will surely be part of my future. Old folks’ toilets, too.
- Anyway, Farrel Coleman just described a high-rise apartment complex built near an abandoned landfill as a “pile of puss.” Surely he didn’t mean puss, as in kitty? How could there be a pile of cat? It doesn’t make sense. Of course he meant “pus” but even that image fails. Pus doesn’t come in piles (thank God). Why didn’t he describe the high-rises as a “pustule”? That would have worked. This will go poorly for Farrel when I get around to reviewing his book.
Hair care:
- For the past several years I’ve been having my hair cut at a nearby Cost Cutters franchise. Sometimes I get a good barber and sometimes an indifferent one, but the last one was truly awful: she blocked the hair on the back of my head at a 20-degree angle. Normally, when a barber screws up she’ll say “oops,” but this one kept her cool. I should have suspected something when she failed to offer me a hand mirror to check the back, but I was thinking of other things and didn’t notice the lapse. When I got home, Donna started screaming. The hair on the back of my head looked like the hair on the front of Hitler’s head!
- Donna took me to her hair stylist, Marti, who did what she could to salvage the situation, and now Marti’s my hair stylist too. Of course I pay Marti twice what I paid the ladies at Cost Cutters, but it’s worth it, if only for the luxury of having a set appointment with the same stylist every time. And you know what? I love having my beard trimmed!