And how would I know that the video is disturbing? Because NBC, while crying their crocodile tears, showed this guy dying over and over and over last night. I had my children in the living room to have a peaceful night of watching the Opening Ceremonies and had to scramble for the remote while NBC kept showing the replay of the unfortunate athlete’s death.

Is that not cruel? I would be absolutely furious if a network was showing the death of a member of my family over and over like it were some sort of advertisement. I know they are there to report the news, and I would maybe understand if they showed it once, but to have it on a continuous replay reel is just disgusting, imho.

I would imagine that the family of the athlete will be lawyering up as well. I have no clue about Canadian law but I am going to guess that the IOC, the Vancouver Games Committee and others will be sued for some sort of negligence in the design of the track. Many have already noted that the steel poles that the luger crashed into were in sort of an odd place – but how do you know that until you have an accident? Many lawyers are probably looking into track designs worldwide and deaths on those tracks as we speak.

I have to sign a release form whenever I do a run, or do Muay Thai, or participate in an organized bicycle ride. Olympic athletes, I bet, sign a release form before they can even get near the sledding run, or ski hill, or ice arena, or anything else. If he signed a release, wouldn’t that free everyone from any sort of lawsuit? Maybe a better question is – shouldn’t it?

Every accident cannot be prevented. I feel bad for the guy who died on the luge run, but this is a dangerous activity by definition. I guess my question for the readers is that if you sign a release form to engage in something like a luge run, and you can see the track and what it has to offer and you die from that activity, is your family owed anything? Or is that just the way it goes? I would vote with the latter.

I was struck by some of the things that Thomas said. He says the word “honesty” quite often. Also, he mentions “doing things right” a lot. I can really identify with both of those concepts.

One other thing that struck me was a concept he brought up of “things aren’t always as they seem”. I don’t want to spoil the whole video so I will leave it to you to see in what context he uses it in. It was a real eye opener and hit home with me.

I have ordered Justice Thomas’s book from Amazon (only $11 for hardcover) and look forward to posting a review here in a few weeks.

In general, I am always impressed when I hear the Supreme Court Justices speak and write. They seem to be the only ones above the fray as far as our governmental structure goes. Even though I disagree with the viewpoints of some of the justices, I really do respect them for the job they do.

Have you ever had a person in your life that seemed to drop out of the blue, but affected you in an interesting way? Henry Rollins did. In his essay Iron, he speaks of Mr. Pepperman, who took pity on a scrawny, dorky kid, and taught Rollins how to lift weights. This gave Rollins a sense of accomplishment. It is a great essay and very motivational. I carry a copy of Iron in my briefcase and read it when I need a swift kick in the pants. Whenever I am sore or tired and don’t feel like going to the gym or running or biking or whatever training I need, I read Iron, strap it on, and get to work.

My orthodontist when I was a kid was Louis Andria. I went for a total of around four years or so before he could get my mouth full of mush corrected. It was quite a project. I told some interesting stories about Dr. Andria at the dinner table last night. As I did, I realized that there will probably never be another one like him.

I grew up in Rockford, Illinois. At the time, Dr. Andria was considered to be one of the top ten orthodontists in the US. Pretty impressive for being in a po-dunk town an hour and a half west of the big city of Chicago. But you could tell from his office that he was in very high demand.

He had approximately ten chairs and would glide from chair to chair and do his work on the kids. I should say almost all kids – even my mom got her teeth corrected by him later in her life. Not many adults in there, though.

When you came into the office you had to check in at the front, where his wife usually worked. Then you would have to try to pry yourself into the waiting room, which was typically packed with the rest of the family members of the kid getting worked on. Many times people had to sit on the floor, it was so packed. I guess the picture I am trying to paint is that this guy had a HUGE business, probably had the biggest market share of any orthodontist in the history of the world. Who knows how far people would drive to see him.

There were always cat posters and pictures on the wall. My favorite was a drawing of a cat with this poem underneath:

Love to eat them mousies,
Mousies what I love to eat.
Bite they little heads off.
Nibble on they tiny feet.

The pace in the patient area was fast and furious. Andria expected the best out of everyone in his place and his assistants NEEDED to have their stuff together at all times.

To round out the atmosphere, he played the heaviest metal station of the time in Rockford, Y95, on the radio. At least it seemed heavy to me back then.

Dr. Andria always, always, always expected the best out of you. If you had braces you were expected NOT to ruin his work. NO gum, caramels, hard candy; anything that would destroy the work was strictly verboten. Here is the best part – if you came into the office with gum in your braces he would FINE YOU. That’s right, I believe it was $25 per infraction right on to your bill that your parents had to pay. Better yet, he would yell it right from the chair to his wife all the way up front so the entire office could hear it – “JOHNNY EVANS NEEDS TO HAVE AN EXTRA $25 PUT ON HIS BILL FOR CHEWING GUM! THANK YOU!” It was classic. I highly doubt that this would ever happen today in our all too correct PC world of coddling everyone.

It sort of reminds me of the way that judges used to be. Well, Billy, you can go to prison or join the army. Up to you. This country is hurting because there aren’t more people who will simply stand their ground and not accept nor coddle failure.

I assume the technique of the fine was to try to get the parents to extract this money from their kids, or at least realize that their kid screwing up was making them go to the office more often. Needless to say I never even thought about messing up my work by chewing gum or using any of the other offending substances.

At times it was really torture in there – my teeth were seriously messed up and I dreaded the appointments where I would have my archways adjusted. The archway was a wire that connected all the braces together. When Dr. Andria tightened that thing it seemed like murder. I wouldn’t cry, but tears would come down my cheeks. I remember one time I could actually feel my teeth move in my skull. Ouch. I usually couldn’t eat too much solid food for a few days after that. But if Dr. Andria saw a tear, he would just punch me in the gut and tell me what a tough guy I was. He always did stuff like that to the kids – punching the guys, tickling the girls and such to make them feel like they had done a good job. I think that the techniques he used were psychological as well as physical to get his deal done. On the other hand, he just could have been a nice guy.

In the end, when I read the Rollins essay about Mr. Pepperman, I was reminded of Dr. Andria. A very unique guy – there will probably never be another one like him. I fully expect that when I go to appointments with my daughter that the environment will be much different than the one I dealt with 30 years ago.

When I was done with the braces and they came off, I really felt a sense of accomplishment, believe it or not. Four years of pain will do that for you. Dr. Andria had done his job, just like Mr. Pepperman had.

I googled Dr. Andria, assuming he may be dead, but am happy to report that he retired from private practice in 1997 and is now a professor of Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics at the University of South Carolina. If you are sending your kid to an orthodontist that he trained and/or educated, that kid will be in good hands.

If you ever read this, Dr. Andria, consider me a satisfied patient.

Cross posted at LITGM.

ChicagoBoyz need to feed their bodies and their brains.

Most said that it was, for a variety of reasons. Some of them posed were national pride, research that is done, and there were others.

I remember visiting the Kennedy Space Center several years ago. I loved the museums filled with the rockets and equipment used to explore space. I also was able to walk through the area where they were working on the International Space Station. I was with my father and he said to me “this has got to be a black hole of money here”. I couldn’t argue. I assume that NASA is run like any other government program, and is rife with waste.

The benefits of the space program are many. So many of the things that we use every day that we take for granted have been either invented or improved due to the space program.

But can’t we build a structure that can hold a perfect vacuum here on earth for a LOT cheaper and do the research there? Like for say, a billion dollars? For fiscal year -09, NASA’s budget was almost $18bb!

Do we need the weightless part to get the good research done?

Can’t private industry or individuals look for life on other planets?

I would love to hear from some of our scientists who read the blog as well as others on this subject.

In essence, the attorney was pleading with people to protect their fifth amendment rights by NOT speaking with the police after an incident unless you have your attorney present, ever. In the video there was a police officer who also said that you should never speak with the cops without an attorney present even if you are IN THE RIGHT.

The attorney said that even if you are in the right, things you tell the police can get twisted and turned around (intentionally, or not), and could incriminate you.

I was thinking of this as the Tiger Woods situation unfolded. I will never know what really happened outside of Mr. Woods’s house in those early morning hours last week. But as I was reading coverage on it I kept seeing that the police kept wanting to come to his house to ask him questions and they were denied. Florida law only states that in this type of investigation that Woods give his license, registration and proof in insurance and apparently that is all that he gave. Finally, Mr. Woods hired an attorney.

It is possible that Mr. Woods hired an attorney right after the incident and got good advice not to speak to the cops, but this episode is a great example of someone who clearly knew his rights and decided to exercise them. Any interview with the police would have hurt Mr. Woods, even though he might have done nothing wrong and just merely had an accident.

Update: Commenter Andrew has a link to the video here.

I have seen woodchucks, skunks, tons of rabbits, squirrels, racoons, coyotes, deer, ducks (etc.) and just last week a couple more (big photos under the fold).

This is a baby red-tailed hawk. GREAT rodent control. He is sitting on top of my eco-friendly H3. We have these on our farm property. Hopefully this guy will grow up to be as big as those – I would guess the full grown ones that I have seen are about three times this size. I absolutely love birds of prey.

My wife needed to come to the ‘hood the other day and snapped this photo – this is right around the corner from my workplace (again, in the middle of an industrial park). It is a giant red fox.

We have these in my residential neighborhood as well. I would be interested to hear of wildlife that you have seen that seems out of place.

Cross posted at LITGM.

Today I heard a story about a proposed wind farm in West Virginia. Seems that the environmentalists there are trying to stand in the way of the wind farm to save a bat – the Indiana bat to be precise.

So I guess I am wondering that if WIND isn’t even clean enough energy, where would the environmentalists say that we should get our energy from? Electricity doesn’t exactly just drop out of the sky (unless you could harness a lightning bolt somehow). Or is the end game simply the destruction of any and all forms of commerce as we know them? All in the name of a bat that may or may not be harmed. Hard for me to tell what the real agenda is anymore.

It looks like a typical warehouse that you would find in any of a million industrial parks in the United States.

But upon further investigation I found something quite different. This is the warehouse that the left uses to store it’s papier mache heads, sign making materials and other props for protest marches. Upon sniffing around it for a bit, I noticed that is was packed to the brim. It looked to me as they had contracted with a local lumberyard to supply the wood for their signage.

All humor aside, does the left not think that we haven’t noticed a certain…well…silence over Obama’s policies? It is OK for Obama to not only not decrease troop levels, but increase them as he is doing in Afghanistan? Why isn’t Gitmo closed? What the hell, even Iraq even has troops there that represent the Great Satan ™ as of now. I know because I am still sending care packages to them (unlike ANY of the protesters who claim they support the troops).

So just exactly what am I to think of the left? That these wars are OK as long as the President and Congress have a D by their names? Puhleeeze.

Today in their news segment they reported some news that I had hoped I would see one day. I let out a cheer – what a great way to start out my week.

I understand that this will be a long fight, but at least it is a start.

There is a very intersting comment thread at Volokh for those interested in the legal aspects of this case.

I am just praying that this goes to discovery.

Last week I was strolling through DFW and happened upon Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription by William F. Buckley Jr. As I posted that last link to Amazon I notice that I paid $4 too much at the airport. Oh well, I had to have it for that flight.

CYOGS is a book full of oddities and letters and replies that filled the pages of NRO when Buckley was running the show there. Some of the letters are personal, but all of the replies show Buckley’s great sense of humor and knowledge of all things linguistic.

April 11, 1975:
Dear Mr. Buckley,
I am a teacher with credentials in English, political science, history, mathematics, humanities and Japanese, and yet I barely have the ability to decipher your vulgar prose.
 
I can’t recall ever having seen such an obvious search for and display of archaic vocabulary and overall obfuscation in an apparent attempt to be “the learned one.” You stink!
 
You are a complete joke, a pedant, a phony conservative.
 
You’re an upstart. You may be a New Englander and a Yale man, but, in no way do you have the class of a Cox, a Richardson, or even a Kennedy.
 
Yours truly,
John M. Herlihy
Seaside, Calif.

Buckley’s reply:

Dear Mr. Herlihy: Sorry. English, political science, history, mathematics, humanities and Japanese are not quite enough. But don’t give up, Herlihy. Don’t ever give up. – WFB

The book also has some more serious letters, but most of it is odds and ends like this example. If you are a fan of Buckley, I suggest putting this one in your next box from Amazon. It is a very easy and quick read, and is an interesting sidetrip into the mind of WFB.

When I was growing up, if I would have been asked to take out the trash and I woud have uttered the phrase “this sucks”, it would have been met with a bar of soap in my mouth and more than likely several lashes with my dad’s leather belt. Today, if someone has a little sniffle or a cold, I would say to them “that sucks” and everone would go on their way without blinking an eye. In general, from what I have experienced, I would say that we have become more vulgar in a big way over the last few decades.

Another word that has lost much of it’s intended meaning is “racism” or “racist”. This morning I passed a van on the way to work. On the side were these words:

“Eliminating Racism, Empowering Women”. I will let you guess the organization before the fold.

Here it is. What the hell? (There I go again)

When my mom was young, she actually stayed at a small apartment in the YWCA. They helped her out during a time where she really couldn’t afford to stay at too many other places. I also remember when I was growing up they offered lots of classes and other things to do there. We even took our dog to obedience school classes there. My mom took tap dancing classes. I was enrolled in other fitness type activities.

So what has it turned into now? Just by having the word “racism” painted on their commuter van really turned me off. The slogan says nothing, and means nothing. When I hear someone called a racist I typically think that means that they have an opposing opinion. The word is used so much that it really doesn’t mean anything anymore. I suppose you could take it to mean “hates black people” or “hates Asian people”. I think by demonizing people and overusing the word so much, it just means nothing. The word “racism” sucks.