Tuesday - August 09, 2005

PC Football

_{Doug Marlette, The Tallahassee Democrat, FL}

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/09/2005 at 04:40 AM   
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   Monday - August 08, 2005

More Money For Africa?

Everyone says we should throw more money at Africa. U2’s Bono is running around the world begging for money, LiveAid gives concerts and the UN wrings its hands over the starving and dying. In my opinion, it is a ”money pit”. For those of you who never saw the movie (of the same name) or bought a house that was a “fixer-upper”, it is a way of throwing away good money after bad. Africa is no exception to this rule. In fact, as long as we throw money at the continent it will only prolong the agony. Why can’t we pass some legislation and call it the “No African Left Behind Act” .. where they only get money if they show reasonable signs of progress in solving their problems?

Take a look at the two quotes below. They both concern the West African country of Mali. The first comes from the US Department Of State and the second is from a news story today from AP ....

Mali

Area: 1,240,278 sq. km. (474,764 sq. mi.); about the size of Texas and California combined.

Population (2002 est.): 10.5 million.

US Foreign Aid: In 2003, U.S. assistance reached $44.2 million: This included $40.7 million in sector support made available through U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs; a Peace Corps program budget of $2.8 million for 190 volunteers serving in Mali; Self-Help and the Democracy Funds of $153,000; and State Department Public Diplomacy Funds of $300,000 for educational opportunities and local projects. Military assistance includes $100,000 for the International Military Education Training (IMET) program, and $200,000 for the Regional Defense Counter Terrorism Fellowship (RDCTF) program. The Department of State dedicated $1.05 million to train militaries of the Pan Sahel countries, including Mali.

MARSI, Mali (AP)—While the world’s attention has been fixed on famished Niger, Sidi Mohammed’s big, tearful eyes and cries of hunger reveal another food crisis unfolding next door. The year-old baby, mewling as his mother tries to feed him a cup of vitamin-rich gruel provided by aid workers, is one of an estimated 1.5 million of Mali’s 11 million people are said to be facing hunger, among them an estimated 144,000 children already suffering malnourishment.

Aid workers say they fear a replay of what happened in neighboring Niger, where the world ignored repeated warnings and only rushed in aid in recent weeks when images of starving children hit TV screens. The U.N. World Food Program said an appeal for $7.5 million was facing a shortfall of 85 percent, which it called “devastating. A similar appeal for Niger got 70 percent of the $16 million sought, mostly from Australia, Germany and the United States. But that was at least seven months after the first calls for help went out for the entire region.

Across the chronically dry and dusty West African region on the edge of the Sahara, malnutrition is a yearly blight. Poor rains and locusts worsened the situation last year, and now Sidi and his three siblings are dangerously underfed and dependent on food aid. Burkina Faso and Mauritania also are affected. “We had nothing to eat except the milk of our three sheep. I was very afraid. What could I do for my children?” says Sidi’s mother, 25-year-old Ahmetan Ahmedu.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 02:15 PM   
Filed Under: • Africa •  
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Most Outrageous Item Of The Day

What do greedy US bankers and illegal immigrants have in common? The mortgage on a new home, it seems. Several US banks have started giving home loans to illegal immigrants. Classic line: “break our laws and we’ll reward you with a home” ....

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The banking industry is opening its doors to a controversial new market: illegal immigrants. Despite heated political debate in Washington over illegal immigration in the United States, an increasing number of banks are seeing an untapped resource for growing their own revenue stream and contend that providing undocumented residents with mortgages will help revitalize local communities. It’s a win-win situation, they say. But skeptics worry about the message these home loans send to illegal immigrants: break our laws and we’ll reward you with a home.

“It’s institutionalizing illegality,” said Marti Dinerstein, president of Immigration Matters, a New York-based think tank. “Now there’s no distinction being made between the people that follow all the rules and those who break our laws by entering the country or overstaying their visas.” Dinerstein also worried that lack of knowledge on the part of illegal immigrants could pave the way for abuse in the form of predatory lending. But advocates of the practice say the benefits outweigh any potential downside. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, one million illegal immigrants cross the U.S. borders every year. About 500,000 illegal immigrants lose that status every year either by getting legitimate green cards or returning to their native countries. That leaves a 500,000 annual net increase of illegal immigrants – a market that has unmet banking needs.

“This is a huge untapped market with people that live and work in this country and are capable of buying homes to realize the American dream,” said Chan Peterson, executive vice president and head of community banking at Banco Popular, one of the earliest banks to enter this field. He added that there’s a common misperception that illegal immigrants will be more likely to default on their loans than a documented resident. But the company has found that there is no higher rate of default in this loan portfolio than any other market the company serves. “There’s a pride that comes with people moving from renting to owning and we’ve found that these borrowers are driven to hang on to their homes,” Peterson said.

Bill Schumer, vice president of product development at Fifth Third Mortgage Co., a unit of Fifth Third Bancorp. (Research), said the company entered the marketplace due to the belief that providing these low-to-moderate income loans will help revitalize communities in the United States, as borrowers buy more run-down properties and rebuild. He added that by introducing this segment of the population to home ownership education, they are also building a foundation to cross-sell their other products. “We’ve been at this program for the last 8 or 9 months and 68 percent of these borrowers have established three or more banking services with us,” he said.

While Schumer wasn’t willing to disclose how many of mortgages the company provides, he said the product has been well received in the marketplace and is already 4 percent above the level the bank had targeted for the year. And it’s growing. That’s not surprising, said Alenka Grealish, manager of the banking group at Celent, an independent research and consulting firm. Grealish said while the mortgage banking business in the U.S. continues to be red hot, veterans know that it’s a highly cyclical industry that moves with interest rate trends. She said that forward-looking banks are already considering how to grow their business when the pipeline of traditional mortgages begins to dry up. “Illegal immigrants are here to stay and banks are recognizing that,” she said. “If you do a niche market well and know how to price it, banks can have some attractive margins.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 12:52 PM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration • Outrageous •  
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On This Day In History

August 8, 1945 ....
&187;&187; Truman Signs United Nations Charter
&187;&187; Second Atomic Bomb Dropped On Nagasaki
&187;&187; Russians Declare War on Japan
(two out of three ain’t bad)

President Harry S. Truman signs the United Nations Charter and the United States becomes the first nation to complete the ratification process and join the new international organization. Although hopes were high at the time that the United Nations would serve as an arbiter of international disputes, the organization also served as the scene for some memorable Cold War clashes.

August 8, 1945, was a busy day in the history of World War II. The United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan, devastating the city of Nagasaki. The Soviet Union, following through with an agreement made earlier in the war, declared war on Japan. All observers agreed that the combination of these two actions would bring a speedy end to Japanese resistance. Tthe Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army.

The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima by the Americans did not have the effect intended: unconditional surrender by Japan. Half of the Japanese inner Cabinet, called the Supreme War Direction Council, refused to surrender unless guarantees about Japan’s future were given by the Allies, especially regarding the position of the emperor, Hirohito. The only Japanese civilians who even knew what happened at Hiroshima were either dead or suffering terribly.

Japan had not been too worried about the Soviet Union, so busy with the Germans on the Eastern front. The Japanese army went so far as to believe that they would not have to engage a Soviet attack until spring 1946. But the Soviets surprised them with their invasion of Manchuria, an assault so strong (of the 850 Japanese soldiers engaged at Pingyanchen, 650 were killed or wounded within the first two days of fighting) that Emperor Hirohito began to plead with his War Council to reconsider surrender. The recalcitrant members began to waver.

At the same time, in Washington, D.C., President Truman took a step that many Americans hoped would mean continued peace in the post-World War II world. The president signed the United Nations Charter, thus completing American ratification of the document. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes also signed. In so doing, the United States became the first nation to complete the ratification process. The charter would come into full force when China, Russia, Great Britain, France, and a majority of the other nations that had constructed the document also completed ratification.

The signing was accomplished with little pomp and ceremony. Indeed, President Truman did not even use one of the ceremonial pens to sign, instead opting for a cheap 10-cent desk pen. Nonetheless, the event was marked by hope and optimism. Having gone through the horrors of two world wars in three decades, most Americans--and people around the world--were hopeful that the new international organization would serve as a forum for settling international disagreements and a means for maintaining global peace. Over the next decades, the United Nations did serve as the scene for some of the more notable events in the Cold War: the decision by the Security Council to send troops to Korea in 1950; Khrushchev pounding the table with his shoe during a U.N. debate; and continuous and divisive discussion over admission of communist China to membership in the UN. As for its role as a peacekeeping institution, the record of the U.N. was not one of great success during the Cold War. The Soviet veto in the Security Council stymied some efforts, while the U.S. desire to steer an independent course in terms of military involvement after the unpopular Korean War meant less and less recourse to the U.N. to solve world conflicts. In the years since the end of the Cold War, however, the United States and Russia have sometimes cooperated to send United Nations forces on peacekeeping missions, such as the effort in Bosnia.
-- Courtesy of The History Channel

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 12:31 PM   
Filed Under: • History •  
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High Noon Oddities

• Lock Up Those Nuts!


• Iguana Vasectomies!


• Killer Eels On The Attack!


• Octopus Tentacles Au Gratin!


• Six-Year-Olds Really Need Cell Phones!


• How To Lose Your Wife In Sixty Seconds!


• Dogs Can Do It But It’s Illegal For Humans!


• The European Union (EU) Doesn’t Like Boobies!


• Two Heterosexual Canadian Men Getting Married For The Tax Breaks!

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 11:52 AM   
Filed Under: • Odd-Strange •  
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Star Trek: The Next Generation

NASA is already working on the Shuttle’s replacement ....

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 11:41 AM   
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No More Noogies In Oregon

That’s right. As one 15-year-old found out yesterday, kids can no longer harass each other with “titty-twisters” or other forms of “Three Stooges” pranks. The young man in question will have to pay a $67 fine and he also has a permanent misdemeanor on his police record (which he can have removed when he turns 18). The really bad news is that “wet-willies,” “wedgies,” “swirlies,” and “noogies” are also criminal acts nowadays. You folks better hurry up and buy those “Three Stooges” DVD’s before they’re banned .... in the public interest, of course. No word yet on “cootie” infections but I assume they will have to be disallowed also ....

GOLD HILL, Ore. (AP)—A 15-year-old boy who pinched and twisted the nipples of a 13-year-old has been sentenced to three days of community service for harassment. David Thumler, 15, said the “titty-twister” was just horseplay. The mother of 13-year-old Matthew Cox counters that the incident was humiliating for her son, who saw it as an assault from an older, bigger bully. “They’re not friends,” she said. “If he was my son’s friend, it would be a different thing,” said Bobby Cox.

In addition to the community service, Thumler has been ordered to pay a $67 fine and the misdemeanor has been placed on his permanent record. He can request to have it removed when he turns 18. Ken Chapman, a Jackson County juvenile probation supervisor, said Oregon law defines physical harassment as “offensive physical touching.” That includes such adolescent antics as “wet-willies,” “wedgies,” “swirlies,” “noogies” and all other forms of “Three Stooges” behavior, Chapman said.

According to David, the two boys were in line at a local deli when Matthew jokingly made an embarrassing remark to the female clerk about David. In retaliation, David counterattacked with the “titty-twister,” the 15-year-old said. “It’s a thing of camaraderie,” David said. “If he’s going to assume our friendship is on that level, then so am I.”

A lawyer hired by the 15-year-old’s family called the juvenile court’s actions “Orwellian.” “They call this ‘baby assault,’” said Michael Kellington, a criminal defense attorney in Medford, hired by the family. Even Bobby Cox said she was surprised to hear that her husbands’ call to Gold Hill police resulted in court time for the boy. “Nobody informed me it would be a full-blown trial,” she said.

According to Kellington, the incident was blown out of proportion in part because David’s mother refused to let him show up for an initial hearing in juvenile court. Christine Alford, David’s mother, said she did not let her son attend the hearing because she had seen photos of teenagers in handcuffs on the county’s Web site. Kellington said that Alford’s refusal to let David go upped the ante and brought down “unfair, Draconian measures” upon her son. What should have been a discussion between first-time-offender and a representative of the juvenile justice system became a court trial.

“The mom is understandably fearful,” said Kellington. “You shouldn’t retaliate for the decision of a parent upon the child.” Chapman, the juvenile probation supervisor, said the mother should have known better. “‘Hearing’ doesn’t mean ‘taking into custody,’” he said. “When we take someone into custody, we don’t make appointments. If there’s a consequence for not coming in informally, well, that’s one they chose.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 08:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Politically-Incorrect •  
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Congress Screws Up Technology

You may all have heard that Daylight Savings Time (DST) will be extended by a month in the Fall and another month in the Spring. The bill is set to be signed by President Bush this week. What you may not know is it is going to screw up everything from computers to VCR’s to DVR’s to cell phones in the spring of 2007. Why? They are all hard-coded with DST start and stop dates. It’s going to be a freaking mess in March of 2007 ....

NEW YORK (AP)—When daylight-saving time starts earlier than usual in the United States come 2007, your VCR or DVD recorder could start recording shows an hour late. Cell phone companies could give you an extra hour of free weekend calls, and people who depend on online calendars may find themselves late for appointments. An energy bill President Bush is to sign Monday would start daylight time three weeks earlier and end it a week later as an energy-saving measure. And that has technologists worried about software and gadgets that now compensate for daylight time based on a schedule unchanged since 1987.

“It is unfortunately going to add a little bit of complexity to consumers,” said Reid Sullivan, vice president of the entertainment group at Panasonic Consumer Electronics Co. “In some cases, depending on the product, they may have to manually increase or decrease the time.”

The upcoming transition evokes memories of Y2K, the Year 2000 rollover that forced programmers to adjust software and other systems that, relying on two digits for the year, never took the 21st century into account.

“It wouldn’t be a society-wide catastrophe, but there would be a problem if nothing’s done about it or we try to move too quickly,” said Dave Thewlis, executive director of a group that promotes standards for calendar software.

Newer VCRs and DVD recorders have built-in calendars to automatically adjust for daylight time. Users would have to override them, switching to “manual” to ensure shows continue to record correctly. Computers with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating systems would need to obtain updates. Though most affected applications would likely be taken care of by the Microsoft fix, calendar systems will need to be checked to ensure that appointments already entered get properly adjusted.

Some electric utilities have advanced meters to adjust rates based on peak and non-peak hours, and studies would be required to determine if any modifications are needed. The telecommunications industry, meanwhile, must ensure that its clocks are properly adjusted to bill customers properly. Adding to the complications is the fact that many computer programs now treat U.S. and Canadian time zones as the same. If Canada doesn’t adopt the new dates, too, Windows, calendars and other software would have to learn additional zones.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 08:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
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Canadian Humor

There are at least five jokes in this story. See if you can find all of them ....

Americans Didn’t Flock To Canada After Bush Win

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians can put away those extra welcome mats—it seems Americans unhappy about the result of last November’s presidential election have decided to stay at home after all. In the days after President Bush won a second term, the number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada’s main immigration Web site shot up sixfold, prompting speculation that unhappy Democrats would flock north.

But official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election. On the face of it this is not good news—Canada is one of the few major nations seeking to attract immigrants—but Immigration Minister Joe Volpe was philosophical.

“We’ll take talent from wherever it is resident in the world. I was absolutely elated to see the number of hits and then my staff said ‘You know what? A hit on the Internet is after all just a hit’,” he told Reuters on Thursday. “I guess I’m happy Republicans and Democrats have found a way to live together in peace and in harmony,” he said.

Canada generally tilts more to the social and political left than the United States. Data from the main Canadian processing center in Buffalo, NY shows that in the six months up to the U.S. election there were 16,266 applications from people seeking to live in Canada, a figure that fell to 14,666 for the half year after the vote. A spokeswoman for Canada’s federal immigration ministry declined to speculate in the reasons for the drop. Toby Condliffe, who heads the Canadian chapter of Democrats Abroad, did have an explanation of sorts.

“I can only assume the Americans who checked out the Web site subsequently checked out our winter temperatures and further took note that the National Hockey League was being locked out and had second thoughts,” he told Reuters. Last year, Canada, which has a population of about 32 million, accepted 235,808 immigrants from all over the world.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 07:15 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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Monday Morning New Bytes

• Peter Jennings Is Dead. I have no comment at this time.


• The Price Of Oil Is At A New High. My wallet is at a new low.


• Bill Clinton Is In England Campaigning For Cherie Blair. What is it with Slick Willy and the gals?


• The Space Shuttle’s Landing Is Delayed One More Day. Astronauts won’t explode until Tuesday.


• Iran Is Re-Starting Its Nuclear Plants. Nuke ‘em now before they get too far along.


• The UN Head Of Oil For Food Program Resigns. Wow, now that’s a shocker!

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 06:06 AM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs •  
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The Bear Facts

_{Steve Breen, The San Diego Union-Tribune}

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 05:58 AM   
Filed Under: • International •  
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   Sunday - August 07, 2005

Suds Trivia

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 11:42 AM   
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Are We Hungry Yet?

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about food in America ....

• 1621 The first Thanksgiving is celebrated.
• 1773 After 342 chests of tea are dumped into Boston Harbor, coffee becomes the colonists’ drink of choice.
• 1803 The first home icebox is patented, and the iceman (below) is born.
• 1812 The first recipe for ketchup based on tomatoes instead of soy is published by James Mease, who calls it “love apple or tomato catchup.”
• 1845 Visitors to Poland Spring, Maine, begin paying for bottles of spring water.
• 1853 A patron at a New York resort complains that his french fries are too thick, so chef George Crum intentionally slices the next batch too thin and fries the potatoes too crisp, inadvertently inventing potato chips.
• 1858 John Mason invents the screw-top glass jar.
• 1860 Chemist Louis Pasteur heats milk to kill germs and bacteria, a process that will become known as pasteurization.
• 1868 George Pullman rolls out the first dining car on trains.
• 1874 Harper’s Magazine writes that using a knife as a fork is “regarded as a vulgarism.”
• 1886 John Pemberton begins selling medicinal syrup as a fountain drink, creating Coca-Cola.
• 1886 Josephine Cochran invents the first working dishwasher.
• 1888 The first vending machines in the U.S. are introduced on New York City subway platforms, selling tutti-frutti gum.
• 1897 A cough medicine manufacturer creates an 88 percent sugar gelatin dessert that his wife names Jell-O.
• 1901 Satori Kato invents instant coffee. (It be-comes popular only after the Nescafé brand of freeze-dried crystals is introduced in 1938, however.)
• 1902 Horn & Hardart opens the first Automat in Philadelphia. For a couple of coins, patrons can open a slot and grab a freshly made hot meal.
• 1902 The Kellogg brothers push boiled wheat through a roller and bake the thin flakes. Looking for a tastier version, they switch the base ingredient, and cornflakes are born.
• 1905 Eleven-year-old Frank Epperson leaves a stick in a cup of soda outside overnight, accidentally inventing the Popsicle.
• 1918 Having gone from 200 pounds to 150, Lulu Peters writes the first diet book to endorse caloriecounting—and sells 2 million copies.
• 1920-1933 Prohibition
• 1922 Stephen Poplawski puts a spinning blade on the bottom of a container, inventing the blender.
• 1937 The shopping cart makes its debut.
• 1946 Percy Spencer stands next to a magnetron, and the candy bar in his pocket melts. A year later he debuts a 750-pound microwave oven.
• 1953 Swanson marries a postwar demand for time-saving devices to the country’s newest obsession, and voilà: TV dinners.
• 1964 Ron Popeil pitches his Veg-O-Matic on TV, pioneering the infomercial.
• 1972 The Spa on Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass., puts yogurt through a soft-serve ice cream machine, producing frozen yogurt.
• 1973 Carl Sontheimer introduces the slicing, dicing, all-in-one kitchen juggernaut Cuisinart.
• 1976 California’s New Albion Brewing Co. starts the microbrew trend.
• 1979 Chef Paul Prudhomme opens K-Paul Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans. His blackened redfish sparks a national fad—which depletes the state’s supply of the fish.
• 1988 Researcher James Anderson finds that oat bran lowers cholesterol. Soon after, oat bran is added to everything, from muffins to beer.
• 1993 The Food Network goes on the air, ensuring that the celebrity chef is here to stay.
• 2003 Congressional cafeterias change french fries to freedom fries after France refuses to support the war in Iraq.
• 2005 Fed up with gooey stickers and running inks, the produce industry introduces laser-tattooed fruit.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 11:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining •  
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Asshat Of The Day Award

Ya gotta hand it to this clown, he has an abundance of chutzpah (even if he ain’t Jewish) ....

(DAILY MAIL - UK)—An extreme Muslim cleric whose family have been living on benefits in Britain for 20 years says it would not be ‘fair’ to deport him. Speaking after the Prime Minister announced his clampdown, father-of-seven Sheik Omar Bakri said: “I have wives, children, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law. It would be hard on my family if I was deported.”

Since Syrian-born Bakri settled in Britain, he and his extended family have raked in benefits amounting to at least £300,000. He is registered disabled because of an injury to his leg during his childhood, and was recently supplied with a £31,000 Ford Galaxy under the Motability scheme. Bakri, who lives in a £200,000 home in North London, tops up his £250-a-week benefit payments with an extra £50 incapacity allowance.

He has praised the September 11 terrorists as ‘magnificent’, called Israel ‘a cancer’ and said homosexuals should be ‘thrown from Big Ben’. In January, he declared that Britain had become a ‘land of war’, and called on Muslims to unite behind Al Qaeda. He has supported suicide bombings and urged his followers to kill non-Muslims ‘ wherever, whenever’. He also claimed he has no wish to stay in Britain, but his family would suffer if he was deported.

“If they want to change the law and say that people who are here must live within the framework of those rules, then that is fine,” said the 45-year-old cleric. “But they cannot punish people by backdating it for 20 years or so. That is not a smart or fair system. Tony Blair should have charged me years ago if that was the case. He did not because I had done nothing wrong.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 07:40 AM   
Filed Under: • Outrageous • RoPMA •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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