Friday - June 10, 2011

eye test

Posted by Drew458     on 06/10/2011 at 11:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Humor •  
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TEST …. TEST

note to Drew .... check email

TEST

Posted by peiper     on 06/10/2011 at 11:02 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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guy rapes, gets out of jail and … yeah. does it again. law and disorder.

As happens so often here, an article of maddening content comes along and even before I post it with my own take and or anger, one of our regulars posts a comment or two that’s right on the mark, on the subject of crime and punishment. Or as in this case, a total lack of it.

It’s this kind of thing that makes so many people have zero respect for the law and the courts.  In fact, there’s even more proof of that.

Recently, a young burglar broke into the home of an 80 year old woman with health problems.  She was sadly subject to strokes and she had one and died.
Since the criminal couldn’t have been aware of her condition, they didn’t bring manslaughter charges against him, and he was originally sentenced to 6months. So he went on Facebook and bragged about his short prison term.
Here’s what he wrote.

Liam Cunliffe , Is a happy bunni all I can say. DROPPED!! YAA X
The big 1 yaa haha x
Im only looking at 6 months haha bring it on easy! x

He ended up with two years and was quite surprised by the change of his term.

Here’s a comment from our Wardmom that sums up what many feel.

Meanwhile the killers and criminals are running amuck in our society - and then given plea bargains to get out of jail in no time at all. Tell me why at all a paedophile should ever, ever be released back into a society populated with children - or a murderer? Time in jail does nothing to ‘rehabilitate’ them nor make them less of a threat to innocent people. Kill them and free the people to not live in fear or danger. Toss the terrorists into that - and a few politicians - and the world would be a much better place.
Wardmama4

I suspect the majority of law abiding citizens feel the same.  But hell. Who listens to them?  It’s enough of a headache for politicians to keep their election war chests topped up, without having to worry about the petty concerns of those who are most at risk.

So anyway, here’s our latest WTF were they thinking.
Take a look.

Rapist released early attacked new victim within weeks

A rapist who was freed after serving just half his sentence sexually assaulted another woman weeks later.

By Mark Hughes, Crime Correspondent

Fabian Thomas, 23, was released in December last year after serving four years of an eight-year sentence for rape. He struck again in February, attacking a woman in a supermarket car park.

The Home Office is now investigating the case. It comes just weeks after Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, had to apologise following his defence of Government proposals to halve prison sentences for rapists who plead guilty early.

He suggested that some rapes were less serious than others. A Home Office spokesman said a review would be carried out into how Thomas was managed while on probation. But women’s groups and politicians seized on the case last night as an example of the consequences of letting rapists out of prison early.

Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, called on the Government to clarify its position on maximum sentences.

Angie Conroy, of Rape Crisis, said: “Letting him out early was an accident waiting to happen.”

Thomas’s first offence was on New Year’s Day 2006 when he twice raped and threatened to kill a girl, aged 17, in an alley in Taunton, Somerset.

He was sentenced in December 2006 to eight years in a young offenders’ institution. In December 2010 he was released and on Feb 20 he committed his second attack, when he attempted to rape a woman, aged 19, in a supermarket car park while brandishing a hunting knife and wearing a balaclava.

He admitted the attack at Plymouth Crown Court on Monday and will be sentenced at a date yet to be set.

a po’d wiley will carry you to the source and other hair pulling links

Posted by peiper     on 06/10/2011 at 09:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Justice - LACK OF • UK •  
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   Thursday - June 09, 2011

No, it’s not a Monty Python Sketch

HOQUIAM, Washington – Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington state.

The victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” Police said the attacker answered, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a marten,” then punched him in the nose and fled.
...
KXRO reports he left the carcass behind.
...
He said he had found the marten dead near Hoquiam, but police don’t know why he carried it with him.

A marten is a member of the weasel family.

stolen from stoaty the weasel, of course!

UPDATE:

HOQUIAM, Wash. —

Here’s an update to the strange case of a man accused of assaulting another man in Hoquiam while holding a dead weasel. The attacker told the victim and police that the animal was a marten.

Now, Hoquiam Police Chief Jeff Myers tells KXRO the animal actually was a mink. He says martens haven’t been seen in the Grays Harbor area for 50 years.

Both minks and martens are members of the weasel family.

The way this story is going, by Monday it will be a wolverine!

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2011 at 02:10 PM   
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A Month’s Supply

Drill here, drill now

Exxon makes major oil discovery in Gulf

Exxon Mobil said Wednesday it has discovered an estimated 700 million barrels of oil equivalent at a deepwater well off the Louisiana coast, a major find that a top House Republican argued should push the administration to speed up offshore permitting.

“This is one of the largest discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico in the last decade,” Exxon Mobil Exploration Company President Steve Greenlee said in a statement.

Exxon Mobil made the discovery after the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) approved an application in March allowing the company to resume exploratory drilling. Drilling at the well was halted in the aftermath of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The well is located about 250 miles south of New Orleans in about 7,000 feet of water, Exxon Mobil said.

“This is the exact reason why Republicans have been pressuring the Department of the Interior to issue offshore permits—America has abundant oil and natural gas reserves, we simply need to allow the hardworking men and women in the energy industry to do their job,” Hastings said in a statement.

Republicans and drill-state Democrats have alleged that the Obama administration is slow-walking the issuance of Gulf drilling permits. But the administration insists that it is working diligently to approve permits under a new regulatory scheme that includes beefed-up safety and environmental standards.

Peak US consumption is said to be 20 million barrels a day. So that’s 35 days of oil for the entire country, from one well. A month without a drop of imports. A relative drop in the bucket, but it ought to be enough to mitigate the market for a bit.

Now, who wants to place bets on whether the wise and wonderful Lord Obama will look down his regal nose and wave the royal arugula and allow them to drill?

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2011 at 01:13 PM   
Filed Under: • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •  
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Life In My World

So I had a couple of checks to put in the bank. Work, woo hoo! I’m putting my deposit together and I see a whole mess of coins on my dresser. You know how that is. You never have the right change for what you buy, so you pay with bills and then they hand you a handful of coins. And you don’t want to carry a pound worth of zinc in your pocket, so you put them down somewhere. Lather, rinse, repeat, and it starts to really accumulate after a bit. My bank has one of those coin counter things, so I counted them all up and put them in a plastic cup and took them with me.

I get to the bank and feed the machine. It talks to me. Good grief.
“If you can guess how much money you have in coins within $1.99, you can win a prize!”
Well duh, I just counted the things. And then I found a few more in the car. So I enter my guess. And I was off by 9¢. So the machine gives me a slip of paper, and I take that to the counter.

“Congratulations sir, you’ve won a prize”, the teller beams at me, “what would you like?”

“Can I have a pony?”

She doesn’t bat an eye. “I’m sorry sir, we don’t offer live animals as prizes. But you can choose from either the roll of stickers or this neat patriotic stencil.”

I took the stencil.

I had enough coins to buy a tank of gas. Ordinarily, but you know how much gas costs these days. Less than half a tank, actually. I blame Obama.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2011 at 12:20 PM   
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A Jersey Tale

In New Jersey, nothing beats Essex County, 130 square miles of urban melodrama stretching from the now sudden-death ghetto streets of Philip Roth’s old ­Weequahic Newark neighborhood to the big-as-the-Ritz engagement rings at the Short Hills Mall. Famous crooks who have plied their trade this side of the Pulaski Skyway include Lucky Luciano, Longy Zwillman, and Richie “the Boot” Boiardo, who, legend has it, burned his enemies’ remains in the furnace of his castlelike Livingston home. Equally greedy, if less folkloric, has been Essex’s epic succession of corrupt politicians, voted in and not. Good luck to Cory Booker, everyone’s favorite walking infomercial for well-tailored municipal uplift, but the smart money is against him. The last three Newark mayors were convicted of one charge or another.

A strong candidate for addition to this list—in a twisted legalistic category all his own—is the 55-year old Paul Bergrin, Esq., who awaits trial in a federal lock-up facing charges that are a good bet to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life. Advocate to killers, whorehouse proprietors, bum-check-passing beauty queens, Lil’ Kim, and a thousand forgotten street hoodlums from Newark’s bad wards, Bergrin has run the gamut of Jersey jurisprudence in his 30 years on the scene.

Paul Bergrin, graduate of Nova Southeastern law school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a time was the biggest fish on the street. Parking his Bentley and BMW in the lot around the corner on Mulberry Street, Bergrin met his clients, people like Angelo “The Horn” Prisco, a Genovese capo­regime, and ranking Latin King coronas, in his huge office on the tenth floor at 50 Park Place. And for legal eagles who continue to work here, their fallen former colleague remains an unsettling, cautionary, obsessed-about presence.

With the trial still pending, the U.S. Attorney’s office had issued a neo-fatwa against talking about the case—no surprise since everyone knew the Feds had a particular hatred of Bergrin. How could they not? First he works in their office, then he supposedly helps murder one of their witnesses. Also galling was the fact that they’d earlier mishandled a piece of wiretap evidence, blowing a previous attempt to indict him in 2005.
...
However, when it came to Bergrin’s insistence on his total innocence, eyes began rolling—especially in regard to the disappearance of witnesses.

Now entering his third year behind bars, Bergrin says he is using his prison time to get closer to his Jewishness. ... He has also completed his memoirs, which he says will ... be “a national best seller.”

Back in Jersey, Bergrin’s legend grows. Like Bonnie and Clyde, the roster of crimes he supposedly committed, cases he fixed, expands by the day. His name has turned up in the lyrics of East Orange rappers.

“He’s a local legend,” said one Essex prosecutor. “Paul was made for this place. He might have done terrible things, but it was Essex that helped him get away with it. Face it, criminals have been running things here for a hundred years.

Hey, all I’m saying is that this is a 7 page story from New York Magazine.  An wadda newyawkas no bout Jersey? Nuttin, dat’s wot. So eh, get atta here, right? Right. Capeesh.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2011 at 10:42 AM   
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Good To Go

I just renewed the internet domain registration and the WhoIs for our alternate web address. Got a nice deal, 25% off, by doing them both at the same time.

The whole deal was only $12.63. But it allows our readers to get to this site even if they forget to use the dash in the URL. That’s right: http://www.barkingmoonbat.com redirects here. One of these days I’m just going to make the effort to change the URL to bmews.com, and perhaps move the blog to another, less expensive, host. Right now if you try to goto bmews.com, you get an odd page from some server saying Host Not Available, and then a list of some odd little webpages on that server. Whatever. That means that bmews.com is already registered to someone, but it isn’t actually in use. Fine.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2011 at 10:25 AM   
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I Count Four. Did I Miss One Or Two?

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration has intensified the covert U.S. war in Yemen, hitting militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, The New York Times reported late Wednesday.

The accelerated campaign has occurred in recent weeks as violent conflict in Yemen has left the government in Sanaa struggling to cling to power, the Times said.

The report, posted on the newspaper’s website, said Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital. American officials hope the strikes will help prevent militants from consolidating power.

A drone strike by U.S. special operations forces on May 5 targeted U.S.-born Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but a malfunction caused rockets to miss him by a matter of minutes, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The recent operations come after a nearly yearlong pause in American airstrikes, which were halted amid concerns that poor intelligence had led to bungled missions and civilian deaths that were undercutting the goals of the secret campaign.
...
The U.S. campaign in Yemen is led by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command and is closely coordinated with the CIA, the Times said.
...
[Yemeni President Ali Abdullah] Saleh authorized secret American missions in Yemen in 2009 but placed limits on their scope and has said publicly that all military operations have been conducted by his own troops.

So, let me see if I understand the big picture here. In Libya, we’re indirectly attacking a brutal dictator and supporting Al Qaeda aligned revolutionaries. And the dictator seems to be winning. But in Yemen, we’re supporting a brutal dictator and attacking Al Qaeda aligned revolutionaries. And the revolutionaries seem to be winning.

Did somebody let Obama make the picks for who we’re going to support? Because the guy utterly sucks when it comes to picking anything, from basketball teams, to Olympics hosting cities, to ... you name it. They guy is like Jimmy Carter: whatever he picks, take the opposite, and that will be the right one.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2011 at 09:54 AM   
Filed Under: • Military • Obama, The One • War On Terror •  
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Better Than Nothing

A hidden chamber deep within the Great Pyramid of Giza revealed a stunning secret last month: strange hieroglyphs written in red paint and sealed within the structure for 4,500 years.

And now one researcher may have unlocked that mystery.

“The markings are hieratic numerical signs. They read from right to left, meaning 100, 20, 1. The builders simply recorded the total length of the shaft: 121 cubits,” Luca Miatello, an independent researcher who specializes on ancient Egyptian mathematics, told Discovery News.

The markings, red ochre figures painted on the floor of the hidden “Queen’s Chamber” deep within the pyramid, corresponds to the length of the shaft leading to them, Miatello said.

But there’s nothing “simple” about this discovery, said Shaun Whitehead of the Djedi Project, the archaeology group that found the hidden chamber through a special, shaft-spelunking robot.

“If the figures are numbers and they are the precise measurement of the shaft, then it’s amazing,” he said. “It would be a huge, rare clue to what the architect was thinking. For example, why take the trouble to precisely measure and record the length if the shaft was only used for a mundane purpose or simply abandoned?”

The shaft, one of four leading deep within the pyramid, was first discovered in 1872.

Two weeks ago:

A robot explorer designed and built by University of Leeds engineers, in collaboration with Scoutek, UK and Dassault Systèmes, France, has revealed hieroglyphs beyond a narrow tunnel inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. The 4500-year-old markings, seen on video images gathered by the Djedi robot expedition, may give clues to how this part of the pyramid was built.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu is known to contain four narrow tunnels – two leading from the King’s Chamber and two from the Queen’s Chamber. However, scholars are unable to agree on what they were used for. This is partly due to problems researchers face getting into these narrow spaces.

This is the same tunnel - the tunnels were called air shafts when I was younger - that those guys ran those tiny tank tracked robots up a couple years ago. The north shaft (dotted line in the pyramid drawing above) There was a much ballyhooed documentary on it ... I think they found a stick. Seriously, there was a stick in the tunnel. Don’t recall if they retrieved it and got a carbon date, which would then prove how old the pyramid is. As I recall, the robots didn’t work right. Or the explorers - they were Swiss, weren’t they? - visas ran out, or they misbehaved. Can’t recall the details, but that mission ended and sometime later somebody made a different robot that went back up the air shaft. And found a block at the end of the shaft, that had two copper handles on it. End of adventure. About a year or so later another robot mission went up, and this time drilled a hole in the block. And found that there was an air space behind it. End of adventure. And then another robot (this is getting tiring isn’t it?) went up and stuck a flexible endoscopic camera in the hole, and looked around. And took some pictures.

And that brings us up to date. Here is a composite of those pictures. Note the line on the floor. The 3 splotches off to the right are hieroglyphs, and the deciphering of them is today’s bit of news.

Read from the lower right to the upper left, these are the symbols for 100, 20, and 1. So the shaft is 121 cubits long from it’s beginning to this line. Hey, more precision building from those ancient Egyptians. And now we have a physical example that lets’ us know exactly how long an Egyptian cubit is, but whether they used a regular one or an oversized “royal” one, I don’t know.

Yee haa!! Wait, that’s a bit of archaeology isn’t it? And it’s Thursday! That can mean only one thing: this must be an A&R Thursday post! Woo hoo!!

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2011 at 08:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Archeology / Anthropology • Eye-Candy •  
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   Wednesday - June 08, 2011

playing soldier and making bang now unacceptable

A couple of weeks ago a little boy in school was reprimanded and sent home because he made a gun with his hand and fingers as so many of us did in saner daze.
I’m spelling it with a ‘z’ because in this case, as in so many others, “DAZE” is applicable.

I suppose that if an adult did that during an argument with someone and things got hot, and one guy did that, it could be seen as a threat.  Likewise, kids should not be allowed to make that sort of gesture at their teachers. 
But come on, little kids at play making a hand gun and playing cowboys and indigenous people or cops and the alleged suspect shouldn’t be seen by adults as a sign of future crime and evil doing.  But apparently some do. This is the irrational world we inhabit these days. Can’t say I like it much but nothing I can do about it except bitch.

Take a look.

School reprimands seven-year-old boys for playing ‘army game’

A primary school has been condemned by parents for disciplining two seven-year-old boys after teachers ruled playing army games amounted to “threatening behaviour”.

By Murray Wardrop

Staff at Nathaniel Newton Infant School in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, reprimanded the two boys after they were seen making pistol shapes with their fingers.
Teachers broke up the imaginary classroom shoot-out and contacted the youngsters’ parents, warning them that such behaviour would not be tolerated.

The school, which caters for around 180 pupils aged four to seven, said the gun gestures were “unacceptable” and were not permitted at school.

However, parents have described the reaction as “outrageous”, while family groups warned that “wrapping children in cotton wool” damages their upbringing.
Defending its policy, a spokesman for Nathaniel Newton Infant School said: “Far from stopping children from playing we actively encourage it.

“However a judgement call has to be made if playing turns into unacceptable behaviour.
“The issue here was about hand gestures being made in the shape of a gun towards members of staff which is understandably unacceptable, particularly in the classroom.”

A father of one of the boys who was disciplined said: “It’s ridiculous. How can you tell a seven-year-old boy he cannot play guns and armies with his friends.
“Another parent was called for the same reason. We were told to reprimand our son for this and to tell him he cannot play ‘guns’ anymore.
“The teacher said the boys should be reprimanded for threatening behaviour which would not be tolerated at the school.”

The community primary school was rated as “good” overall in an Ofsted report published last year, but warned that children oughtt to have greater freedom to play.
The inspectors praised pupils’ behaviour as “outstanding”, telling them in a letter: “Your behaviour is excellent and you work very well together.”
They added that they had asked teachers to “make it easier for the children to play and learn outside”.

Parenting groups condemned the school’s reaction to the children’s game of soldiers, warning that it risked causing a rift between the school and parents.
Margaret Morrissey, founder of the family lobby group Parents Outloud, said: “It is madness to try to indoctrinate children aged seven with political correctness in this way.

“Children have played cowboys and Indians like this for generations and it does them absolutely no harm whatsoever.
“In my experience, it is the children who are banned from playing innocent games like this who then go on to develop a fascination with guns.

“We cannot wrap our children in cotton wool. Allowing them to take a few risks and play games outside is an essential part of growing up.

“By reprimanding these youngsters at this age, the school makes a very big issue out of something trivial, which will divide the parents and teachers.”

The case follows a string of similar incidents in which children’s playtime activities have been curbed by overzealous staff over health and safety concerns.

Earlier this year, a Liverpool school banned youngsters from playing football with anything other than sponge balls amid fears youngsters might get hurt.

Other traditional playground games such as British bulldog and even leapfrog are prohibited at 30 per cent 10 per cent of schools respectively, a study by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers union found.

Marcus Jones, the Tory MP for Nuneaton, said: “It is quite apparent that the seven-year-olds would be playing an innocent game.
“This is political correctness gone mad. When I was that age that type of game was common place and I don’t remember anyone coming to any harm from it.”

TELEGRAPH

A bit of confusion here I believe. Either the kiddies were brought up due to disrespectful behavior towards staff, or because they were playing army/soldier make believe.  It read like both.  How do you see it?

Posted by peiper     on 06/08/2011 at 09:22 AM   
Filed Under: • Education •  
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   Tuesday - June 07, 2011

James Arness

Thanks to reader Dave for pointing out my oversight. James Arness died Friday from old age. He was 88.

James Arness of ‘Gunsmoke’ fame dies at 88
Written by
LYNN ELBERASSOCIATED PRESS

James Arness, the 6-foot-6 actor who towered over the television landscape for two decades as righteous Dodge City lawman Matt Dillon in “Gunsmoke,” died today. He was 88.

The actor died in his sleep at his home in Brentwood, Calif., according to his business manager, Ginny Fazer.

Arness’ official Web site posted a letter from Arness today that he wrote with the intention that it be posted posthumously: “I had a wonderful life and was blessed with so many loving people and great friends,” he said.

“I wanted to take this time to thank all of you for the many years of being a fan of ‘Gunsmoke,’ ‘The Thing,’ ‘How the West Was Won’ and all the other fun projects I was lucky enough to have been allowed to be a part of. I had the privilege of working with so many great actors over the years.”

As U.S. Marshal Dillon in the 1955-75 CBS Western series, Arness created an indelible portrait of a quiet, heroic man with an unbending dedication to justice and the town he protected.

The wealth and fame Arness gained from “Gunsmoke” could not protect him from tragedy in his personal life: His daughter and his former wife, Virginia, both died of drug overdoses.

Arness, a quiet, intensely private man who preferred the outdoor life to Hollywood’s party scene, rarely gave interviews and refused to discuss the tragedies.

“He’s big, impressive and virile,” costar Amanda Blake (Miss Kitty) once said of Arness, adding, “I’ve worked with him for 16 years, but I don’t really know him.”

The actor was 32 when friend John Wayne declined the lead role in “Gunsmoke” and recommended Arness instead. Afraid of being typecast, Arness initially rejected it.

“Go ahead and take it, Jim,” Wayne urged him. “You’re too big for pictures. Guys like Gregory Peck and I don’t want a big lug like you towering over us. Make your mark in television.”

“Gunsmoke” went on to become the longest-running dramatic series in network history until NBC’s “Law & Order” tied in 2010. Arness’ 20-year prime-time run as the marshal was tied only in recent times by Kelsey Grammer’s 20 years as Frasier Crane from 1984 to 2004 on “Cheers” and then on “Frasier.”

The years showed on the weathered-looking Arness, but he - and his TV character - wore them well.

“The camera really loved his face, and with good reason,” novelist Wallace Markfield wrote in a 1975 “Gunsmoke” appreciation in the New York Times. “It was a face that would age well and that, while aging, would carry intimations of waste, loss and futility.”

Born James Aurness in Minneapolis (he dropped the “u’’ for show business reasons), he and brother Peter enjoyed a “real Huckleberry Finn existence,” Arness once recalled.

Peter, who changed his last name to Graves, went on to star in the TV series “Mission Impossible.”

A self-described drifter, Arness left home at age 18, hopping freight trains and Caribbean-bound freighters. He entered Beloit College in Wisconsin, but was drafted into the Army in his 1942-43 freshman year. Wounded in the leg during the 1944 invasion at Anzio, Italy, Arness was hospitalized for a year and left with a slight limp. He returned to Minneapolis to work as a radio announcer and in small theater roles.

He moved to Hollywood in 1946 at a friend’s suggestion. After a slow start in which he took jobs as a carpenter and salesman, a role in MGM’s “Battleground” (1949) was a career turning point. Parts in more than 20 films followed, including “The Thing,” ‘’Hellgate” and “Hondo” with Wayne. Then came “Gunsmoke,” which proved a durable hit and a multimillion-dollar boon for Arness, who owned part of the series.

His longtime costars were Blake as saloon keeper Miss Kitty, Milburn Stone as Doc Adams and Dennis Weaver as the deputy, Chester Goode.

When Weaver died in February 2006, Arness called it “a big loss for me personally” and said Weaver “provided comic relief but was also a real person doing things that were very important to the show.”

The cancellation of “Gunsmoke” didn’t keep Arness away from TV for long: He returned a few months later, in January 1976, in the TV movie “The Macahans,” which led to the 1978-79 ABC series “How the West Was Won.”

Arness took on a contemporary role as a police officer in the series “McClain’s Law,” which aired on NBC from 1981-82.

Despite his desire for privacy, a rocky domestic life landed him in the news more than once.

Arness met future wife Virginia Chapman while both were studying at Southern California’s Pasadena Playhouse. They wed in 1948 and had two children, Jenny and Rolf. Chapman’s son from her first marriage, Craig, was adopted by Arness.

The marriage foundered and in 1963 Arness sought a divorce and custody of the three children, which he was granted. He tried to guard them from the spotlight.

“The kids don’t really have any part of my television life,” he once remarked. “Fortunately, there aren’t many times when show business intrudes on our family existence.”

Former “Gunsmoke” actor James Arness, who played Marshal Matt Dillon in the western TV series for 20 years, died Friday from natural causes, according to his website. He was 88.

Over the two decades of “Gunsmoke” episodes from 1955 to 1975, Arness worked with hundreds of actors, some of them just up-and-comers such as Harrison Ford, Burt Reynolds and Charles Bronson. He also worked with Betty Davis.

Born in Minneapolis on May 26, 1923, Arness served in the Army during World War II at Anzio, the Italian beach that the Army says was the setting for the largest and most violent armed conflict in history.

Arness was wounded in his right leg and received the Purple Heart.

Arness’ younger brother Peter Graves, of Mission Impossible fame, died last year.

Two great actors, exiting the stage a year apart.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/07/2011 at 09:35 PM   
Filed Under: • Hollywood •  
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The Lady Next Door

Pray for my neighbor, she needs all the help she can get.

Michelle B is one of those superwomen. Strikingly attractive, self confident, skillful at all sorts of home improvement work. As a dedicated athlete she works out constantly and runs marathons. Wicked smart, she’s a member of Mensa and teaches science in the local school system. Divorced from an FBI agent, she has two preteen daughters. She’s always been an avid motorcyclist, owning several bikes in the time I’ve known her, including a bright yellow Buell. Her latest ride was a full fairing Honda CB1000 with all the performance goodies. Even with all that power on tap, she’s always been a modest and safe rider. Naturally she always wears her leathers and her top of the line Bell helmet.

Wednesday evening she went down to the Exxon station 2 miles away to get gas. It was a nice evening, so she took a short ride around the reservoir right behind us here. A deer jumped out of the woods and hit her.

Woman motorcycle rider hits deer in Union Twp. ejecting her 50 feet off bike

UNION TWP. - A woman motorcycle rider traveling on Van Syckels Road in Union Twp. was ejected about 50 feet after a deer that entered her path made contact with the bike on Wednesday night at about 7:47 p.m.

State Police at the Perryville Station said the woman landed on the road and sustained serious injuries, including a broken wrist and multiple abrasions. She was unconsious and transported by medevac helicopter to Morristown Memorial Hospital.

The woman is still in critical condition as of 11 p.m. Thursday, June 2, police said. No other vehicles were involved.

She lost a kidney, seriously bruised her liver, shattered her arm so bad that the bone had to be replaced with metal, and broke her jaw in several places. And that’s just the injuries I’ve heard about. Her mother is over watching the kids, but Michelle will be in the hospital for some time to come.

She lost one boyfriend in a motorcycle accident a few years ago; he survived but had serious brain damage. Another one trashed himself and his bike a couple times; we don’t see him around anymore.

One of the happiest days of my mother’s life was when I sold my last motorcycle. I really miss riding, but I will not own one as long as I live in this state. It’s bad enough with the lunatic inattentive local drivers and the can-never-go-fast-enough folks from PA and NY who pass through the state every day. And the tens of thousands of giant trucks. And the tailgating SUVs that use your vehicle as a wind wedge. But it’s worse than that. The deer attack. I am not kidding. And not just when the rut is on. They seem to suffer the same suicidal drive that squirrels have. They come after you. I’ve been hit by a deer twice. Once was when one came bouncing off the bumper of a car coming the other way and hit our car like 130 pounds of raw hamburger. The other time was right out on the village road here in the early evening, not 100 yards from my door. Two of them ran right at me. I blew the horn, I swerved, I shouted. I was only going about 20, so I slammed on the brakes. And the damn deer ran right into the side of the front fender and went over the hood. I know loads of people who have similar stories: I didn’t hit the deer, the damn deer hit me. They’re nuts. They are a lethal hazard, and I swear we have more deer per square mile around here than we do people. And we have more people per square mile in NJ than in any other state in the nation. You don’t see a deer. Or two together. You see herds of deer at a time. Two or three dozen out in packs in the middle of the day, stripping people’s lawns and hedges bare. We have 1/2 acre of woods on the Association property here, down by the highway on-ramp. 8 deer live in there year round, and there are at least 2 new fawns this spring.

Morristown Memorial is a Level II Trauma Center. Van Syckel’s Road gets used but is not highly traveled. I have no idea how long she was laying there in or by the road before someone found her.

I’ll talk to her mother tomorrow if she’s around and try and get an update. My God. Without that helmet she’d be dead for sure. For her daughter’s sake, I really hope she gives up bikes after this, should she survive.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/07/2011 at 06:25 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life •  
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Oh so you thought your life was dull?

Akkadian cuneiform finally deciphered after an amazing 90 year effort.

A dictionary of a dead language not used for two millenia has finally been completed after academics spent 90 years painstakingly deciphering ancient words scrawled on clay and stone tablets.

As decades came and went generations of scholars travelled from across the world to the University of Chicago to work on the monumental Chicago Assyrian Dictionary project.

It is now officially complete and contains 21 volumes devoted to Akkadian, a Semitic language with several dialects including Assyrian, that endured between 2500 BC and AD 100 and was recorded on tablets in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

The dictionary was begun in 1921 by James Henry Breasted, an American archaeologist who wanted to “recover the lost story of the rise of man.” He died 14 years later, by which point one million index cards had already been compiled.

Robert Biggs, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, later devoted half a century to the dictionary, uncovering tablets in the desert and poring over texts in museums in London and Baghdad as he tried to translate the wedge-shaped letters.

For almost an entire year he studied thousands of references to sheep livers, the shapes of which were believed to contain omens.

Prof Biggs admitted: “Sometimes it got to be very tedious. Other times, there was a sense of exhilaration if you could solve some problem or figure out what a rare word means.

“You always saw the light at the end of the tunnel, but the end of the tunnel kept getting further and further away.”

During their marathon academic quest the Chicago scholars battled problems with the ancient Assyrian lack of punctuation, and the propensity of the tablets to crumble. They were joined at various times by experts from Vienna, Paris, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, Berlin, Helsinki, Baghdad and London. Martha Roth, the dictionary’s current editor, spent 32 years on it, four years of that working on a single word.

She said: “It’s hard for many people to understand the kind of stick-to-it this kind of project takes.”

The 28,000-word dictionary, which will cost $1,400 (£850) to buy, is more like and encyclopaedia and offers a window into the ancient society of Mesopotamia, including recipes, love letters and ancient poems.

There is even a 4,400-year-old letter from a teenager at boarding school who wrote to his mother: “From year to year, the clothes of the gentlemen here become better, but you let my clothes get worse.”

It figures that academics in Chicago would want to sell their research. Anybody else would have just published it for the greater good of mankind.

The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian was spoken in the Northern areas of Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. The Babylonian dialect was spoken in central and southern Mesopotamia, Mariotic in the central Euphrates, and Tell Beydar in northern Syria.

There have been different phases in Assyrian’s development. Old Assyrian was spoken between1950–1530 BC, Middle Assyrian between 1530–1000 BC, and Neo-Assyrian between the years 1000–600 BC. Assyrian served as the lingua franca during much of the Old and Middle times, and was extremely popular.

It was in use for 2,500 years but has not been spoken for more than 2,000 years.

Now, why should anyone give a darn? Because Akkadia and Assyria are OLDER THAN EGYPT. This is the Cradle of Civilization stuff you learned about in grade school; the rise of the very first city states in the Fertile Crescent. Mesopotamia>. This language and this civilization go back to the very beginnings of the Bronze Age. In other words, they are a late Neolithic group, and that means New Stone Age. They invented things like towns. And the wheel. That’s right, they invented the bloody wheel. So just think what one of their history books must be like; their great-great-great-grandparents hadn’t even invented animals yet! (well, domesticated ones)
The proto-city of UR was far far in the future to these people. They may not have known Adam personally, but they knew where he used to live ... which was a few days walk down towards the beach. Down under the mud.

This is awesome, and I hope reams of translations are soon published. I have no idea how many of these old clay tablets are still around, but it would be so cool to think of reading something written so long ago that there were only 3 recipes for chicken in all the world.

h/t to Peiper

Posted by Drew458     on 06/07/2011 at 02:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Archeology / Anthropology •  
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