Category Archives: Etc

David Post has one for the annals of improbabiity,

You Think You’ve Got Bad Luck?: Some of you may recall the weird story of a few years ago, when one of the giant balloons at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York (the 60-foot tall “Cat in the Hat,” in fact) came loose, crashed into a streetlamp, and fractured the skull of one of the onlookers below. And most of you surely recall that last October a small plane co-piloted by Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle slammed into an apartment in a building on New York’s Upper East Side. What you may not know (and what I didn’t know until recently) is that these accidents both happened to the same woman. (I was pretty sure this must be one of those silly urban legends that make the rounds from time to time, but according to the NY Daily News, MSNBC, and others, it is in fact true). It truly boggles the mind — making the front page of the New York Times twice for falling victim to two of the most freakish, random, and improbable events one can imagine. The likelihood of this happening to the same person? Obviously, not zero (since it happened), but surely about as close to zero as one gets; what odds would you have given someone in 1998 if someone had been willing to bet on its occurrence?

At least she wasn’t on my flight home today from Sao Paulo.

BoingBoing takes us to Tattooed teacher teaches tolerance:

Bruce Potts is a teacher of Public Speaking at the University of New Mexico and has a full tribal face tattoo. He has a straight forward attitude and imparts a cool vibe of acceptance. We’ll bet his students get an extra edge on using demeanor and attitude in public speaking. And a life long lesson on not judging books by their covers. Either that or they study really hard because they’re afraid he’ll eat them.

You know, I bet he doesn’t have to deal with problems like this.

• The Brutal “Miami Model” for Subduing Protests
• Billmon has been visiting Egypt. Read about his train station and train trip from Cairo to Luxor. Both remind me strongly of one of my greatest travel memories. Egypt is special.
• Via SDFL Blog, Holland & Knight has raised local associate salaries to $120,000 per year. Miami tends to run behind the North East cities with higher taxes and living costs, but this helps close the gap.
• SDFL also has your Padilla case update. It seems the government won’t even give him copies of his own statements while in custody — on the grounds that the information is classified!
• Daily Kos Diarist makes the case that Bush Lied About Abu Ghraib. Interesting to see the “Bush lies” meme propagate and mutate.

Quickies. Because I’m distracted.

• The most important post of the day. I will write about this if I can find the time/energy, but go read it.
• Officer Friendly (not)
• Outrage fatigue (On discovering that people in government who tell the truth get forced out of their jobs: “It’s like reading that, once again, the freeways are crowded this morning.”)
• Our Air Force isn’t only a home to religious intolerance verging on bigotry, it’s headed by four-star suspects
• One thing that has surprised me about Wesley Clark is how poor his online presence is. I’d have thought he’d be making a bigger bid for the online activists. Now it begins: he’s speaking to Daily Kos convention. I hope they chide him about his web site.
• Establishment Democrats support Leiberman. despite his routine practice of putting a knife into the party’s rigbs. Real Democrats don’t.
• Republicans understand about party discipline: there will be strong right-wing primary opposition for an only somewhat conservative Republican Fl. state senator who recently voted his conscience (and his district) scuttling Jeb Bush’s latest attempt to undo the Florida constitution’s class-size amendment. That amendment, which Jeb hates and has plotted to undermine for years, caps the sizes of public school classes (and thus creates a need to actually pay for schools!). And polls show voters (but not Republican primary voters, maybe?) love it.
• Ranking Law Reviews is a high-quality effort, but is the game worth the candle when everything is online and searchable?

Improv Everywhere Mission: Best Buy. So these people all dress up as Best Buy employees and descend upon a store.

It’s very funny except that it seems to weird out some of the employees, which gives it a creepy tinge.

Via Wampum, whom I have inexplicably failed to blogroll until now, comes Hotter Than A Pistol, the sort of story that could make a grown man get a bit misty-eyed.

It’s so nice to read about ordinary goodness.