Security Cam Reviews 2015 On World's Oddest Street Corner

A crash or crime or something caught on
security camera in Chilliwack, British Columbia
A lot of strange things went down on
this corner during 2015. 

Chilliwack, British Columbia seems to be one happening town.

At least one street corner in that community is.

Somebody who has security cameras on his property near this street corner has put up a year in review for 2015 for all the interesting things seen through the surveillance lenses.

We get lots of drug deals, even more idiots doing dumb things in cars, sketchy people repeatedly going into the carport, at least one beating, police cars, emergency vehicles, and a definite act of fire hydrant vandalism.

The most intelligent beings seen on camera are not humans, but some raccoons carousing the night away. They are definitely smarter than the people caught on camera.

The highlight video - all 12 minutes of it -- is worth watching

If only to reflect in the joy that your neighborhood isn't as wild as this one.

Then again, you're not always home. You don't know what goes on, unless you have cameras to catch it

Watch:

Aretha Franklin Honors Carole King In BEST Possible Way

Aretha Franklin belts out "(You Make Me Feel Like) A
Natural Woman" at the recent Kennedy Center Honors.
Carole King, who co-wrote the song, was clearly
overwhelmed with joy by this performance.

If you don't shed a tear of joy while watching the video at the bottom of this post, then you're not human.

Carole King was recently feted at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors. During this, Aretha Franklin appeared on stage so she could perform one of her signature songs "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," which King co-wrote.

Just my opinion, but this song is one of the best pop songs ever written. And King totally deserved the Kennedy honors.  

Of course, Franklin received the Kennedy honor back in 1994, so that's another thing she and King have in common.

In the video, we see Franklin in full diva mode with a floor length fur coat, performing the song like the boss that she is. At age 73, Franklin has lost none of her touch.

King is also 73, and she's as vibrant as ever.

Carole King (arms outstretced) along with Barack and
Michelle Obama experience the joy of listening to
Aretha Franklin at the recet Kennedy Center Honors. 

The beauty of the video is the reactions. President Obama is moved to tears, and Carole King is absolutely beside herself with joy, and awe at Franklin.

I just love Franklin and King and think they are the best in the music business. To see this interaction between these two greats is just stunning.

To nobody's surprise, the video of Aretha King performance of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" has totally gone viral today.  

This is one of those videos that, when you're in a bad mood, or the news is so bad it's overwhelming, or you just need a shot of adrenaline and courage and joy, you turn to this video.

It made me so happy, and it will for you, too:

I Would Have Taken The Long Way Around, But.....

Does this bridge look safe to you? 

OK. You have a great big pickup truck, you've got a couple kayaks strapped to the roof and you're towing a boat

And you have to get across a wide river in Brazil.  

Do you take the bridge this guy's going to take? It's made of some saggimg planks, supported by some iffy, thin, rusty metal work.

It IS the shortest way across the river, but, frankly, I would have taken the long way around. As the verbiage on this YouTube video indicates, I would have been afraid to walk across it.

This guy in tbe truck with boats apparently wasn't afraid.

Watch how it ends. I won't spoil it for you.

Trouble The Dog Gets His Christmas Wish

Hard to see in this image, but a little dog
is going to like what's in the big gift he's about to open

I don't know about you, but I sure was happy with the Christmas gifts I got this year.

However, I don't think it's possible to be happier with a Christmas gift than the dog named Trouble, in the video below.  

His human companion wrapped a special, very personal gift that the dog then opened under the Christmas tree.

I think Trouble liked what he got. Just a video to make you smile on a gloomy winter's day:

Animals Are Comedic Geniuses

A finalist in the C'omedy Wildlife Photography Awards.
Image by Alison Buttigieg.

One piece of good news I learned as the year draws to a close is that somebody has come up with the annual Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

The winners are photographers who capture images of animals that just make us laugh.  

Apparently, there are a lot of them.  You have to scroll through the list of 2015 winners to really get a chuckle at these wonderful animals. I might be anthropomorphizing, but the animals in the photos exude such joy. 

The awards are the brainchild of Paul Joynson-Hicks, who is himself a wildlife photographer.

Says he on the wildlife comedy web site:

Finalist in the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards
Image by Charlie Davidson. 

"I often enter wildlife photography competitions (NB so far with very little success!) but I love seeing the funny pictures. Strangely enough, they are harder to come by than you might think."

The Comedy Wildlife Awards are partnered with the Born Free Foundation, which works to provent animal suffering and protect animal species.
 

The photos are judged on how funny, creative, dynamic and interesting they are, and on the technical proficiency of the photographer. The funnier the captions the better.

Obviously, the 2015 competition is closed, since the winners have already been announced, but let's hope this becomes an annual tradition so we can look forward to the 2016 winners.

Finalist in the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards
Image by Julie Hunt 

Weird Carbon Dioxide Leak Turns German City Into Fog Machine

Leaking carbon dioxide created this weird fog
in Mainz, Germany last week.  

Just before Christmas, a tanker truck full of carbon dioxide pulled up next to a Champagne producers building in Germany.

I guess they were getting ready for the holidays.

Something went wrong, and the carbon dioxide leaked from the truck.

The result was this weird fog of carbon dioxide, no more than waist high, covering some of the streets in central Mainz, Germany.

The carbon dioxide was heavier than the surrounding air and clung close to the ground. It was so thick that nobody could drive their cars out. The visibility was too low.

People in the neighborhood were warned to stay out of basements and some first floors, since the high concentration of carbon dioxide would crowd out the oxygen, potentially asphyxiating people.

The superchilled carbon dioxide slightly injured the truck driver involved.

The carbon dioxide eventually dispersed, adding a tiny little bit to the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.

Here's a video of the incident: It's a news account of the leak in German, but you'll get the point:

Jerk Of The Month Harasses Parents of Sandy Hook Shooting Victim

James Tracy might get fired from Florida Atlantic University
for what many his harassment of the parents and relatives
of Sandy Hook massacre victims. 

So many jerks, so little time.

It seems like idiots and mean people keep proliferating, and there's so many it's hard to keep track of them all.

But I'll try by nominated as the Jerk of the Month, one James Tracy, a professor in the school of communications and media studies at Florida Atlantic University.

Gee, with that title, the guy sounds pretty smart and sane.

But oh, no. He's a "Sandy Hook Truther" one of those people who actually believe the 2012 massacre of 26 little kids and teachers at an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the government to take all our guns away.

At the behest of some of the people Tracy has allegedly harassed, the unversity is in the process of trying to fire the guy.

I know, I know, firing the guy for his beliefs sounds like a bit of a First Amendment issue. We're all entitled to our opinions, no matter how completely moronic they are.

But it seems Tracy went beyond just talk.

Lenny and Veronique Pozner, parents of a boy murdered at Sandy Hook, published an op-ed in the Broward County, Florida Sun Sentinal in which these so called Sandy Hook truthers, have been harassing and intimidating them.

The Pozners' essay has since been re-published in several other web sites and media outlets.

They Pozners write:

"Tracy even sent us a certified letter demanding proof that Noah once lived, that we were his parents, and that we were the rightful owner of his photographic image. We found this so outrageous and unsettling that we filed a police report for harassment.

Once Tracy realized we would not respond, he subjected us to ridicule and contempt on his blog, boasting to his readers that the 'unfulfilled request' was 'noteworthy' because we had used copyright claims to 'thwart continued research of the Sandy Hook massacre event.'"

No, Tracy, your request went unfulfilled because who in their right mind would respond to such a jerky, horrible demand as yours?

On his Facebook page, Tracy calls the Pozners "fake parents" who profited "handsomely from the fake death of their son."

Earlier, according ot The Trace, the Pozners tried to debunk the so called debunkers by posting Noah'ss birth and death certificates online, shared the medical examiner's reports and Noah's report cards from the school.

Of course I'm afraid the Pozners were naive. You can't convince a conspiracy theorist of anything once you start showing proof they're wrong. The "truthers" dismissed the documents the Pozners provided as fakes.  

Conspiracy theorists are saying the death of Noah Pozner, shown here
was faked, along with every other death at
Sandy Hook Elemetary School in 2012
by a government who wants to take our guns away,
or something. Noah's parents are fighting back.  

To fight back, the Pozners have created an organizaton called the HONR Network, whose stated goal is to "bring awareness to Hoaxer activity." says the web site BoingBoing.

Of course, as good an idea as HONR is, the organization is playing an endless game of whack a mole.

The group does things like when a screed attacking the victims appears on YouTube, HONR contacts YouTube to alert them their terms of use have been violated to get the video removed.

Pozner probably believes that HONR won't change the "truthers'" minds. But it does bring consequences to them. He filed police reports about the harassers and placed them on line, as he put it, "so the hoaxers could see what I was doing," even thoug Pozner knew the police reports wouldn't go anywhere.

But the reports were enough to sometimes get some hoaxers to take down offensive content from their blogs and web pages and such.

Every well publicized violent act or crime ends up drawing in the conspiracy theorists who claim it was all a fake so that the government can cow a frightened populace and oppress them.

As The Trace points out, the so-called Sandy Truth truthers take this to a whole other level. There's the obvious cruelty of abusing parents whose young children have been murdered.

Led, sort of, by a guy named Wolfgang Halbig the conspiracy theorists have been attacking Sandy Hook parents and witnesses to "prove" they were part of a "treasonous" fake shooting staged by the U.S. government.

They claim parents didn't appear "sad enough"' in public appearances. Time stamps on photos of the kids taken before the massacre were wrong, which is a very common bug in digital photos and online memorial pages, such as those run by Google.

Sure, it's fine to be skeptical of what the government or anybody else has to say. But if the evidence is overwhelming, and documents proving what happened are readily available, then geez, give up already.

That idiot professor Tracy isn't the only one to harass Sandy Hook parents. A 32-year old man was arrested for accosting the sister of Vicki Soto, a teacher slain during the massacre, during a Newtown charity event. He demanded to know whether photos of Soto were photoshopped.

As I noted, now there's an effort to get Tracy fired. He's a tenured professor at Florida Atlantic University, so getting him fired is thorny. But possible.

It's true you don't want to get rid of a professor whose views are contrarian. You want vigorous debate and to allow students to see perspectives they haven't thought of.  Even if a few of the perspectives are full of hooey.

But pretty much everyone is in agreement that Tracy has gone too far. He's certainly an embarrassment to Florida Atlantic University.

From the New York Times: "Jeffrey S. Morton, a professor of international law at the university, said in a statement to the Times that Mr. Tracy's "harassment of the parents of murdered children was vulgar, repulsive and an insult to the academic profession."

I guess conspiracy theories are fun. They fuel and define a person's inner unfocused anger and makes them feel better.

But the conspiracy theorists are too stupid and too delusional to understand they are wrong, and they're too stupid and delusional to understand the real harm they do to others.

When conspiracy theorists begin to abuse others, the only way to shake them out of their hallucinations is to do something that really wakes them up. Like make them face criminal or civil sanctions, or have them lose their jobs, if such actions are legal and ethical.

Or at least put the hoaxes on notice that people are watching their awful activities. That maybe would freak them out just a little, who knows?

The Sandy Hook "truthers" seem to be among the people who correctly embrace their free speech rights, but cannot accept that with those rights comes the equal weight of responsibility for your comments.

And consequences for what you say.

So let's fire Professor Tracy!

Driverless Cars Getting In Crashes Because We Humans Are Too Stupid To Drive

A Google driverless car. People who actually drive cars
are idiots, and are slamming into the driverless ones. 

Experiemental driverless cars are getting into a lot of accidents lately. And it's our fault, not the fault of these robot cars.

According to Bloomberg, the "problem" is driverless cars follow the rules.

"They obey the law all the time, as in, without exception. This may sound like the right way to program a robot to drive a car, but good luck trying to merge onto a chaotic, jam-packed highway with traffic flying along well above the speed limit. It tends not to work out well.

As the accidents have piled up -- all minor scrape-ups for now -- the arguments among programmers at places like Google Inc and Carnegie Mellon University are heating up: Should they teach the cars how to commit infractions from time to time to stay out of trouble?"

The first driverless car crash with injures came in July, when three Google employees in a driverless car suffered relatively minor neck injuries when another driver rear-ended them, says CBS News. The driver of the car that re-ended the driverless vehicle suffered minor injuries.

The accident rate for driverless cars is twice as high for driverless cars as it is for regular cars, according to the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, as reported by Michigan Public Radio.

However, so far, none of the crashes studies were the "fault" of the driverless cars. Most have been by inattentive drivers slamming into the backs of driverless cars.

The driverless cars tend to obey the speed limit. A huge proportion of people who drive DON'T obey the speed limit (Yeah, I'm talkin' to you!)

Add in inattentiveness - let's text while we're driving since everybody else is doing it! -- and people end up rear-ending the slower driverless cars.

As a Google engineer put it, driving is a social game, not just plugging in the exact parameter of what is legal on the roadways and what is not.

Should Google and anyone else testing self-driving cars to break the rules every once in awhile, just to make things on the road flow more smoothly?  And if so, to what extent?  Limit it to things like crossing a double yellow line to make room for a bicyclist? Or speed a little bit on the freeway to keep up with the flow of traffic?

Where's the line between breaking the rules to make things go better and becoming a robot scofflaw?

And what of that "social game"? Will road rages become even more enraged when a robot car does not respond emotionally to some jerk yelling and screaming about something? Do driverless cars call police to report their suspicions that the car ahead is being driven by a drunk?

You can imagine, also, whether to program driverless cars to make "moral" choices, even if it's saving others from their own stupidity.

For example, asks Bloomberg's reporting, "should an autonomous vehicle sacrifice its occupant by swerving off a cliff to avoid killing a school bus full of children?"

Driverless cars will ultimately be programmed differently, so different models will "behave" differently in traffic.

That begs the question, posited by another Bloomberg article: Who would be at fault if two driverless vehicles collided?

After all, says Bloomberg. Computers routinely crash. Won't robot cars crash, too?

Lawyers are loving this, as you can imagine. Yes, driverless cars are autonomous robots. But would be made by humans. Who make mistakes. Who might program a car incorrectly.

Says Bloomberg:

"With no one behind the wheel, lawyers say they can go after almost anyone even remotely involved.

'You're going to get a whole host of new defendants,' said Kevin Dean, who is suing General Motors Co over its faulty ignition switches and Takata Corp over air bag failures. 'Computer programmers, computer companies, designers of algorithms, Google, mapping companies, even states. It's going to be very fertile ground for lawyers.'"

Well, at least lawyers can look forward to full employment, since robots and computers are going to take all the rest of the jobs from  us humans.

All these driverless car questions leads to the largest question of all:  Will the machines just take over? And another question: Will they do a better job? Because sometimes I think us humans have really mucked things up.


,

My Annual Darlene Love Christmas Celebration

Darlene Love, looking and sounding better than ever at
age 74, performs her classic "Christmas (Baby Please Come
Home)" on "The View" earlier this month 

For a few years now, I've put Darlene Love in the starring role in this blog thingy on Christmas Eve.

It's a tradition.

Every year, close to 30 of 'em,  the unstoppable Love would perform her classic "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" on the David Letterman show.

But Letterman retired last year, so what would I do, what would Darlene Love do this year?

Well, I said Darlene Love is unstoppable. She turned up a week or so ago on "The View" to do her Christmas song.

As I've said in past years, this is my favorite Christmas song, especially as performed by Darlene Love.

I've heard Darlene Love perform this song dozens and dozens of times, and I still get goosebumps and all emotional and all that when I listen to "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home.)"

It is at once bittersweet and rousing, a mix of terrible longing and joy.

Which is what I often feel at Christmas. This year being a classic example. My husband Jeff is visiting his side of the family in South Dakota, while I'm staying in Vermont with my side of the family

I miss Jeff incredibly, him not being here on Christmas, but he'll be home soon. So Jeff: Christmas Baby Please Come Home. (And I know you will.)

As you'll see in the video below, Darlene Love is as awesome as ever. Can you believe she's 74 years old? Like I said, she's unstoppable. Thank you, Darlene, and Merry Christmas. And happy holidays to everyone else out there.

Here's the video:

Wildly Crazy "Lyssue Paper" Will Solve Your Last Minute Christmas Gift Crisis

This gal named Lyssue Paper will help
you with your last minute Christmas gifts. Beware!! 

I really hope the video in this post is just a parody, a joke aimed at all those do it yourself videos out there.

I'm 99.9 percent sure this is just comedy, but if not, I'm really, really scared of the woman in the video you 'll see below.

Her name is Lyssue Paper, and she's obsessed with tissue paper. She'll make anything under the sun out of this stuff.

Including, Christmas sweaters!

So just watch the video carefully, and you will wow your family and friends with gorgeous tissue paper sweaters, made by you!

I love the wild look in her eyes as she guides you through the process.

H/T to boingboing for alerting me to this.

Watch:

Glad People Are Now Saying Customers Are Not Always Right

A tiny minority of shoppers are bullies. They yell
and cause ugly scenes. Let's stop tolerating them. 

A friend of mine posted on Facebook today a June Huffington Post essay by Matt Walsh on a middle aged woman who absolutely LOST it when she ordered a burger without ketchup, but when she bit into it, she found it had ketchup.

A reasonable person would have come back to the counter, and calmly say "I don't like ketchup, I ordered a burger without ketchup and this one has ketchup. What can you do for me?

I would bet my next paycheck the person behind the counter would take the burger, replace it with one without ketchup and hand it to the customer, and the issue would end right there.

However, there are precious few reasonable people around these days.

We must all cause a scene, apparently.  Because an improperly prepared burger is a High Crime Against Humanity and must be met with hysterics.

In this case, the teenager behind the counter did, in fact, offer to give the irate customer a new burger, sans ketchup.  Not good enough.

"What's wrong with you people?! I just sat in the drive thru for ten minutes and now I have to come in here because you guys can't understand fucking English! I ordered this burger with NO ketchup but of course I get gobs of ketchup. Unbelievable. This happens every fucking time!," Walsh quotes are ketchup-hating heroine.

As Walsh notes, if this particular establishment mucks up her burger order Every Single Time, why doesn't she go to one of a zillion nearby burger establishments that DON'T muck up burger orders?

Anyway, the woman Walsh writes about is all too common. Do a search on YouTube and see how many bazillion examples there are of people losing it over a minor mistake in customer service.

As for the offering a new ketchup-free burger? Not good enough.

"No, I don't want a new burger! Give me your name and the number to corporate! I'm sick of this shit! Give me my money back and the number to your corporate office! Why can't I ever fucking get good customer service?!"

Probably because you're always screaming about you can never get fucking good customer service. Who would want to, with your crummy attitude.

Yes, I get it. When I order something and it turns out wrong, I'm vaguely irritated. But almost always, the customer service rep fixes it and everybody's happy. There are some companies that don't give a whit about customer service and basically say "screw you" when an order is messed up and it's their fault.

But they are generally an exception.  

Customers who bully should be treated as "seriously"
as Marvin the Martian, who always seems
to be "very very angry." 

My job involves a fair amount of customer service. It's interesting, more often than not, when there's a problem with an order and it's our fault, and not the customer, the customer is pretty amazingly understanding, provided we fix the problem, which we always do

When the order problem is the customer's fault, like when they ignore the warning on the web site that we can't garauntee delivery before Christmas if you order after such and such a date, they scream at us, and no matter what we do, we can't appease them.

I guess this type of person can't handle being wrong, so they lash out.

The customer is always right ethos is wrong. There's a difference between great customer service and assuming the customer is always right no matter how terribly wrong they are.

A minority of people internalize the "customer is always right" idea and try to bully the retailer, the service provider, or whatever, into doing something they can't do.

It's all about them.

If there's a sale, say 20 percent off, and there's a disclaimer that says the lower price can't be combined with another offer, they go ballistic. Like everything has to be handed to them for free.

If every business did that, every business would go out of business, if you can follow that.

"The customer is always right" slogan forces employees to give better service and prices than people who are pleasant and reasonable. Why should annoying people get advantages over nice people? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Wouldn't you want the nice people to keep coming back and the nasty people go elsewhere? It's better for business, better for morale, better for everybody. Except the nasty person, but who gives a frig about them?

The vast majority of customers are perfectly reasonable. They want a fair price, an honest salesperson, decent qualilty goods, food or services and no bureacracy. Perfectly reasonable.

It is also an absolute joy to work with these pleasant, fair minded customers. Thank goodness almost all of them are like that.

It's perfectly fair to fire employees who can't or won't give great customer service. It's also fair to "fire" customers who demand much more than great customer service, and abuse people to get what they want.

Awesome Presidential Debate Format Ideas From New Republic

Supporters of Bernie Sanders say the DNC is
trying to shut him out in order to
ensure Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee.

The Democratic National Committee is coming under fierce criticism, especially from Bernie Sanders partisans, over its debate schedule.

In case you haven't heard - and most people haven't - the latest Democratic debate took place Saturday evening.

Yep, the Saturday before Christmas, when most people were out at holiday parties or otherwise engaged in Christmas-related activities.

Critics are giving the very plausible argument that the DNC and it's chair, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, scheduled the debate thusly as part of an effort to just coronate  Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for president, and shut out any upstarts, like Bernie.

The ever helpful New Republic offered the DNC some suggestions on how Wasserman and her cohorts can make the Democratic debate format more obscure. Here they are:

1. A debate transmitted only on college radio stations at 3 a.m in an Urdu translation.

2. A debate at the bottom of an unlighted mine shaft, conducted entirely in American sign language.

3. Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley layout out theri agenda in interpretive dance, available as a Beta tape to anyone who mails in a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

That last one, I'd REALLY like to see.

Safety First In Vermont With Star Wars Message

Vermont Agency of Transportation workers set up these electronic signs along the state's Interstate highways to warn people about the dangers of drinking and driving.

It makes me wonder if the next Star Wars sequel will somehow be set in the Green Mountain State.

Wishing You "Happy Holidays" Is Not An Insult, You Idiots!"

Texas Agriculture Secretary Sid Miller is going to slap
you if you wish him "happy holidays' instead of
"Merry Christmas." I don't think I'll wish him anything.

Ok, there's an insult in the headline for this post. I called people idiots. My bad.

But, I'm sorry, people who are insulted when somebody wishes them "Happy Holidays" are idiots.

Like it or not, this nation, and the world for that matter is full of Christians, Jews, Muslims, agostics, atheists, Buddists, Sihks and a whole bunch of other persuasions.  

Which means if you never met the person you're greeting, you don't know if they're celebrating Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, winter solstice or some other year-end holiday. Or maybe they're celebrating nothing at all.

When somebody wishes you "happy holidays," all they're doing is wishing you happiness. That's it.

You'd think all this would be obvious. You'd' think you'd be happy somebody is being nice to you. Just enjoy it. Say "thank you" if you have any ounce of politeness in you. 

However, some people just HAVE to find something to be outraged about. Some people are FURIOUS when you wish them "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

Because a small subset of Christians think EVERYBODY just HAS to celebrate Christmas, and if you don't you should just go to hell.

I'm having this rant because of one Sid Miller, the Texas State Agriculture Commissioner, who recently said on Facebook. "If one more person says Happy Holidays to me I just might slap them....Either tell me Merry Christmas or just don't say anything."

Sid, Sid, Sid. When someone tells you "Happy Holidays," they're wishing you well. Maybe they don't  know you that well, so they revert to "Happy Holidays."

And yes, I know it works both ways. It's equally silly to have a hissy fit if someone wishes you a Merry Christmas even though you don't celebrate Christmas. If someone is being nice to you, why be hostile?

Speaking of hostile, respondents to Miller's Facebook whine were not exactly friendly. 

Jon Anderson: "Yeah, I hate it when people gie me well wishes that aren't the exact well wishes I want. It's like someone giving me a present and having it be a gift card to my favorite restaurant instead of to my favorite clothing store."

Ron Coley: "Let me get this straight: If one more person wishes you happiness with words that don't meet your approval, you'll slap them because you are a Christian and that's what Christmas is all about? Oh brother." 

Jonathan Buck: "Great idea! And, a great message for kids! Slap someone if they say happy holidays! Glad someone is focusing in on what is important."

You get the picture.

Sid's complaints about not being wished a "Merry Christmas" is all part of the "War on Christmas" a few conservatives and evangelicals think they see.  Right, Bill O'Reilly?

The Huffington Post offers a helpful chart to help you determine if you are being persecuted or not, so take a look at that, Sid Miller and friends.

What the "War On Christmas" really is is people who can't live with the fact that not everybody celebrates Christmas the way they do, and some people don't celebrate Christmas at all.

Yes, the whole Mary and Joseph and Jesus in the manger thing is really important and wonderful to millions of people and I think that's a great thing.

Is it really in the Christmas spirit, though, to slap down, literally or figuratively, people who are perhaps not that into Christmas, but are still generous enough to wish you well?

It's the season of sharing.  Maybe share some warmth instead of Grinchy bitterness instead.

New Orleans Civil Disobedience: The Homeless Guy Keeps His Christmas Tree, Dammit!

Good Samaritans decorate a Christmas tree
for Philly, a homeless guy living beneath a freeway
in New Orleans. The city took away Philly's earlier
Christmas tree, claiming a "code violation." 

There's a homeless guy named Philly who lives beneath the Pontchartrain Expressway in New Orleans.

Desperate for some holiday cheer, he got himself a Christmas tree, decorated it and set it up next to his tent. (He used some money a passerby donated to him to get the tree.)

The city was not amused. They removed it - twice. Code violation the New Orleans sanitation department said, without additional explanation.

The first time it was taken away, Philly managed to retrieve it from the sanitation truck and set it back up.

The second time, no luck. The city hauled the Christmas tree away and destroyed it.

In a city swamped with crime, poverty and other problems, I'm not sure why removing Philly's Christmas tree took such priority. But many of New Orleans' fine citizens didn't buy the New Orleans sanitation department's Grinchiness.

Television station WDSU reported on the city taking Philly's Christmas tree, and viewers were NOT happy.

"The city that stole Christmas from the homeless," was a typical comment on WDSU's Facebook page.

Residents sprung into action. Several ducked under the Ponchartrain Expressway and gave Philly replacement trees. Several. So Philly kept one and donated others to those in need.

WDSU said one of the people who came to the underpass was Kelly Caruso, who donated Christmas decorations to Philly. "We need to be New Orleanians and band together. With the city taking the tree, was i word I don't use often--shameful....... I don't care what code violation it is, it's the holidays. These people need everything that can unlift them as much as we can," Caruso said.

So far the city hasn't responded to the mass "code violations" the people who brought Christmas trees committed.

Of course, it would be much better if Philly wasn't homeless and could just put up a Christmas tree in his own living room under a solid roof, but this will have to do for now.

It's a start, anyway.

Bank Robbed During Live News Report About A Previous Bank Robbery

During a live shot on the noon news, a bank employee
(in blue shirt) tells KIMT reporer Adam Sellet
that the bank is being robbed again. 

During the noon news on television station KIMT in Mason City, Iowa Monday, reporter Adam Sallet began his live shot in front a southern Minnesota bank, which had been robbed the previous day.

Salute was just launching into his update on the robbery investigation when things went off the rails.

As Sallet begins talking, you see a man in a blue shirt run out of the bank behind him, then run past the reporter while pointing and saying, "That guy right there!"

Sallet appeared confused for a moment, looked to where the guy in the blue shirt had pointed and says, "Oh, that's the robber."

Yup, the robber had returned to the bank to rip it off for the second day in a row, and the TV station was there to record it.

Sallet says in the video "That's live TV," then ducks out of the live shot to call 911. The report then cuts bact to the KIMT anchor, who also appears taken aback, says "I can assure you that was not set up," and then proceeds with the news.

Ryan Liskow, 36, was later arrested and faces charges for Monday's bank robbery and Tuesday's basically televised attempt at a re-do.

Here's the great video of all this from KIMT:

Pharma Bro Shkreli and Shadenfreude: A Match Made In Heaven (Or Hell)

Martin Shkreli under arrest today, inspiring a huge wave
 of schadenfreude. But will he get the last laugh? 

I bet it's fair to say that one of the most searched words on Google today is "Schadenfreude."

"Schadenfreude" refers to the pleasure derived from another person's misfortune, and so many people, including yours truly, have been experiencing intense schadenfreude over the arreset of Martin Shkreli.

Martin Shkreli, the "Pharma Bro" train wreck I've been obsessing about because he raised the price of life saving drugs to sky high levels to make oodles of money, was arrested on fraud charges, according to numerous media reports this morning.

He's the guy who raised the price of a medication for people with HIV and other life threatening illnesses from $13.50 to $750.00. His logic is its his job to make lots of money, and if sick and broke people suffer because of it, too bad.

He's been busy getting reading to inflate prices of other life saving drugs, too.

According to MSN:

"Prosecutors charged him with illegally taking stock from Retrophin, Inc., a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. He was later ousted from the company, where he'd been chief executive officer, and sued by the board.

In the case that closely tracks that suit, federal prosecutors accused Shkreli of engaging in a complicated shell game after his defunct hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, lost millions. He is alleged to have made secret payoffs and set up sham consulting arrangements."

Everybody had a HUGE field day with this arrest, especially on social media, because Shkreli is such a vile creature.

Maybe this makes me a bad person, but the news about the criminal charges against Shkreli are making me a very happy man today. I'm in a good mood now. Like a lot of people.

When I Googled "schadenfreude Shkreli" this evening, I got no fewer than 6,250 matches.

Salon collected some of the best Tweets about Shkreli's arrest today, including, from @ohiotimmons3, "On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me a warrant for Martin Shkreli."

@John Fuglesang Tweeted: "Wait, Martin Shkreli in jail? Are the criminals OK?"

Probably not. As long as Shkreli is around, somebody's going to get hurt.

Over at Wired, they tell us that Dean Burnett, known as @garwboy on Twitter, noted, "Government warning: National schadenfreude reserves expected to run dry by the end of the week."

I have no doubt that's true.

Many people are apparently worried about a Wu-Tang Clan album Shkreli recently bought. It's the only one in existence, and he reportedly paid $2 million for it.

Yeah, I don't know why anybody would spend $2 million for the only copy of an album from anybody, but what do I know?

If Shkreli goes to jail, I guess he now has time to enjoy the Wu-Tang album he bought from all the money he's making off the backs of ill people.

This arrest will probably slow down Shkreli's quest to totally inflate the cost of life-saving drugs for other people, but at least it's a start.

Here's how lousy Shkreli is. He told a Forbes health care summit early this month that he screwed up. Did he mean he shouldn't have raised medication prices so much?

Nope. He said he should have raised them more.

Forbes quoted Shkreli thusly: "'My shareholder expect me to make the most profit," Shkreli said, a theme he returned to again and again. 'That's the ugly, dirty truth.'

'I'm going to maximize profits,' Shkreli addes later. 'That's what people (in healthcare) are afraid to say.'"

In other words, the only responsibility of a manufacturer of a life saving medication is to maximize profits. The patients who need it? Fuck 'em. let them die as long as I can make millions.

No wonder people as disparate as Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton hate him.

My dream? That Shkreli gets a long, long inside look living among the "Lights of Dannemora."

As in the really nasty Clinton Correctional Facility in New York.

My dream probably won't come true, though. As The Guardian points out, even when there's wild excesses like those of Shkreli, the big splash of publicity over the arrest will be for naught.

Most CEOs caught with their hands on the cookie jar are not convicted. Even when they are, they get what for them is a slap on the wrist. A fine of a few million dollars, which is really peanuts, and then they can go on ripping people off.

I'm sure several more medically needed people will die to satisfiy Shkreli's greed.

Then it will, unfortunately, become his turn to feel the schadenfreude when the rest of us can't afford the medicine to keep us alive. The medicine that the likes of Shkreli prices out of our reach.

Today's Overreaction: Man's Credit Card Declines At Hotel, Goes On Rampage

Police in Oklahoma say John Parsley, 62,
rammed his truck into a hotel because
the front desk declined his credit card.

According to police, John Edward Parsley, 62 of Gonzales, Texas tried to check into the Comfort Inn in Alva, Oklahoma, but his credit card declined.

He had to pay cash.

A situation like that might vaguely irritate you and me, but we'd get over it in, oh, I don't know, two seconds.

Not Parsley, oh, no. It was an OUTRAGE the hotel declined his credit card. So he did what any American would, or so he thought. He slammed his big pickup truck through the lobby and into the front desk.

He barely missing two receptionists who scrambled to get out of the way and succeeded, just barely.

You can view the surveillance camera video of the crash at the bottom of this post.

The Enid (OK) News & Eagle reported that apparently, Parsley had contacted Alva Police about the credit card decline.

The News and Eagle said the officer said he'd go inside and discuss the credit card issue with management. Office Wade Sutton's report said, "I observed Parsley reach up and place his vehicle in drive and accelerate rapidly, crashing into the hotel front entrance and into the lobby."

After the crash, he got out of the truck with his hands up to be greeted by Alva police, who were not amused.

He told police  he drove into the hotel because "they thought he was bluffing, and he proved he wasn't."

On the bright side, Parsley got some accommodations that night. Authorities charged him with assault and battery, and malicious destruction of property and held for lack of $1 million bond.

On the ugly side - there's lots of ugly here but this is the ugliest - racism might have been a factor here. Parsley said he kept having trouble with "Indian" hotel personnel.

Also, I'm laughing, but this could have been tragic. The two women behind the desk could have been killed!

Here's the video of this idiot crashing into the hotel:

Plumber Sues Auto Dealer Because His Truck/Logo Ended Up With Terrorists.

Mark-1 Plumbing's old truck ended up in the hands of
terrorists, and now the owner of the business
is suing the dealership that failed to remove the logo.

Mark-1 Plumbing in Texas got some unwanted free advertising about a year ago.

One of the company's old pickup trucks was sold, but then reappeared in the media, complete with its Mark-1 Plumbing logo, being used by Islamic terrorists in Syria.

It should be obvious that Mark-1 Plumbing's owner, Mark Oberholtzer is not a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer. He's a fine American, a reputable businessman, and certainly no threat to anything, except maybe a leaky pipe.  

We should have all laughed off the fact Oberholtzer's truck somehow ended up in Syria, even if the people using the truck are certainly no laughing matter.

However, this is America, land of a substantial subset of dumb people.

A segment about the Mark-1 Plumbing truck appeared on the widely watched final episode of the Colbert Report.

It was a joke, but some dumb people didn't take it as such.

According to the New York Times, Olberhotzer and his employees faced this, according to the plumber's attorney, Craig Eisland:

".......there were thousands of harassing and threatening phone calls to Mr Oberholtzer's office and other phone numbers with accusations that he supported terrorists. His staff and family members were also subject to threatening calls, Mr. Eisland said.

Mr. Oberholtzer said his business has suffered. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents met with him and advised him to protect himself, the lawsuit said. He started carrying a handgun."

Note the clip from the New York Times mentions a lawsuit. That's because Oberholtzer is suing AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway in Houston, Texas for $1 million.

Oberholtzer said he traded in his old truck at the dealership and they failed to remove the Mark-1 Plumbing logo from it before re-selling it on the open market, and it ended up going on the black market, to end up in the hands of terrorists.

The lawsuit seems frivolous at first, but then you have to remember the dumb people. The dumb people who somehow thought Oberholtzer was a terrorist or ISIS sympathizer because his truck ended up with terrorists, even though he clearly had nothing to do with getting his truck to Syria.

Because people could not follow the very clear point in media reports about that the truck ended up in Syria through no fault of Oberholtzer.

So he's suing, due to the fear, the lost business, the inconvenience, the damage to his reputation.

Too bad Oberholtzer can's sue all the stupid people who made those threatening calls to him, who threatened him and his business.  Hell, I'd like to sue 'em.

I wonder if we can make being stupid a crime, too. Maybe we can send the stupid people to Syria to join the Mark-1 Plumbing pickup truck. It's one sure way to defeat ISIL: Just infiltrate all our stupid people into their ranks, and watch them crumble.

Morons Oppose Solar Panels Because They Will "Suck Up Sun's Energy"

Hmm. The vegetation near these solar panels looks
nice and green, so I don't think they're "sucking all
the energy away" and preventing photosynthesis.
A couple in North Carolina publicly worried
that would be the case. 

If you ever wonder why there are idiots in our Great Nation, I'm about to give you one reason why.

It's that there a few idiots among our mostly fine teachers, and these idiot teachers are "educating" kids

I bring this up because a retired science teacher of all things in Woodland, North Carolina spoke up in opposition to proposed solar panels in town, says the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald newspaper. (Note you'll have to answer a survey question to get access to the article in the link.)

The retired teacher, Jane Mann, said the solar panels would interfere with photosynthesis, the process by which plants absorb sunlight to live and grow. Apparently, she thinks the solar panels would hog all the sun energy coming into Woodland and leave any left for the trees and grass and shrubs in the community.

Mann says she's seen areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight, reports the News-Herald.

Unless those plants were hidden way beneath the solar panels, I'm afraid those dead plants died of something else, dear Jane. Maybe drought? Insects? Or they gave up after exposure to your ignorance?

For the record, there are many solar panels and solar farms where I live in Vermont. Yes, the vegetation around them is brown now because it's winter. But in the summer, the panels are surrounded by lush green grass and trees.

 Mann also feared the solar panels would somehow cause cancer. Yes, if you stood out in the sun day in and day out, whether you were near the solar panels or not, you could develop skin cancer. But otherwise? Um......

Mann's husband Bobby was even worse. He opposed the solar panels because they would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland as a result.

Yes, he really said that.

Also for the record, the amount of solar energy that hits the earth in just one hour is enough to provide the entire planet its energy needs for an entire year.

Geez, if Bobby Mann were right, you'd think he'd be happy. If the solar panels sucked up all the energy from the sun, so much for global warming, right?

What does he think? Sunlight is like water poured from a bucket? If you empty the bucket into a solar panel, there's none left for anything else?

A representative of the solar company involved actually had to explain to the Manns and others at the town council meeting that the only sunlight the solar panels use in generating power is that which hits them directly.

I thought everybody knew that, but apparently not.

In the end, the town council in Woodland rejected the solar farm, so the town is safe from the dastardly solar panels sucking all the energy from the town.

I just wish solar panels had the ability to suck away the ignorance and stupidity of some people.

Alton Brown Tells You What Kitchen Gadget NOT To Buy This Christmas

Alton Brown finds a great use for the Perfect Meat Handling
and Shredding Claws, but that use has little to do with cooking. 

Alton Brown, the celebrity chef from the Food Network has some Christmas gift ideas for you.

Some really bad ideas.

In a YouTube video from Daily Dot, Brown rails against these ridiculous "unitaskers" you can buy on Amazon.

Basically, they're gadgets that have only one, limited use, instead of handy things that you can do many things with as you're preparing your holiday feasts.

What makes the viral video fun is how Brown describes in his deadpan way how ridiculous these gadgets are. But of course there are suckers out there buying them.

All the gadgets are indeed bad, but Brown has some sympathy for a couple of them, but not because they're good tools for the kitchen.

One, called the Perfect Meat Handling and Shredding Claws, which shreds meat no better than your average fork. But as Brown notes, the Shredding Claws are perfect if you want to pretend to be the Wolverine. 

Then there's the Rollie, a device that's suppose to cook an egg,  resulting in a highly unappetizing looking egg thing that rises from the top of the machine like some phallic disaster.

The Rollie infomercial is really something to watch, too! 

In the Alton Brown video, it takes the Rollie 17 minutes to cook an egg, a job that usually takes a couple minutes maybe. But Brown notes The Rollie probably has performance issues and is sensitive to being watched while it is, um, erecting the egg.

Here's the video, which is totally worth watching, especially for you foodies out there:

You'll Hear A Lot From Awesome The Voice Contestant Jordan Smith..

Jordan Smith does an incredible version of
"Somebody To Love" on "The Voice." 

UPDATE: In case you haven't heard, Jordan Smith won Season 9 of "The Voice" Tuesday evening, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

I think he's got a long, successful career ahead of him.

By the way, I really love Smith's parents, who cried with pride through every episode, and did so when brought up on stage last night when Smith won.

Kudos to his coach, Adam Levine, too, for giving Smith the latitude to do things his way. And nice bear hug by Levine given to Smith's mom. Very nice moment!

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

I get nervous anytime somebody tries to sing like the late, great Freddie Mercury

Mercury, the frontman for Queen, had in my opinion perhaps the best rock singing voice of anybody through the decades.

On the many singing competition shows out there, contestants sometimes try to show their chops by trying to be be the next Freddie Mercury. It usually doesn't work.

However, The Voice contestant Jordan Smith this past week took a stab at Freddie Mercury and Queen's "Somebody To Love."

The results were amazing, and so good Smith's "Somebody To Love" managed to knock the unstoppable Adele's "Hello" out of the top spot on iTunes.

He's also the first person on record to replace himself at the Number 1 spot on Billboard's Hot Christian Songs list. His "The Voice" performance of "Hallelujah" dethroned his earlier cover of "Great Is They Faithfulness."

On top of his powerful voice, Smith had a gospel choir perform backup for "Somebody To Love." It worked perfectly.

See for yourself in the video below. Jordan Smith is just amazing, and I hope we hear from him for a long time to come:

Is Big Beer Making It Harder For You To Get The Better Craft Beers?

Makers of Add caption

I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys beers like Budweiser, Natural Light or Miller Light.

I think the stuff is terrible, but that's my snobby opinion. Still, I like to keep trying craft beers.

It seems like a new craft beer appears on the market every second. Which is a good thing.

However, Big Beer, the giant companies like Anhauser-Busch/InBev (AB InBev) that make Budweiser and similar products, are probably going to make it harder for you to get the craft beers you love.

Not impossible, mind you, but harder.

According to Mother Jones, via the Wall Street Journal, independent craft beers make up 11 percent or so of the market, and that share is growing. Big Beer is NOT happy about that, because they're losing market share.

To combat this, Big Beer is offering incentives to local distributers who stock the shelves at your local supermarket and corner store  to basically keep craft beers off the shelves.

Says the Wall Street Journal: "Distributers whose sales volume are 95 percent made up of AB/InBev brands would be eligible to have the brewer cover as much as half of there contractual marketing support for those brands, which includes retail promotion and display costs. AB InBev, which introduced the plan at a meeting of distributors in St. Louis, estimates participating distributors would receive an average annual benefit of $200,000 each."

That's a chunk of change, and that's why you often see a tiny area of store shelves devoted to craft beers, while you get aisles and aisles of Budweiser and Natural Light.

The AB InBev incentive program would also limit shelf space to craft brewers who produce less than 15,000 barrels or sell beer in only one state.

That's because Big Beer is scared of the competition by relative large craft brewers like Sierra Nevada or Long Trail.

The incentive program for brewers is voluntary, so it sounds like it avoids violating anti trust laws. But the incentive is so sweet that few distributors would likely blow it off, says the Wall Street Journal.

Makers of beers like Budweiser want to make it harder
to buy craft beers, like 14th Star Brewing Co. products
in Vermont, but don't worry, you'll still be able to get
them and not have to swill Natural Light. 

The incentive program says a lot about the makers of brews like Budweiser and such.

They perhaps don't have the quality to compete with craft brewers so they use their financial might to try to crowd the craft brews out of the market.

This is a First World problem, of course. Nobody is going to die because it's a little harder for the public to buy craft beer.  But it is an interesting comment on American big business practices: Use existing clout and finances to stifle competition.

It won't be impossible to buy craft beer, of course. There are so many brew pubs and such around the nation springing up that have great beers. You can go directly to these breweries and buy whichever craft beer you like best.

For instance, in my town of St. Albans, Vermont, I can just go down to the excellent 14th Star Brewing Co. and pick up a growler of their finest. No need to settle for Natural Light (ugh!) that's for sure.

And as for all that Budweiser filling an entire aisle at the local supermarket: I appreciate your efforts, Anheiser-Busch, but I think I'll pass.

Orangutan Widely Amused By Man Doing Magic Trick

This orangutan just LOVES the man's magic trick.

I LOVE this viral video going around, because it's such a day brightener in a world with dark news these days.

It was taken recently in a Barcelona, Spain zoo. A man shows an orangutan that he is putting something in a cup.

With a mild sleight of hand, the man removes the object and shows the orangutan that somehow, suddenly, there's nothing in the cup now.

The orangutan's reaction is priceless an delightful. Watch:

"You Ain't No Muslim, Bruv!" And Other Rallying Cries. Do They Help?

Among those embracing the "You Ain't No Muslim, Bruv"
slogan is British Prime Minister DAvid Cameron. 

The phrase on seemingly everybody's social media lips Monday was "You ain't no Muslim, Bruv!

This came from a extremely viral video in which a bystander video'd some moron attacking innocent passersby with a knife in London's Underground. The attacker yelled some nonsense about his assault being for Syria or something.

Three people were hurt, one seriously in this attack. While cops tackled the suspect, you can hear, very clearly in the video, another bystander shouting angrily at the suspect, "You ain't no Muslim, Bruv!"

("Bruv" is the British equivalent of "Bro" in th United States.)

"You ain't no Muslim, Bruv"  instantly became a rallying cry and a top trending hashtag on Twitter. Muslims in particular embraced the slogan, as the overwhelming majority of them clearly don't think terrorist attacks are consistent with their religion, Donald Trump's opinion notwithstanding.

Among those praising the unidentified man who said "You ain't no Muslim, Bruv" was British Prime Minister David Cameran, who noted the man "said it better than I ever could," and thank the man on behalf of the nation.

Many people for many years have been stating the obvious for years, saying that jihadists aren't really Muslims, even if they think they are.

But "You ain't no Muslim, Bruv" crystalizes the sentiment more perfectly than any politician or pundit or writer could ever manage.

The phrase is an instant way for all of us to demonstrate solidarity against ISIL and its terrorist ilk.

As a practical matter, slogans don't solve problems. At least not directly. I can't imagine an ISIL jihadist hearing "You ain't no Muslim, Bruv," and saying, "Geez, that's right. I'll lay down my weapons get rid of my bombs and lead a peaceful life from now on."

But such slogans offer us cohesiveness, a way to tell the world we're speaking with one voice against terrorism.

Oh, I know here in America there is a pretty big bunch of people taking the opposite tack, coming up with more and more over the top ways to "ban" Muslims because they are "all terrorists" or something.

As President Obama pointed out in a televised address Sunday, that attitude plays directly into the hands of ISIL, which insists the West is waging a war against Islam. (So come join us at ISIL to save Islam and bomb the hell out of those sinful Westerners!)

You Ain't No Muslim, Bruv is a counterweight to ISIL's sick recruitment efforts. The slogan won't save us from terrorism, just as #Port Ouverte  or open door for refugees in France after Paris attack didn't save us from terrorist. Nor did the popular hashtag #JeSuisCharlie after January's terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine.

However, we all feel like we need to do something, even if we are, as individuals, pretty powerless to stop ISIL. But the defiant Twitter hashtags like #YouAin'tNoMuslimBruv does its small part to reject and overpower Islamic extremists.

It isn't much, but every little bit helps.