An amazing video surfaced in the past couple of days from a breakdancing tournament in France held Saturday.
It's the baby division of the competition, in which pre-teens show their stuff. It opens with a boy who looks to be about nine years old, looking incredibly impressive.
Then a six year old girl identified only as Bgirl Terra appears, dressed in a grey sweat suit with red stripes, and shows us how it's done. Big Time. (I love how the nine year old, impressed, is eventually reduced to just pointing at the six year old phenom.
Watch and be amazed.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Best Restaurant Nominee? Tim's Place, New Mexico
If I ever find myself in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and feel even a bit hungry, I'll definitely check out a restaurant called Tim's Place.
It's believed to be the only restaurant in the nation owned by someone with Down's Syndrome, and from all reports, Tim's Place is an awesome place to eat.
The owner is Tim Harris, who likes his job so much he does a little dance in the parking lot before going in and opening the place early every morning.
The restaurant's catch phrase is "Breakfast, Lunch and Hugs," and owner Harris makes sure he goes around and hugs all his customers.
"I am a mean, mean hugging machine," Harris said.
Talking about leaving the clientele in a good mood!
His parents, Keith and Jeannie Harris and brother Dan Harris help Tim run the restaurant, but Tim Harris basically is a Jack of All Trades, ensuring the place runs smoothly.
For more on Tim's Place, watch this video. In a world of gloomy news, here's a very upbeat business item to digest:
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| The awesome Tim Harris, owner of Tim's Place, an Albuquerque, N.M. eatery. |
The owner is Tim Harris, who likes his job so much he does a little dance in the parking lot before going in and opening the place early every morning.
The restaurant's catch phrase is "Breakfast, Lunch and Hugs," and owner Harris makes sure he goes around and hugs all his customers.
"I am a mean, mean hugging machine," Harris said.
Talking about leaving the clientele in a good mood!
His parents, Keith and Jeannie Harris and brother Dan Harris help Tim run the restaurant, but Tim Harris basically is a Jack of All Trades, ensuring the place runs smoothly.
For more on Tim's Place, watch this video. In a world of gloomy news, here's a very upbeat business item to digest:
Fees, Fees, Everywhere Some Fees Invade Everything
First it was the airlines, who screw us over with their byzantine system of fees. Hotels do it, too.Now, restaurants have gotten into the act. An outfit called Miller's Ale House in Winter Park, Fla. started putting a fee on everybody's bill marked "Revaudage PUF," according to television station WESH.
The "Revaudage" referred to the development the restaurant was in and "PUF" is "Personal Usage Fee" the television station said. The fee was for maintenance of the property. Customers were using the property, after all.
Of course, few people would really examine their restaurant bill to notice the fee. True, it only amounted to less than 50 cents per bill, but it was still shady. Why not just mark up the cost of the food every so slightly to keep the restaurant profitable.
Miller's Ale House removed the fee after the bad publicity from WESH-TV surfaced.
Instead of just being straightforward with their pricing, more and more businesses seem to want to create the fee structure knowing most of us can't keep track of it all. Most of us don't know what's included in the price and what is an extra charge.
That way, we're lured in by their "low" price, but hit with fees so they rake in the dough and we're screwed.
These businesses do it simply because they can. As an Associated Press article on complex airline fees asked, Here's the AP take on the airline industry:
"What other industry can you think of where a person buying a product doesn't know how much it's going to cost even after he's done at the checkout counter?" said Simon Gros, chairman of the Travel Technology Association, which represents the global distribution services and online travel industries.
The answer to that is, in the future at least, more and more.
More from the AP story:
"The harder airlines make it for consumers to compare, 'the greater opportunity you have to get higher prices,' said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, whose members include corporate travel managers."
A lot of the reason this complicated fee structure seems to be gaining popularity is data mining, according to the AP. Businesses can try to sell you services based on what you wanted in the past. Baggage claim, more leg room, frequent flier, etc., according to the AP.
So we have to pay the price in higher expenses and much more confusion so businesses can learn more about us so they can try to get us to spend even more money on them?
I hope we don't end up where everything we buy is like that. Nowadays, we go to the grocery store and say, buy a can of soup for $1.99. Straightforward enough. Are we going to go to some system where the soup seems to cost $1.99 a can but we have to go to a Web site to make sure we don't pay a $2 carrying fee for taking the soup out of the store once we purchase it, a 50 cent restocking fee, a $1.00 manufacturing fee, and a 50 cent recycling fee, so we end up paying $5.99 for a $1.99 can of soup?
We know costs go up for businesses Just raise the damn price so you can still make a profit. We won't like the higher prices, but we get it. Inflation exists. We deal with it. Just tell us in a straightforward fashion how much it will cost to buy the thing you are trying to sell.
To obscure how much we're paying through a complex fee structure just seems dishonest to me, even if it is perfectly legal.
Because that's essentially what we're doing with airlines, some hotels and resorts, and apparently, a few restaurants now.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Creepy Young Man Who Beat Up Homeless Man for YouTube "Fun" Sentenced.
In December, 2011, I posted an awful story about some dopey kid named Taylor Giresi, who was then 20 and some 17 year old moron posting a video of them beating up a homeless guy in New Jersey, apparently because they thought it was funny.
Word comes now that Giresi, now 22, has been sentenced to three years in prison for the crime, but some might question whether the sentence is long enough.
Giresi's lawyer said mitigating factors are that his client has a low IQ of 74 and has some psychological issues. Well, you have to have some mental health problems if you think beating up a guy for the cameras is fun. The lawyer said Giresi was egged on by the 17 year old moron who was filming the beating.
Here's just a tiny bit of the account of the attack the New York Post provides:
"After initially attacking the homeless man, the young man in the video returns to him again. As the cameraman urges him on, he punches the homeless man in the face, sending him sprawling to the ground."
According to the New York Post, Giresi didn't exactly seem too remorseful for the crime.
"I already apologized to the homelesss man; I knew him," Giresi said in a halting monotone. "It wasn't like anything serious. But when I put it on YouTube it got serious. I wasn't trying to hurt the man."
Wow, are there a lot of problems with that statement. Let's pick it apart, OK?
"I already apologized." Really? How? When?
"I knew him." So that makes it OK to beat the crap out of him and terrorize the poor guy? Because you knew him? Funny, my first impulse isn't to punch the people I know.
"It wasn't like anything serious." Nah, We do it all the time. Just beat up innocent people minding their own business because, you know, it's fun!
"But when it got on YouTube it got serious." Yeah, it's not serious if you brutally assault someone, but when people call you out on it when they see you being a horrible person on YouTube, then it's bad. Are we a little self centered, Taylor?
"I wasn't trying to hurt the man." So punching and kicking a person is not hurting someone? Then what is?
Yes, yes, I know that Giresi is mentally challenged and has psychological problems. But isn't there some level of responsibility in there somewhere? The prison sentence seems to say so, but if his quotes are right, he doesn't say so.
There's no word on where the homeless man who Giresi and friend beat up is now. The 17 year old who helped in the attack spent two months in a juvenile detention center and is on probation, according to the post.
 |
| A still from that awful video of Taylor Giresi, attacking a homeless man, seen here bloodied after Giresi hit him |
Giresi's lawyer said mitigating factors are that his client has a low IQ of 74 and has some psychological issues. Well, you have to have some mental health problems if you think beating up a guy for the cameras is fun. The lawyer said Giresi was egged on by the 17 year old moron who was filming the beating.
Here's just a tiny bit of the account of the attack the New York Post provides:
"After initially attacking the homeless man, the young man in the video returns to him again. As the cameraman urges him on, he punches the homeless man in the face, sending him sprawling to the ground."
According to the New York Post, Giresi didn't exactly seem too remorseful for the crime.
"I already apologized to the homelesss man; I knew him," Giresi said in a halting monotone. "It wasn't like anything serious. But when I put it on YouTube it got serious. I wasn't trying to hurt the man."
Wow, are there a lot of problems with that statement. Let's pick it apart, OK?
"I already apologized." Really? How? When?
"I knew him." So that makes it OK to beat the crap out of him and terrorize the poor guy? Because you knew him? Funny, my first impulse isn't to punch the people I know.
"It wasn't like anything serious." Nah, We do it all the time. Just beat up innocent people minding their own business because, you know, it's fun!
"But when it got on YouTube it got serious." Yeah, it's not serious if you brutally assault someone, but when people call you out on it when they see you being a horrible person on YouTube, then it's bad. Are we a little self centered, Taylor?
"I wasn't trying to hurt the man." So punching and kicking a person is not hurting someone? Then what is?
Yes, yes, I know that Giresi is mentally challenged and has psychological problems. But isn't there some level of responsibility in there somewhere? The prison sentence seems to say so, but if his quotes are right, he doesn't say so.
There's no word on where the homeless man who Giresi and friend beat up is now. The 17 year old who helped in the attack spent two months in a juvenile detention center and is on probation, according to the post.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
A Robot Horse Wants to Kill You By Throwing Cinder Blocks at Your Head
I found a pretty terrifying video that's spreading around the Internet today.
It shows a robot horse that's able to coordinate itself so that it can throw cinderblocks really hard, and really accurately at people or things that the robot, or its programmers don't like.
This is a Pentagon project, natch, done by Army Research Laboratory Boston Dynamics. It seeks, and seems to succeed at the physiology animals and humans use to most effectively use their bodies for any variety of tasks.
They're trying to come up with a robot that can negotiate uneven terrain, yet can throw objects or otherwise fight the enemy. Especially an enemy with an aversion to cinder blocks. Of course, I imagine this thing can throw other things. Shoes. grenades. tactical nuclear weapons.
This is kind of a mix of old school --- horses engaging in warcraft on the battlefield ---with the Big Future -- robots fighting our wars for us.
If I was unfortunate enough to have a hostile neighbor, I'd hate for them to get their hands on this machine.
Here's the video:
It shows a robot horse that's able to coordinate itself so that it can throw cinderblocks really hard, and really accurately at people or things that the robot, or its programmers don't like.
This is a Pentagon project, natch, done by Army Research Laboratory Boston Dynamics. It seeks, and seems to succeed at the physiology animals and humans use to most effectively use their bodies for any variety of tasks.
They're trying to come up with a robot that can negotiate uneven terrain, yet can throw objects or otherwise fight the enemy. Especially an enemy with an aversion to cinder blocks. Of course, I imagine this thing can throw other things. Shoes. grenades. tactical nuclear weapons.
This is kind of a mix of old school --- horses engaging in warcraft on the battlefield ---with the Big Future -- robots fighting our wars for us.
If I was unfortunate enough to have a hostile neighbor, I'd hate for them to get their hands on this machine.
Here's the video:
Friday, March 1, 2013
School Says Kids Who Cry Out For Help Should Just Shut Up Already
Hey kids, if you have a big problem and you can't get help at home and need a trusted adult to help you out, do not ask a teacher.
The teacher might be willing to help, but the school will probably expel you. And call the cops on you. So just suck it up and suffer in silence.
That's the hideous lesson a fifth grader in Virginia seems to have learned after he brought pot to school to take it away from his father because he was worried about dad's pot smoking habit.
It's those stupid zero tolerance rules again, which is the comfort zone of those few school administrators who can't think on their feet.
While most school teachers and administrators seem to have no problem managing to mete out discipline and education in sensible doses, a few schools just don't get it.
And now I've got another example in this poor Virginia fifth grader. There've been plenty of others, some of which I've written about HERE, HERE and HERE
The Virginia Pilot, in an editorial lambasting the school district that is torturing the fifh grader through their "rules," quotes some administrators who say they can't tailor their draconian rules to fit the situation. One size fits all, folks! Even if means killing a fly with a nuclear bomb.
Writes Kerry Dougherty in the Virginia Pilot column:
"There's really no wiggle room," Bethannne Bradshaw, Suffolk's schools public information officer, told me Wednesday.
Oh really, Bethanne? You can't tailor the consequences of the kid bringing the pot to school to the circumstances of the incident? You, or maybe more accurately the administrators at the school, can't think and just have to follow some sort of rote recipe? How the hell did YOU all get through school with such a mentaliity?
The unbelievable thing about cases like this one is the amazing fact that these school administrators have a fundamental misunderstanding of zero tolerance laws.
On their face, zero tolerance rules make sense. The rules send a strong message that bringing drugs or weapons to schools is strictly forbidden.
Even strong advocates of zero tolerance are appalled by this kind of case, since the ridiculousness of these punishments undermine the concept of zero tolerance.
According to USA Today, zero tolerance rules mean there are consequences for any instance of bringing drugs or weapons to school. But it doesn't necessarily mean automatic expulsion. That means the punishment fits the crime. The punishment can range from saying "don't do that again" to expulsion, depending upon the severity of the offense.
According to USA Today:
"I'm terribly embarrassed when I read about some of these cases," says Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation's second largest teachers union, which has pushed hard for zero-tolerance policies. "These are examples of adults not exercising proper responsibility. I'm always in favor of just plain common sense."
By the way, the USA Today article I reference came out in 1999. The need for flexibility within the confines of zero tolerance rules has been the subject of educational journals for two decades now. And some schools STILL don't get it? What's going on?
Oh, you poor thing Bethanne. Victimized because people are calling idiots idiots
The bad publicity is a good thing. For a few school districts, not the many smart ones, but the dumb ones like this one in Virginia, the only thing that has a chance of making them use common sense for once is the toxic pain of bad publicity.
The teacher might be willing to help, but the school will probably expel you. And call the cops on you. So just suck it up and suffer in silence.
That's the hideous lesson a fifth grader in Virginia seems to have learned after he brought pot to school to take it away from his father because he was worried about dad's pot smoking habit.
It's those stupid zero tolerance rules again, which is the comfort zone of those few school administrators who can't think on their feet.
While most school teachers and administrators seem to have no problem managing to mete out discipline and education in sensible doses, a few schools just don't get it.
And now I've got another example in this poor Virginia fifth grader. There've been plenty of others, some of which I've written about HERE, HERE and HERE
The Virginia Pilot, in an editorial lambasting the school district that is torturing the fifh grader through their "rules," quotes some administrators who say they can't tailor their draconian rules to fit the situation. One size fits all, folks! Even if means killing a fly with a nuclear bomb.
Writes Kerry Dougherty in the Virginia Pilot column:
"There's really no wiggle room," Bethannne Bradshaw, Suffolk's schools public information officer, told me Wednesday.
Oh really, Bethanne? You can't tailor the consequences of the kid bringing the pot to school to the circumstances of the incident? You, or maybe more accurately the administrators at the school, can't think and just have to follow some sort of rote recipe? How the hell did YOU all get through school with such a mentaliity?
The unbelievable thing about cases like this one is the amazing fact that these school administrators have a fundamental misunderstanding of zero tolerance laws.
On their face, zero tolerance rules make sense. The rules send a strong message that bringing drugs or weapons to schools is strictly forbidden.
Even strong advocates of zero tolerance are appalled by this kind of case, since the ridiculousness of these punishments undermine the concept of zero tolerance.
According to USA Today, zero tolerance rules mean there are consequences for any instance of bringing drugs or weapons to school. But it doesn't necessarily mean automatic expulsion. That means the punishment fits the crime. The punishment can range from saying "don't do that again" to expulsion, depending upon the severity of the offense.
According to USA Today:
"I'm terribly embarrassed when I read about some of these cases," says Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation's second largest teachers union, which has pushed hard for zero-tolerance policies. "These are examples of adults not exercising proper responsibility. I'm always in favor of just plain common sense."
By the way, the USA Today article I reference came out in 1999. The need for flexibility within the confines of zero tolerance rules has been the subject of educational journals for two decades now. And some schools STILL don't get it? What's going on?
The Virginia Pilot points out the school district is now the subject of a lot of embarassing, derisive news coverage of their handling of the poor kids.
"We were hearing from people telling us we were idiots. It's been disruptive," Bradshaw said, according to the Virginia Pilot.Oh, you poor thing Bethanne. Victimized because people are calling idiots idiots
The bad publicity is a good thing. For a few school districts, not the many smart ones, but the dumb ones like this one in Virginia, the only thing that has a chance of making them use common sense for once is the toxic pain of bad publicity.
Gloomy Weather Can Be Beautiful
Here in Vermont, we've been stuck in one of those end of winter weather funks, where it stays damp, cloudy and gloomy. Some wet snow splats down from time to time, or some cold raindrops. The sky is always gray and fog waxes and wanes, obsuring the landscape one minute, partially revealing it another.
It thaws a little during the day, and the meltwater sort of hangs in the air as mist. At night, it gets colder and a bit of slushy or icy snow greets us each morning. The brief daytime thaws have left bare brown patches here in there in the ragged carpet of dirty, thin, soggy snow.
The mild weather, at least compared to the heart of winter, rouses the skunks, who spray randomly or get hit by cars as they wander in their groggy, sleepy stupor. The acrid smell of skunk hangs in the foggy air, so what we have is a bit of a skunk smog.
All this, of course, is a sign of spring, that winter is losing its grip. This makes most of us happy but the gloomy air seems designed to contain our excitement about the change of season, so we don't get excerssivelly excited about it.
There's certainly a beauty in the mist, the clouds, the thawing snow, the mud underfoot, as you can see by the photographs I took in Burlington, Vermont this week that are in this post.
Everything looks mysterious. It's as if spring knows it wants to put on its bright, green gaudy show, but what's to keep everything under wraps in the mist, so we don't get ahead of ourselves and embrace spring before it's time to do so.
It thaws a little during the day, and the meltwater sort of hangs in the air as mist. At night, it gets colder and a bit of slushy or icy snow greets us each morning. The brief daytime thaws have left bare brown patches here in there in the ragged carpet of dirty, thin, soggy snow.
The mild weather, at least compared to the heart of winter, rouses the skunks, who spray randomly or get hit by cars as they wander in their groggy, sleepy stupor. The acrid smell of skunk hangs in the foggy air, so what we have is a bit of a skunk smog.
All this, of course, is a sign of spring, that winter is losing its grip. This makes most of us happy but the gloomy air seems designed to contain our excitement about the change of season, so we don't get excerssivelly excited about it.
There's certainly a beauty in the mist, the clouds, the thawing snow, the mud underfoot, as you can see by the photographs I took in Burlington, Vermont this week that are in this post.
Everything looks mysterious. It's as if spring knows it wants to put on its bright, green gaudy show, but what's to keep everything under wraps in the mist, so we don't get ahead of ourselves and embrace spring before it's time to do so.
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