The Occasional Joke


Nurse: Patient's name?

Centurion: Marcus Licinius Crassus

Nurse: And his date of birth?

Centurion: 115 BC.

Nurse: All right. And what is he here for?

Centurion: Cataphract surgery.


Saturday, August 11, 2012

The heat is being turned up

Worth a look. Note that we are now saying that a major conflict with China is highly unlikely, up from unthinkable not too long ago.

See the Guardian article here.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

The times they are a-changin'

The Mayor lost his majority on council, based on the primary results. In particular, the wins for Sumi Kailasapathy and Sally Hart Petersen mean trouble for Hizzoner, since in the words of Tony Derezinski, one of the losing candidates, "... they ran on — stopping various things ..."

Since, in the opinion of this blog, the primary thing Ann Arbor needs is someone to hold up a hand and say, "Wait! You want to do what? For how much money?" the outcome is probably a good one. Too bad for the Mayor, since by and large, his heart is in the right place, but the recent image projected by city hall -- a kind of Soviet-style "we never make mistakes" arrogance -- is not one that has endeared them to a lot of people.

The ironic thing is that although Hieftje will be running for re-election himself this year, we'll still be voting for him, regardless of any symptoms of hubris he may or may not have exhibited, since the "Independent" running against him is a full-blown looney. Albert Howard is our own little Thad McCotter, right up to the voices in his head that told him to run for President in 2008. So far, he hasn't been indicted for anything.

Freeze, sucker! You're busted!

The Michigan Attorney General is charging four of Thad McCotter's half-witted staff with actual crimes -- conspiracy, mostly -- related to their recent process improvement efforts. Going the conspiracy route was necessary, apparently, since Michigan's law against being an imbecile was repealed last year, thanks to efforts by the same pressure groups that now want to repeal the Emergency Manager law.

Wood-Charles has discovered that McCotter's team held a Kaizen event sometime in 2007, at which they determined it was a waste of effort actually to contact people and get signatures, when technology to photo copy repurpose the signatures was readily available. Unfortunately (for them -- it's great for Michigan,) their photoshop skills weren't up to the task, and as so often happens when production corners are cut, defect escapes occurred.

Update: at least one of 'em has been convicted.

Ah, the Irish - keep 'em away from microphones

Erin go barking mad ...

This is the absolute best sports commentary I've heard in years. Let me know if the link stops working, since I understand the IOC aren't especially happy about it.

"And what do we have here? More idiots."

Here's another link to the same content.