A pity, really

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Update 2013 06 11: The artillery bombardment has demolished the whole south set of buildings now, leaving the northern block still standing. The sappers are pushing forward their approach trenches steadily, with an eye to running a mine under the remaining curtain wall. Trebuchets had been flinging dead woodchucks into the citadel for several days, but this tactic was suspended when deserters from the garrison revealed that they'd been making a tasty stew of 'em. The Duke of Alba was unavailable for comment, but AnnArbor.com reported rumors that Don John of Austria (that bastard!) was coming up the Huron with a fleet of war galleys and canoes.

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Now that the demolition of the Georgetown Mall is finally underway, I'll have nothing to whine about (unless, of course, they run out of money and have to quit partway through, leaving a vast mound of rubble; but that won't happen, will it?).

Instead, I'll have to wait until it's down and has been sitting there for months without any apparent progress on building the pipe dream mixed use development that has been pitched to Council. How do I know this will be the case? Well, the word on the street is that the developer had so much trouble even getting funding in place to tear the old stuff down, his chances of getting money to build new stuff are ... let's just say, poor. Yeah, that's a good word for it. Poor.

Anyway, here are some photos I took this morning. Demolition is at least colorful if not especially aesthetic.

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Update: Ed from Vacuum sent me this link about the Georgetown Developer's other fiasco.

A strange way of speaking

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who narrowly defeated Sarah Palin on the short-lived reality show, "Babbling with the Stars", is not going to run for re-election when her term expires in 2016. She offers as a reason this strange statement:

"The law limits anyone from serving as president of the United States for more than eight years. And in my opinion, well eight years is also long enough for an individual to serve as a representative for a specific congressional district."

This veiled threat hint that she might be considering a run for the Presidency again was discounted by many pundits, since the law also limits presidential candidates to those with an IQ greater than 37. However, the P word kept cropping up in her statements:

"(Her decision) was not in any way influenced by" concerns about her re-election prospects, nor by the "recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign or my former presidential staff."

Of course, she doesn't have any "former presidential staff", since she never had a snowball's chance in hell of winning in the primaries, let alone in a national election. And she only won in her district by a very small margin, defeating a Democratic candidate who says he's going to run again. Her reference to staff is apparently about investigations into campaign finance abuses.

Anyway, until she changes her mind (which is a pretty safe bet), we'll have to look elsewhere for the architype of a far-right loonie. Fortunately, Donald Trump has just spent a million bucks to determine what states he'd carry if he ran in 2016. The results of that research were not released, surprisingly enough. Wonder why?

Oh, and here's a better-written, less blatantly biased article on the subject.

How many people do you know ...

... who meet this description?

"... persistent and pervasive elevated (euphoric) or irritable mood, as well as thoughts and behaviors that are consistent with such a mood state. ... extremely energetic, talkative, confident, and assertive. They may have a flight of ideas and feel creative."

Like every single sales rep I've ever had to deal with. Certain kinds of consultants. People who have high-touch jobs, customer-facing positions, celebrity chefs ... and people who creep into positions of authority and then find themselves in trouble generated by their way of approaching the universe. People, perhaps, like Wayne County Circuit Judge Wade McCree.

Physicians and those who play them on TV call this set of behaviors hypomania, and a doc who treated Judge McCree ("Ain't no shame in my game!") says he thinks this condition may be present. The Judge is one of many Michigan officials who seem to have difficulties keeping their pants zipped, their pictures off Twitter, and their financial situations straight. But he's the first one I've heard of to claim that a mental condition that makes him act like an Oracle salesman is to blame.

Here's an article; judge (haw, haw) for yourself if McCree is a victim of a mental condition with a name or without one.

Ironically enough ...

Our old pal, Ed Vielmetti, ongoing champion of all things Internet, appears in print this month, in the AA Observer. Patrick Dunn leads off an article on blogs and blogging with a Profile of Ed and the
Vacuum blog he writes.