“Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.”
Today is cloudy and damp. Tomorrow the rain will come, heavy rain accompanied by a strong wind according to the forecast, but by the looks of the sky, I think it may rain this afternoon or evening.
I have house stuff to do today: plants to water, bills to pay, litter to change and feeders to fill. I have no intention of going anywhere. Today is a stay warm and cozy sort of day.
The Cape Times used to publish court news from both the Orleans and the Barnstable courts. I always knew someone, usually a former student. Now the paper just has news items in a section called The Log. Today a few crimes caught my attention. One item recounted the arrest of a man who cut the security wires from the jewelry display case at Kmart then wheeled the case to his car. He was caught because of the surveillance video. If you watch any TV, you know there are video cameras everywhere so the police knew who did it and what he was driving. His car was seen and stopped and the thief was wearing the same clothes as in the video. His watch cap had the word SELFIE across the front. The backseat was loaded with jewelry still sporting Kmart tags. According to the police, this thief has 78 arraignments on his adult record mostly for breaking and entering, larceny, shoplifting and narcotics.
The other crime was multiple assaults. The man was described as having a long criminal record and is now charged with assault and battery on a police officer and two counts of assault and battery. When the police went to arrest him, they said he smelled of alcohol and his speech was slurred. During booking he became belligerent, punched the door cell and yelled obscenities. In his cell, he flooded the floor with water and put toilet paper in the water to make the floor slippery. Two police equipped with riot shields warned him they’d use a stun gun unless he stopped. They entered the cell and he began striking the officers who threw him down on a bench. He continued to fight until the stun gun was used. Now this guy has used 10 aliases in the past and has 132 arraignments on charges which include violence.
Usually I’m fairly happy with my world. I’ve always been a half full sort. I look for the good and hang on to it. I know the bad is there, but I refuse to fall prey to pessimism. I try not to let the bad things color my world. These two articles threw me a bit with the 78 and 132 arraignments. Things need to change, but I don’t have an answer, only questions.
Stuck between the two reports was an article that the season’s first right whales have been seen in the bay. About half of the North Atlantic population of 526 right whales will winter here. They come here to eat zooplankton. Right whales are rare and endangered and to have that many so close is amazing. This is the good news.
Explore posts in the same categories: Musings
January 9, 2016 at 1:56 pm
And it is like this in FL
January 9, 2016 at 3:19 pm
rk2000,
I’m sorry you don’t have better weather. I thought you would.
January 16, 2016 at 1:37 pm
it was raining here all day yesterday
January 16, 2016 at 2:46 pm
Thanks for sending it my way!!
January 9, 2016 at 3:07 pm
Just finished plugging everything back in … had a brief electrical storm with lightning come thru, and when that happens I quit all my programs, shut the computer down, and unplug it and my external hard drives. If a lightning strike gets close enough, the wires going into the wall are a direct pathway to ‘Fry Me City,’ and I really don’t want to deal with that. It’s a lot easier to quit and unplug. Cheaper, too.
I’m always mildly interested in the sheer idiocy of the Criminal Class that conducts its ‘business’ in full view of surveillance cameras. Since so many of ’em go uncaught, it brings about questioning of the need to be the Surveillance Society which we’re rapidly becoming. Want a bit of the old ‘chilling effect’ … ?
Take a look at the things many may consider to be ‘ordinary street lights’ can do these days:
http://www.illuminatingconcepts.com/intellistreets/
Orwell’s ‘viewscreen’ should have it so good. This is ubiquitous. You can run, but you’ll only die tired.
The two crims you point out sound as if they’d be prime fodder for the writer at ‘The Arcata Eye’ in Mexifornia. I’m sure it all goes back to early toilet training and too much sugary food in childhood … The one with the record of multiple assaults should have been permanently deprived of his oxygen rights. It’s the ‘Less Work For Mother’ principle … I know, color me cynical.
‘Course, if that actually happened in real life, the ‘Sharpson Bros’ (a/k/a ‘The JustUs Brothers’) would have been on the scene in a flash, replete with three-piece suits and matching bullhorns to agitate the easily agitated …
Ooh! Ooh! ‘Glass half full!’ … easy solution: Drink it all. Problem solved. See what happens when y’ give a problem like this to a lazy person … ?
January 9, 2016 at 3:26 pm
Richard,
It is rare to have an electrical storm in winter but we do get thunder every now and then but not always rain.
Wow, that street light has everything conceivable and some stuff I never thought about. I live where there are no street lights.
I couldn’t believe how many arraignments each of them had. Why are they out committing more crimes? That seems to be all they can do. There must be a solution just waiting to be conceived by somebody.
Drinking the water doesn’t answer the question. How much water did you drink?
January 9, 2016 at 3:51 pm
Well, y’ hafta drink ALL of it, otherwise the question’s still posed. To be on the safe side, I’d grab a dishtowel and dry it, too.
If y’ want to take a look at something most of us regular people will never have to worry about doing, take a look at this zero-zero ejection test …
http://worldwarwings.com/youd-never-want-to-eject-after-seeing-this-slow-motion-video?a=mk&var=ww2-slowmo-ejection
If this is a double post (again), please delete the earlier one, as it doesn’t allow you to see the video when you scroll to the bottom.
January 9, 2016 at 4:02 pm
Richard,
The one in real time was scary. His body was shot in the air, twisted from side to side then he hit the ground. Not for me in any way!
January 9, 2016 at 5:25 pm
Bob,
My neighborhood has all the wires buried which is why we don’t have street lights. I unplug nothing.
January 9, 2016 at 5:12 pm
If your electrical wires in your neighborhood are buried underground you don’t have to unplug your computer. Even if you didn’t the odds of getting a direct lighting strike on your AC wires are very remote. Do you also unplug your router and either cable or phone lines? Your cable TV or phone internet provider’s lines also could be overhead.
January 9, 2016 at 7:35 pm
Bob …
We don’t have no steenking ‘underground wires’ … everything’s in the air on a pole. I unplug the router, and have no landline to worry about. Rather than play the odds, I just unplug and wait for it to pass. That’s why I have an emergency radio with both a crank dynamo and a solar panel …
January 9, 2016 at 3:32 pm
It stopped to snow here in the late afternoon so I was a bit surprised when the plow guy came a few minutes ago and plowed to road. It had started to snow again and I think we’ve gotten around two inches or more in just an hour. Can’t say I’m happy about it.
It is a bit surprising that criminals never learn that there are cameras everywhere, some are even idiotic enough to film what they do and put it on Youtube or Facebook 🙂 🙂 I mean even if I was drunk as a skunk I would know that would be a rather stupid thing to do 🙂 🙂
We rarely get whales by our shores but when it happens they usually show it on the news. This summer and autumn has been rather unusual because lots of dolphins have swum all the way in to the Baltic sea. Normally we get Orcas here and the occasional bigger whale and the Harbour porpoise is still here even if they are getting rare but they are usually so shy we never notice them.
Have a great day!
Christer.
January 9, 2016 at 3:55 pm
Christer,
I’m right with you. I’d feel the same way if we got plowable snow.
It’s true. Criminals go and brag on Facebook to their friends, and the police get them. A criminal with so many arraignments is a very bad (as in performance) criminal, a not very good one or he wouldn’t be caught so many times. I doubt he gives his crimes much preparation or thought.
We will have the whales all summer long as the plankton is plentiful. Sightseeing boats will take people to whale watch. I took my family once and we saw so many whales. It was spectacular.
Have a great evening!
January 9, 2016 at 5:19 pm
Just sitting at the Tampa airport waiting to return home. Our flight is delayed because of bad weather in the Midwest because the plane airplane we are waiting for departed Indianapolis. I assume that’s the weather that you are expecting on the East Coast tomorrow. Whenever you fly you have to remember the adage, “Time to spare go by air”. 😁
January 9, 2016 at 5:28 pm
Bob,
We are expecting heavy rains tomorrow so the weather is coming. I am happy it isn’t snow.
My recent flights were all on time; one was actually early.
January 9, 2016 at 7:52 pm
Eric got it done, even gone some heavy TV and Internet action for putting JJ Watt in his place. On go the Chiefs and the Prince is very happy
January 10, 2016 at 12:38 pm
My Dear Hedley,
J.J. cried.
I thin the Chiefs play the Pats next weekend.
January 10, 2016 at 12:57 pm
Here in Texas obviously the number one crime on the TV news is gun violence. Shootings as a result of domestic violence, robberies, police shootings and lot’s of nut cases with guns just shooting for no apparent reason. Governor Abbott just called for the state legislature, along with the required 34 others, to call for a Constitutional convention to rewrite the 1789 document. He wants to strengthen States rights to ignore Federal regulations and court decisions they don’t like. Hopefully, it won’t happen in my lifetime but the idea appeals to the right wing tea party loony bins. Just look at our junior Senator Ted Cruz. 🙁
January 10, 2016 at 1:50 pm
Bob,
The Constitution wisely divides responsibilities between the states and the federal government. Giving states the right to ignore federal laws because they don’t like them for whatever reason is ludicrous. It is also scary as rights now accepted would disappear in some states.