Isolated Blurt Thread

[LettersFromTatyana]

According to the US. Census Bureau there are 4.2 human births, globally, every second. That works out to 252 births every minute. If only one-half of one percent of those births are suckers, then the P.T. Barnum maxim holds.

Ooh! I'm special!

In other news, Barnum might not have coined the phrase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_a_sucker_born_every_minute

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I was just watching the movie Salt, and I noticed a really big fucking plot hole that anyone from D.C. should be able to point out. She was captured at the white House, and Chewitel Ejifor is told that he has fifteen minutes to talk to her during a helicopter ride, and then she will be in the FBI's custody. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has their central office in the J Edgar Hoover building seven blocks away from the White House, on the same street no less. Not only would that be one hell of a short helicopter ride, that doesn't cross the Potomac river as depicted in the movie (one mile away from the white house, shown as a ten minute helicopter ride, that's one slow helicopter), but it would actually be easier to get there by car.

I picked out that mistake (and verified it by Google maps) after only one visit to the United States capitol, once, around 20 years ago.

Fucking ridiculous.

 

[_Lynn_]

The true test to moving furniture alone will be hearing what my back tells me tomorrow.

 

[The_Fool]

The true test to moving furniture alone will be hearing what my back tells me tomorrow.

Didn't we have a discussion about how not to do that?

 

[The_Fool]

Anonymous feedback on a submission. I forgot what the fuck the poem was about.

 

[MagicaPractica]

If stuff like this keeps happening, I'm going to need tranquilizers.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

I Phil Liggett.

 

[trysail]

Sonofabitch. Rarely have I ever seen a squall like that. Thank god we weren't caught out on the water.


The violence was just amazing. Sheets of rain were blowing down the creek and there were huge wind gusts visible on the water's surface. The creek looked like a white water river. It is so easy to exaggerate but it had to have been blowing at least 40 knots ( and maybe more ).


If you'd been on a boat in the middle of that, it would have been virtually impossible to get the sails down. The idea, of course, is to never— ever— get caught in something like that with your sails up.


I've seen something like it only once or twice. The last time I recall getting in just in the nick of time and sitting around watching the anemometer dancing around 55 MPH. It puts the fear of god in you.


This followed on the heels of Thursday night's hail and thunderstorm. It's a rarity to get hail around here. I recall only one previous episode. As darkness set in during the violent thunderstorm, there was a strange clatter and I immediately wondered if it was hail. Sure enough, as I slid the door open there on the deck was a layer of quarter-sized pieces of ice. It's fascinating to reflect on the fact that in the midst of 100° air temperatures, there's someplace reasonably close-by where it's ( very obviously ) 32° or less. I'm glad I was inside; it'd hurt to be hit by that stuff.

 

[Wandering Star]

Just when I thought I had escaped, hell has come to visit me.

Hell on wheels!

 

[mynameisben]

Life has taught me once again never to leave things

 

[_Lynn_]

Didn't we have a discussion about how not to do that?

Yep. We did.

 

[carsonshepherd]

This was quite awhile ago, but every now and then past transgressions walk across my karma.

I'm sorry. I had no idea he was your boyfriend. He made fools out of both of us.

I hope you left one of your petite Doc Martens stamped on his forehead.

 

[trysail]

We’ve always known National Public Radio ( NPR ) is completely bent on the topic.

As a result, they aired a story that was so completely bogus that even NPR had to admit it. Why were they taken in so badly?

The answer is simple. NPR has become a broadcast platform and advocate for a scientific hypothesis. In this area, they long ago crossed the line from journalistic balance into outright advocacy. NPR is so predisposed to air stories that agree with their institutional bias that they fell all over themselves and KNOWINGLY broadcast a story that they were told was inaccurate (by the Yellowstone Park scientists and rangers).

It was disgraceful performance.

They finally admitted it— unfortunately, they didn’t admit or address the underlying reason for the blunder.
________________________

A Grizzly Bear Story With Too Many Leaps And Not Enough Skepticism
by Alicia Shepard
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/...with-too-many-leaps-and-not-enough-skepticism

… Although it would make story-telling so much easier, most issues are not black and white. This is the case for an NPR interview on whether grizzly bears are killing people because they are starving due to climate change.

Ah, if only it were that simple. It would be a great story.

But the issue was made to seem rather simple in a 5-minute interview last month on Weekend All Things Considered (WATC) entitled: “Climate Change Making the Nation’s Bears Hungry?” (That headline, on the NPR Web site, was itself misleading because the interview dealt only with bears near Yellowstone National Park)…


… Servheen has a PhD in wildlife biology, and took strong exception to WATC’s [NPR's] interview.

“The complaint I have is NPR featured this story as if it were factually correct and you interviewed this guy as if he had knowledge about grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem,” said Servheen. “Neither of those things is true. All of us look to NPR as a source of factual information. That was the most egregious thing I’ve ever heard on NPR.”

Yellowstone’s superintendent, Servheen, and the lead grizzly biologist for Montana’s department of fish, wildlife and parks complained in a letter to Men’s Journal that there are “multiple factual errors” in Solotaroff’s story. He also complained to NPR.

There were not as many errors in NPR’s much shorter interview, Servheen said. I asked him to annotate the NPR transcript.

Solotaroff told NPR that the mother bear was “tragically thin.” But in fact, Servheen said she was within the normal weight range for a female with cubs in July. Solotaroff said the sow smelled fish cooking, but the attack on the campers occurred at 1 a.m. and an investigation indicated no cooking took place at that time.

Solotaroff also told Adams that another reason the grizzlies are “starving” is that fish are dying of heat stroke because the streams are so warm because of climate change.

“The fish that was used by approximately 10 percent of Yellowstone ecosystem bears for about 3 weeks in June each year is cutthroat trout,” wrote Servheen. “Cutthroats have declined in Yellowstone due to the illegal introduction of lake trout into Yellowstone Lake. This decline is not due to ‘rising temperatures.’”…

Original story:
Climate Change: Making The Nation’s Bears Hungry?
by NPR Staff
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/16/135468901/climate-change-making-the-nations-bears-hungry

…Despite the attacks and the infestations, Yellowstone told NPR in a statement that the issues are too broad to scientifically connect to climate change…

[ the transcript is, unfortunately, incomplete as it omits a significant part of the Yellowstone statement making it clear that the original broadcast was patently false and that NPR— nevertheless— knowingly went ahead and aired the story regardless. ]

 

[YoursSINSerely]

Dropping a piece of uncooked linguini under the burner only flames for a few seconds, but takes a lot longer to clean up.

 

[Mandy57]

I bought One-A-Day chewable vitamins but the directions say you have to chew two a day. WTH?

 

[trysail]

It's not long now. In five weeks, I'll revisit the dunes, the forest, marshland, the surf and the swamp. It defines Tidewater.


Egrets, bald eagles, heron and osprey abound. Crabs, bald cypress, minnows and the unmistakeable, pungent odor of marsh. The landscape is always comforting; it says home— flat as a billiard table with the horizon defined by the outline of the distinctive and lovely loblolly pines in the distance.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Loblolly_Pines_South_Mississippi.JPG/240px-Loblolly_Pines_South_Mississippi.JPG​

Back in isolated areas of the swamp, there are places where the Spanish moss grows so thick that you can easily imagine you're in a room with walls made of the stuff. It makes me think of the legendary "Amber Room" that was heisted away from St. Petersburg by the Nazis. I've got a version of my own equal to anything created by the hand of man— it's there, deep in the wood, a unique wonder— my very own Spanish Moss Room.

 

[Chantilyvamp]

I'd like an island with all my favorite people on it with me. No one allowed that would annoy me. Have a huge huge pillow mattress and all the people around me in a giant snuggle!

 

[sereneone4u]

It is hard, so very hard to do the right thing.

 

[Mandy57]

Some mornings.....coffee goes down way too easy.

 

[rgraham666]

Schadenfreude is a wonderful thing.

 

[trysail]

"The faster they talk, the less likely it is that they actually understand what they're talking about."

-Trysail​

 

[trysail]

That's the best time I've run since 2007. It is gratifying to take whole chunks off my time; since April I've reduced my time for the course by a surprising 3½ minutes. I really don't understand why it happens— as it does each year; my conditioning and stamina are not all that different. It's a point of pride that no one passes me.


It does help a little to have a modest amount of adrenalin kick in; the presence of all these gumbas in what was once my private preserve has that effect on me. God this place feels crowded— there's a reason; it is. For every person who was in this county when I was born, there are now another 1.98 people. That's horrifying. For every person who was in this state when I was born, there are now another 1.46 people. What was once at least semi-rural has been invaded by yahoos. I really dislike these people.


These woods are mine; I'm convinced that all those years spent here are part of the reason for my absolute immunity to poison ivy/poison oak. Roaming across the forested hills and valleys contributed to my agility, made me comfortable in the outdoors and familiar with shooting.


When I was young, it was the best possible combination of country, city and Tidewater— the best of all possible worlds. It's been destroyed.

 

[Dragonlipz]

That area Trysail spotlights

in his missives looks like great oil country....nothing like a buncha derricks to balance the whole scenario........................lather up, bitches!!!

 

[Mandy57]

Happy Father's Day to all the wonderful dads out there in Lit land!

 

[LifeofRiley2010]

Happy Father's Day to all the wonderful dads out there in Lit land!

Why thank you.