Category: News

Republishing of exerpts from news sources.

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Let Oak Ridge, er, Hollywood Clean Up the Mess!

Right now there is a huge ecological disaster happening in Tennessee. An 18 wheeler tanker has a spill of highly volatile material, titanium tetrachloride, and has caused an evacuation of everything within 10 miles of the accident as well as totally shutting down Interstate 40 near Crossville and having some people stuck in traffic 6-12 hours. This sounds similar to the train wreck that evacuated much of Farragut a couple of years ago.

So here is the scenario: Truck containing hazardous materials traveling on Interstate 40 has a problem and substance begins leaking. Nine people get sent to a hospital. Area is quarantined and evacuated for a radius of ten miles. A hazmat team is sent in, cannot contain the leak, and determines contents of truck to be producing heat (ie. explosion pending). To make matters worse, water mixed with this hazardous material produces hydrochloric acid. Winds are currently blowing strong. Storms are forecasted in less than twelve hours and the special cleanup team from New Jersey will take twelve or more hours to arrive. Sounds like an out of work script writer is trying to pitch Paramount.

My question: Why isn’t Oak Ridge responding to this? Certainly the labs are prepared for a worse ecological disaster than this. Between Becthel Jacobs, SAIC, Perma-Fix, and the dozens of other contractors that regularly do work at Y12 (in particular cleanup and handling of dangerous materials), you would think we could have a crew to Crossville in one hour instead of twelve. Are lives at stake for bureaucracy? Is this Katrina on a smaller scale?

How would Hollywood handle this? Simple! Tommy Lee Jones would come barking in to establish perimeters and control the choas while Will Smith beats some people into cooperating/doing actual cleanup and Chris Tucker smack talks the red tape out of the way. Of course we don’t get to learn the outcome because Hollywood is poised for a second strike (See Return of the Bad Television – Guild Strike Part Deux).

And would someone teach the AMPTP about permalinks?

Our final offer to SAG members includes more than $250 million in additional compensation, important new media rights and protection for pension and health benefits. The refusal of SAG’s Hollywood leadership to accept this offer is the latest in a series of actions by SAG leaders that, in our opinion, puts labor peace at risk. SAG’s Hollywood leaders have already pursued a time-consuming, divisive, costly, and unsuccessful anti-AFTRA campaign. Any further delay in reaching a reasonable and comprehensive agreement does a disservice to the thousands of working people of our industry who are already being seriously harmed by the ever worsening de facto strike. [Source, AMPTP, Breaking News, July 10, 2008, Statement of the AMPTP] (See also July 8, 2008, AFTRA Ratification Statement and June 30, 2008, Statement of the AMPTP)

Any increase for the benefits of health insurance, pension, or residual gains made by the WGA are also likely to be demanded by other entertainment industry labor unions when their contracts expire. This is a practice known as pattern bargaining — the first union to reach a contract with the AMPTP usually sets the template for the agreement with other unions. The contracts for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Directors Guild of America (DGA) expired on June 30, 2008. [Source, Wikipedia, Other 2008 industry-wide strike threats]

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Writer’s Strike Part 2

Is SAG trying to kill television? Don’t they know the second in a series is almost always bad?

The contract between the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expires Monday, and negotiations have dragged on for weeks with no apparent headway…A strike in July…could delay the return of many fall TV shows. [Source, MSNBC, Strike 2? Hollywood braces for actor walkout]

Seen on Shavar’s Blog (which has music that autoplays).

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Disturbing News of the Day

Can you say "psychotherapy?" I knew you could!

A 12-year-old girl has testified in court that she saw her father kill her mother and he then forced her to help dismember the body with a circular saw. [Source, WBIR]

Now that’s some authoritative parenting! I can’t even get my children to sweep the floors! I wonder what that girls career will become. And the grossness continues…

Police said James Hawkins cleaned the saw and returned it to a store where he had obtained it. [Source, WBIR]

…which means someone else bought that circular saw and is cheerfully using it to build their bookshelves in their house. Of course, they’ll never understand why the books seem to rearrange themselves, occasionally jump off the shelf, and exhibit symmetrical book stacking just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947.

I don’t get how someone could do this to another human being much less include their child in the act!

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D.C. Madam “suicide” – Don’t these people watch movies?

When you heard that "[a] court had recently found Deborah Jeane Palfrey guilty of money laundering, racketeering and mail fraud in connection with a high-end prostitution ring operating in Washington D.C." [Source, Truemors], didn’t you just immediately wonder which senator was afraid of having his or her super kinky dungeon fantasies revealed?

Suicide notes were found near the body in a small storage shed next to a mobile home…Palfrey, 52, was reportedly staying at the home of her mother…Prosecutors estimated the sentence she would have likely received would have been…about six years…She argued it was a legitimate, legal escort service. [Source, CNN, ‘D.C. Madam’ found dead]

The low budget spy thriller writes itself.

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Today’s Tinfoil Hat

3 critical cables mysteriously break and are blamed on ships. Video proves no ships were in the area. Iran loses 100% connectivity to the Internet. Does this sound right?

To me it sounds like AT&T is installing a secret room in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea!

Now for some US/Iran studies: If Iran Were America (And We Were Iran): A Timeline by J.L. Byran.

Update: Now the report says 5 cables have been cut.

Update: The secret room might look like NOAA’s Aquarius Undersea Lab.

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Not in America! And Only in Knoxville…

Does that suit drive you nuts? Would you like to be a little more casual? Perhaps the Audrey Underwear company is for you.

The Audrey Underwear company in Taiwan asked it’s 500 women employs in the firms head quarters to come to work in camisoles and knickers to celebrate record sales. … More than 90% of female workers reportedly went along with the spirit of the day and worked in their underwear. [Source]

This takes Half-nekkid Thursdays to a new level!

And Knoxville shows its butt on the news with a woman who wants her butt implants removed:


http://view.break.com/409510 – Watch more free videos

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My penis is a mountain

Last night at the Bearden Bulldogs vs Farragut Admirals football game, as the crowd stood respectfully as color guard brought in the American flag (and 3 others), Rocky Top blared from the speakers instead of the national anthem. Whoops! The crowd chuckled through the beginning of the actual national anthem. Why did they use a recording instead of having the two high school bands play? I wonder if they could have done it in sync.

Of course, the playing of the national anthem is not unique to sports events in the United States. Countries all around the world play their national anthem, and often a singer belts out the words. Croatia invited UK opera singer Tony Henry to perform their national anthem at the beginning of the Euro 2008 soccer tournament with Croatia vs England. He mispronounced a Croatian word (see the video) when trying to sing "we love your mountains" and instead announced to the crowd "my penis is a mountain." The Croatians believe the mistake relaxed the team enough to knock England out of the tournament with a 3-2 win for Croatia. They have since adopted Tony Henry, and his mountainous member, as their mascot.

(This post should pull in some interesting spam… )

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My Famous Wife

Cathy is quoted in the Knoxnews article How goes security in schools?.

“I like the SROs. They’re good people, and they give the students the sense of ‘somebody’s there and is keeping an eye out,’ ” said Cathy McCaughan, mother of students at Bearden middle and high schools.

But, she said, “I don’t know if they’re keeping an eye out for the kids so much (as) the vice principals’ disciplinary issues.”

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Panic!

Don’t take hand lotion to the airports! Hand lotion is the next terror substance! Because..well..uh, terrorists have smooth hands? No, that can’t be it. Um… No..can’t publish that thougth.. that would take away the G rating of this blog? What’s that? I lost my G rating? Oh I never had one! So, Knoxville wants to be Boston?

A white substance left in a hospital emergency room, prompting a quarantine of the area may have been a hand lotion. [Source]

Oh NO! Potentially deadly substance found in hospital! What do we do?!

"It smelled good, so we’re thinking it was a hand lotion," [Source]

That’s right! Stick yer nose in that thar anthax and tell me ifn its dangerous. After the spokeswoman for the Knox County Health Department, whose job is apparently to go to crime scenes and shove her nose into unknown substances, you know, like medieval food tasters!, after she lived, it was determined that something had to be done with the substance.

A private contractor that handles the hospital’s wastes will incinerate the bottle and contents, Dougherty said. [Source]

You got that right! We determined the substance to be inert and harmless so instead of having a hospital employee, or the high paid (she does get paid well for shoving her nose into stuff right?) health department employee, or for that matter one of the sick people at the hospital, or a child, to simply throw the container into the trashcan, we are going to pay a "private contractor" (read that as expensive) to dispose of the substance. I had the personal privilege of working with one of the fine companies in Oak Ridge who get paid to move hazardous waste around. You know those spray cans of paint, compressed air, and so forth that you so casually chunk into the trash can? Those are considered hazardous materials and government agencies have to pay to have them "properly disposed of" which means that they are dumped into 50 gallon drums, sealed, and shipped to a landfill at $10,000 per drum. Not tightly packed mind you. Sure, they could fit a lot more cans in a drum if the spray cans were put in an orderly fashion but if you just throw them in the drum you have to create more $10,000 invoices (and it takes less time). So you can bet the private contractor is going to take a vacation on that container of hand lotion.

Does anyone think before they jump anymore? Or has the government just got you that scared! Is this over? No way! For your enjoyment, the News Sentinel promises to spend more money on this horrific event!

More details as they develop online and in Friday’s News Sentinel. [Source]

Anyone know what teenage boys do with hand lotion? That’s what’s happening with your tax dollars right here!

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We are going to war!

The squirrels have been sent in!

A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country’s borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes. [Source]

I can’t get the squirrels out of my attic. How do you capture trained spying squirrels?! Perhaps Boris and Natasha were on contract! "We’v ‘ave Moose on our side now as doolble agent." Thank you Ray Kurzweil!