Friday, August 5, 2011

News Roundup

  • From the "Lawn Dart" Department - A lady in Scotland survived a fall from 3500 feet when both her main and reserve chutes failed with only a broken ankle.  Her life was saved when she landed in soft, boggy ground instead of the landing zone. I've known several paratroopers who survived similar accidents, and they were all nicknamed "Lucky".
  • From the "Conspicuous Consumption" Department - A company in New York City has started renting out a backyard sized area of grass for $50 an hour, with the option to pay hundreds more for toys and lawn furniture.  People reportedly find this to be easier than travelling to the park or the beach to get away from the hyper-urban New York landscape for free.  My advice to these people:  move.  For the cost of rent on a flat in Greenwich Village and renting this kind of place out to get an afternoon of green grass and a weenie roast, you can afford to buy a mansion in flyover country.
  • From the "WTF?" Department - A bill to extend the operating mandate and funding for the Federal Aviation Administration was "deemed to have passed unanimously" by the United States Senate today.  Apparently, only two senators bothered to show up to vote for the bill, but it still passed.  I'm glad that the FAA got back to work, but apparently the word "quorum" isn't covered in new senator orientation training.  Maybe I can suggest the purchase of a new National Match M1A and "deem it passed unanimously" because Irish Woman is asleep when I ask for her consent and she doesn't object.
  • From the "Water Still Wet" Department - A study in Australia has found that women who are sexually assaulted are likely to have psychological problems at some point in their life.  No fooling?  You mean having your body violated in the most intimate manner causes psychological damage that can linger for a lifetime?  Who'd have thunk it?  If you're in Australia and you're not seeing red over paying for a study to find out if something we already knew is still true, then please re-read that article until your blood pressure starts going up.

2 comments:

Julie said...

DaddyBear ... if I got my blood pressure up over every stoopid study sponsored by my tax dollars i would be dead!

Like every other (1st world) country we seem to need to provide money to a range of idiotic persuits. And then pay for these by ever increasing taxes.

If we stopped these type of studies, stopped paying money to people to ease our guilt, stopped funding 'equality' (for left-handed one footed lesbian surfers and the like) publications, sponsoring endless studies on animals (surely there's not much left to know about bower birds after 30 years of studying them) - AND stopped burgeoning government departmets set up for no good purpose we would save billions!

... sorry, i'll step off my soap box now :)

DaddyBear said...

No need to apologize Julie! I was hoping you'd comment on this. Sounds like 'research' on your side of the Pacific is in the same state as it is here.

Creative Commons License
DaddyBear's Den by DaddyBear is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at daddybearden.blogspot.com.