Some Old Dude

Have you ever wanted a job where you could run around in your swimsuit all day? Then you need a job at the beach. Not just any beach, but the Beach at Tao in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Tao Beach is currently holding an open casting call today 1pm to 5pm, then again on March 4th and 6th.

If you’ve got the right attitude, and the right body, and want to run around wearing nothing but a bikini and a smile, serving drinks to other folks running around wearing next to nothing, go down and apply. — Who knows? Maybe all that time in the tanning salon will turn out to be a good investment.

And they say there’s no work in Vegas.

This is an excerpt from Doug Hanchard’s blog titled:
How did Congress pass extension of U.S. Patriot Act? Ask your doctor

And then the roof caved in, H.R. 3961 – Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009 -was going through the House. Everyone in the House knew about the expiry of the existing extensions of the Patriot Act and thus was slipped as amendments to H.R. 3961. It was either that or watch H.R. 3961 face an uphill battle getting passed on the floor. According to the record, here is how the extension came to the floor as an amendment to H.R. 3961;

I won’t go in to the rest of the details, but I would advise you to read his entire post.

The problem I have with the process is the inherent deceit and dishonesty that our so called representatives use without hesitation, and without any sign of remorse that their bill is so unpopular that it can’t be passed on it’s own merit.

The patriot act is a violation of everything I would consider patriotic. It denies us rights, it assumes guilt and is abused by the police state.

Yes I used the phrase “POLICE STATE.” What else would you call it when an American citizen can be thrown in prison simply because someone didn’t like his name? What else would you call it when the police, in their myriad uniforms, have no oversight?

When the investigatory agencies find a violation of the law by various and sundry police agencies and can’t find a way to bury it, they announce it publicly. And by God they’ll step up and say the law has been violated again if it doesn’t stop.

The law has no teeth; after all, how do you punish an entire agency?

On top of everything else, the NSA / AT&T debacle shows that even if it can be proven that the law has been deliberately violated and names can be provided, the Whitehouse will protect that agency or company. This is done in the name of “national security.”

We have a constitution and a bill of rights that are supposed to protect our freedoms. –Instead they are twisted, ignored or made exception to, because some politician or group of politicians has an agenda.

The bills congress passes are not for our benefit. They are to feed the egos, further the agendas or profit the friends of those in power. And most importantly, they are there to control the peasants.

A private school in the northern Indian state of Meghalaya was found to have textbooks published by Skyline Publications of New Delhi that contained a picture of Jesus holding a cigarette and what appears to be a can of beer.

State Education Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh said that although private schools were not obliged to use textbooks prescribed by the Meghalaya Board of Secondary Education, his government has seized all the copies of the textbook from schools and bookshops.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sir Elton John said in an interview with Parade magazine that Jesus was a “super-intelligent gay man.”

Karaoke is a major form of entertainment in some neighborhoods in the Philippines. In fact it’s fans are so enthusiastic that fights and stabbings over the way a song is rendered are fairly common.

NYT: By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: February 6, 2010 – The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

Karaoke-related killings are not limited to the Philippines. In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

Here in the states, a Seattle woman punched a man because she didn’t like the way he sang “Yellow.”

A friend of mine and I used to listen the Karaoke singers at a local bar and some of them were so bad that we would make fun of them but it was hardly worth getting in a fight over. –In the P.I.s on the other hand, an off duty policeman pulled his revolver when the people at the next table laughed at one of the singers. -I guess the cop was a big fan.

“The Philippines is a very violent society, so karaoke only triggers what already exists here when certain social rules are broken,” said Roland B. Tolentino, a pop culture expert at the University of the Philippines. But even he hedged, noting that the song’s “triumphalist” nature might contribute to the violence.

The lessons to be learned from this: Don’t hog the stage, if you can’t sing stay the hell away from the mic, and if you travel to the Philippines -a country with over a million illegal guns and a reputation for violence- Do Not sing Sinatra.

In Moscow there are many stray dogs, some of which have developed a unique system for acquiring food:

From English Russia:
Regular Moscow busy street with some small food kiosks. A middle-aged man buys himself a piece of hot fast food and walks aside chewing it without a rush. Then just in a second he jumps up frightened – some doggy has sneaked up on him and barked out loudly. His tasty snack falls out from his hands down to the ground and the dog gets it. Just ten minutes later, on the same place, the teen youngster loses his dinner in exactly the same manner. The modern Russian dogs are on their urban hunt.

There are also many strays in the subway system, a few of which have even learned to ride the train.

One look at this picture is enough to show that some of these “dumb animals” are smarter than the humans who ride the trains. Or maybe just more sober.

Are you not as young or spry as you used to be? Do you have a few pounds you need to lose. Does your doctor bug you about the ol’ spare tire, that seems to have come out of nowhere? –Well maybe you shouldn’t worry so much.

According to a study done by the University of Western Australia and published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, being a little overweight may actually extend your life.

The university team tracked the number of deaths over 10 years among volunteers who were aged 70 – 75 at the start of the study.

It found that those with a BMI which classed them as overweight, but not obese, not only had the lowest overall risk of dying, they also had the lowest risk of dying from specific diseases: cardiovascular disease, cancer and chronic respiratory disease.

The study also showed that being seriously under weight had the same effect as being obese.

The long and the short of the study is: As long as you aren’t too overweight, and you get enough exercise, your can outlive that annoying person with the perfect figure who keeps telling you that they can eat anything they want and never gain an ounce.

MOSCOW – A Russian journalist died Wednesday after being severely beaten by a police officer in the Siberian city of Tomsk, investigators and his editor said.

Konstantin Popov, who worked for Tomskaya Nedelya weekly, died in a hospital after almost two weeks in a coma, the publication’s editor-in-chief, Yulia Ivanova, said.

The police had this to say:
“The cause of death is not yet revealed,” Natalia Ustymenko, Chief of Information and Public Relations Department of Internal Affairs of the Tomsk region, told Interfax news agency.

In her opinion, the victim – Konstantin Popov – could have died from alcohol intoxication due to consumption of alcoholic beverages.

The officer has since been arrested.
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From the The Other Russia:
A deputy of the Omsk City Council, Oleg Ivanov, has been detained for his support of Aleksei Dymovsky. A Russian police officer who posted a video on YouTube alleging the police force in his home town was corrupt who has been arrested and charged with fraud and corruption. (His YouTube video has received over a million hits)

Oleg Ivanov is known in Omsk for his efforts to combat mafia influences in the regional housing authorities. After achieving a twice over reduction in tariffs for local residents, Ivanov was severely beaten by men later identified as police officers from a neighboring area.
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The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists named Russia the world’s third deadliest country for the news media last year. Several Russian police officers have recently been charged with murder, beatings and other abuses.

Public concern over police abuse has grown after a drunken Moscow precinct chief gunned down two people and wounded seven at a supermarket in April.
—————————–

On April 27, Police Major Denis Yevsyukov, chief of the Tsaritsino district precinct in Southern Moscow, opened fire in a supermarket, killing two and injuring six -with four critically injured (www.publicverdict.org, April 27). The major also shot dead the taxi driver who had driven him to the store. What the authorities hastened to present as an act of random brutality on the part of a deranged individual, in reality represents a much deeper institutional problem within the police. Whereas most citizens in a Western country feel either indifferent or protected when they meet police on their streets, in Russia the same meeting evokes fear.
—For Russian click here.

(Wide Bay Bar, 30 knots + on gusts and 5 metre waves and going in the long way)

The captain and crew of this 12 meter cat. made the world news when they decided to risk the surf at Wide Bay Bar rather than sail two more days to an easier entrance.

This is from the captain: “Two years ago I flew from my home town in Launceston,Tasmania to Lakes Entrance in Victoria, the location of what is probably Australia’s most dangerous bar, to undertake a two day course in bar crossing. This course gave not just theory, but involved practical instruction in a vessel which the students piloted over the breaking waves on the Lakes bar. The lessons learned here were put to use on the day I took Saltonay over the Southport Bar, adding worthwhile experience to my current Coxswains ticket.”

This was a text to the captain from a friend “Jesus loves you, everyone else thinks you’re a dickhead.”

Read more here.

The British Government thinks they can pay for bringing fast internet to rural GB by putting a yearly tax on fixed phone lines.

BBC online:
The government’s controversial broadband tax has been given the green light by chancellor Alistair Darling in his pre-Budget report.

The £6-a-year levy will be imposed on all households with a fixed line phone.

The money made will be put into a fund to ensure rural areas of the UK do not miss out on super-fast broadband services.

The money is earmarked for the 30% of homes that experts think will be by-passed by commercial fast broadband plans.

It is estimated that the broadband tax would raise about £170m a year, which is a wee bit short of the estimate of £5bn needed to provide super-fast fibre services to every UK home.

Currently BT is committed to rolling out next-generation broadband to about 40% of the UK with Virgin Media offering speeds of up to 50Mbps to about half of UK homes.

The tax wont pay the bills, but they can always raise it after the elections, and the advertised speed of the fibre is mostly advertising hype.

Anyone who’s ever dealt with internet service providers knows that the rates will always go up, and the maximum advertised speed has very little to do with what real people get, or for that matter, can afford.

Here in Las Vegas, Cox offers a maximum speed of 50Mbps down/5Mbps up, with up to 55Mbps “burst” using PowerBoost®, but the cost is currently $119.00 per month. You need to be a hardcore gamer or a downloader of very large files to justify the cost.

Fortunately, the actual speed of high-speed internet doesn’t really matter to someone like me who doesn’t play games or download large files.

Even 3 Mbps beats the hell out of dialup with it’s 56k advertised speed and it’s less than 50k real life speed.

I found this on Covertress:

It’s even better with Browned Butter Icing:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt butter. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, or until butter is lightly browned. Whisk in confectioners’ sugar until smooth.
(This works great on carrot cake)