Last Wednesday a posse of Maryland Natural Resources police found another illegal gill net off Kent Island. It was filled with 400 pounds of rockfish. Maryland authorities say they’ve rounded up 8,425 yards of illegal net and 12 tons of rustled rockfish this month. And February is a short month.
Police are hot on the trail of the varmints, but so far have failed to corral the criminals, so they’re bringing in the bounty hunters. The reward for information leading to a rockfish rustling arrest has been raised to $30,500.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Before tonight’s endless hours of sluggish Academy Awards presentations, watch this short video to remind yourself that movies are “talkies.” They don’t write ‘em like that anymore. “It’s showtime!”
Compare: “Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time,” Tim Dirks, FilmSite.org
Video, “150 Lines & Catchphrases,” by “MoPapparani” (David Balboa). The complete list of catchphrases is on Exorphrine (scroll down).
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Former Alaska Temp-Governor Sarah Palin will travel to India to speak at an intellectual gathering next month. Her address: “My Vision for America.” In judging her “Vision,” we hope the audience will take note of her big, thick glasses.
Mrs. Palin will be following in the sandaled footsteps of the Dali Lama, one of the many distinguished world leaders to speak at the “India Today Conclave” in previous years. Why would organizers pay the $100,000 speaking fee of our Tea Party Sweetheart? Perhaps as an object lesson in American decline. The theme of this year’s Conclave is “The Changing Balance of Power.”
Chivalry may be dead, but the Middle Ages are alive on the Mexican Border. Federales found a catapult used by drug smugglers to propel pot over the border fence and into the Arizona desert. Cops captured the catapult and cannabis but the flingers fled. Anybody missing from the Centro de Estudios Medievales at the Universidad de Sonora?
A pizza a day keeps the Reaper away, at least in Memphis. That’s where Domino’s delivery driver Susan Guy noticed that 82-year-old Jean Wilson hadn’t ordered her daily Large-Thin-Crust-Pepperoni-With-2-Diet-Cokes in three whole days. Horrified, Ms. Guy alerted the authorities, who found the elderly pizza fan collapsed on the floor, and rushed her a hot, Double Cheese — um, no, rushed her to the hospital, where she’s doing fine. Except for the food.
Yet more proof the US doesn’t need your so-called “health care reform.” The private sector is doing just fine. Call 911 – thirty minutes, or it’s free.
“Blogs were once the outlet of choice for people who wanted to express themselves online. But with the rise of sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are losing their allure for many people — particularly the younger generation.
The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.”
–”Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter,” Verne G. Kopytoff,New York Times.
Related: ”Social Media and Young Adults,” Amanda Lenhart, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith, and Kathryn Zickuhr, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
Image (“Anatomy of a Blogger, after Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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The U.S. government has allowed prescription drug hucksters to come between patients and their doctors for over a dozen years now. Television commercials give consumers important medical information by using images of flowers, butterflies, smiling faces, puppies, and kittens. They also enrich our culture with the sheer poetry of those lists of side effects.
The 3rd Monday in February finds banks and post offices across America closed, but no one really knows why. Some kind of holiday, obviously. Some think it’ss called “President’s Day;” some go with “Presidents Day;” others “Presidents’ Day.” According to the United States Code it’s Washington’s Birthday, but George was actually born on February 22nd.
At our house we call the holiday “Lincoln and Cadillac’s Birthday” in recognition of the traditionalcar sales that mark this day from sea to shining sea. God Bless America and have a safe and sane holiday, whatever you call it.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Psychologist and writer Steven Pinker recently spoke to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) about language and cognition. The video of his complete lecture is here, but the animated excerpt above may be easier to follow, and more fun.
A kayaker snapped a photo of the monster of Lake Windermere last Friday. The beast, known as “Bownessie” after the town of Bowness, has been sighted eight times since 2006 in Cumbria’s Windermere, the largest natural lake in England.
The creature was said to measure 25 to 50 feet (7.6 to 15.2 meters) in length. Some believe the beast is a Wels catfish (Silurus glanis), an Eastern European species brought to England in 1880 by the Duke of Bedford. Skeptics point out that a Loch Ness Monster could take A82 to the M90 motorway and reach the Lake Country in a few hours.
Image (“Bathers and Lizards at Asnières, after Georges Seurat”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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