Archive for July, 2015
Update on a lot of Things
Revenge or Reason?
https://www.carolinarustica.com/low-voltage-vs-line-voltage
http://lighting.about.com/od/Lighting-by-Location/tp/Top-10-Tips-for-Safe-Outdoor-Lighting.htm
Part of the solution.
Let me see, those LED spotlights are something like 180 watts equivalent each. I think there was a typo in the original listing. I offered $20 and they’re on their way.
I have not read it. I doubt the writer knows… anything. It is a) money poorly spent and b) a bizarre world where the publicity undermines it. And egos too.
Bland
“Self-reported computerized suicide assessment?”
PTSD. No.
The whole thing is a little like that guy in Baltimore who slammed himself into the doors and walls of the paddy wagon and later died. Why was this woman so angry?
Napoleon
I wish I could find the new Globe Trekker (Isolated Islands: Saint Helena) show online. The island doesn’t look that great. But it was worth it to see where Napoleon lived—it was not as lavish as I had thought, a one-room house and then later a nicer home consumed by a cold and rainy “micro-climate.” I wonder if what the guides and locals had to say is more than just self-hyping gossip.
Apparently precautions were taken to prevent his escape from the island in addition to the 3.000 British troops.
Seinfeld-ology: He was a ruthless war monger.
Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon Dynamite. North Dakota, Montana, Idaho…
Rick Steves mentions it but does not elaborate… The French Revolution and end of monarchies, but Napoleon was maybe worse.
Mexico
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/14/americas/el-chapo-guzman-us-extradition/index.html
From the outset (el Chapo) there was all this talk about how it proves Mexico can’t be trusted. On the heels of the NY escapes that seems harsh.
Pablo Escobar basically lived in a hacienda within the prison until he decided that wasn’t good enough. That he was “connected” wasn’t even transparent. This guy is even bigger.
Guzman learned pretty much only poppy farming as a kid and turned that into a life-long career of… manufacturing and distribution. Beating competitors and government and community relations are keys to success and survival. I don’t know about technology—“tunnel digging” is a skill that can probably be learned as a job or career pretty easily. The management, that of the people inside and outside the organization, is the extraordinary part.
The theory is this guy was in prison only so he could bust out again. That is how ingrained it is. It sounds ridiculous, and you have to do a little reading to reach that conclusion, but it may be true. A big part of it is the U.S. influence.
I believe the warden of the first prison he broke out of is still in jail.
Oh, Guzman’s still-wife—as in he is still married to her—went to Los Angeles to give birth to their twins so now they are U.S. citizens. She is the beauty queen who he found at 17 and married at 18; she is his third wife. Her father too is a successful businessman (i.e., career smuggler).
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I had no idea Colorado was the prison capital of the U.S. Really, really ugly. Capital punishment? Terrorism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/inside-americas-toughest-federal-prison.html?_r=0
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/04/25/the-alcatraz-rockies/a0BWrZjRpmQatMsfm8FUOL/story.html#
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/25/us/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-supermax-prison/
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I learned Mexico has 31 states. Look up Sinaloa. The notable residents are mostly boxers and drug lords (the drug workers are not included). A random selection turned up Amado Carrillo Fuentes. He is another example of someone who reached heights in his career; his niche was airplanes, specifically Boeing 727s. Apparently he died while undergoing plastic surgery (in Mexico City) and the two surgeons were found dead in concrete.
Greece
I’ve been watching this. I thought it was over when, faced with Greece’s imminent default, the EU said “whatever.” Why Germany and Ms. Merkel seemed to be the rallying-point I don’t understand and don’t really want to know.
So now they have this election. Actually, it was scheduled a short while ago, before the whole world watched the required payment not happen. At first the news here in Colorado was that the election was too close to call. Now we receive word that it is a landslide rejecting whatever austerity measures may have been proposed. Put differently, even the austerity measures that were in place are now seriously in question because the debt will be downgraded and… It is going to get worse.
Sadly, the elections don’t matter much. Apparently even the specific wording was hard to understand. It is not funny at all. Greece is a country without banks and money in a global economy.
The people seem virtually helpless. Elections and celebrations are not going to help.
Pam Smart
I don’t remember paying much attention at the time and I didn’t like the movie (based on the novel) much.
The case has received publicity recently because (some) of the murderers are being set free.
They’re all stupid, but Pam Smart is dumber than them all. The bookless professor (apparently they, the books, were confiscated by the prison) in the documentary said she’s super-smart. She did have a good job and she sure has a lot of energy. She too was very young when it happened (22, and close to 23). She had been married one year.
‘Poor guy’ is not funny. Why four fifteen year-olds would kill for her I just don’t know. Helen Hunt was attractive in those days… I mean I wouldn’t want to marry her, not then or now. But if I was fifteen? Well, chances are I would still have the good sense to avoid twenty years in prison.
The whole crowd is whacked, her, the four boys, and that Cecilia chick.
There is something annoying about this woman, still, even today. Just being annoying is not a crime. Again, none of them are too bright—you can’t kill someone in your home town, among people you know, in a premeditated fashion, and not expect to be found. You’re going to crack. At least run to Mexico, which a 15 year-old probably couldn’t do. And she’s going to go right back to work at the school? Her husband had a one-night affair. It was her own living room, and apparently they almost went through with it a few weeks before too. It does seem like she either planted the seed or was heavily involved in premeditated murder.
I think the D. A. had it right when he said she believes she is innocent and that will not change.
The unique things about this case are that it was heavily publicized and Pam Smart is viewed in a role model or educator or at least adult way. Even though she was only in her early twenties, the boys were only fifteen. They are not exactly choirboys, and that’s another thing, she had to have known that. Manipulating yourself into her bed is about as unusual as… doing lines before your testimony to make it more emotional.
Like the Roman Polanski case, the judge seemed to like the attention and allowed the show. The jury should have been sequestered. The prosecutor was overzealous (and right). The whole state can… I’m not moving to New Hampshire.