Alkaline Hydrolysis in Ohio ?
Not if the Pope has anything to say about it
Funeral Directors in Ohio are seeking legislation to add alkaline hydrolysis (liquefaction) to their line of body disposal methods. Since it wasn't defined as illegal a funeral home in Columbus offered the service til the state shut him down. Apparently you need government permission to do things not deemed illegal…..
8 other states offer the service which basically uses lye & heat to dissolve the body in a few hours. Costs are a little higher than traditional cremation & a fraction of traditional burial. Cremation is becoming a much more popular form of body disposal every year.
The fly in the ointment here in Ohio however is papists determined to impose their religious beliefs onto state law. State Rep. Ron Maag, chairman of the government and elections committee is leading opposition to legalizing the process to conform with Catholic doctrine. The notion of choice in burial seems foreign territory for religious zealots who frequently cry for religious freedom.

News Son story here.

The Ohio Beacon Journal Gets to Know It's Online Commenters
The Ohio Beacon Journal, like the Cincinnati Enquirer & other sites that allow commenting is wrestling with ways to handle online comments. The OBJ, unlike the local Fishwarp (to my knowledge) tried to get to know their audience. The title to their article was Commenters on newspaper websites may be a lonely bunch. This wasn'r exactly found through scientific research so much as it was a comment by a commenter who happens to be ill of health & primarily bed ridden. I think he might be biased. However Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron last year surveyed Plain Dealer online commenters as part of the Ohio Civility Project. They found a majority of frequent commenters are single males over 45 making more than $50K.
They found a small percentage of readers even read the comments. That small percentage is over 2M a day. While not in BIC's league, it's a decent size audience. From reading comments at the Fishwarp, it's clear that many commenters don't read the articles past the sensationalistic headlines, but that wasn't discussed. Maybe they naively believe they do read their professionally written articles. They also point out that, like the Fishwarp, their staffs don't even read the comments, let alone participate. So, why the fuck do they carry on about "civility"?
The article states they have 617 banned words including 61 variants of FUCK. I would like to see that list.
It was nice these guys reached out to their readers but they still don't get it. They are still arrogant & insulting to their readers. They still don't get that incendiary headlines & articles will result in incendiary comments.
Blogging Isn't Cool has no intention of censoring posts.

and as for the guy who just left a message on my answering machine telling me he wants his fucking sander back? sorry, wrong fucking number.

Bike Day @ College Hill Farmers Market
Thursday, Jun 28 is Bike Day at the College Hill Farmers Market from 3:00 PM to 6:30 PM at 5742 Hamilton Avenue (between the pizza joint & the church at the south end of the business district where (I think) the train station once stood).
Thrill to sight of bike trailers! Spend on bike helmets sold by Children's Hospital! Fill your head with handy bicycling tips~ Learn how to use the bike racks on Metro buses!Win a prize !

For more info porterd@cinci.rr.com

Rob Portman Leads the Fight Against Cannibalism
After a "string of events" (2?), Ohio Senator & vice presidential hopeful, Rob Portman (R) OH, has proposed legislation to outlaw "bath salts".
Great, more government & less freedom in a pandering effort to surf the wave of media hysteria. This is just the type of leadership we need & the TEAse demand.

ABC News story here

Gary Johnson in Columbus 6/29
Johnson will be at 2 fundraisers Friday, June 29
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM at the Holiday Inn, 7007 High St, Worthington, OH
tickets - $60
More info
and
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM ,4030 Easton Town Center, Suite 450, Columbus, OH
tickets - $300
More info

Bob City

you know you wanna go
From my hometown. Where else would a Quimbob come from?
I always liked these weird super narrow buildings. This place was a seedy bar with a steep step down that caused many a spill. The balls on the pool table would shake when a train went by. One night I was there, sitting next to some old geezer. He took of his hat & set it on the bar. He took off his glasses & set them on the bar. Then he took out his dentures & set them on the bar. At that point the bartender came over, inserted the teeth ino the guys mouth, set the glasses on his nose & put his hat on his head & told the guy to leave.
The place had standards after all…..

As Seen at the Cincinnati Asylum

HT to The Asylum
UPDATE:WS takes down the video, an obvious bit of parody, for "copyright issues"
UPDATE II: The video is now being privately hosted here

A Bakers Dozen of the Hottest Star Trek Chicks
As I promised, I am going to do more pointless lists this year. This list isn't so pointless, however since nobody seems to have done a list on this particular subject. With only 10 movies and 5 series with over 700 episodes, it was pretty easy to narrow it down.
In no particular order…..
Leah Brahms

A hologram the blind engineer concocted to figure out some stuff he couldn't. She had died a long rime ago so she wouldn't have been up to speed on modern stuff and he could only program what he already knew so, it didn't make much sense but she saved the day & was easy on the eyes even if you were wearing a chrome beret over your face.


The Duras SistersLursa & B'etor

Klingon chicks plotting, fighting and drinking blood wine into the wee hours? Be still my heart.


Vash

Piccard's nemesis, an Indiana Jones type chick in space. yow


Losira

Lee Meriwether telling you she's "for you"? Who cares if you die?


B'Elanna Torres

Klingon chicks…..
even if half human...


Marta

Batgirl goes green!


Ro Laren

argh The feisty Bajoran who ditched her role to languish in obscurity til she could turn Bon Temps on it's head. If Sisco only knew….


Yeoman Janice Rand

oh, man, she didn't do much but in the late 60s, who cared?


Jadzia Dax

Hot but with that staid librarian freak thing going on. Add to that she had a symbiote in her that used to be a cantankerous old gut. Seriously mixed messages for a geeky teenage boy.


Kira Nerys

The feisty little Bajoran rebel who had problems playing by the rules. The good bad girl or the bad good girl, whateever….


Lieutenant Nyota Uhura

Do I really need to say anything?


Seska

A traitorous alien spy - does it get any hotter?


Alice & Alice

ahhhh, the Alices, Harry Mudd couldn't make too many…..

If you see a pattern here, yeah, I do too. scary….
Anyway apologies to Elinor Donahue, Sally Kellerman, the chick with the competitive chef show, the young T'Pol, the chick doing the Weight Watcher ads, Joan Collins, Terri Garr, Marina Sirtis, The various Borg Queens, the chick who played a zombie, the historian chick who sold out the crew to Kahn, Sisko's girlfriend, the hot Romulan commander chick, Engineer O'Brien's wife & a gazillion others.

A Problem Street ?

There's a problem on my street. People keep crashing their cars. As we all know this is anybody's problem except the drivers' I mean it's straight - how ac anybody navigate that?
It's not flat - it slopes down to the east.
The issue is that halfway down the street the road narrows and, while parking on the north side of the narrower section is eliminated, there is parking on the south and people routinely drive east & proceed to smash into the parked cars. Straight street? Stationary objects? Talk about a recipe for disaster…..
From my perch on the southside of the street it's clear that most people driving east drive down left of the double yellow center lines to deal with the crazy roadway.
The upper western half of the road was developed in the 20s while the eastern section was largely developed in the 40s. A deep ravine appears to have been the divider. Why the development to thee east has a narrower road? beats me.
Nobody living in these homes really needs to park on the street. All the homes have driveways & garages. Of course in the 20s & 40s people didn't have fleets of cars……
One of the issues at this bottleneck - a guy in the house just past the bottleneck on the north side is a car hoarder. He uses the city street to store his fleet. He leaves them up the street in the wider stretch (the long term storage) but mainly has them clustered right at the bottleneck. Does it bother me that his are the cars most often smashed? ~not really~ The idea that he has no insurance makes it even more palatable. Most of the crashes are hit & run. Probably because the drivers don't have insurance either.
While it's usually just a sideswipe or bump (and invariably a hit & run) the last one had a car bounce off a parked car & into the path of an oncoming car. Everyone was speeding. No injuries, thankfully but the crashes are becoming more frequent.
One neighbor wants speed bumps. As a cyclist I am way opposed to that idea. The city also recommends this street to cyclists (which is also dumb since it's a residential street). Another alternative would be to widen the street to the south. That'd be BIG bucks with all the emminent domain. It makes some sense, tho since the far eastern end of the street doesn't align with the rest of the steet anyway. It jogs south at the bottom of the hill with a little bridge crossing a small stream. A lot of people drive into the stream on winter days.
My suggestion is - put some kids out there in the street. No, not real kids, just project holographic images of kids playing in the streets to slow the drivers down.
My other idea is pretty wacky, tho - make drivers education more rigorous.

A Bridge for Today or an Obstruction for Tomorow ?

As we look at spending more than $3,000,000,000 for a replacement bridge over the Ohio River, Hamilton County Commissioners are looking at ways to spend the money faster.
But what is the future usefulness of the bridge? Projections are being made of use trending along into the future the same as it has up til now. Does that make any sense? What about changes in technology? Even as you read, Volkswagen of China is working on hover cars. No longer the stuff of fantasy, we may have flying cars sometime before 4000.
Is this short sighted quick fix the answer or will the bridge just prove to be another obstacle for the flocks of flying cars that will soon fly along the Ohio River?

Hearing this reminded me of the first time I heard Miles Davis play Time After Time at Cincinnati's Music Hall. He's playing who?

Arty Northside

Giovanni Battista Guadagnini was born 6/23/1711, so what better way to celebrate than by going to arty Northside, the land between the cemeteries, and Art Out?!
From 11AM to 7PM, Art in the Park returns to level Hoffner Park. Enjoy young, hip, wacky, crafty local artists hawking their stuff.
Take a breather for some grub at one of Northside's many fine eateries like The Blue Jay, recently voted Best Diner in the Tri State. They should be, they've been at it for 45 years this year!
Swing by Building Value for some door hardware marked down 50% - one day only!
Later, check out ParProjects Symphonic Stylings fundraiser at the Bertke Electric building at 1645 Blue Rock @ 6:30PM. Music by Concert:Nova quartet of Cinti Symphony members will provide the theme for multi media fashion extravaganza featuring work by Dana Artaya Greaves, Duru Armagan’s Sloane Boutique, Susan Byrnes, Billy Colbert and NVISION owner Emily Buddendeck will be showing off fashions from the 40s to the 70s.
More about Symphonic Stylings from the Fishwarp here.

Brats on the Bus

Anybody who has had the privilege of riding Cincinnati's buses with her fine youth has probably seen or been the target of this loutish behavior. Listening to their bile while thinking about paying their tuition & bus fare can make one's blood boil. I have frequently thought of Bernard Goetz while standing in a Metro bus in the afternoons.
I propose that anybody under the age of 25 should be hooded, gagged & shackled when in public. They should be tethered and accompanied by a parent or guardian.
CBS story via the Gem City Noose here

When I was a little kid, I got a Superman Halloween costume. It was the old kind, a baggy 1 piece fire trap with a cape & red mask. But it also came with a little cartoon flyer that gave the warning that the suit would not give you super powers. Duh - Supes got his power from a yellow sun. Anyway, it pointed out that donning the costume would not make you impervious to bullets, it would not make you super fast and you would not be able to fly. Even as a kid I thought this was kinda stupid but apparently there had been kids who put on the costumes & jumped off garage roofs (like it takes a Superman costume to prompt a little boy to jump off a garage roof).
I bring this up because people are running around saying certain politicians can and do perform superhuman socioeconomic feats that they really just can't do. They can put on the suit and that's about it. I know they say they do these things but they are politicians - aka sociopathic liars.

Anarchy in Hamilton County

Sure glad the "son of the suburbs" found all those efficiencies.....
Glad he got that county administrator with all the bold new ideas.....
Fishwarp story here

Translation
ok, since 25-30% of the people who have the misfortune of finding this site are from non-English speaking countries I have added the Google Translate gadget to make your experience a tad less confusing. Of course, if you got here looking for "Britney Skye zombie", "Cleopatra hot", "XXX porno", "mother son fuck", "Ashley Bulgari", "Jenni Kohoutova", "Jana Miartusova", or "sexy pictures of Leslie Ghiz", you probably don't need it.
you're welcome

Preservation / Conservation

Count Kálnoky & The Prince of Wales discuss preservation & conservation in sunny Transylvania. Charles also discusses the over harvesting of Scotland's timber, something Haiti has become the poster child for. This is from an English Travel Charnel show, Wild Carpathia, which discusses the size, history & significance of the forested mountain range - home to 40% of Europe's bear population & lotsa wolf & lynx. You can snag a DVD of the episode (in PAL format) here.

Pieces of Shit

I'm no fan of organized religion but I don't exactly relish churches going away. They are increasingly losing population however, especially as people leave small denominational neighborhood churches for big bland megachurches which I really don't like. So kicking these small neighborhood churches when they're down is particularly disconcerting to me. With empty pews come empty coffers & the ability of these small churches to be able to deliver to their neighborhoods is negatively impacted. That's exactly what a gang of cretins is doing now, raiding churches in Northside & ripping out their metal utilities, causing thousands of dollars of damage for a pittance they can get at a scrap yard.
CAIN was created in Northside some 20 years ago to unite neighborhood churches so they could provide relief to their neighbors better. Heck, even they have been hit.
I don't have the faith some of the church members & pastors have that these thieves & vandals will pay down the road on some mythical judgement day. I'd sentence them to eternity in public service.

WXIX story here

WLWT story here

WCPO story here

The Headline reads, "Do NOT steal a car from the FBI", but, hell, why not? The agent's car (actually the taxpayer's car) was left unattended probably blocking the sidewalk and even tho the location is usually crawling with cops, almost midway between the main police station & the district 5 station and just up the street from the police unions, some dimwit made off in the damn thing. The fact that he got away with it was one thing but that it took 3 weeks to find it is the real kicker. This is America's premier law enforcement agency? With the egg on the faces of the Cincinnati police and the FBI, the county proceeded to be burned by the dimwit when he didn't show up for sentencing after being convicted.
WTF people?
Maybe the state will want to get in on the act & release him due to some bureaucratic snafu….

Community press article here

More Heartening News
This week's Kiplinger letter has some good news. It points out that people's perception of the economy - not the actual economy - will guide people in re-electing the incumbent president or making a change.
It also goes on to say that a lot of the indicators that mold people's perceptions are beyond the reach of a president anyway.
sigh…..

Centerville !

Not only is Centerville home to America's hottest dad, David George, it's a real nice place to raise your kids up!

Gretscharama !

Tonite @ The Comet, The Black Belles from sunny Nashville with Fake Hands.

The Zombie Tarot

Paul Kepple & Stacey Graham have released The Zombie Tarot: An Oracle of the Undead. It's pretty, well crafted & produced with clever packaging. It follows a retro 50s/60s motif and is pretty fun. The cards are slightly oversize but not like the Thoth deck. Given the detail, larger cards would have been nice. maybe a display of the original illustrations would be in order?
But it's still just a novelty deck.
When it comes to tarot, I'm squarely a Golden Dawn man. My favorite deck isn't the prettiest but the clear & concise Golden Dawn Magical Tarot by Chic & Tabitha Cicero. The Golden Dawn specifies some imagery, card names & color schemes. This makes interpretation at a glance pretty easy. Suit colors in the Zombie Tarot are relegated to small logos in the corner printed in muted colors that don't pertain to elements at all. The suits are typical with "Hazards" taking the place of Disks/Pentacles. Dunno why. Simple things like having 2,3,4,5 elements on the corresponding cards, like 5 skulls on the 5 of cups are ignored.
The booklet has amusing descriptions that mostly get it right. There are some zombie inspired layouts included as well as some ads for zombie apocalypse era merchandise.
I realize it's a novelty deck, but with a little more discipline, it could have been a more usable deck.

Horror Sells - Bullets ?

I don't know if you really need Hornady's special bullets to kill (rekill) zombies. As Sheriff Mclelland said, "... if you got a gun shoot 'em in the head. That's the sure way to kill 'em. If you don't - get yourself a club, beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy.

Mozart Opera in the old Art Damage Lodge

June 9 & 10 Isaac Selya & Antoine López will conduct Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor and Bastien und Bastienne at Hoffner Lodge, 4120 Hamilton Avenue, in jammin' Northside.

More info here.

Proper Casino Attire ?

The Clevo Horseshoe casino has posted a sign out front with some rules for behavior & dress. No word yet on what the Porkopolis casino will do along these lines. While th Fishwarp reports that 'sagging pants' will be banned, what it actually says is that pants will be worn around the waist. Theoretically, this would ban fat rednecks who wear their pants under their gut (like me) & girls with low cut pants. These aren't the groups they are planning on banning, of course. The rules also state that face coverings are not allowed. While I doubt anybody wearing a burqa is going to go drinking & gambling, it does raise the question of religious freedom. And before anybody claims it's private property - they can do what they want- no, they are there by the will of the people and are heavily taxed & regulated by the representatives of those people. We can tell 'em what to do.
Interestingly, they don't mention colors. Dunno how long you can sit before you are considered a loiterer. It would be damn nice if some local stores banned running screaming kids.
No word on busty gals lying around on the gaming tables in their utrou yet, either.

Cincinnati's budget deficit is growing primarily due to state budget cuts of over $20 million - an action supported by COA T. Earlier this week, City Manager Dohoney proposed to restore property tax rates throughout Cincinnati.
City Councilmember Smitherman has taken to the airwaves (again) to spread hysteria through the community. Monday, Smitherman took his fear mongering to 550 WKRC.
As Councilmember Smitherman said, the Enquirer's report interprets the amount of the deficit differently than he does when he says Cincinnati faces a deficit of $40.8 million. Donohey's proposed property tax rate re-institution would reduce this significantly, to a deficit of $33 million. Councilmember Smitherman fails to point out that if previous councils had not lowered the rate in a pandering effort to get votes, we would not be facing a deficit at all.
In addition to this predictable deficit, the City is underfunding its big union thug demanded pension obligations by at least $50 million every year.
Meanwhile, Mayor Mallory and the majority of a democratically elected Council continue to invest taxpayer money on the streetcar and the City Hall atrium in an attempt to raise tax revenue without raising rates.
At the same time, and in the same breath, the majority of a democratically elected Council are planning to put to a public vote a measure that would double the length of their terms! That's right, they want to go four years between elections so less financially privileged candidates can have a better chance at election. One of COA T's biggest complaints about council is that their terms are not long enough for them to see the results of their actions.
Enjoy your bloody state budget cuts, COA T.

furthermore...

17

Tried upgrading Fedora 16 to 17 using PreUpgrade. No go. While Fedora upgrades usually go amazingly well, this'n started out ok but the sucker wouldn't shut down. It just panicked & froze.
Poking around, this was a problem in test versions that Red Hat kinda just let go. I found (possible) fixes but decided to just DL the CD & nuke & pave because I'm a lazy sod.
That worked fine. The Gnome update is still the same goofy Gnome interface. KDE is no better. BUT! This thing starts up & shuts down like Mac used to. So nice not having to deal with the long ass start ups & incredibly long ass shut downs of Mac/Win.
Wonder if anybody bothered to make a driver for my dumbass, very likely to be tossed off a cliff, 6 color Epson printer?

Speaking of Engineers….

~OTOH~

The Goode Effect ?
The Constitution Party nominated Virgil Goode for their presidential nominee on April 21. Goode is probably the most electable candidate the party has ever fielded. They have no office holder on the state or Federal level. In the past the highest number of votes a presidential candidate received was under 200,000 and, since 1992 has averaged about 133,000. To contrast that, the Libertarian Party topped out with the disgraced Bob Barr with over 500,000 votes and averaged about 416,000. The Green Party has done significantly better with Ralph Nader, who received 2,883,105 in one election but without his celebrity they have only averaged about 141,000 votes.
The Libertarians & Greens have done best with better known candidates and this will be the first time the Constitution Party has had a candidate who has actually won an election before. With what party? Pick one. Goode started out as a Democrat in state politics around 1973. After a couple failed bid for the US Senate, he got himself elected to the US Congress in 96, ran as an independent in 2000 & joined the Republican party in 2002 only to join the Constitution Party in 2010.
This election both the Constitution party & Libertarian Party, with Gary Johnson, are fielding previously elected office holders for president. Both stand to get more than a few votes. Couple that with incredible dissatisfaction with both major parties and, without a ringer from the Greens, it looks like Romney has the most to lose.

CLARIFICATION: I only used numbers since 1992 when the Constitution Party started running presidential candidates. The Libertarians actuall garnered almost 1,000,000 votes for Ed Clark in 1980. I lso ignored Ross Perot's run in 1992 where he got 19,741,065 votes because he was kind of a mule in the scheme of things.

Let's Aim Higher

My latest dive into TV Science Fiction history has been Irwin Allen's Time Tunnel featuring the incomparable Lee Merriwether. In the first episode a grouchy little Senator wants to see what the taxpayer's $7.5B had returned. This got me thinking, if a time machine costs that much, why should we stop at $3.5B for a plain old bridge over the Ohio River at I-75? Why not put a little more into it and create a time traveling bridge! Sure, $7.5B in 1966 dollars is more like $500B today but it likely wouldn't be so expensive as computer junk is way faster & cheaper nowadays. Heck, you could probably run the whole thing on an iPad, today. Further, think how popular a bridge that could get you there yesterday would be. Would people pay tolls? You betcha! Would they complain about going over the bridge one at a time? Of course they would but the back up would be meaningless since you would come out on the other end before you started waiting to enter!
This is the way to go folks - and if there's a glitch here or there? Well 33,000 traffic fatalities a year doesn't seem to deter anybody from the road.
Also - a remake of Time Tunnel with Lee Merriwether as the cranky politician would be too cool.

What to Expect in Northside Today

This afternoon the Queen City Mods V. Rockers scooter & motorcycle rally will descend upon idyllic Hoffner Park. No doubt the above scene will be played out in full.
Meanwhile, over at ghastly Spring Grove Cemetery we will have antique fire trucks at the 3rd Annual National Fire Heritage Muster.
And this evening American Can will host the Hot Club of Northside featuring The Faux Frenchmen !

Fire trucks!
Motorbikes!
30s French jazz!

wheeeee!!!!!!!

Syria

What's going on in Syria these days is pretty much just insane. One wonders how people can treat their own people in such a sociopathic manner. In this video Christiane Amanpour speaks to retired Syrian General Akil Hashem about just how this can happen.