I can't be the only one eagerly anticipating the women's 100-meter hurdles at the London games.

Emerging 19-year-old Michelle Jenneke, who hails from Sydney, has become worldwide internet sensation after some very interesting dance moves at last weekend's Barcelona World Junior Championships.

While she completely dominated her women's 100-metre hurdle event, it's Jenneke's sexy warm-up dance - which included wiggling her hips and shimmying - that's made her famous around the Web.

The footage has gone viral and has become a YouTube sensation - with the most popular video one of her moving to a catchy dance tune.

It has gone everywhere, even USA Today - which described the footage as "unique way of stretching."

If you're interested, and you know you are, the women's 100 m hurdles schedule is here.

Special added bonus. Smoking hot American Lolo Jones is also competing in the event. You're welcome.

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Posted by: Guest Blogger at 09:10 AM | Comments (260)
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Penn State has removed Joe Paterno's statue from outside the stadium. They had initially planned to move it to the Paterno library, which would have been ridiculous.

The Joe Paterno statue was removed Sunday morning from its pedestal outside Beaver Stadium, and it will be stored in an unnamed "secure location," Penn State president Rodney Erickson announced. Erickson also said the Paterno name will remain on the university's library.

Shortly before dawn in State College, Pa., a work crew installed chain-link fences to barricade access to Porter Road outside Beaver Stadium and covered the fence with a blue tarp.

The work crew then removed the 7-foot, 900-pound bronze statue by forklift and placed it into the lower level of the stadium. Erickson released his highly sensitive decision to the public at 7 a.m. ET Sunday.

Paterno's name will remain on the library? These people are tone deaf.

CBS News is reporting that the penalties that will be announced tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. are "unprecedented", according to an NCAA source.

CBS News has learned that the NCAA will announce what a high-ranking association source called "unprecedented" penalties against both the Penn State University football team and the school.

"I've never seen anything like it," the source told correspondent Armen Keteyian.

ESPN has reported that there will be no "death penalty", but that the penalties are so severe that the death penalty would have been preferable.

We can only hope so.

It's interesting that they finally removed the statue only 24 hours before the NCAA announcement, isn't it?

Posted by: JohnE. at 08:07 AM | Comments (280)
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Good morning morons and moronettes. Welcome to the witty and urbane Sunday morning book thread

I will be out of town next week for a few days, so I will not be able to post a book thread next Sunday.

EReaders, and tablets, and eInk, Oh My!

I recommend this recent post by ace on eBook sales, and there's plenty of good discussion about the various eReaders in the comments.

For example, someone mentioned buying an el cheapo $99 Android tablet, downloading the free Kindle and Nook apps, and you're all set. This may be the best suggestion yet.

About 10-12 years ago, I just stopped reading. It's not one of those you realize you're doing, you do it unconsciously and then one day it just occured to me, "Hey, when was the last time I actually read a book?" and then I knew what I had done. And it didn't take much thought to discover what had happened. All the time I used to spend reading was now being used being on the internet, clicking on this link or that link. Oh, I read stuff, but it was all short articles and blog entries, nothing long or sustained.

So I made a conscious effort to step back, and buying a Nook helped with that.

I bought the Nook over the Kindle because it had expandable memory and because it reads ePub files. The Kindle does neither. But there's just so much stuff out there for the Kindle in its proprietary azw format that not reading ePub files isn't a problem. And I'm finding out that 2GB is plenty.

So, if I had to do it over again, I'd probably by a Kindle.

But I wanted to take advantage of the tons of ebooks in azw format. So I googled around for an azw-to-ePub converter and found out that azw files are usually loaded with Amazon DRM, so they can't be easily converted.

But it can be done.

This blog shows you how. You basically have to download and install Calibre, an open-source eReader for your PC along with an azw conversion plugin for it. The blog has all the links you need. So what I do is buy the Kindle book from Amazon, download it to my PC, and bring it up in Calibre. Calibre, because of the installed plugin, automatically strips off all the DRM and saves it as a mobi file, which I then can convert to ePub format in Calibre and download to my Nook via USB cable.

Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

Books I've Discovered While Looking For Other Books

This week's grim events in Colorado sent me searching on Amazon for books on serial killers as a topic for this thread, but I couldn't find anything I thought was really suitable. The books I found were about serial killers who committed their crimes over months and years, rather than doing it all in a brief frenzy of violence. But while I was poking around, I found this book about someone rather rare, a female serial killer. This one plied her trade in New England at the turn of the 20th century. No, it wasn't Lizzie Borden.

From one of the reviews:

Amy Archer-Gilligan—Sister Amy, she was called—was a murderess well-enough known to be cited as an inspiration for Joseph Kesselring’s perennial grim farce, Arsenic and Old Lace. She took in elderly and frail roomers and dispatched them with loads of cyanide. Along with husband James, she opened the Archer Home for the Elderly and Infirm in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1907, having succeeded with a similar, smaller facility in nearby Newington. James dying in short order, Amy married wealthy widower Michael Gilligan, who expired suddenly not long after, willing his estate to his new bride. Because of her friendships with local bigwigs, including the coroner, nobody noticed the rather high death rate among her patients until local newspaper stringer and jack-of-all-trades Carlan Hollister Goslee started poking around. Discovering the large quantities of arsenic Sister Amy had been purchasing, ostensibly to control rodents, he pressed his findings on authorities who eventually responded by exhuming bodies. Amy’s sensational trial attracted great interest, and Phelps wraps the whole dirty business in a delightfully cozy narrative. A genteel true-crime excursion.

So the play 'Arsenic and Old Lace' was based on true events. I did not know this. Does everyone know this except me?

Also, this sounds like it would make one hell of an interesting movie. In fact, I wonder why it hasn't. It's got a liberal hero (a reporter) and the villain, 'Sister Amy' was probably one of those damn tea-bagging Christians. If she wasn't, hell, make her one, anyway. Who's to know? Brian Ross would certainly approve.

Apropos of nothing, here is a cartoon about boobs: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:00 AM | Comments (148)
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Hey, how about a new one?

Posted by: andy at 04:55 AM | Comments (264)
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That chart my friends may portend some wallet shock here in the short term but in the long term, just may help cost Obama the election. Of course his own Agriculture Secretary isn't doing him any favors in this regard.

Food prices may go up next year, but for now the severe drought conditions should not have an immediate effect on prices at the grocery store according to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

"The prices and the impact of a drought will probably not likely be seen in the grocery aisle until later next year in 2013," Vilsack said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Experts say prices for beef, poultry, pork and milk will be the most directly affected, while processed food prices will remain more stable, as a larger percentage of their prices are affected by packaging and advertising.

Senior Vice President of research for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association Michael Miller said prices for beef, poultry, pork and milk could rise 10 percent if the drought continues.

Corn is such a pervasive ingredient in the U.S. diet that food prices overall rise about 1 percent for every 50 percent jump in corn prices, USDA economist Richard Volpe said.

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In hard scrabble street fighting, the US Army's 24th Infantry Division fought in a retreat to hold off communist North Korean forces in the early weeks of the new war. Although they abandoned the city of Taejon, their delaying action was crucial and bought time to establish a hard perimeter around Pusan.

The 24th ID was badly understrength, thrown into the line to slow the North Korean advance. Throughout July, the undertrained soldiers of the 24th fought continuous delaying actions, without sleep or adequate provisions. So many officers were wounded that large numbers of NCOs rose up to take command of battered units.

They had no tanks, and minimal artillery support. They suffered 30% casualties, and yet managed to hold off the North Koreans long enough to secure the Pusan perimeter, which held until more American forces could be brought to the fight.

During the last moments of the fall of Taejon, the Division commander, Major General William F. Dean became separated from his command during the retreat, and was eventually captured by North Korean forces. He tried several times to get them to kill him, for fear of divulging information, but even after his rank was known, they were unable to get him to talk.

For their delaying actions around Taejon, the 24th Infantry Division was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation and the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation. Major General Dean was awarded the Medal of Honor, as was Sgt. George D. Libby (posthumously) for his actions protecting and aiding wounded soldiers during the battle. His citation is below. more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 10:38 AM | Comments (80)
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This open thread is brought to you by statism, the philosophy of kings. Statism, where everything that is not mandatory is forbidden. Statism, embraced by both political parties, only in different degrees. Statism, where your betters get to tell you what to do, where to do it, and who to do it with. And while you do it, they get to watch.

It's for your own good.

I am Michael Bloomberg and I approve this message:

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:31 AM | Comments (160)
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In the aftermath of the horrific shooting massacre in Colorado Friday there were plenty of folks who came out looking really stupid. There was the idiot mayor of New York chastising both the president and Mitt Romney over gun control, a pet obsession of a man who also spends way too much time concerning himself with what people like to eat and drink.

Then there was ABC News hack Brian Ross, who felt no compunction about pointing the finger of blame at another man named James Holmes, who just happens to be a member of the Tea Party.

Now along comes some atheist clown who declared that the president praying for the shooting victims and their families was egregiously offensive, leaving us in the rare position of agreeing with Obama.

“I think it’s a little unfortunate,” CSH director Tom Flynn told The Washington Examiner. “Even in a situation like this, [when] he leads a public prayer to a deity that it pretty recognizably the Christian God, much as you can understand the emotional context of it, he’s still sending to some degree a message of exclusion to other religions who don’t call their god “Lord” and to non-religious Americans.”

“By the very act of praying, that’s a message of exclusion,” he continued. “If I’m a public official, I think I’m going to look around in the morning and conclude that, ‘hey, this religion thing is just too hot to handle, I should stay away from it in my official capacity.’”

For praying for rain. This guy should really consider a gig at The Onion.

"It sends the wrong message to distraught farmers when the Agriculture Secretary suggests that the best response is to pray," said Flynn. "For a Cabinet official to recommend prayer as a solution or call attention to his own devotions may violate the Constitution's prohibition against establishment of religion. Most important, though, is that prayer doesn't work. But if you want to test the power of prayer yourself, consider this. Apparently Secretary Vilsack's been praying for rain every day; how's that working out?"

Posted by: Guest Blogger at 05:20 AM | Comments (205)
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All the content that's fit to not print.

Posted by: andy at 04:18 AM | Comments (202)
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