Ken Nelson

 
The place to shop in Laredo

Laredo’s last bookstore is closing:

With a population of nearly a quarter-million people, this city could soon be the largest in the nation without a single bookseller.

The situation is so grim that schoolchildren have pleaded for a reprieve from next month’s planned shutdown of the B. Dalton bookstore. After that, the nearest store will be 150 miles away in San Antonio.

I LOVE that St. George has a Barnes & Noble. Even though I use the Kindle for most of my reading, I make sure to get plenty from Barnes & Noble so they will stay in town.

As to Laredo… I guess they need to read more.  Markets work.  Alas, a new store could be a long time coming:

Some worry that the closing could send a message that books and reading are not priorities in Laredo, a hot, steamy city of 230,000 that is choked by smog from trucks lining up at the border, which is home to the nation’s biggest entry point for trucks and trains.

Nearly half of the population of Webb County, which includes Laredo, lacks basic literacy skills, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Sometimes, you make your bed, and you lie in it, not reading.

Interesting…. are they trying to make sure people really read it, or just joking around? 

Via Drudge

It is one thing to look at a magazine that has an article about you. Quite another to travel with it.

It turns out that motorcycle helmet laws hurt those waiting for organ donations:

Our estimates imply that every death of a helmetless motorcyclist prevents or delays as many as 0.33 deaths among individuals on organ transplant waiting lists.

If I needed an organ I’d move to the red states.

Via Marginal Revolution

Let’s see…

• Yasser Arafat – terrorist, murderer, philanderer and corrupt politician
• Jimmy Carter -   complete idiot
• Al Gore            -   overweight energy hog that uses fake science to advance socialism
• Mohamed ElBaradei  – nuke checker who didn’t check for nukes.

All recent winners of the same ridiculous award.  I had to go back to 1978 to find winners that actually did something – Sadat and Begin.

It seems to be not an award but a warning that people with really bad judgment think Obama swell.

I suspect the narcissists on the committee hoped that the narcissist in our White House would “see the light” on Afghanistan after receiving the award.

I take heart that all U.S. Presidents on the list were one termers.

I post this link mainly for the benefit of a game playing student I know that owns samurai swords, went on a LDS mission to Japan,  and even DRIVES a Samurai…

Detectives are still interviewing a Johns Hopkins University student who fatally lacerated the upper body of a man breaking into his off-campus residence overnight. The suspect also suffered a nearly-severed hand, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Note that either Samurai – sword or vehicle can induce this sort of damage. I wish the reporter had been more specific.

62,000+ people are members of the Facebook group “The Lying Down Game”. They lie down in odd places and snap photos:

It seems to be primarily popular in England. I heard about it because a hospital there was firing people because their lying down was breaking sanitation rules.

If you are on Facebook, visit the group here:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5989617014

No… no… no…. Quarter million dollar Bentley ruined by 1K camo job…
I’m not a car enthusiast, but even I can see “wrong” written all over this (-:

Source: The internet

The average human face (per university in Germany). I don’t recognize them.

“Super-recognizers” remember the faces of people they meet.

I may have this ability. It makes trips to Target interesting. And when I did weddings, I would meet hundreds of people a week, and remember them all.

And I’m constantly seeing people and trying to remember where I saw them before. It can be quite distant. I sat down once in an airport and said “hi, do you still work for ____” to a lady that had interviewed me while I was still in college.

Oddly, she had an eidetic memory and remembered me and what I put on my resume (silly tripe that we both laughed about a decade later).

Meet Mike the Headless chicken:

This is not a hoax, folks: Following a non-lethal decapitation, Mike the headless chicken, later nicknamed "Miracle Mike," lived for approximately 18 months. Here he is, "dancing" in 1945.

Click the link to see Mike, I decided not to include a picture here so as to not shock those with sensitive sensibilities.

Here is my Photo Essay covering one year of me raising chickens.

Actual house in Detroit. Sold for $1.

The average price of a house in Detroit is $11,533.  Monthly payment… around $50 bucks.

Instead, why not have a kitty cat key chain:

How sweet. How quaint. Oh yeah… it’s a weapon too…

Now if only it held a couple of gigabytes too…

Argentine coinage

This seems dumb… Argentina has a shortage of coins. Retailers often decline sales that aren’t in exact change because they can’t make change:

The coin scarcity has created a strange predicament: Merchants regularly refuse to sell their goods or services if it means they’ll have to give coins back as change. For small transactions, they’d rather lose the revenue than spare the change.

They reserve coins as change for larger, profitable transactions.

But the really dumb part is that the Argentine Central Bank says it is supplying enough coins.

Which of course it isn’t because there is a shortage!

More likely it was because the coins were worth more in metal than in face value, and were thus melted for their raw materials.

One obvious fix… make coins that are worth less in raw materials. The paper in a Peso isn’t worth a Peso. Why should a coin be worth anything as other than a collectible or symbol of money.

Another obvious way to handle this is a separate IOU system for change that can be exchanged at agreeing stores. Some larger chains of stores are doing this.  It may be that sometime soon, their IOUs will be worth more than the Argentine currency.

… that Democrats are working for legislation that would automatically register to vote anyone who obtains a driver’s license or who qualifies for welfare benefits? There is no move to automatically register anyone who actually obtains a job, becomes successful and pays taxes.

… that the people who make Hotwheels and Matchbox cars made more money last year than the people who make Fords, Chryslers and Chevys?

More at Neil Boortz’s blog.

 
Chute. Check. Abs. Check.

Woman survives paragliding accident due to “washboard stomach”.

If you do plan on paragliding, consider http://www.ehow.com/how_2078645_get-washboard-stomach.html

but note that the only real way to get washboard abs is to get rid of body fat and reveal the muscles below. No amount of sit-ups will give you washboard abs. ONLY fat reduction does it.

Sorry.

Which, alas, is one of many reasons you won’t seem me paragliding anytime soon. Most 45 year old men would be pleased with my 13% body fat, but alas, that is not washboard territory. 9-10% is, and that, frankly, is too much work for me.