More from The Last Psychiatrist:
Those of you expecting the rise of the Chinese Dragon and the collapse of the American Eagle are all going to die, along with your grandkids, way before that ever happens. Plan accordingly. …not everyone in China has a TV. What do you call it when part of a population becomes exponentially and suddenly more western while another part doesn’t at all?
I’ll save you the Google search: the answer is Iran.
From back in February, but it’s still an interesting read.
The IRS came out with the regulations for the small-business health-care tax credit. Free money from the .gov, for up to 35% of your employees’ health-care premiums for the next few years (six, I think). Catch is, it’s phased out if you have more than 10 employees or pay them more than an average wage of $25k.
So of course I’m looking into whether or not it makes sense to spin off a few departments into their own ten-person companies — to which we’d outsource their former in-house function. Of course that would be counted as creating new small businesses, hooray!
Under Obamacare, entropy = growth.
So, those who “cling to their guns and religion” against us are not to be called “religious extremists?” They are just victims…products of their environment, really.
An 80-year-old Chicago man shot and killed an armed man who broke into his two-story house in a pre-dawn home invasion Wednesday on the city’s West Side.
At about 5:20 a.m., the homeowner and his wife, also in her 80s, discovered the intruder entering their home through a back door. The homeowner, who had a gun, confronted and killed the burglar on the doorstep, police said. Cops said the intruder also fired his gun during the struggle.
“It’s a good thing they had a gun, or they might be dead,” said Curtis Thompson, who lives next door to the couple, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Neighbors described the elderly couple, who both walk with canes, as pillars of the community in Garfield Park, where home invasions have been all too frequent.
Their neighbor, Shaquite Johnson, told MyFoxChicago that the two are “heroes” for fighting off the attacker — and that the shooting means there is “one less criminal” walking the streets.
“They don’t bother no one, so why would anyone do that to them?” she said.
Relatives of the couple told the Sun Times that the man is an Army veteran, his wife a former nurse. Police said neither the man nor the woman was injured in the attack.
The assailant, who was described by police as being in his 30s, was found slumped on the back doorstep of the couple’s house, removed four hours after the shooting, the Sun Times reported.
No charges have been filed against the homeowner, but Chicago currently has a statute outlawing the possession of handguns. Its legality is currently being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A high-profile Chicago attorney has already stepped forward offering to represent the man pro bono if he faces charges for possessing a weapon.
“Self-defense isn’t just a right, it’s a duty,” said attorney Joel Brodsky. “If this man is prosecuted for saving his own life it’s not just a travesty, it’s justice turned inside out.”
But that is how Chicago justice works. I’ll be keeping my eyes on follow-ups to this one.
Maybe.
Odds are 1-in-3 that a huge quake will hit Northwest in the next 50 years
New analyses by Oregon State University marine geologist Chris Goldfinger and his colleagues have provided fresh insights into the Northwest’s turbulent seismic history – where magnitude 8.2 (or higher) earthquakes have occurred 41 times during the past 10,000 years. Those earthquakes were thought to generally occur every 500 years, but as scientists delve more deeply into the offshore sediments and other evidence, they have discovered a great deal more complexity to the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
“What we’ve found is that Cascadia isn’t one big subduction zone when it comes to major earthquakes,†Goldfinger said. “It actually has several segments – at least four – and the earthquake activity is different depending on where a quake originates. The largest earthquakes occur in the north and usually rupture the entire fault. These are quakes of about magnitude-9 and they are just huge – but they don’t happen as frequently.
“At the southern end of the fault, the earthquakes tend to be a bit smaller, but more frequent,†he added. “These are still magnitude-8 or greater events, which is similar to what took place in Chile, so the potential for damage is quite real.â€
Based on historical averages, Goldfinger says the southern end of the fault – from about Newport, Ore., to northern California – has a 37 percent chance of producing a major earthquake in the next 50 years. The odds that a mega-quake will hit the northern segment, from Seaside, Ore., to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, are more like 10 to 15 percent.
“Perhaps more striking than the probability numbers is that we can now say that we have already gone longer without an earthquake than 75 percent of the known times between earthquakes in the last 10,000 years,†Goldfinger said. “And 50 years from now, that number will rise to 85 percent.â€
Found via the FuturePundit who asks “Anyone who lives in the northwest made any special preparations for an earthquake? Ready to survive for weeks without electric power or city water?”
I’m ready.
Art thou?
This being Phil’s site, far be it from me to dub this thing the Official RNS Sex Toy… but it does have a soft green glow. Really!
Poured in beautiful pearlescent shades of pink and blue, turn out the lights and this sex toy will glow a soft green.
“Twisted” ain’t the half of it, either. Absolutely, positively, not safe for work.
