Cute cat pictures

My first formal photojournalism course was taught by St. Donald Wooley, then of the University of Iowa, later a professor at West Virginia U.

He had two rules chipped in stone. (1) If you miss the first day of laboratory procedure instruction you are dropped from the course. (2) Anyone handing in a photograph of a cat or kitten automatically failed the course.

The latter policy was routinely appealed by undergraduates who argued passionately that it stifled their creativity. The deans routinely upheld Professor Wooley for the possibly mythical but still cherished reason that he told them the first time: "If I have to look at one more (effing) saccharine cat picture I'll regurgitate all over the front row of coeds, then I will resign."

Junk Guns: Junk Policy

Turk has an item on the latest Sodom-on-Lake Michigan area gun-buyback. The gist is that taxpayers spent their money on about 200 non-working junkers with about the same crime potential as black board eraser.

Most of what the pictures show are unidentifiable long guns, and I doubt many are worth the $75 public bounty as potential working weapons.

But there's another element here. Just suppose one of them is a clapped out Winchester 74. Firing pin price-- $30. Magazine tube assembly about the same. Sights about ten bucks each. Or suppose a Remington 514, stock value at least $40. Et cetera.

And do you suppose there was anyone at the church there glancing at the stuff as it came in to check for old Redfield receiver sights? Marble screw-ons? Tang sights?

It is a sort of cash-for-clunkers disaster, huge amounts of benign value heading straight for the Burns Harbor blast furnaces with no conceivable redeeming public service rendered.

If I had a Huffington Post account I could say this there for the giggles inherent in being told that Redfield peeps can transform any weapon into a sniper rifle capable of killing children at a half-mile.

Greek Style, again

We shouldn't be honked off at Reuters because this is a disjointed item, vaguely prophetic with only minor actual news content. That's the nature of most pre-market stories written to drum-tight deadlines while trying to cover the morning's major economic happenings.

But the writer and editor ought to be sentenced to a half-dozen paint balls to the bare butt for leaving the most important fact to the last paragraph:

"At the same time the U.S. Federal Reserve reopened currency swap lines with several central banks in hopes of assuring markets of dollar liquidity, and the European Central Bank said it would buy government debt to steady investor nerves. A number of European central banks said they had already started. "

Translation: U.S. taxpayers will foot some of the bill. If history is a guide, we will cover most of it, one way or another. Because we are flat broke and because HIs Obamaness is deathly afraid a tax hike would further motivate His peasants to wrap torches and sharpen pitch forks, the price you pay to mask the stupidity of EuroSoc will be indirect -- a fresh few tons of fiat dollars further eroding the value of the ones you have.

In return you'll get the warm fuzzy glow that comes from knowing you helped pay for Marshall Plan No. 666. This one follows the Aegean War of 2003-2010, fought by unionized Greek grape leaf packers against the evil forces of The Market.

Housekeeping note: Cranky Lit Prof is one of the funniest bloggers I've run across. She's disappeared from the TMR roll only because she seems to have taken her blog private.

EDIT: Might as well redo the whole list while I'm at it.