1. Is That a Tiger in the Front Yard?
This is insane. So far it sounds like the sheriff’s office has gunned down 35 of the nearly 50 exotic animals that escaped from the preserve (I believe this is The Wilds, I can’t think of any other exotic private game preserve in Zanesville, OH). But there are F-ing lions, tigers, bears and wolves roaming free, probably frightened and pissed off, and while I’m impressed that they’ve bagged as many of the animals as they have in such a short amount of time, I imagine there will be a few that elude capture/killing for a little while.
2. Romney Wins (Again); Gingrich Gets His First Bloody Nose; Cain Founders; Perry Falls Flat (Again)
Gingrich got his nose bloodied for the first time last night when he finally went on offense against Romeny on health care. His strategy up to this point (and it’s a good one) has been to steadfastly avoid criticizing his primary opponents; he strayed from it and got his hat handed to him by Romney. Very interesting to watch, and more than a little disappointing. I don’t care what the media, the polls or anyone else says, Cain is foundering. 9-9-9 got hit from every side last night and all he could say were his typical taglines, calling the criticisms “knee jerk reactions” (what the hell does that even mean) and telling the American people to do the math themselves and ignore all of the independent analyses in favor of his own analysis. Not too terribly compelling. While I agree that he should get credit for starting a conversation, I think there are far better plans that would be more worthy of the political capital the next president will have to spend to get them passed. It’s amazing how badly Perry sucks. He tried to get aggressive but his attacks were all either low-blows, blatantly hypocritical or were met with vigorous boos by the crowd. Bachmann sounds ever more crazy, proudly touting her plan to build a double-walled fence along the entire Southern border. Romney is once again, unfortunately, the undisputed winner.
3. Life is Precious
Not in the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” kind of way, but rather statistically-speaking, life on other planets seems clearly far rarer than lifeless planets (though more common than originally thought). Even if living planets were even-steven with lifeless planets, the universe is so infinitely vast and so thinly dispersed (relatively speaking) that when one extrapolates the likelihood of intelligent life capable of contacting us actually sending a signal that reaches us before our planet or theirs dies, the prospect of extraterrestrial contact is (probably mercifully) woefully unlikely.
1) "Lutz also said that his deputies had been to the preserve more than 30 times in recent years in response to complaints from neighbors. And "every time we were out" there he worried about the animals getting loose. Thompson bought and kept the animals for himself, not for showing, Lutz said." - evidently not The Wilds.
ReplyDelete2) 9-9-9 is highly defensible on a number of fronts. Whether Cain chooses to get past platitudes and explain in hard economic terms what its upsides are could be what makes or breaks his campaign.
3) Yes, hopefully we will never find other life. Or at least if we do, let us be the superior ones...