Category: Boneheads

For those of you who aren’t big fans of tv, you may not realize that Bristol Palin is on Dancing with the Stars this season. She’s the only one left (and has been for some time) who isn’t a professional performer in some capacity. She’s endearing, cute, works hard, and is part of a family who many in this country feel have been unfairly targeted for criticism – even beyond political views. It’s not surprising that these many factors, along with the evidence that she’s really come a long way in her dancing skills, have earned her a place in the heart of many viewers.

One man in Wisconsin was apparently so pissed with the results of the last episode that he shot his television, aimed a shotgun at his own wife, and held police in a 15 hour standoff. I do believe that trying to kill your wife over a contestant in a television program is just a tad over the line we call unhinged. (Hat tip to JR Absher for the link.)

Apparently now being the subject of lawsuits. I agree with Clayton that slavery is a lot for a fifth grader to wrap their heads around in its entirety, but it would seem to me a discussion with the teacher, principle, and school board (in that order) might be a more productive path forward rather than a lawsuit.

It apparently made news that many things sold at a farmers market in Los Angeles aren’t, in fact, coming from small farms.

NBCLA’s investigation began this summer, when we bought produce at farmers markets across the LA area, and then made surprise visits to farms where we were told the produce was being grown.

We found farms full of weeds, or dry dirt, instead of rows of the vegetables that were being sold at the markets. …

Frutos Farm’s state permit to sell produce at farmers markets says their farm is in Cypress.
NBCLA asked owner Jesse Frutos, “Everything you sell at farmers markets is grown in your Cypress field?”

Jesse responded, “Correct…everything.”

But when NBCLA made a surprise visit to the Cypress field listed on its permit, Frutos couldn’t show us most of the produce he was selling, such as celery, garlic, and avocados.

So NBCLA asked, “Do you grow avocados here?”

“Avocados? No, not here on the lot. … That I’ll be honest. That stuff came from somewhere else,” Frutos said.

Somewhere else? NBCLA’s undercover cameras followed Jesse’s trucks on farmers market days, and saw him going to the big wholesale produce warehouses in downtown LA.

We saw him loading up his truck, with boxes of produce from big commercial farms as far away as Mexico. He bought many of the types of items we saw him selling at the farmers markets.

Their customers don’t bother asking, so it’s easy to get away with selling things you pick up at Sam’s Club. This should not shock people. It would be like me getting offended by the local markets I saw with Sam’s Club delivery trucks parked outside their stores in Hawaii. It’s just the easiest and cheapest way to get goods into the hands of people who want them, yet want to shop at a smaller or closer store. Yes, I could go buy the same things at the same prices, but there are tradeoffs with that – more quantity than I can eat, and another shopping trip to make.

But, this is also a good excuse to highlight an email Virginia Postrel posted in response to her recent locavore column in the WSJ.

Beyond these public policy issues, we run a series of focus groups and mall intercepts and other studies that interact with consumers from the UK to North America and on to Australia/New Zealand. You would be shocked at what people expect. A seemingly intelligent woman walked out of a farm stand in Massachusetts. The stand stood on a small farm but probably 90% of the sales of the farm stand were purchased off the local wholesale market. Yet when we asked shoppers why they liked shopping there, more than one pulled out their pineapple and pointed to the advantages of a good Massachusetts grown pineapple!

Painful.

What I don’t get is why some shoppers are upset if they find out the truth. Is buying into the lifestyle of farmers markets really that important? We bought a bunch of jams, sauces, and spreads out in Hawaii that tasted delicious. (The Aloha Stadium Swap Meet – don’t miss it.) If you were to tell me that they were secretly manufactured by some big company, I wouldn’t be upset. Instead, I’d be excited since it would increase the likelihood that I could purchase more without having to go to Honolulu. The fact that we did buy from small local retailers is interesting, but note the key to my purchase. The reason we purchased was because each of the products was delicious. We’re not looking for a lifestyle beyond one filled with fruity delicious jams.

Via The Outdoor Pressroom, we have this amusing tale from Georgia of a homeowner with a trail cam and some very unfortunate burglars:

Coweta authorities captured three perpetrators recently after a motion-sensing surveillance camera first captured them in the process of burglarizing a Sharpsburg residence.

They managed to photograph the thieves, their car, and the license plate. Apparently, they believe these three are responsible for other burglaries in the area.

But what I want to know is: How does he walk with his pants tied up around his legs? And what kind of chick wears flip flops to break into people’s homes? You’d think she’d want something a little better for running should the cops arrive.

I have to say, one of the highlights of the trip was Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. But not just because of the dried lava hikes, glowing lava lakes, steaming ocean entry points, and beautiful scenery. The pair of resort flowers we later dubbed “The Lava Girls” really made the trip worthwhile.

As we did our stroll down Chain of Craters Road, we pulled off at all of the crater scenic stops. Puhimau Crater was a perfectly lovely picture-taking spot until the Lava Girls walked up. The first was dressed in fashionable not-very-park-appropriate clothes and marching with determination up to the viewing area. The other in skin tight workout clothes yapping on her cell phone and yelling, “We’re in Hawaii looking for lava! We just want to see lava today.”

For those of you who didn’t have maps that said in nice bold letters that you could only see glow at the sea and from Jaggar Museum handed out at the door of the Visitor’s Center, this is the explanation from USGS on why these girls were in the wrong damn place:

Puhimau pit crater is about 160 m deep. The crater probably formed between the mid-15th century and A.D. 1800. No eruptions have occurred from Puhimau Crater, and no lava flows from historical eruptions have poured into the crater. Dense forest surrounds the crater, but a small thermal area lies just north of the crater. Steam often can be seen low on the northwest wall. (Emphasis added.)

Lava girls stomped off back to their car and sped down the road to their next crater stop.

I’ll assume they left very unsatisfied. I would even put money on one of them saying something like, “They totally lied – there were no volcanoes at that park!”

There was a great glow from the lava lake that night, but I’m sure they never saw it. We were both tempted to give them directions to the nearest sources of lava just to remove them from the gene pool. Unfortunately, without any surface breakout, that would be tough. (Of course, with surface breakout, it would have been tough since they weren’t dressed for hiking on lava – typically the first step in finding the hot, flowing stuff.)