It's sad when you have to say "Which shooting?"

We had two shootings in town overnight, here and here from WWL-TV. A couple of other news outlets had one story but not the other on the front page, or vice versa. Maybe they were trying to sugarcoat our problem and not give us all the bad news at once?

In any case, now the cab drivers who pick up fares at the hotel are up on edge and I'm going to have to pay for parking next time I go see the LPO. Ugh...

Surprise, surprise: Mitch is in

Fox 8 WVUE among others is reporting that Mitch will officially join the mayor's race tomorrow. Why couldn't he have done this a month ago so we could just deal with 4 or 6 people's commercials instead of 9?

A hero steps up for Dr. Tiller's memory

Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who in the past spent some time working at the late George Tiller's late-term abortion clinic, has expanded his own clinic in Nebraska to take the patients who would have formerly gone to Wichita.

I am not nearly as militantly pro-choice as I used to be. I can sum up my position in two sentences:

1. I will not make my agreement with a politician's or judge's stance on abortion a necessary or sufficient condition to vote for her or him.
2. Judicial and legislative fiat are not my preferred means to reduce the incidence of abortion.

I congratulate Dr. Carhart for the courage to stand up to his convictions; pray for safety of him, his employees, and his patients; and continue to hope that people who disagree with him do so by civil means.

Saints fans make themselves known many ways...

Virginia Tech's student newspaper notes in this story that in Bud Light's ongoing campaign to sell team-colored cans, that the most popular combination is black and gold, "color for Purdue, Central Florida, and West Point". They forgot one thing:

Geaux Saints!

You can vote for black and gold yourself here.

This week's The Economist stories

Electricity generation: No pinch of salt
First there was learning by osmosis, and now this.

Rwanda's laptop revolution: Upgrading the children
Soon India won't have the world's cheapest computer engineers anymore.

Banyan: The world's forgotten fair
Yup, the world's fiar is still around-we even have an exhibit this time.

The Panama Canal: A plan to unlock prosperity
Now if only we can get more of this increased traffic.

Now that Tiger Woods has done his mea culpa...

...my opinion of him really hasn't changed.

In case anyone has been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, the National Enquirer wrote an actual researched, fact-based story about Tiger having a tryst with someone other than his wife. This was followed by digging more dirt by the Internet media and relative ignoring by traditional sports information sources such as ESPN. Then, the morning after Thanksgiving he is involved in an auto accident and goes to the hospital with facial injuries that could have come from eith the accident or an argument with wife. After days of trying to blow off everyone looking for him to admit that he wasn't Mr. Perfect with his family, smoking-gun evidence shows up and he finally puts out the "I'm sorry I hurt my family, now leave me the f*ck alone" press release.

Now why does this not change anything? Basically, Tiger Woods is four things, in about this order:

1. Probably the best golfer ever known to humankind.
2. Someone who cares very much about his family - first his father and now his children.
3. A corporate shill.
4. A person so hell-bent on being the three things above that he will not let the media or the public get in his way.

None of this affected 1 whatsoever. When Nike said they were behind him no matter what happened, and his other sponsors lined up and took care of 3. That leaves 2 and, people, don't you think the hell he is going through with his wife is a lot worse than anything tabloid journalism can do?

Be careful next time you go to Destin

Image from Lagnaippe Mobile

A TV station in Mobile put up a billboard with pictures of their anchors next to live Twitter feed. Hopefully WDSU will keep this picture in mind if they decide to do the same thing with theirs.