Thursday, August 17, 2006

Random thoughts

♣ This panel from a Tank McNamara strip (illustrating some problems with hand signals in baseball) drew a sharp rebuke in a letter to the editor the other day. The writer suggested that the H-T review such strips in the future. Bob Zaltsberg confirmed in an e-mail that it is not possible to screen cartoons printed in the Sunday paper, so there was nothing the H-T could do about the strip. There is no question in my mind, however, that the strip is racist and unnecessarily demeaning. Jeff Millar and Bill Hinds deserve to be publicly rebuked and shamed for this cartoon.

♣ The Herald-Times ran a headline in the Nation/World section declaring "Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire in effect". In the article, we find that is not quite true, as "Hezbollah guerrillas fired at least 10 Katyusha rockets that landed in southern Lebanon early Tuesday." It is clear that Hezbollah has no intention of ending attacks in Israel and will continue to murder Israeli civilians and soldiers. This "peace" will be about as effective as the Munich Agreement before World War II.

♣ The Herald-Times reports that a 21 year old man drinking at a party "decided to take an old football helmet and duct tape a large firework to the top of it. He then put the helmet on and lit the firework." The explosion shattered the helmet and the man "suffered severe burns to the face and head." Just remember: these people vote.

♣ A half-dozen Indiana counties want to switch from Central Daylight Time to Eastern Daylight Time just months after they officially switched to CDT, and Governor Daniels is supporting their request. It was beyond silly from the very beginning to allow individual counties to decide which time zone they wanted to be in. DST was supposed to be about eliminating confusion allegedly caused by Indiana being on Standard Time, but our time wound up even more muddled than it was before.