Logic & Sanity

Le Souk = Le Suck

Hookah hot spot Le Souk's liquor license was suspended yesterday following a slew of violations with the State Liquor Authority, officials said.

The East Village eatery and club - which has an exemption from the city cigarette ban and features giant water pipes at its tables - was one of 34 establishments whose licenses were pulled.

In addition, the club was fined $12,000 for the violations, SLA officials said.

The Avenue B club has a litany of complaints against it dating back to 2003 for a "disorderly premises," being the "focal point for police attention," exceeding occupancy and keeping illegal hours. It was also cited for building-code violations and fire-safety issues.

Good riddance! That place is the worst! My brother did his birthday there a year ago and on top of of drinks being overpriced and watered down, service being extremely slow and stuff rude, they tried to charge his card for $300 more then the actual bill was. Read Le Souk's reviews on Citysearch to get a sense of how bad that place is. I am sure that any positive comment there was posted by the place's owner as the negative ones are all very consistent with each other and my experience.

That's the photo of our flaming waiter who tried to overcharge us. Yea. It's a man.

Check out this crafty

Check out this crafty reporting from the Associated Press.

Hamas militants fired a barrage of rockets and mortar shells toward Israel on Tuesday and said they considered a five-month truce with Israel to have ended.

Funny that! Palestinians elected a government by the name of Hamas. Members of Hamas shoot guns/rockets and blow up bombs on a daily basis with the backing of the Palestinian government. Why are they not being referred to as soldiers? Seems to me like the Associate Press is trying to absolve the Palestinians of any responsiblity, because, you see, it's not the Palestinian army fighting Israel, it's merely militants...

When will the Associated Press refer to the Israeli soldiers as Israeli militants? They seem to fit the criteria applied here - they shoot guns and they have the backing of the government.

Indecent proposal

Singer Sheryl Crow has said a ban on using too much toilet paper should be introduced to help the environment.

Crow has suggested using "only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required".

The 45-year-old, who made the comments on her website, has just toured the US on a biodiesel-powered bus to raise awareness about climate change.

She teamed up with environmental activist Laurie David for the shows.

The pair targeted 11 university campuses to persuade students to help combat the world's environmental problems.

"I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming," Crow wrote.

"Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating.

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting."

Sounds like her brain is in the earliest stages of development.  Unfortunately for Ms.Crow, her titanic intellect is in the world full of icebergs.  It would take quite a few squares of paper to wipe all the bullshit from her mouth alone.  Hey, Sheryl, why not stop wasting fuel by not going on tours?

...and if anything, they should be printing the New York Times in 2ply.

Marker control

An adjunct professor was fired after leading a classroom discussion about the Virginia Tech shootings in which he pointed a marker at some students and said "pow." The five-minute demonstration at Emmanuel College on Wednesday, two days after a student killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus, included a discussion of gun control, whether to respond to violence with violence, and the public's "celebration of victimhood," said the professor, Nicholas Winset. During the demonstration, Winset pretended to shoot some students. Then one student pretended to shoot Winset to illustrate his point that the gunman might have been stopped had another student or faculty member been armed. "

A classroom is supposed to be a place for academic exploration," Winset, who taught financial accounting, told the Boston Herald. He said administrators had asked the faculty to engage students on the issue. But on Friday, he got a letter saying he was fired and ordering him to stay off campus. Winset, 37, argued that the Catholic liberal arts school was stifling free discussion by firing him, and he said the move would have a "chilling effect" on open debate. He posted an 18-minute video on the online site YouTube defending his action. The college issued a statement saying: "Emmanuel College has clear standards of classroom and campus conduct, and does not in any way condone the use of discriminatory or obscene language."

Student Junny Lee, 19, told The Boston Globe that most students didn't appear to find Winset's demonstration offensive.

So what if he was making a valid point and the students weren't offended. The real questions here are - did he have a permit to carry that marker? Was he in a marker free zone? Those students sure feel safer now that he's gone...

The passion of Cho Seung-Hui

   Many of his victims haven't been buried yet, and there are already those who are painting Cho Seung-Hui as a victim.

"Cho Seung-Hui lived eight-thousand, four-hundred, and eighty-nine days. I and no reasonable person, or deity, could or should allow the events of one of them to discount the other eight-thousand, four-hundred, and eighty-eight," the student wrote.

How reasonable! I should invite this person to guest blog with me. You simply can not argue with this logic, after all Cho Seung-Hui was not a murderer for 99.98% of his life! It's just a matter of simple math, see?

"You will be in my prayers, Cho, though I never knew you -- it is a shame that you died the way you did, and that so many others died that day too."

Yea, it's a shame you died Cho Seung-Hui... Oh, and those others, too.  Speaking of the others, sure, maybe they went through 100% of their lives without murdering anybody, but hey, 99.98% is pretty damn close, so they are not that much better then you, Cho Seung-Hui.

Then there's this deluded soul:

"The groups expressing anger toward him are what inspired me to create the group. We have no idea what happened to this kid, or what was going through his head, but it's really clear that he had problems," Swigart told wcbstv.com. "When I saw all of those groups damning him to hell and wishing him ill, without considering that, hey, he is a person too. I thought he deserved to be respected and remembered like the other victims."

Whenever I come accross comments like these, I can't help but roll my eyes so hard that they almost fall down my throat. We don't know what went through his head? Who cares? What could have possibly went through his head that justifies what he did? And how about the blatant sense of entitlement. He deserves respect. For what?  Respect is something that's earned.

That's the problem with our society. Everybody feels entitled and everybody is a victim. Something doesn't go your way? Don't adapt or bother with introspection - claim victimhood, instead! Nothing is ever your fault, it's they who are...

"...one of the goodiest book..."

As I've mentioned on my blog  - I love the subways. Every time I ride it - it's an experience. There's always something to see, something to hear, someone to smell. From mere gadget jealousy, to people reading ghetto literature, to an obese female eating McDonalds' fries out of a paper bag while unwittingly dropping a few into her substantial cleavage. Sorry, no link for the last one, but trust me , that was observed on the R line last week. She definately discovered a tasty snack that was still warm, when she got home. 

As for today, it's another case of ghetto literature. Saw an older black lady read Around the Way Girls 3 on the Hoboken bound PATH. So, is this book worth reading, you ask...

Acording to an amazon reviewer:

The author can not keep it no real than what it is. Thats one of the goodiest book I have read this year.

Yes, that good!

Massacre at Virginia Tech

Over thirty people are dead, because a nut with a gun flipped out over his girflriend and went on a rampage at the Virginia Tech's campus. I am not going to rehash the details, you can follow the link or go to you favorite news site - there's no shortage of coverage. What I will comment on, however, is the instant knee jerk reaction by many on variuos forums and blogs calling for tougher gun control and other nonsense of that sort.

To think that changing a law would've stopped this nut is naive to say the least. This article comes off as a bad joke, untill you see that its from January :

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.

House Bill 1572 didn't get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

The mind boggles.  Guns are outlawed on campuses. How the hell did this nut show up with a gun? Simply does not make sense! Maybe someone forgot to tell him about the law, though I am pretty sure he had to know that murder was illegal as well.

And while we are walking down that road, let's revoke all car thiefs' licenses to drive. Think about it - if they don't have a a driving license - they can't drive. If they can't drive - they can't steal cars!

Bingo! That's how good I am. Problem solved.

On a serious note, the following paragraph, from that very same article, made me shudder:

Last spring a Virginia Tech student was disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, despite having a concealed handgun permit. Some gun owners questioned the university's authority, while the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police came out against the presence of guns on campus.

That's what happens when you put these feel good measures in place where even law obiding citizens are not allowed to carry weapons. You give criminals the monopoly on firepower.

I'll leave you with this:

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

 

Mark Steyn on the Imus fiasco

So I don't know whether calling the Rutgers basketball ladies "nappy-headed hos" is a mean old white guy's racist slur or an artful parodic jest on the way black women are talked about by black men -- or at least by the ones on the record charts. After all, the only way mean old white folks know the expressions "nappy" or "ho" is because they heard 'em from hip young black folks. Indeed, one could argue it's a tribute to how non-racist America is that an elderly Caucasian would wish to talk like a gangsta rapper. What was it Martin Luther King dreamed of? A nation where men would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their characterizations?

Alas, it's not that simple. Apparently, when two hip-hoppers are up on stage doing their "Who was that ho I saw you with last night?"/"That was no ho, that was my bitch" shtick, they're just keepin' it real. When a white guy does it, he's just keepin' it real unlikely he'll find gainful employment again. Unless, of course, the networks are now proposing to apply the Imus standard to all performers, in which case the Grammy Awards will last 10 minutes (Best Liner Notes on a Polka Album and Best Tony Bennett Celebrity Duets CD of the Last Two Months).

Read the whole thing.

A Dutch police station

A Dutch police station trying to help Muslim detainees face Mecca for their prayers painted arrows in cells pointing in the wrong direction.

The Segbroek police station in The Hague borrowed the idea of putting compass marks on ceilings from an Amsterdam hotel, the Dutch daily De Telegraaf reported on Friday.

     Muslims pray five times a day, facing east in the direction of Mecca. But the arrows in Segbroek pointed west.

     "This is a really gigantic, stupid blunder," a police spokesman told the De Telegraaf.

     "The faulty compass marks have been immediately corrected. It is a mystery for us how this could have possibly happened".

A mystery indeed! Another mysery is who's going to get their head hacked off for this gaffe...

Jokers at Pravda

In a clear sign of its intent to reign in dissident American media personalities, and their growing influence in American culture, US War Leaders this past week launched an unprecedented attack upon one of their most politically 'connected', and legendary, radio hosts named Don Imus after his threats to release information relating to the September 11, 2001 attacks upon that country. According to European reports of the events surrounding Don Imus that have gripped the United States this past week, it was during an interview with another American media personality, Tim Russert, who is the host of a television programme frequently used by US War Leaders, wherein while decrying the state of care being given to American War wounded stated, "So those bastards want to keep these boys [in reference to US Soldiers] secret? Let's see how they like it if I start talking about their [in reference to US War Leaders] secrets, starting with 9/11."

A rather fascinating claim coming out of the russian rag Pravda and one can expect it to end up all over conspiracy blogs and forums.  The reality is  that the attacks on Don Imus did not come from the "US War Leaders", but from the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, both of whom, incidently, happen to oppose the "US War Leaders".  Russians, it seems, still haven't figured out that the US government does not control the media. The most hilarious manifestation of that phenomena was Putin's statement that Bush is the one who fired Dan Rather.