This is supposed to be a news story?!?

Japan's Red Cross has collected more than $1 billion in the first three weeks after the massive earthquake and tsunami but has yet to distribute any funds directly to victims

It would never have occurred to me that some people would expect the primary use of that money to be cash handouts (their words), and that this would be so important that it would be the leading complaint in a story that goes on to mention the 12,000 dead, 15,000 missing, and 160,000 living in temporary shelters.

Silly me, I thought you’d want to spend that money in an organized fashion on things like food, water, shelter, portable generators, medical care, search and rescue, etc. The Red Cross does give out cash, but that isn’t all they do, and it isn’t what they do first. Apparently media foolishness is not limited to hysterical screeds about nuclear armageddon.

(Now, I have no objection to money being given to the folks whose homes, lives, and families were destroyed. If that’s the best way to help them right now, then by all means give them the money. But how much does a journalist in LA know about helping people?)

I honestly don’t know what to think about the Foothill College email newsletter leading off with a reassurance from the Santa Clara County Health Officer that there is currently no health threat from nuclear fallout here.

It is of course so artlessly phrased as to imply that Japan is now full of radioactive mutants wading knee-deep in the stuff.

[Update: Geiger counters have sold out in Paris. No, seriously.]

We hates it.

Worse than we hates the mindless anti-nuke activists going “see? see?” and the morons from Left, Right, Center, and Alpha Centauri grinding their favorite axe and babbling about why Japan “deserved” this. Not that I plan to forget who signed their names to hatred that would shame a paid union agitator, I’m just busy reviling the news media hysteria peddlers at the moment.

This is not “what democracy looks like”, this is what a temper tantrum looks like. If you wanted democracy, you should have spent the last three weeks hounding your senators to stop hiding out in hotels and go back to their jobs.

Words fail me. Windmills. Solar panels. Greenhouses. Only people with advanced degrees could come up with such a stupid bridge design.

(via Gizmodo, whose writer seems to be about as technically adept as the designers themselves)

Looking through the messages that were trapped by my spam filters, I found an odd one today. At first glance, it was very spammy:

1. Sent to username johngreely at my domain jgreely.com, something I have never, ever used.
2. Supposedly from a travel agency in the UK.
3. Booking a room at a Four Seasons Country Club in Portugal, 2 adults, no children, checkin date today.
4. Listing a home address for me in Ireland.
5. With a "click here to complete your payment" link at the bottom of the invoice.

Except, the agency seems to really exist, and all of the links in the message went to their site, and there really is a Jigginstown in Naas, County Kildare. To ice the cake, a search of the Irish Times family notices page turns up engagements for both the son and the daughter of John and June Greely, of Jigginstown, Naas.

So, enjoy your vacation, folks, and I hope the misdirected email didn’t screw up your booking.

[Update: Not true. So the only thing that was really news in those leaked cables turns out to be no news, hopefully hastening the day when both Assange and Moore fade into well-deserved obscurity.]

Best Wikileaks exposure yet: even Cuba thinks Michael Moore writes bad propaganda.

Perhaps I should have titled this one “When attention whores attack…each other!”.

How well do those red-light auto-ticketing cameras work? This well (emphasis added):

"On top of this, many tickets are never paid, partly because failure to do so does not result in a suspension of license but also because 67 percent of tickets were mailed to people making legal right turns on red."