Now this is just sick: somebody hid a gun inside a teddy bear, then mysteriously gave it away to a little kid, who was caught with it on an airplane.

I feel terrible, of course, for the victims and their families in today’s Santa Monica tragedy. The overused word “senseless” comes to mind, and feels totally appropriate in this case.

I also feel terrible, just terrible, for this guy:

His name is George Russell Weller (the one on the right), and he’s the 86-year-old Santa Monica resident who sped through a crowded market at somewhere between 60 and 80 miles per hour, apparently because he accidentally put his foot on the wrong pedal and then, presumably, just sort of froze. Eight people died. Imagine having to live with that.

This will inevitably renew the debate over how readily, and under what circumstances, the government should take away old people’s driver’s licenses — part of the inevitable, and inevitably doomed, cry of “let us make sure this never happens again” that arises after every tragedy. (My dad calls this Gnosticism. I’m not sure if the term is accurate or not, but the concept is certainly a real one.)

The thing is, I’m not sure there’s a good solution to this problem. It seems fairly obvious — now — that George Russell Weller should not have been driving a car. But the fact is, he passed a vision test a few years ago, and he had no known medical problems that contributed to this accident. From what I’ve read, it seems the government had no reason, until this happened, to believe that it should not be allowing Weller behind the wheel of a car. And I, at least, can’t imagine what sort of test or procedure could be instituted that would have allowed them to predict this. How can you test people to determine whether they might freeze up at the most inopportune of moments while driving? I don’t think it can be done.

Here, by the way, is the Los Angeles Times article from which I got most of my information. (I think you have to register with their site in order to read it.)

May the victims rest in peace.

In light of the recent Bastille Day debate on this blog, as well as my mom’s reflections on being a Francophile converting to Judaism, I thought I’d link to this report on anti-Semitism in France for everyone’s edification. (The article was published in yesterday’s Washington Post and referenced this evening on InstaPundit.)

The subject of this post, by the way, is a reference to a line in a song called National Brotherhood Week by the brilliant political satirist Tom Lehrer:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.

UPDATE: The above was automatically e-mailed to the website. (I manually deleted the email address info, public knowledge of which would be a major security breach for my blog.) And, from now on, all of CNN’s e-mail breaking news alerts will be automatically e-mailed to the site, too.

The text below, telling you to visit CNN for more and providing you with a link to CNN’s site, is also automatic. I figure that way, CNN is unlikely to sue me for making use of their breaking-news service in this way, since I’m sending traffic to their site for free. :)

Becky at Mighty Taco.

At least eight people were killed, and dozens were injured, when a car plowed into a crowd of people in Santa Monica today.

I’m on the ground in B-lo.

I’m on board. Shuffling off to Buffalo!

All packed up and ready to go to Buffalo… and maybe Phoenix (though the weather there is not a selling point; I believe the high temp yesterday exceeded the high in Baghdad. Seriously.) My flight to Buffalo leaves JFK at 9:30 AM Wed., so good nite now:)

Yesterday Toby met Ugmo (who has actually been renamed “Froggy”) and Ugmo/Froggy’s mom, Tabby. Based on what Toby’s blogged about the cats’ encounter, it was, um, well, a bit tense. Little does Toby know she might be going on a road trip with these cats soon…

Well, actually, Toby does seem to be on to something:

The humans seemed awfully interested in how we got along, which makes me suspect that a conspiracy is afoot. I’ll keep you posted.

Pat Robertson is praying for a more conservative Supreme Court. He wants God to “put it in the minds of…three [liberal] judges that the time has come to retire.” Hmm… wouldn’t that be a violation of separation of powers? :)

I suppose there might be something, somewhere on earth, more demoralizing than standing in a temp-agency office as a college graduate (a cum laude graduate, no less, from a good school), having just passed various typing and software and other miscellaneous “tests” with flying colors, and being told that $9 per hour might be asking too much.

Yeah, there’s probably something more demoralizing than that. But I can’t think of it at the moment.

Going to Buffalo (I’m leaving by plane tomorrow), and maybe Arizona (I might be leaving by car, with Becky and hopefully Shannon, late next week), doesn’t make economic or practical sense — I’ll admit that off the top — but I think I really do need the break. I need to recover from the frustration of my first six weeks of job searching, fine-tune my strategy and approach and attitude, and come back at the beginning of August rearing to go, with “failure is not an option” as my new motto. (My backup motto: “Would you like fries with that?”)

Sigh.

UPDATE: Oh, by the way, my computer is broken again. Woohoo.

The Associated Press reports:

Hurricane Claudette sloshed ashore on the Texas Gulf Coast on Tuesday, barely at hurricane strength but still powerful enough to peel off roofs, knock out power and flood low-lying areas. …

“The windows are flexing, it’s howling and I’m wondering what … I’m doing here,” Ed Conaway said at the power plant, just north of where Claudette’s eye made landfall.

Heh. Good question, Ed.

But luckily, Claudette was only a very minimal hurricanes. The biggest problem with storms of this strength is always the rain, not the wind. Thus far, no deaths or injuries have been reported.

Here’s a 12-hour visible satellite loop of Claudette making landfall (1.38 MB, animated GIF). The first few images are dark, because the sun hadn’t risen yet.

Perhaps unsuprisingly, my dad, in his first-ever blog posts (#1 and #2), has started doing something he does quite frequently in real life as well: quoting Irish song lyrics. (And we love him for it.) Inspired by this, I can’t resist quoting a few lines from one of my personal favorites, “Johnson’s Motor Car.”

This particular ditty of Irish resistance recalls an episode in which some Irish Catholic rebels (these days we’d call them “terrorists”) tricked a Protestant doctor, Dr. Johnson, into becoming the victim of a rather elaborate carjacking. The IRA boys sent a telegram to Dr. Johnson, telling him of a supposed medical emergency that required his attention. The road from Johnson’s office to the site of the “emergency” just happened to pass over a railway bridge where a bunch of the rebels were lying in wait. The good doctor fell for the bait, of course, leading to my favorite verse in the song, and indeed one of my favorite lines in the whole genre of Irish rebel songs:

But when he got to the Railway Bridge, the rebels he saw there.
Old Johnson knew the game was up, for at him they did stare.
He said, “I have a permit to travel near and far.”
“To hell with your English permit! We want your motor car!”

Hee hee.

I can type 91 words per minute. Woo hoo.