A heartbeat away

Biden: “There’s no reason the nation of Africa can’t [succeed]; simply no reason.”

Except, perhaps, because no such nation exists, but don’t tell poor Joe that.

God’s mysterious ways revealed

Igor and his savior

Turns out there is a reason for Justin Bieber to be on this planet: he just saved a Russian named “Igor” (of course) from a bear mauling. But now that he’s served his purpose, perhaps he’ll do us the favor of shuffling off this mortal coil.

Even bears can’t stand Justin Bieber’s music.

A fisherman in Russia was being attacked by a brown bear and escaped death when his Justin Bieber ringtone went off and sent the beast fleeing into the forest.

Igor Vorozhbitsyn was heading to a local fishing spot in northern Russia’s Yakutia Republic when the Bieber-hating bear suddenly appeared and pounced on him, Central European News reports.

The 42-year-old was saved when Bieber’s popular hit song “Baby” started playing on his phone.

“I couldn’t believe my luck when the phone went off and he fled,” Vorozhbitsyn said.

“I know that sort of ringtone isn’t to everyone’s taste, but my granddaughter loaded it onto my phone for a joke.”

 

And another $2 million house goes to contract

 

553 North Street

553 North Street, 2 acres, 1972 construction, asking $1.995 million. See my comment on 9 Frontier.

And perhaps, following the Peter Principle, Tesei could become a CNN reporter – there’s probably a vacancy opening up

 

Arwa Damon -wipe the vomit off her and she cleans up good

Drunken CNN reporter  bites EMS responders trying to help her, blames it on too much heat, not enough food. Uh huh.

The State Department launched an investigation after a foreign ​correspondent ​for CNN ​allegedly bit two medical workers​ ​during a drunken fit at the US Embassy​ in Baghdad​.

Senior international correspondent A​rwa Damon was said to be intoxicated and abusive to medics stationed on the grounds of the embassy, and bit both EMTs on their forearms as they tried to treat her on July 19, ​according to a $2 million lawsuit​ they filed against Damon and CNN in Manhattan on Monday​.

The papers say Damon, 36, bit EMT​​s Tracy Lamar and Charles Simons as they tried to help her, before threatening them and saying she was a “major reporter for CNN.” The suit claims CNN hired Damon knowing she “has a history of becoming intoxicated and then abusive,” and a “penchant for violence even when sober.”

A source tells Page Six, “The State Department prepared a report on the incident, which was sent to CNN.” But Damon continued working for the network, where we’re told she is well-regarded.

Page Six can also reveal a sobered-up Damon later wrote a groveling apology to US Embassy staff about her “disastrous behavior,” which she claims she doesn’t fully remember.

She said in an e-mail: “It’s been an extremely stressful time, I was exhausted, I had not had proper food all day and clearly miscalculated how my body would handle the alcohol consumed … Needless to say, I am utterly mortified and take full responsibility for my actions, which are inexcusable.”

She added, “I am being filled in on the details of my behavior. I am beyond embarrassed. My actions and words were entirely out of my character, and I hope that everyone can at some point forgive me.”

UPDATE: Arwa Damon has returned from Baghdad and is now in Pittsburg.

Terrific – he’s now free to come here and replace Peter Tesei

 

Don’t let his goofy look fool you – he’s actually already 12, and clearly past his shelf life

Five-year-old mayor loses reelection bid in Minnesota.

Who is playing games with our MLS data?

 

185 Old Mill Road – under contract, unless it isn’t, again

185 Old Mill Road ($1.395)  is reported as “pending”, today, and isn’t that nice; it’s been for sale for 819 days, and I’m sure the owners and David Ogilvy, listing broker, are both relieved that an end is in sight.

But here’s the odd thing: I was sure I’d seen this reported as pending before, but according to our MLS records, that never happened. So I checked the only reliable source I trust, For What it’s Worth, and lo, I reported that this was pending on April 9th of this year. Where did that pending contract go to and, far more important to the question of the integrity of the Greenwich Association of Realtors, who made it disappear, and who allowed that to happen?

You wonder why the GAR has eliminated public access to real estate sales? This is one of the reasons why.

The “Official” history of 185 Old Mill Road, as doctored by the Greenwich Association of Realtors

 

Cos Cob contract

 

9 Frontier Lane

9 Frontier Road, $1.995 million. Plain vanilla, in an unobjectionable way, and about what you can expect in the $2 million range.

As an aside, I hadn’t realized that this stretch of Cat Rock/Cognewaugh was the “frontier” back in 1967, but developers have always been creative when naming their creations.

Bidding war on Rockwood Lane

83 Rockwood Lane

Well, a modest bidding war, but 83 Rockwood Lane asked for $1.995 and got $2 million, indicating that there were at least two people who wanted it. It’s just 1.27 acres in the R-2 zone, which severely restricts its FAR value (5,000 vs. 7,840 for a full-two-acres), but a 5,000 sq.ft. home isn’t quite a hovel, so I’d go with this being a land sale, rather than a renovation of this ’50s ranch. Either way, the house contributed little or nothing to the price.

No open houses to report on today

Railroad Avenue, 10:00 AM

Unless you’re in Nantucket, which I’m not.

(UPDATE) Too funny: I played the ‘whatever happened to” search with Jonathan King, composer singer of “Gone to the Moon”, and it turns out he was sentenced in 2001 to 7-years imprisonment for molesting young boys. Checking the video,that’s not too surprising.

Hey, it was just a prop; she didn’t actually mean she supports the military

 

She looks more like a stewardess than a killer Kraut, but it’s the (non) thought that counts.

Female* Democrat on House Veterans Affairs Committee uses babe in Luftwaffe costume to dress up her fundraiser flyer.

Whatever.

 

* I mention her sex only because ad features women in every photo.

As government fails, the free market advances

 

Nancy Pelosi greets new voters

British columnist lauds effort of the man who built a private toll road to bypass the broken road government can’t fix (an effort which, two days ago, I wrote about here) and notes other instances where private citizens have stepped in to solve problems their government won’t.

Here in the United States, where the government has already surrendered our borders, we are rapidly approaching the point where all our tax money will be spent on transfer payments, from welfare to municipal union pension funds, and the basic government services: “basic”, because they were the desired services free citizens voluntarily, and temporarily, surrendered certain rights to government to address, will disappear. When they do, the government will be serving no purpose except to coerce and rob the people. That should produce some interesting results.

From the column:

Thankfully, there are encouraging signs that Mr Watts may not be alone, that our spirit of defiance and perseverance may be re-emerging — chiefly, I might say, through the efforts of the middle-aged and the elderly.

Take retired grandmother Margo Kirk, for example. Fed up with a lack of bus services to and from her Dorset village two years ago, Mrs Kirk, 63, decided to start her own.

Just five months later, the community of Milborne St Andrew had a new service called Bus2Go.

People in Tiverton, Devon, have been repairing potholes themselves after becoming fed up with a bumpy road that damaged their vehicles.

It might sound daunting at first, but Collipriest Lane was easily improved after 16 households donated £10 each to buy asphalt to patch potholes caused by heavy traffic.

In Highgate, North London, residents recently employed their own private security firm to patrol their streets after a spate of break-ins. Having asked police for more patrols to no avail, those living in Sheldon Avenue and Stormont Road decided to pay for a private firm to patrol their streets in a security van.

Police have now had to admit that there has been a sharp fall in burglaries and vehicle crime in the area since the patrol was set up.

From little acorns, mighty oaks grow.

 

This is not going to please AJ

 

AJ and friend prepare to duck under the cone of silence

Now they can read human speech by interpreting sound vibrations, through tinfoil.

Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag photographed from 15 feet away through soundproof glass.

In other experiments, they extracted useful audio signals from videos of aluminum foil, the surface of a glass of water, and even the leaves of a potted plant. The researchers will present their findings in a paper at this year’s Siggraph, the premier computer graphics conference.

“When sound hits an object, it causes the object to vibrate,” says Abe Davis, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and first author on the new paper. “The motion of this vibration creates a very subtle visual signal that’s usually invisible to the naked eye. People didn’t realize that this information was there.”

Back to the leadfoil – lined beaver den hutch, AJ, fast!