We’ve got some odds ‘n’ ends to cover this morning, so let’s get started.
Our story yesterday (HERE) about the Minnesota utility company drilling through sewer pipes and laying the gas line through them, only to have plumbers’ augers chop them into big leaks, brought an email from one of our long-time readers. Joe J. sent this photo from a similar incident in Cambridge, Ohio, four years ago that destroyed three homes and left two people badly injured.
I don’t know for certain, but from looking at the pictures and reading of the recent incident in St. Paul, it looks to me like the utilities are using that flexible gaspipe which is nothing more than a reinforced hose. We ran a short series of articles early last year (HERE and click on the links in the article for more) about that stuff (CSST – Corrugated Stainless Steel Tubing) in the mid-west taking lightning strikes to ground and failing, filling people’s basements with flaming gas leaks. That’s a bad selection of product, if you ask me. Is it really that important to save some money on installation costs that they are willing to sacrifice so many homes and livlihoods?
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There has been a lot of news over the past 6 months about the dubious hiring practices of a few big-city fire departments, most notably Cincinnati, Pittsbugh, and Memphis. Dave Statter at STATter911 has been following the Memphis situation closely and has an update on the repeat-felon on their roster. They finally fired the toad, but you have to read yesterday’s Quick Takes (HERE). Get this…. Memphis’ slow-to-learn fire chief says that he’s aware there are firefighters with criminal records, and that he’s not against hiring felons in the future. What a schmoe. Just the kind of people that you want wandering around your house unsupervised while you are gone.
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Back in October we reported HERE about some tv self-help guru who set up a phony “sweat lodge” and charged a bunch of New-age Yuppies $9,695 to “experience a new technologically-enhanced form of meditation that creates new neurological pathways.” The treatment killed three of them and sent another 18 to the hospital with serious, and some near-fatal, injuries after packing 60 people into his makeshift tent.
Yesterday James Arthur Ray was arrested at his lawyer’s office in Prescott, Arizona, and charged with three counts of manslaughter. He is being held under $5 million bond and will appear in court later today. You can read the details of yesterday’s action HERE.
It’s time to get this equipment checked out now. I am ready for some more coffee, so I’ll slip back to the kitchen and get another pot started. See you back in the day room in a little while.
