Idiots for the weekend: a Darwin Awards recipient and one close to winning

No, I'm not talking about the leftist troll Washboard (but check that out for his latest idiocy and cowardice over at my friend Karol's blog). First up:

A woman who realized she was on the wrong Brooklyn subway platform Saturday tried to cross the tracks to the other side - only to be hit by an oncoming train, police said.

Shatonia Spencer, 23, died instantly when she was struck by a Q train pulling into the Prospect Park station, police said.

Upon entering the underground station at Ocean Ave. and Lincoln Place at 5:30 a.m., Spencer mistakenly walked to the northbound platform, police said.

But instead of crossing over to the southbound side, Spencer hopped down to the track bed and then tried to climb up to the southbound platform, police said.

She was attempting to scale the steep platform wall when the train arrived in the station, police said.

The only thing I find sad about such idiots is that they screw up transportation (subway service has to be stopped, roads have to be closed) for everyone else. In this particular instance, my only regret is that though her job was paid for by taxpayers, the city's just going to hire someone new, so it won't save taxpayers any money.

Was that cold for me to say? If so, then why should I express any sympathy for such a complete idiot? Maybe her boss will see the silver lining: someone this unbelievably stupid shouldn't be working for him, so now he doesn't have to worry about firing her.

Even worse are when these stupid people take others with them. At a gas station this evening, a middle-aged bitch at a gas station pulled up next to us, continuing to puff away on her cigarette. She stayed in her car for whatever reason, but her window was still down, so all it would have taken was a flying piece of hot ash... So I quickly finished, hopped in the car and said to my wife, "Let's get the hell out of here."

I thought about going inside to complain to the attendant, but 1) even the owner could do no more than call the police, who'd arrive far too late; and 2) we could have found ourselves trapped inside as the pumps successively turned into fireballs. If we had reported her license plate to the police, she could have denied it.

This woman was lucky. Others are not, and God save us from them.

Where was the "humanity" when this murderer killed an innocent human being?

Ronnie Gardner: may you suffer horribly until your last breaths, then rot in hell for all eternity, you damned sonofabitch. For what you did, you deserve to have sulfuric acid pumped into your veins.

Only government researchers could be so stupid as to study rats in the subway

What could be more stating the obvious?

NEW YORK — Rats have infested multiple subway lines in lower Manhattan and often live right in the station walls, according to a rodent expert overseeing what officials say is a new approach to battling rats in the nation's largest subway system.

"We're actually trying to measure what the factors are directly that cause rats to take advantage of certain stations and not others, so we're putting some science into this," said Robert Corrigan, a health department senior research scientist leading the effort.

So how much has this dimwit Corrigan been paid, when Edward Estrella gave the answer for free? Food. Anyone who takes the subway knows that people deliberately throw garbage onto the tracks, and they drop food all over. Now we know about a third factor that's simple disgusting: garbage bags left for days at a time.

Not in this article is that the study also wondered why rats would live in the subway, as opposed to parks and other areas that are more suitable. Here's my free answer: the rats don't know about open spaces and don't need to, because they're living their entire lives in the subway with a steady supply of food.

Here's a novel suggestion: instead of more poison traps, how about taking those MTA workers loafing around in vests and booths and assigning them to take the garbage out, and then sealing up the walls? Rats living inside will have no way to get out and will eventually die, and appropriate materials will contain the decay.

In his marvelous autobiography "An American Doctor's Odyssey," Dr. Victor Heiser wrote about efforts to prevent rats from going from a ship to the docks. The rat is an amazing swimmer, after all, so they'd jump off one ship, swim to a pier, then climb up the wooden supports and onto the docks. The answer was to affix large, thin sheets of metal on the underside of the piers, which were too smooth for rats to climb through. Relatedly, thin sheets of aluminum can be used to seal walls in these "garbage storerooms." Aluminum is plentiful, light, and highly resistant to corrosion. It would need only be thick enough that rats couldn't gnaw through. If the edges are fit snugly (say, an inch deep) into the ceilings, floors and side walls, there would be no cracks for rats to squeeze through. A few coats of flat paint, and presto.

No charge for that, MTA. It took more time to write that out than to think about it.

The boys from Brazil

May you keep kicking ass, o mighty ones.

At the same time, though, I can't help but fear the defeated North Koreans will return home for labor camps or execution. It's time to defect.

Really, Yahoo, can't your writers be bothered to know what they're writing about?

The error is self-evident to any fan of the show:



And if that weren't enough, the slideshow says, "The show premiered after Super Bowl XVII in 1983 and stayed in the top 10 rated shows on television for its first three seasons. Ratings took a dive in season four, and in 1986 the series was canceled midway through its fifth season."