Taco Truck Bust Saves New York City

I read this and I thought - what an awesome display of manpower and focused management. They got EIGHT cops sitting up there looking at this truck ALL morning? Who's driving this truck, Dillinger? Too much.

The woman who owns the truck, she doesn't speak English, they give her a $55 ticket, and I can totally relate, she goes, "okay, fuck it, I still got 45 minutes." There is not a man alive who is a native of New York City that would dispute this logic or reasoning, IN ANY LANGUAGE.

And this taco truck is "unfairly competing" with businesses up there? On the Upper East Side? Can I call my Philadelphia lawyer? You're kidding, right? Guy walks by a Zagat's restaurant and goes, "to hell with this, I'm getting a taco." COME ON.

Ordinarily I would suggest a rally or something but I'm tired. Everybody who reads this should be pissed off and drive over and buy a taco. Or better yet, drive over there and go into a restaurant and go, "hey, where's the taco truck?"

It wasn't the rain that spoiled Paty's Taco Truck's first day back on the Upper East Side. It was the police.

The NYPD towed the food truck just after 1 p.m. on Tuesday in the midst of a special $1 taco deal that was meant to commemorate Paty's return to 86th Street and Lexington Avenue.

The taco truck, which has built a loyal following on the Upper East Side corner over the last two years, was ousted from the neighborhood more than a month ago, following a ticketing blitz that culminated in the arrest of the taco truck founder’s son, Alberto Loera, and the truck's towing.

The battle continued on Tuesday.

"They told us we had to move or we'd be towed," Loera explained as the cops rigged the food truck to the tow truck.

They gave Paty's truck a $55 summons saying it was not allowed to sell merchandise from a metered spot, Loera said. His mother, Patricia Monroy, who does not speak English, made the ultimate decision to stay put once her family translated what the cops were saying.

"My mother felt like she was not breaking the law," Loera said. "We still had 45 minutes on the meter."

Roughly eight officers in a police van had been monitoring Paty's the entire morning, said Sean Basinski, director of the Street Vendor Project, an advocacy group based at the Urban Justice Center.

Loera had reached out to the Street Vendor Project after his Nov. 29 arrest, and members of the organization joined Paty's for Tuesday's return to raise awareness on issues vendors face: harassment from law enforcement and city ofices, a harsh ticketing system and excessive punishment and regulations confusing to vendors and cops alike.

But no one anticipated the towing.

Paty's had faced the ire of several residents on Community Board 8, who complain about food trucks in the area. They worry the trucks are illegally hogging metered parking spots and that they are unfairly competing with struggling brick-and-mortar stores.

[DNAinfo.com]

Dead Fetuses: Not Just for Stem Cells Anymore

Disappointed with your rabbit's foot and your four-leaf clover? Well, the Captain has just the ticket for you. All you need to do is knock your wife up, chop her into pieces with an axe, then hang your dead, dried, unborn child around your neck on a string.

A MAN told police he murdered his pregnant wife with an axe because he wanted the fetus to make a lucky charm which might help him win the lottery.

The 38-year-old was arrested a day after after allegedly luring his wife, aged 24, into the forest of northeastern Xieng Khuang province on January 3 and killing her with an axe blow to the back, the Vientiane Times reported.

[...]

Police told the state-linked newspaper that the man confessed he planned to use the three-month old fetus to produce a "louk lord", a mystical object which, according to local legend, can give its owner great power and fortune.

[...]

The suspect said he had heard that if he "produced a 'louk lord' he would be able to ask the ghosts for lucky lottery numbers," Khamsouk added.

"Or he could sell the 'louk lord' at an extremely high price."

[Herald Sun]

Valet Villain

Next time your wife is about to give birth and you think to yourself, "ah, she can drive herself to the hospital, I'm sure they've got valet parking," think again.

A pregnant woman rushing into Lowell General Hospital’s emergency room handed her keys to a seemingly helpful man who said he was the valet and offered to park her car.

Only one problem, cops said. Lowell General doesn’t have valet service.

[...]

A man clad in what appeared to be a uniform shirt walked out of the ER as the woman arrived, claiming to be the hospital’s valet. He told her she could not park in that spot, but that he would gladly take her keys and move the car for her. Then came the bad news.

“During the admission process, she was told they don’t have a valet there,” [Lowell police Capt. Kelly] Richardson said.

[...]

The hospital is cooperating with police to try to track down the heartless con man, described only as a heavy-set white man with dark hair.

[Boston Herald]

Loyal to the Grave

The Captain hopes you have some Kleenex handy. Sniff.

A dog, "Leao", sits for a second consecutive day, next to the grave of her owner, Cristina Maria Cesario Santana, who died in the week's catastrophic landslides in Brazil, at the cemetery in Teresopolis, near Rio de Janiero, on Jan. 15. Brazilians braced for more rain Saturday, fearing further landslides after walls of muddy water tore through towns and claimed some 550 lives in the country's worst flood disaster on record.

[MSNBC]

"Sarah Palin's Comin' South to Hunt Some Skunk"

[Andrew Sullivan]

California Screwed, But Until Apocalypse It's Still Nice

If you've been reading the newspaper lately, you've seen the articles about California going broke. Of course, most Daily Downers readers just get their news here, so you don't have to read the paper (we read it for you), but in case you have read a paper lately there was probably something bad about California in it.

When I was a kid, everybody was afraid of earthquakes and people would say California was going to fall into the ocean someday. When I went to California, I thought it was so beautiful that people just made up these stories to keep guys like me out.

When you go out in California, people say "hello" to you. They do it on the street too. Bunch of freaks, right? But it's pretty cool. Hopefully they will emerge from this new onslaught intact.

Until I see the qualifications of the 100 "scientists" involved I'm going to assume that this is bunk, because everyone knows there is no such thing as global warming, except for that kook Al Gore. But Daily Downers readers can decide for themselves because that's what we're all about here. We give you the power to see right through the news, or you could just accept it at face value. I really don't care, since I'm busy getting ready for the disaster I KNOW is coming (zombies and thinking dogs).

A group of more than 100 scientists and experts say in a new report that California faces the risk of a massive "superstorm" that could flood a quarter of the state's homes and cause $300 billion to $400 billion in damage. Researchers point out that the potential scale of destruction in this storm scenario is four or five times the amount of damage that could be wrought by a major earthquake.

It sounds like the plot of an apocalyptic action movie, but scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey warned federal and state emergency officials that California's geological history shows such "superstorms" have happened in the past, and should be added to the long list of natural disasters to worry about in the Golden State.

The threat of a cataclysmic California storm has been dormant for the past 150 years. Geological Survey director Marcia K. McNutt told the New York Times that a 300-mile stretch of the Central Valley was inundated from 1861-62. The floods were so bad that the state capital had to be moved to San Francisco, and Governor Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his own inauguration, the report notes. Even larger storms happened in past centuries, over the dates 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605, according to geological evidence.

The risk is gathering momentum now, scientists say, due to rising temperatures in the atmosphere, which has generally made weather patterns more volatile.

The scientists built a model that showed a storm could last for more than 40 days and dump 10 feet of water on the state. The storm would be goaded on by an "atmospheric river" that would move water "at the same rate as 50 Mississippis discharging water into the Gulf of Mexico," according to the AP. Winds could reach 125 miles per hour, and landslides could compound the damage, the report notes.

Such a superstorm is hypothetical but not improbable, climate researchers warn. "We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes," Geological Survey scientist Lucy Jones said in a press release.

Federal and state emergency management officials convened a conference about emergency preparations for possible superstorms last week.

[Associated Press]

Happy Blue Monday, Everyone

If you woke up this morning feeling especially gloomy, hopeless and defeated, you are not alone. Science tells us that today (the third Monday in January) is officially the most depressing day of the year! So go ahead and weep a little, it's OK.

"Blue Monday" ... is an idea coined in 2005 by psychologist Cliff Arnall, a former part-time lecturer at Cardiff University in Wales.

"I was asked a number of years ago if I could come up with what I thought was the most depressing day of the year. And I thought that was a really good challenge and I was curious to see what day that would be," Arnall told CTV's Canada AM from Brecon, Wales on Monday.

Arnall came up with a bit of a convoluted formula to show that the third Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year.

That's the day, he reasoned, when the lousy weather conspires with our holiday bills and our depression over our failed New Year's resolutions to make this day downright awful.

If the cold and cloudy weather weren't enough to make us blue, many of us are realizing today that we really couldn't afford all those things we bought ahead of Christmas. Then, there's those New Year's resolutions we made that have fallen by the wayside or been outright abandoned.

"Motivational levels also tend to be quite low at this time of year," Arnall explained. "You've got something called the ‘hibernation effect,' when people tend to be more lethargic, they eat more than they really need."

Put it all together and you've got the most depressing day of the year.

[CTV Calgary]

Fighting Fire with Bullets

Believe it or not, there are a few very rare problems that cannot be solved with an onslaught of gunfire.

NORTH KNOXVILLE - Stephen Forthman shoots first and asks questions later. He wears a shirt proudly displaying the words "I don't dial 911" next to a picture of a hand gripping a sixshooter. When it comes time to contact local emergency services for assistance, he'd rather just shoot at the problem until it goes away - even when the problem is his own home being on fire.

[...]

"At first I didn't even notice the fire," said neighbor Tricia Perkinson. "I heard gunshots coming from across the street. When I looked outside, I saw Steve in his front yard waving a gun at the house. He was yelling obscenities and just shooting. He was saying, 'You better get out of here you bleeping bleep.' I thought he had lost his mind. Then I saw the smoke."

"When we arrived at the scene, the house was completely engulfed in flames," said firefighter Daniel Cummings. "Outside, the homeowner was shouting and firing a semiautomatic pistol into the fire."

[...]

This isn't the first time Forthman has refused to dial 911. In 2004, Forthman tried to shoot himself in the torso after having chest pains. His brother-in-law wrestled a rifle away from Forthman and called an ambulance.

[FireEngineering.com]

Acid Spill Ruins Otherwise Picturesque Area

If there's one thing that always cheers me up it's a story about boatloads of acid. The human race has shown its flaws in handling almost everything, from nuclear power to oil rigs, and the thought of an accident where it's ONLY a boatload of acid is, in a way, a relief. Also the fact that it's in Germany is alright, but I bet when the acid leaks out, it goes straight down the river in a jetstream and will probably end up destroying Biloxi.

I love the part where they need an expert to explain that the acid could leak out and they actually have no control over anything. Duh hey, really governor? This Bud's for you.

But the really good part here is, it happened in a mythic place. Where the maiden of Loreley sung her song, and horny sailors plowed their ships into the rocks trying to follow it. What a bitch. Maybe the maiden still sings? And this acid boat captain heard it? Reminds me of another Zeppelin song. "Hammer of the Gods," right? Cool.

So hats off to the acid bath to come! Could have been worse.

A tanker loaded with sulfuric acid capsized on the Rhine river in Germany on Thursday, and special cranes and more than 100 rescuers struggled to right the vessel and find two crew members who remain missing.

There was no immediate word on why the ship capsized, the shipping office in Bingen said. Two other crew members were rescued from the ship, which overturned near St. Goarshausen, in western Germany, early in the day.

The 360-foot (110-meter) long tanker was carrying 2,400 tons of sulfuric acid. There were no indications that the load was leaking and initial measurements carried out downstream from the scene showed no abnormalities, the shipping office said.

Yet given the difficulty of righting the vessel, leakage of the chemicals cannot be ruled out, Kurt Beck, governor of Rhineland-Palatinate state, told reporters.
The accident happened on a picturesque stretch of the Rhine near the famed Loreley cliff, where the river runs 370 feet (113 meters) wide and 82 feet (25 meters) deep, making it one of the most dangerous bends in the river.

Legends of a beautiful maiden on the Loreley singing to sailors passing on the waters below are told to have cost countless men their lives.

[Associated Press]

Pie à la Commode

Apparently these Chinese people never got the memo that you don't shit where you eat.

Diners in China are overcoming their reservations by flocking to a new toilet-themed restaurant where business is booming.

Customers at the Modern Toilet restaurant, in Kunming, Yunnan province, eat on seats converted from toilets.

Urinals hang on the walls as decorations and signature dishes include 'excrement ice cream', 'toilet bowl hot pot' and 'fried poo sticks'.

Owner Xu Liang says the restaurant has proved more popular than expected with students, in particular, keen to try the experience.

[...]

"Sometimes unusual combinations can work. A toilet and a restaurant are complete opposites but combined together they make for a unique experience."

[Orange]

Rush Limbaugh's Billboard in Tucson

[Andrew Sullivan]

1 Million Homes Repo-ed by Banks in 2010

That's a record-breaking figure, needless to say. The good news is that's fewer foreclosed homes than we're likely to see in 2011.

NEW YORK – The bleakest year in foreclosure crisis has only just begun.

[...]

"2011 is going to be the peak," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at foreclosure tracker RealtyTrac Inc. The firm predicts 1.2 million homes will be repossessed this year by lenders.

The outlook comes after banks repossessed more than 1 million homes in 2010, RealtyTrac said Thursday. That marked the highest annual tally of properties lost to foreclosure on records dating back to 2005.

[...]

The pace slowed in the final two months of 2010 as banks reviewed their foreclosure processes after allegations surfaced in September that evictions were handled improperly. Under increased scrutiny by the government, lenders temporarily halted taking actions against borrowers severely behind on their payments.

However, most banks have since resumed their eviction processes, and the first quarter will likely show a rebound in foreclosure activity, Sharga said.

Foreclosures are expected to remain elevated through the year as homeowners contend with stubbornly high unemployment, tougher credit standards for refinancing and falling home values. Sharga said he expects prices to dip another 5 percent nationally before finally bottoming out. The decline will push more borrowers underwater on their mortgages. Already, about one in five homeowners with a mortgage owe more than their home is worth.

[FOX News]

Rats On a Train

[The Awl]

Your Nose Knows When It's Your Time to Go

Can't smell as well as you used to? Prepare to die.

[A] surprising study has now claimed that losing your sense of smell when you're older could mean that your time is nigh.

Scientists from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago found that the more everyday odours a person can identify, the more likely they are to be alive several years later.

The team gave more than 1,000 volunteers, aged between 53 and 100, a standard 12-item smell test.

[...]

Amazingly, they found that the risk of death was 36 per cent higher for those who only got six of the answers correct compared to those who managed to identify 11 out of 12.

[...]

Writing in January's edition of the journal Chemical Senses, Dr Wilson and his team wrote: 'The results indicate that difficulty identifying familiar odours in old age is associated with increased risk of death.'

[Daily Mail]

Ruthless Scientists Kill Penguins

And they have no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Penguins live at the bottom of the world, where scientists expect the most drastic global warming changes. As such, the waddling birds have become beacons of environmental change, so much so that they've been strapped with identification bands so climate scientists can monitor their whereabouts (and health status).

But the harm caused by this method of flipper tagging may outweigh the benefits, a new study suggests. Over a 10-year period, banded penguins produced 39 percent fewer chicks and had a survival rate that was 16 percent lower than birds without bands.

[...]

The researchers found that banding increased mortality in less-fit birds during the first 4.5 years. The banded penguins also had less time and energy to reproduce and care for their young, because they spent more time foraging and arrived more than two weeks late to breeding areas.

[...]

Wearing the equipment forces penguins to expend 24 percent more energy while swimming, an amount similar to humans running with a heavy backpack, Wilson said, referring to research he has done on captive Adelie penguins. What's more, the gear could injure the flippers and attract the attention of predators, he added.

"Although at any one moment for any one day, the impediment is perhaps not that great, if you put on a band for the animal's life, then it's carrying that cost every hour of every day, and that could come to be quite a serious cost," [Swansea University ecologist Rory] Wilson told LiveScience.

[...]

Meanwhile, thousands of penguins still carry bands, and because they’re cheap, durable and convenient, scientists may continue to use them in the future.

"The big question for scientists using flipper bands is how much and under what conditions is banding penguins justified," Wilson said. "I would say that if anyone puts bands on, there has to be a bloody good reason for it."

[LiveScience]