Wow. They’ve changed the layout of WordPress’ innards. It’s been a while since I posted.

Anyway… LOL!!!!

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

At the NY Times web site … This has audio. Click HERE.

Check out his face as he approaches the mound. Beautiful! And you know why he threw to Manny Acta? Because he wouldn’t throw to LoDuca, who’s been busted for using steroids. Of course, the WH denies that.  Story below the video.

Acta to Catch Bush’s First Pitch

Lo Duca Says He’s Not Miffed That Manager Got the Job

By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 28, 2008; E06

VIERA, Fla., March 27 — With President Bush slated to open Nationals Park by throwing the ceremonial first pitch Sunday night, new Washington Nationals catcher Paul Lo Duca has assumed all spring that he would be the man to receive it.

But Thursday morning, on the last day of spring training, General Manager Jim Bowden informed Lo Duca that the honor instead will go to Manager Manny Acta.

The choice has symbolic implications. Lo Duca was one of the primary figures in the report by former Senate majority leader George J. Mitchell on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Bush, in turn, is an avid baseball fan and former owner of the Texas Rangers who has publicly denounced the use of steroids, both in professional sports and by America’s youth.

The White House said it played no role in determining who would catch the pitch.

“Whatever the decision the Nationals make is up to them,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said by telephone Thursday. “In no way did we, or would we, raise any issues.”

Lo Duca said after Thursday’s final Grapefruit League game that he had no animosity about the situation.

“I’m not upset,” Lo Duca said. “I’m just not catching it. They just told me that was the decision, that they’d go with Manny.”

Lo Duca declined to speculate as to whether his role in the Mitchell report had anything to do with the decision. Bowden did not mention that in his conversation, Lo Duca said.

Bowden did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment. Nationals President Stan Kasten said by e-mail that the club was “still finalizing details” about the pregame ceremonies, and that more information would be made available Friday, when the club holds its first workout at the new ballpark. The team will host an exhibition game Saturday against the Baltimore Orioles before opening the season with a nationally televised game Sunday night against the Atlanta Braves — one in which Bush is scheduled to both throw out the first pitch and appear in the ESPN broadcast booth.

The only other time Bush has thrown out a ceremonial pitch before a Nationals game was on April 14, 2005, when baseball returned to Washington after a 33-year absence. That night, the starting catcher was Brian Schneider, and he was on the receiving end of the pitch.

Lo Duca battled a torn meniscus in his left knee through most of spring training. But after playing consistently over the last week — though he did not play Thursday — he is expected to be in the lineup Sunday night. Earlier in the week, he spoke about the chance to catch the president.

“It’ll be cool,” he said. “It’s something you’ll always remember.”

Though it is typical for the starting catcher to receive a ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day, Bush hasn’t always thrown to catchers. In April 2001, he threw out the first pitch in Milwaukee, and then-manager Davey Lopes caught the pitch for the Brewers. In 2006, however, Bush opened the season in Cincinnati, throwing to Reds catcher Jason LaRue. On Oct. 30, 2001, he threw his most famous ceremonial pitch, opening Game 3 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium — just seven weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11 — by firing a strike to Todd Greene, then a backup catcher for the Yankees.

Boudreaux’s Butt Paste.

There’s even a Butt Paste/Bobble Head gift set available on Amazon.

And Zim’s CRACK Creme (comes in Butter Blends Lotion + Citrus Fresh Trial). This product was the traffic & weather sponsor on WTOP radio a few months ago, and the announcers cracked up (yeah, that was on purpose) every time they had to say “Crack Creme”. So did we.

From Janis:  Laughed out loud at this one. I bet these are on you tube….

“Politicians Spanked by Virgin

By Al Kamen
Friday, March 14, 2008; A15

Seems just about everyone has been seizing on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s misfortune to score legislative points or make a buck.

RH Reality Check, an online abortion rights publication, has been pushing to drop language in an international AIDS-prevention bill that would require health organizations to sign a pledge condemning prostitution.

In an online message Tuesday, the group noted the irony of Spitzer’s “visiting prostitutes while Congress is forcing” the organizations to sign the pledge.

British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s mobile-phone company weighed in quickly after the scandal broke. It is using Spitzer in Canadian newspaper ads touting a warmer, more personal service.

A photo of Spitzer, Love Client No. 9, has a bubble that says “I’m tired of being treated like a number.”

Well, not to worry, gov’ner. “At Virgin Mobile, you’re more than just a number,” the ad says. “When you call us we’ll treat you like a person, not a client. Whether you’re #9 or #900, you’ll get hooked up with somebody who’ll finally treat you just how you want to be treated.”

A Virgin ad last week focused on lower rates and featured Hillary Clinton with this thought bubble: “I wish my bill wasn’t so out of control.” Switching to Virgin Mobile’s “no-con contracts” the ad says, will let you “finally put your bill back in its place,” and show you “how you can get your bill to behave.”

A Barack Obama ad will be out shortly, said Virgin chief marketing officer Nathan Rosenberg. “There is a brilliant photo of him in his swimwear we are quite fond of,” he said, and “we also think he is probably wondering if they will hear my ‘call for change.’ “

But no John McCain? The GOP candidate will be happy — or maybe not — to know that the company intends “to give him fair representation,” Rosenberg said. But “all the action and craziness is on the Democratic side right now. . . . We haven’t been inspired.”"

Something else I recently discovered:

And, it appears that they have a racing team.

Yes, my new job has opened my eyes to a whole new world of facility/employee safety and infection control. (Like my friend Susan, I now notice where fire extinguishers are located, when they were last inspected/maintained, if their locations are properly labeled… and so on). I totally empathized with her blog post about a recent fire drill during a class, “I have to say the emergency coordinator of the universe in me was very pleased, even as I shivered, that many people exited safely, pointing self-righteous fingers at those few clustered in the lobby saying ‘It’s not an ALL CLEAR YET!’” I said in my head, “YES! YES! Good for them!”

Anyway, when I need a break in the action, I browse through the many catalogs I get and look at all the really cool stuff in them, like safety vests, and eye wash stations, and special chemical-resistant gloves, and tools, and knives, and anti-slip floor tiles. Oh, yes. The dyke in me loves those catalogs. For example, I bought these for the warehouse and delivery guys as a thank-you for all their hard work for accreditation:

And yes, in case you were wondering, I got one for me, too.

Anyway…

I was just flipping through a “First Aid and Safety” catalog, and came across the kind of stuff I LOVE:

Speedy Cleanz.

“Absorbs up to 10 times its own weight in vomit, urine or other body fluids; transforms liquid into odorless, semi-solid mass.”

It’s like putting kitty litter on an oil or gas puddle, but BETTER because it works on VOMIT, URINE, or OTHER BODY FLUIDS. That’s just awesome.

And I love the “10 times its own weight” bit. Beautiful.

Too bad we don’t need it.

Click here to read the full article.

“W.R. Grace to pay record Superfund fine
But $250 million may fall well short of Libby, Mont., cleanup cost

By ANDREW SCHNEIDER
P-I SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

The government says it finally has persuaded W.R. Grace & Co. to pick up some of the cleanup bill for what the Environmental Protection Agency has called the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

The Justice Department on Tuesday announced that Grace had agreed to pay a record-setting $250 million to reimburse the federal government for the costs of the investigation and cleanup of asbestos contamination in Libby, Mont.”

From Wikipedia:

“Contamination incidents

W. R. Grace and Company has been involved in a number of controversial incidents of proven and alleged corporate crimes, including exposing workers to asbestos contamination in Libby and Troy, Montana, water contamination (the basis of the book and film A Civil Action) in Woburn, Massachusetts, and an Acton, Massachusetts Superfund site.

Trichloroethylene

In the 1970s, it was discovered that W. R. Grace had improperly disposed of trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent, which then entered the town’s groundwater. The chemical appears to have caused fatal cases of leukemia and cancer, as well as a wide variety of other health problems, among the citizens of the town.

Asbestos

Despite the fact that Grace is troubled with asbestos lawsuits, it still sells $1.4 billion of products a year. 150,000 lawsuits have been settled or dismissed and 120,000 remain.^[14] W. R. Grace and Company has faced more than 250,000 asbestos-related lawsuits. Grace no longer makes asbestos-related products.

After asbestos injury claims nearly doubled in 2000, W. R. Grace & Company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001 due to the unexpected increase in asbestos litigation. The United States Department of Justice determined that Grace had transferred 4 to 5 billion dollars to spin-off companies it had recently purchased, shortly before declaring bankruptcy. Justice Department attornies found that this amounted to a “fraudulent transfer” of money in order to protect Grace from civil suits related to asbestos. The bankruptcy court ordered the companies to return nearly $1 billion to Grace, which will remain as part of the assets to consider in the bankruptcy hearings.

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice began criminal proceedings against W.R. Grace. The department announced that a grand jury in Montana indicted W.R. Grace and seven current and former Grace executives for knowingly endangering residents of Libby, Montana, and concealing information about the health affects of its asbestos mining operations. According to the indictment, W. R. Grace and its executives, as far back as the 1970s, attempted to conceal information about the adverse health effects of the company’s vermiculite mining operations and distribution of vermiculite in the Libby, Montana community. The defendants are also accused of obstructing the government’s cleanup efforts and wire fraud. To date, according to the indictment, approximately 1,200 residents of Libby area have been identified as suffering from some kind of asbestos-related abnormality.

…

Popular culture reaction

The movie A Civil Action, starring John Travolta, was based on these law suits.

The PBS television show P.O.V., which highlights independent films in August 2007 premiered the movie Libby, Montana that documents the thousands of people in Libby, Montana that have been exposed to and are suffering the effects of exposure to asbestos. The show also discusses the criminal indictments of many Grace executives for covering up the asbestos related illnesses and deaths.

NPR ran a piece on their show All Things Considered discussing the criminal charges against W. R. Grace. A U.S. attorney general alleges that the company and managers of the mine in Libby, Montana knew about the dangers of the asbestos they were dumping into the air for over 20 years.^[17]“

Lexicographical Beneficence

FreeRice.com

Online entertainment improves on older forms, like television, by way of its activeness. For example, watching a presidential debate on TV is passive. Hunting for, commenting on, remixing and forwarding a YouTube video of someone being Tasered at a political event is active. Despite the unassailable nature of this popular critique, engagement can be judged in other ways. For example, among the many time-killing activities the World Wide Web makes available is FreeRice.com. While it is surely a diverting time killer, it is more than that: it’s a self-improvement time killer on behalf of a greater good. Let’s break it down.

FreeRice.com presents the visitor with a word and four choices as to what that word means. Click, learn the right answer and get another word. Correct answers lead to a higher score and harder words. It is, then, a “casual game,” the name given to a wide variety of electronic, computer or online games with a relatively simple structure and set of rules — a genre of diversion, not immersion. With tens of millions of regular players, “casual games are among the stickiest, most-sought-after content online,” according to a white paper posted on the site of the International Game Developers Association. The core texts of casual gaming are solitaire and Tetris. It’s a safe bet that a great deal of casual gaming occurs in the workplace, where it’s more discreet than paddle ball.

Because it is structured as a sort of rolling SAT vocabulary quiz, FreeRice.com laces your time-wasting with fresh knowledge. For example: “hircine” means “goatlike,” and “omphaloskepsis” means “navel contemplation.” Thus: self-improvement.

This brings us to the greater good. The site promises that every time you give a correct answer — that, say, “rubicund” doesn’t mean “hairless,” it means “ruddy” — you donate 20 grains of rice to feed the hungry by way of the United Nations’ World Food Program. It’s easy to forget that a world with such wonders as a diversity of Tasering videos could also contain significant numbers of individuals starving to death. But according to the U.N., about 25,000 people die of hunger or related causes every day. Twenty grains of rice seem meaningless, but a cacophony of clicks has added up to more than 20 billion grains — or more than 400 metric tons. (Some 300,000 to 500,000 people now play FreeRice daily — traffic spikes during work hours — including scores of college-student groups that compete against one another on Facebook.) On FreeRice.com, you can watch a video of an early shipment being delivered to feed Myanmar refugees in Bangladesh. Subsequent FreeRice-financed aid has gone to Uganda and Cambodia.

The rice is paid for by advertisers: banner ads for Regent International Hotels, Alibris books, Shutterfly and others accompany every click, courtesy of a largely automated ad-serving technology that hooks up online marketers and Web sites. In its first three months, this system generated $250,000 for the W.F.P. All in all, FreeRice is a triumph of converting passivity into engagement. And in a stunning rebuke to those who say one person can’t do much to change the world, FreeRice.com was created not by a team of expert tech-marketing consultants, but by a guy in his spare time.”