REMINDER: All investment, economics, and finance related material now appears at the new IaconoResearch.com. For the time being at least, this has become a personal blog covering a variety of mostly unrelated topics.

Greek Children Scarred for Life?

Conditions are deteriorating rapidly in Greece where, not only is the current generation undergoing forced austerity, but the next generation may have been scarred for life by this image of Prime Minister George Papandreou as related in this story at The Economist.

For all I know, maybe Greek children have a universal love for clowns, but, if they are anything like kids in the U.S., this sort of imagery could have a long lasting impact.

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The Best of the Bozeman Police Reports

Culled from the Police Reports page of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle come the best of the Bozeman police reports from the last week along with some items from the Sheriff’s Office.

Hungry bears and inadvertent 911 calls dominate the most recent batch of police reports as it seems all the downtown bars must have been shut down in recent weeks given the dearth of reports of drunk and disorderly patrons. Maybe the late-night crowd is taking a few weeks off until the bears get through their “hyperphagia” stage and enter hibernation. If so, that would be a wise decision as TV news reports of bears being where they’re not supposed to be at all hours of the day are a regular occurrence.

  • A small, dark bear went through someone’s trash on Westridge Drive around 2 a.m.
  • Someone from Willow Way wanted to know whether it’s legal to give an 11-year-old boy a Playboy magazine.
  • Officers responded to an assault with a golf club on South 10th Avenue. Officers found people in their front yard dressed up and filming.
  • A man opened his car door on Little Coyote Road to find a bear inside. The bear had “trashed” the interior of the vehicle.
  • South 15th Avenue man named Larry wanted to know how to block 911 from his phone “because he’s tired of” 911. When told that he was calling 911, not the other way around, he sighed and hung up.
  • A business on Main Street wanted officers to remove a person sleeping on a picnic table.

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The Best of the Bozeman Police Reports

Culled from the Police Reports page of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle come the best of the Bozeman police reports from the last week along with some items from the Sheriff’s Office.

When including one report with the term “cop bear” (whatever that is), last week’s police blotter contained seven reports of bear activity in the area (highlighted in red), the ursines now well into their “hyperphagia” stage where they eat anything and everything prior to hibernation. But, the more troubling news in this batch of reports is the sharp increase in drunks ending up where they’re not supposed to be during the wee hours of the morning (highlighted in blue), four incidents of this type appearing in the list below, what must be a new record high. I keep wondering if these two will ever interact…

  • A bear was seen in a tree on South Third Avenue at 6:33 a.m.
  • A 13-year-old boy was cited for being an “ungovernable youth” at 8:12 a.m. after refusing to go to school. He was not physically resistant aside from grabbing his blankets back when his mother pulled them off.
  • A black bear cub was seen in the back yard of a West Cameron Bridge Road house at 12:30 p.m.
  • A man in thigh-high white boots and “very short shorts” was standing by the East Gallatin Recreation Area’s women’s bathroom at 2 p.m.
  • At 1:30 a.m. a Hayes Street resident contacted officers after an intoxicated man wearing a tight black shirt tried climbing onto the resident’s deck. The “violent and belligerent” climber was gone by the time officers arrived.
  • Three or four people near Glenwood Drive and Westgate Avenue at 11:25 p.m. were discussing their drunkenness and plans to go to a downtown bar.

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Couple Steals Copper to Pay for Wedding

The Beaver County Times in Western Pennsylvania reports that a couple pilfered copper wire from utility poles in order to pay for their upcoming wedding, beating the sharp price decline last week but failing to escape the law.

Preparing for a weekend wedding, an Eastvale couple cut copper wire valued at $7,146 from 18 utility poles, according to a North Sewickley Township police report.

April C. Cater, 24, and Joseph Russell, 23, both of 700 2nd Ave., were charged with theft, criminal conspiracy and criminal mischief after the incidents on Aug. 9, according to police.

Russell told police they planned to be married on Aug. 13 and he had lost his job at an auto parts store, according to the report.

Cater was the driver and, accompanied by Russell, used her name to sell the copper wire at Allegheny Raw Materials in Franklin Township, according to police. Company officials gave police video of Cater and Russell and their vehicle from Aug. 10.

And I thought stories about stripping the copper plumbing out of foreclosed homes in Detroit were about as bad as it would get for the down economy/high commodity prices period we’re going through. Perhaps we’ve entered a whole new phase…

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The Best of the Bozeman Police Reports

Culled from the Police Reports page of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle come the best of the Bozeman police reports from the last week along with some items from the Sheriff’s Office.

The word “hyperphagia” is one that we are starting to hear a lot around here as the local bear population gorges themselves prior to their long winter sleep and reports of these animals being where humans think they shouldn’t be are beginning to trickle in. I recall that last year there was a report of a black bear walking cooly down Main Street looking for something to eat, so, it should be interesting to see what happens this year, particularly if that downtown stroll is repeated  in the wee hours of a weekend morning and the hungry bear interacts with some of the locals, for example, the subject of the second item below.

  • A black bear crossed the road near West College and Grand streets at 10:54 p.m.
  • A man calling from a West Main Street pay phone said he “hasn’t seen a sober moment in the last week” and asked for a ride to the hospital at 1:48 a.m.
  • A woman called to report that a man revved his engine at her and frightened her.
  • A 4-year-old boy on Chestnut Grove Avenue sprayed himself and his mother in the face with bear mace at 11:20 a.m.
  • Three apparently homeless men were walking through a Commerce Way parking lot at 8:02 p.m. When asked what they were doing, they said “if (you’re) going to ask that question then we’re wasting (our) time.”

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Lock Your Doors When in Bozeman…

We have returned from Yellowstone and things should be back to normal around here for the foreseeable future as summer draws to a close and the weather gets colder. As they say on HBO’s Game of Thrones, “Winter is coming”. Normally, a Best of the Bozeman Police Reports item would appear here today, but I thought it better to feature this story from today’s paper in which,  as noted here many times on recent Saturdays, intoxicated residents continue to stumble into all kinds of places where they shouldn’t be in the wee hours.

Bozeman residents catch couple having sex in their living room

Two West Babcock Street residents awoke at 1:40 a.m. Thursday to find a young couple having sex in their living room.

The two had broken into the home on the 600 block of West Babcock Street, possibly through the back door, said Bozeman Police Lt. Rich McLane. All the doors were locked, but the back door didn’t latch.

When the residents discovered the copulating couple, they demanded they leave, McLane said. The two got dressed — the man in a plaid shirt and jeans, the woman in a black-and-white striped dress — and stumbled away from the house, according to police reports.

“The two were highly intoxicated,” McLane said.

One of the two left a wallet at the scene, McLane said. Officers are following leads to identify the man and woman.

The investigation is likely to lead to misdemeanor charges of criminal trespassing, McLane said. It’s possible the couple could be charged with burglary, he said.

If memory serves, someone setting off illegal fireworks on the Fourth of July left their wallet behind at the scene of the crime, an ill-advised move if ever there was one, but one more likely to occur the more you drink.

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