I spud, therefore I yam.

You gotta click to enlarge this one and look at how many points potential of failure this guy has.

At 27 years old, Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London apartment. Boy! Didn't see that one coming!
She now joins the "27 club," a group of musicians who died at that age. It's a list that includes Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Colbain.
And Pope John XII, considered the most immoral of all the Popes (no mean feat).

Good ride this morning. 19 miles at a brisk pace. Left a little after 6 a.m. and I think it was still under 90 when I got back.
Not a Tour de France pace, though. After 20 days and 2,200 miles they rode a 26-mile time trial over a technical course at an average speed of about 28 mph. That's incredible. But I don't have a $5,000 bike or a masseuse to make my sore muscles feel all better.

There is general disgust with the now-shuttered British tabloid, News of the World for its hacking of cell phones to get what they hoped would be salacious scoops. The hacked the cell phone of a murdered teenager, deleting old voice mails from her full inbox in the hopes of getting story material from new messages. That action caused the authorities and her parents to conclude the missing teen was still alive. Evidence suggests they hacked other phones without a twinge of conscience, all for the sake of a gossipy tidbit.

It strikes me that there's a bit of hypocrisy in the public disgust. This would be the Brits who gobbled up copies of The News of the World in the hopes of reading just the kind of inside dirt the tabloid was after when it crossed the line of ethical journalism. They weren't buying that rag off the new stands because it promised heady analysis of national and international issues. But never mind that; righteous indignation comes easily when the pusher who fed the public's habit is exposed as - imagine! - a scoundrel.

I can't help but see that same dynamic in several other cases. Take, for example, illegal immigrants here in our country. For decade after decade society knowingly used those men and women to pick our vegetables, clean our homes, watch our children and do whatever other work was difficult and unpleasant. We paid them wages and they worked in conditions that bordered on criminal.

Now we've decided they are indeed criminals and should be treated accordingly - deported regardless of the time they've lived here or the contributions they've made to our country (paying taxes, buying homes and other goods & services, etc.). If their children were born here and are therefore citizens, well, that's their fault, too.

Yes, they are here illegally. That should not be dismissed; we have to find a way to deal with the problem that doesn't ignore the demands of the law. But the air of self-righteousness and indignation rings hollow, IMHO. We were at least complicit in the situation.

Norway sets the maximum penalty for any crime at 21 years. That means the guy who killed 90+ people will be out of prison when he's in his early 50's.