Jerry’s Blog–Because Wit Happens

My favorite clip from the movie:

Joe Pesci in ‘Goodfellas’. Heath Ledger in ‘The Dark Night’. Ben Kinsley in ‘Sexy Beast’. These are three chillingly memorable performances as Ultimate Bad Guys. Nicely done, gentlemen.

But…this guy is the best of them all.

I came to television’s PRISON BREAK series late. I’m still on Season One on DVD. It’s pretty darned good, but is worth watching just to see the all-time greatest bad guy ever.

I’m not alone in my fandom. Someone has already done a tribute and here it is:

  Go to this site.

   Wait for it to load.  (Have most recent version of Flash installed).

   Move your mouse around.

Enjoy!

Third post this week on this rascal. As previously mentioned, I thought this guy was a scamster from Day One. Nice dresser, though.

From FORBES.COM:

“On the very day Toyota was making a high-profile defense of its cars, one of them was speeding out of control,” said CBS News–and a vast number of other media outlets worldwide. The driver of a 2008 Toyota Prius, James Sikes, called 911 to say his accelerator was stuck, he was zooming faster than 90 miles per hour and absolutely couldn’t slow down.

It got far more dramatic, though. The California Highway Patrol responded and “To get the runaway car to stop, they actually had to put their patrol car in front of the Prius and step on the brakes.” During over 20 harrowing minutes, according to NBC’s report, Sikes “did everything he could to try to slow down that Prius.” Others said, “Radio traffic indicated the driver was unable to turn off the engine or shift the car into neutral.”

In fact, almost none of this was true. Virtually every aspect of Sikes’s story as told to reporters makes no sense. His claim that he’d tried to yank up the accelerator could be falsified, with his help, in half a minute. And now we even have an explanation for why he’d pull such a stunt, beyond the all-American desire to have 15 minutes of fame (recall the “Balloon Boy Hoax” from October) and the aching need to be perceived as a victim….[Rest of article]

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UPDATE: And from YAHOO NEWS:

SAN DIEGO – Investigators with Toyota Motor Corp. and the federal government could not replicate the runaway speeding reported by a Prius owner who said his car’s accelerator stuck as he drove on a California freeway, according to a memo drafted for a congressional panel.

The memo, obtained Saturday by The Associated Press, said the experts who examined and test drove the car could not replicate the sudden, unintended acceleration James Sikes said he encountered. A backup mechanism that shuts off the engine when the brake and gas pedals are floored also worked properly during tests….[Rest of article]

It would appear that Vote For The Worst has finally become a significant factor in who comes and goes on this program. Congrats to Tim and Paige for the extra votes their poor performances netted them.

The loss of Lilly Scott has to be one of the biggest shockers I’ve seen in the history of the program. I don’t think she would have won, but she definitely was a Top Fiver.

Anyway, here’s this week’s odds from the Bodog site:

Aaron Kelly    40/1
Andrew Garcia    10/1
Casey James    13/2
Crystal Bowersox    7/4
Didi Benami    18/1
Katie Stevens    22/1
Lacey Brown    40/1
Lee Dewyze    7/1
Michael Lynche    5/1
Paige Miles    50/1
Siobhan Magnus    5/1
Tim Urban    40/1

The Devil made them do it!

From THE TIMES:

Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.

He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.”

He claimed that another example of satanic behaviour was the Vatican “cover-up” over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss Guard, who were all found shot dead. “They covered up everything immediately,” he said. “Here one sees the rot”….[Rest of article]

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But wait–there’s more (from the Associated Press):

VATICAN CITY – Germany’s sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected pedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children.

The pontiff is also under increasing fire for a 2001 Vatican document he later penned instructing bishops to keep such cases secret.

The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict’s handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes — a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.

And they may lead to further questions about what the pontiff knew about the scope of abuse in his native Germany, when he knew it and what he did about it during his tenure in Munich and quarter-century term at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith….[Rest of article]

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Regarding my post a couple of days ago about the recent “runaway Prius driver“, and my opinion that his story did not pass “the smell test”, I have now had crime author Dave Cullen (author of COLUMBINE, which I am currently reading and which is nominated for an Edgar Award in the best non-fiction crime category) comment here that he had the same suspicions AND I see that there are now suspicions elsewhere. From JALOPNIK:

James Sikes, the San Diego runaway Toyota Prius driver, filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and now has over $700,000 in debt. According to one anonymous tipster, we’re also told he hasn’t been making payments on his Prius. UPDATE!

We received an email earlier today from an anonymous tipster who claims James (Jim) Sikes, the driver of the runaway Toyota Prius, was in financial trouble and even behind by five months on his payments for the Prius. If that’s true, it’s potential motivation for wanting to find an out — any out — on paying for the vehicle.

We did some public records searches (thanks to the help of Gawker’s John Cook) and found Sikes and his wife Patty found themselves, like many in the California real estate business, on the bursting side of the real estate bubble last year. The two declared bankruptcy in June of 2008 and have a combined liability of over $700,000 dollars in debt…[Rest of article]

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An interesting sidelight:

“In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89—and I’m leaving out the son whose age wasn’t identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger”–from the WASHINGTON EXAMINER.

An oldie, but a goodie that you probably haven’t seen:

This has all of my favorite elements: it’s a 1) music remix of 2) old British public service announcements, with 3) cool car crashes. Genius!

From the NY TIMES (FREAKONOMICS blog):

We’ve established that men are more likely to take the wheel when a couple rides together, but should we care? I say we should. Aside from the cultural, sociological and psychological implications, the gender driving disparity might be costing us lives and treasure. If women are more skilled drivers than men, perhaps we’d all be better off if they were behind the wheel and men were in the passenger seat knitting. What do the data say?

Despite comprising half the population, women drivers are unquestionably involved in many fewer accidents than men are. In fact, it isn’t even close. Insurers are well-aware of this fact (see this from the Australian insurance company AAMI), and hence they often charge women lower premiums.

So there it is: women have fewer accidents than men. Time to move the driver’s seat up?

Not quite—we haven’t yet heard the whole story (and we all know that once that seat is moved you can never again get it as comfortable as you once had it).

The problem is that if we’re trying to determine whether men or women should take the wheel when the couple is in the car, aggregate accident totals are of limited usefulness.

Why? Because men drive lots more than women do. The American Time Use Survey shows that adult men average about 60 minutes a day behind the wheel, while women average around 40. The National Household Transportation Survey reports that in 2001 men averaged 16,749 miles driven per year, and women 10,174. Given that they drive so much less, it’s not particularly surprising that women are involved in fewer accidents and pay lower premiums….[Rest of article]