Amish 4 Life

Eight Amish men in Kentucky were recently jailed for refusing to attach orange reflective triangles to their buggies.

It's true. Here are their mugshots:



The men, from the hardcore Old Order Swartzentruber Amish -- that's O.G., yo -- don't have a problem with reflectors. Their problem is with the color orange.

It seems the OOSA think that the color orange is too garish. They agreed to use gray reflective tape, but the state said they gray tape wasn't visible enough during the day.

Um... what? Listen, if you don't see a horse and buggy on the side of the road during the day, is an orange triangle really going to help? Maybe the problem isn't the Amish, but Kentucky drivers?

But that's not even my biggest problem with this. The Amish, when arrested, were issued the typical prison jumpsuits. But instead of the usual orange jumpsuits, they were issued jumpsuits that had been dyed gray.

So... the state agrees that they shouldn't be forced to wear orange?

Case dismissed.

Look! Up in the sky!

The United States military is apparently working on a giant spy blimp.



Two blimps, actually: The Air Force wants to call theirs "Blue Devil" (pictured above), while the Army wants their own blimp called the Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle, or LEMV (pictured below).



The Air Force wins the "cooler name" round, obviously. And it's probably not a good idea to plaster "U.S. Army" on the side of your spy blimp. I mean, sure, the bad guys are going to notice it -- it's a fucking blimp -- but at least you have a chance of someone thinking it's from Goodyear or something. "Hey look... is the Super Bowl in Fallujah this year?"

The Wired.com story is great, but even better is the comment battle over whether a blimp is easy to shoot down or tough to shoot down. The consensus seems to be that it would be easy for a first-rate military with advanced air defenses to bring one down, but that's exactly where you wouldn't use one of these things.

Of course, when I saw this, all I thought was... "Hey, cool! They've got a blimp!"

Coming soon to a cop show near you

Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down, Killing Pablo) is an amazing journalist, and he hits another home run with this incredible story about a private investigator who just refused to give up on a seemingly impossible case.

After a woman living in a hotel in Florida was raped, viciously beaten, and left for dead near the Everglades in 2005, the police investigation quickly went cold. But when the victim sued the Airport Regency, the hotel’s private detective, Ken Brennan, became obsessed with the case: how had the 21-year-old blonde disappeared from her room, unseen by security cameras? The author follows Brennan’s trail as the P.I. worked a chilling hunch that would lead him to other states, other crimes, and a man nobody else suspected.

Read the whole thing over at Vanity Fair.

I'd imagine someone is already writing a script for Law & Order: Special Victim Unit based on the story.

Missing a missile?

This is a little odd:



First off, if this hadn't been captured on film by a reputable news organization, do you think the military would even admit it happened? Five thousand people could have said they saw it, there could be dozens of fuzzy videos from iPhones, and the military would be saying it's a cloud or a flock of birds or whatever.

I love this:

In a statement released Tuesday, Northern Command said they were continuing to investigate the origin of the apparent missile launch, but said they had determined "that there is no threat to our nation..."

We don't know what it is or who did it, but it's not a threat! Convincing.

Some experts say they think it's a contrail from a jet -- really? -- while others say it couldn't be a jet. Who knows.

It did remind me of this:

Investigators in Texas say a flying object that narrowly missed a Continental Express plane last month may have been a large model rocket.

The jet's pilot and co-pilot spotted the object and a long white vapor trail shortly after they took off from Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport on May 29. The plane was bound for Greenville, South Carolina.

Here's where the latest mystery missile event happened:


View Larger Map

Near Catalina Island, about 35 miles west of the coast, fairly close to Los Angeles. This isn't some remote area in the desert, so I can't really imagine the military is testing secret weapons Monday at 5 p.m. near Los Angeles.

In other news...



Happened Monday, off the coast of Baja California? That's not... it couldn't...

Nah, it happened about 12 hours before the mysterious missile launch. Ah, man! Way to kill a good conspiracy theory.