Thumbs up, down

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” Gustave Flaubert wrote those words in the 19th century, more than 140 years before Simone Biles was born, but he may as well have been describing what it’s like to attempt to capture the four-time Olympic gold medalist’s physical ability. Last Saturday, during the USA Gymnastics national championships, the Spring resident debuted a double-twist, double-somersault dismount off the balance beam and a triple-double — that’s three twists and two flips in the air — during a floor routine. Feats never before seen in competition that left the audience stunned. This is where the limits of speech come in: you can “double-this” and “triple-that” all you want but it fails to do justice to the sight of Biles hurtling through the air, seemingly defying gravity, as she pushes the boundaries of what we think ahuman body can do. Oh, well. We may not be able to melt the stars, but Biles’ talent is blistering.

Whether you’re pacing around your airport gate or talking yourself out of buying that memory foam neck pillow, waiting on a delayed flight can feel like a lifetime. New data shows that, at least collectively speaking, that’s not an exaggeration. In total, passengers at Bush Intercontinental Airport waited the equivalent of 393 years in 2018 due to flight delays. Overall, 18 percent of flights at the city’s largest airport were either delayed or canceled, with passengers waiting an average of 72 minutes, according to reports. The silver lining on those clouds you can’t see out the window because you’re still stuck at your gate? It could be worse! Passengers at DFW spent more than 700 years in delays, while at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, the time lost was 1,133 years. The neck pillow appears to be a good investment after all.

Speaking of airports, a 17-year-old flying out of Bush early this month allegedly posted a pair of selfies to Snapchat with the words “blow this sh*t up” and “time to blow up the plane,” both with a smiley face and bomb emoji attached, the Chronicle reports. The teen was arrested days later after he flew back to Houston and was charged with making a terroristic threat, a felony. When it came time to set bail, Harris County Magistrate Lisa Porter had some advice for prosecutors to determine if this was just a kid acting out or a real threat. “I’d like to know if he has any bomb-making ability,” Porter said. “Maybe get a search warrant and go over there and check that sh*t out. That’s what I’d do.” That’s blunt but good advice. Serious charges require serious investigation — one would think.

Speaking of serious matters,

President Trump took time last week during his visit with hospital workers who treated El Paso shooting victims to comment on the crowd size at the political rally he held earlier this year in the Sun City. Trump compared it to the number of people who showed up to see Beto O’Rourke speak at a counter-rally. “That was some crowd,” Trump says in the video. “And we had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had 400 people in a parking lot.” Nothing strange about the president putting down a Democrat, but during his visit he also leveled an insult at the grieving city’s Republican mayor, Dee Margo. According to an interview with PBS’ “Frontline,” Trump called Margo a RINO, or “Republican in Name Only,” after Margo publicly corrected the president’s false claim that El Paso had a high crime rate until the border fence was built. “I’m not a RINO,” Margo says he told the president. “I simply corrected the misinformation you were given by our attorney general, and that’s all I did.” Kudos to the mayor for (politely) standing up to the president, a rare occurrence among Republicans. Trump should be nicer to an elected official who represents another kind of vulnerable species: a Republican in Deep Blue El Paso.