Like the Temperature, What Goes Up, Must Come Down

An Uncontested Beautiful Day

A beautiful Day in the Neighborhood 9/27/08

Great Place For Chinese Take Out

Chinese Astronauts Complete Flag-Pass Maneuver

Fellow astronaut Liu Boming emerged briefly from the capsule to hand Zhai the Chinese flag.

Zhigang cracked open a Fortune cookie and read the fortune as he floated out of the orbiter module's hatch.

It said, "You will take a long and eventful journey."

Zhai returned to the interior of his capsule and closed the hatch after less than 20 minutes outside.

An hour later, he was hungry.

Okay, maybe it didn't go exactly like that. They probably have a different sense of humor than mine.

Paul Newman Made it to 83

Paul Newman playing clown for charity.

"I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried — tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out."
Paul Newman

The $700 Billion Dollar Flim Flam

Statues of Founding Fathers nearly explode in indignation
while listening to sales pitch for $700B Bail Out.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he hopes to have an agreement in principle by late Sunday.

This is how the crisis happened;

Although America’s housing collapse is often cited as having caused the crisis, the system was vulnerable because of intricate financial contracts known as credit derivatives, which insure debt holders against default.

They are fashioned privately and beyond the ken of regulators — sometimes even beyond the understanding of executives peddling them.

Originally intended to diminish risk and spread prosperity, these inventions instead magnified the impact of bad mortgages like the ones that felled Bear Stearns and Lehman and now threaten the entire economy.

Now these same greedy financiers want to grab more money, even though their failed schemes have already made them obscenely wealthy.

Don't people remember how they got screwed with the Savings and Loan Bailout?

The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.

One of the Keating Five crooks
The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989.

The Adventures of Bat Girl

Bat Girl at Pennsylvania Rest Stop 9/27/08

"Stay tuned for my next exciting installment."

News From Houston

I received e-mails from two of my nephews, who assure me that all is well, and they are helping to restore order at my sisters Houston home.

Bryan, the oldest, said they would be going down to check on the beach house damage, tomorrow, and that he would send pictures.

He writes that it is a "Look and Leave" kind of deal, and that they will be going early, (4:30 AM), in the morning to avoid the crowds.

Space Trash Headed for South Pacific

Space Dumpster to Fall on "Paradise" Monday

Scientists have earmarked a remote area of the South Pacific where bits of Europe's massive space freighter may crash when the orbiting craft is destroyed in a suicide plunge on Monday, an official said on Friday.
The ATV was filled up with the ISS's trash before detaching on Sept. 6.

Picture of a dump-site

Today's Relatively Appropriate Song;
From the movie South Pacific-Happy Talk

Heaven means to be one with God.
Confucius