Got Your Handbasket Ready?

This Is How Crazy It's Becoming

Suitcase With $134 Billion Puts Dollar on Edge: William Pesek

June 17 (Bloomberg) -- It’s a plot better suited for a John Le Carre novel.

Two Japanese men are detained in Italy after allegedly attempting to take $134 billion worth of U.S. bonds over the border into Switzerland. Details are maddeningly sketchy, so naturally the global rumor mill is kicking into high gear.

Are these would-be smugglers agents of Kim Jong Il stashing North Korea’s cash in a Swiss vault? Bagmen for Nigerian Internet scammers? Was the money meant for terrorists looking to buy nuclear warheads? Is Japan dumping its dollars secretly? Are the bonds real or counterfeit?

And Thus...

*Tending The Dirt Babies

OLD SPACE BLOB!

"A strange giant space “blob” spotted when the universe was relatively young has got astronomers puzzled. . . . But what’s most remarkable about this blob is its size: It's 55,000 light-years long, which is comparable to the radius of the disk-shaped Milky Way. According to many theories of the universe, nothing was supposed to be that big at that time in the universe. The other objects from that period are far smaller, Ouchi said."

-story

(you mean we're not 100% sure of our scientific theories??? damn it, I'm going back into the zombie shelter... er, blob shelter)

And Good Riddance

...the future, or the future as a lot of people are hoping it will be: pared down, more natural, more stable, less full of enervating overstimulation, of what Walker Percy called the "trivial magic" of modern times.

Some Common Yet "New" Sense For US Foreign Policy

In this volatile setting, direct American military involvement in conflicts where the U.S. itself is not attacked and its national prosperity is not at risk should be avoided. Otherwise, American military involvement could cause 21st century conflicts to spin out of control and confront Americans with regional alliances designed to contain American military power; alliances that but for American military intervention would not exist. It is vital the U.S. not repeat the mistakes of the British Empire in 1914: overestimate its national power by involving itself in a self-defeating regional war it does not need to fight and precipitate its own economic and military decline.

link

Another Light At The End Of The Test Tube

PORTLAND, Ore. — U.S. Navy researchers claimed to have experimentally confirmed cold fusion in a presentation at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting.

"We have compelling evidence that fusion reactions are occurring" at room temperature, said Pamela Mosier-Boss, a scientist with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (San Diego). The results are "the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons from low-energy nuclear reactions," she added.

Link

Reminds Me Of Someone

"For more than a year McCoy had kept the secret of the still. Only a Scot could have done it, one gifted with all the caution and canny reserve of his race. Little by little he had exhausted the principal supplies of ti, and for many months now he had been able to obtain no more than enough to operate his still twice or, rarely, three times each week. A small stock of bottles, accumulated one by one, were hidden where he concealed the still when not in use; by stinting himself resolutely, he managed to keep a few quarts of his liquor set aside to age. In this manner, which had required for some time a truly heroic abstinence, McCoy was enabled to enjoy daily a seaman’s ration of half a pint of grog.

"His temperament was an unusual one, even among alcoholics. When deprived of spirits, he became gloomy, morose, and irritable, but a glass or two of rum was sufficient to make him the most genial of men. Mary had been astonished and delighted at the change in him. He conversed with her for an hour or more each evening, laughing and joking in the manner the Polynesians love. He romped with the two-year-old Sarah and took delight in holding on his knees the baby, Dan. With his grog ration assured, there was no better father and husband on the island than McCoy."



-Pitcairns's Island,
Part Three of The Bounty Trilogy,
Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

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The overwhelming pain is less than I can bear.

The smallest fears threaten only my larger parts.

I’m too late to care if the appointment was missed.

She’ll never love who I am not.

The future creaks like a well-oiled doorway in a horror movie.

Tonight I will load my pistol and unload it.

The thoughtless harsh words I spoke to him never left my mouth.

My regrets of a lifetime have yet to be defined by my death.

Blindness seeks me, but I save vision insurance.

Murderers find me well prepared to defend.

Cataclysmic tremors of the earth belie not my adaptive foundation.

I will not, not.

I am what I am not, when resting in hell.

Salvation is a daily medicine
for what follows life as what traces the sound of a bell.

Noble Fear