The Daily Grill

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The ill-logic of Mideast hostilities continues to hurt my brain. First the Hamas tosses rockets from Gaza into Israel, knowing Israel will do something -- which they do when they shut down ALL supplies into the Strip. So first Hamas knows they're putting innocents on their side in danger, then Israel punishes EVERY innocent soul. Now Hamas has blown out a section of the wall between Gaza and Egypt so that hungry, thirsty innocents are streaming into Egypt for relief. I guess White House Resident Bush's hope to be the one to bring the region together for a big Kumbaya isn't looking too good.

Bun in the Warming Oven

A new study out today by the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (I receive it because OB/GYN is a hobby of mine) says that pregnant women that consume caffeine equal to 10 ounces of coffee a day double their risk of miscarriage. Maybe this will prompt the opening of a chain of decaf coffee joints called BabyBucks.

When News Is The News

Newspapers keeps their slide into whatever their status is becoming. As the internet continues to leech away those who used to get their news from the dead tree purveyors (at a cost that includes the decline of true investigative journalism), newspapers are having to increasingly report on their own flagging health. Such as today's front page headline in the Los Angeles Times announcing the firing of James O'Shea, the Editor-in-Chief of...the Los Angeles Times. Well, the actually headline wasn't so blatant: Editor of Times leaves in dispute over budget. Makes it seem like a tussle over how to spend the furniture allowance. In reality, O'Shea refused to fire reporters and other newsroom staffers per his marching orders by Times publisher David Hiller. Hiller, trying to put a comforting spin on things, insists (according to the story IN the LATimes) that O'Shea's departure was "part of a larger reorganization plan." All O'Shea was allowed to say was that "we did not share a common vision for the future. Yeah. O'Shea was thinking "NEWSpaper", while Hiller and his corporate overlord Sam Zell are evidently thinking "Ad rag". All such thinking is speeding papers to become, inevitably -- Aha! I just thought of their future status! -- the "fishwrap" that they have been slangily referred to for over a hundred years. What a shame scientists are predicting that the seas will be fished out by 2050 -- newspapers may end up fulfilling no function in the next half-century.

The Cost Of Apples & Oranges

Panic about the economy continues to mount, ratcheted up a few more notches by today's reveal by Citigroup that they lost $9 billion in the 4th quarter of '07. A quarter of the year is three months, which means they didn't make $3 billion per month. At last count, White House Resident Bush's War in Iraq® is costing us about $4.5 billion a month -- a hemorrhage that's been going on for 5 years, yet there have been no screechy cries of an impending recession because of that. So if that's not money going out, we're left to conclude that someone in America must be making a big ol' fat profit from the war. I guess it's not Citigroup.

Hot Potato Gitmo

U.S. military, your impotence is showing. It seems anyone in a position to remark on the future of the dentention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is in favor of its imminent closure. This includes Admiral Mike Mullen, who happens to be the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I'd like to see it shut down," he said after touring the joint over the weekend, citing its presence as being "pretty damaging" to the image of the United States. Yet neither he nor fellow detractors Secretary of Defense Gate and White House Resident Bush seems to be able to work out how to close it. It seems those pesky prisoners have to go somewhere and, of course, not having been charged or tried with any crime, it's a head scratcher what to do with them.

Please Deposit $66,000 For The Next 3 Minutes

Say what you will about criminals they at least pay their phone bills on time. Unlike the government spooks eavesdropping on them -- turns out telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time. A Justice Department audit uncovered that, in one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000. So, at the same time the telcos have been whining that allowing government goons to tap American's lines was "patriotic" and shouldn't be actionable, it turns out it's nothing more than business -- they get paid with our money to tap our phones. Or, in this case, they don't get paid.

Right Timetable, Wrong Continent

White House Resident Bush was over in Ramallah yesterday, talking about "I've got 12 months" to help bring about a peace treaty in the Middle East. That's fantastic. The U.S. economy is running on fumes, the dollar's worth less than the beads the indians traded Manhattan for, our borders have so many holes Swiss cheese is jealous and there's Lame Duck Dubya -- using his last year in office trying to fix something half a world away that's been broken for a couple of thousand years.

Wrong On Purpose

The pollsters and pundits are still scrambling around, trying to figure out why they'd come up so wrong in their projections as to who was going to win the New Hampshire primary. I think the voters collectively decided to not vote the way the pros said they were going to vote. Like purposely voting for Sanjaya during last year's American Idol.

The Invisible Benefactor

So Barack Obama grabbed the Democrapic win in the Iowa Caucus, while Mike Huckabee took the Republicant victory. For the Dems, JohnBoy Edwards was second, while former favorite Shillary Clinton came in 3rd. For the GOP, Mitt Romney was runner-up, while John McCain and Fredhorn Leghorn tied for third and Ron Paul in 4th place. In all of the analysis I read following the cavalcade o' crap that marks the beginning of Primary Season, not one pundit seemed it important to mention that Elemental Force Oprah Winfrey placed her blessings upon Obama just a few scant weeks ago. If she shows up in New Hampshire to re-anoint him, I predict the Demo side of this show is over. And if he's nominated and Her Nibs shows up again, the election will be just about in the bag. Whose going to vote against her? Martha Stewart?

Top 10 Random Things Of 2007

There are SO many "Top 10" lists that come out at the end of the year (Time Magazine alone issued 50 of them...) that I was hard-pressed to create one of my own. So instead I've cherry-picked 10 Things At Random from everyone else's lists...

1. The iPhone
Love it or hate it, have one or not, this piece of Apple tech probably made the biggest splash of the year. Twice. Once when it debuted, then again when Steve Jobs dropped the price and raised the hackles of early buyers.

2. Michael Vick
Footballer-turned-dogfight impresario got himself ragged, bagged and tagged. As horrific as the treatment he and his gang passed out to the canines in their charge, the very nature of the crime itself raised awareness of the average public that this kind of activity is still going on in our country.

3. Pencil Head
German woman Margret Wegner underwent surgery in August to remove a pencil that had been stuck inside her head for 55 years. The German woman had suffered from chronic headaches and nosebleeds after falling at age 4 with the writing implement in hand. "The pencil went right through my skin and disappeared into my head," she said. This summer surgeons in Berlin were able to remove all but the pencil's tip.

4. Bowling Ball USB Drive
Chris Spurgeon designed a functional (but not very practical) USB drive inside of a regulation 16-lb bowling ball.

5. "No Country for Old Men"
Fantastic movie and truly disturbing film. One friend of mine said it was hard to watch so much evil on the screen. The Coen brothers outdo themselves, having made a film that is different from pretty much anything we've ever seen. An interesting thing you won't notice until you've left the theater: there's no music soundtrack at all.

6. Real Computer Bugs
A photographer in Thailand discovered ants had taken up residence in his external hard drive, so he took the cover off and blasted the interior with insect repellent. The ants were wiped out and the data looked doomed too, until some techs at Kroll Ontrack resurrected it.

7. Halo 3
I don't have an XBox but it's clear from the Top 10 lists yammering about video games that this "first-person combat simulator" is really making gamers happy with great game play and fantastic graphics. Maybe I'll have to spring for the Box. Wiiiiiii!

8. Hazmat Diver
From a list of the Top 10 worst science jobs comes the occupation of Hazmat Diver, "The worst was at a factory pig farm, says Steven M. Barsky, the author of Diving in High-Risk Environments. A guy had driven his truck into the waste lagoon and drowned. Not only was it full of urine and liquid pig feces, the farmer had dumped all the needles used to inject the pigs with antibiotics and hormones in there.” Someone had to recover the body, and the task fell to commercial hazmat divers.

9. Writer Guild Strike
Okay, so this one hits close to home (being a member of the WGA) but still the strike brought the new TV season to a crashing halt, in terms of the scripted series and such. Putting thousands of writers AND many other workers out on the street, it also has opened a massive influx of mindless reality and game show programming, sure to "dumb down" the American TV viewer more than ever before.

10. w00t!
Interjection, used for expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay". this was voted by visitors of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website as the most-used word of the year.