Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

No, actually I don’t feel much better. But I’ve been wanting to use the “finish with Windex” line for some time, and the butthole Belgians gave me the excuse.
Years ago I worked for the Stewart-Warner corporation, which had an operation in Belgium that paralleled the operation we had in Indianapolis. The thought was that the company would save money by building these 3 and 4 ton monster air separation cores in Europe (thus saving import duties, shipping costs, etc). It ended up being such a boondoggle due to European employment laws that they closed down the plant in 1980 and moved all of the work back to Indy. Cost them millions in “future earnings” payments.
Unfortunately they brought the plant manager back to Indy, too, and he managed to run the operation into the ground within about 3 years (I was long gone by then, I’d gone back to college). But how often do you hear about manufacturing jobs coming back to the states from overseas?

Another place we ought to pave with glass, and finish with Windex.

Sorry for lack of postings…I’m down with bronchitis and I don’t really feel verbose. I’ll be back when I feel better.

South Korea Fears U.S. Is Emotional Over North Korea
Whereas South Korea is just stupid.

The Air Force reportedly got hi-res pictures of Columbia’s left wing just before the shuttle broke up.

Lt. Kelly Jeter, a spokeswoman for Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, confirmed that the base had turned over photographs to NASA.
“One of our telescopes got some shots of it going over,” Jeter told The Associated Press late Thursday. She said NASA had instructed base officials not to comment further.
The base has a high-resolution Starfire telescope that photographs satellites orbiting earth. It can recognize features as small as a foot long on a satellite 600 miles away, base officials said.

Unfortunately they’re keeping the pictures under wraps for the moment.

…things to be protesting. Haven’t we taken all the Sixties’ trash out yet? I thought Dick Gregory was dead.
(Just kidding. I knew he was alive. Doesn’t make him any less Sixties’ trash.)

(the so-called White House “press gaggle“) from yesterday, and tell me that the Washington press corps aren’t just a bunch of nit-picking assholes.
What the fucking earthly difference does it make if W ever visited Johnson Space Center before yesterday or not? Jesus. I suspect that if a nuke went off in NYC, the press would want to know if W had ever eaten at Sardi’s, or some other damn stupid thing. They have absolutely no fucking sense of what is really important. None.

Lileks is in rare form this morning.

It is time instead to consistently support democracy. Perhaps it is unfair to expect George W. Bush to understand democracy, much less consistently promote it –
Ah yes. Selected, not elected. It rhymes, so it must be true. I’ll still take him over Clinton, whose impeachment trials could be described as ERECTED, NOT EJECTED. But tarry if you will over that line: Perhaps it is unfair to expect George W. Bush to understand democracy. The Greens have entered the territory previously occupied by the right-wing fringe who thought Clinton would use Y2K to suspend the Constitution and use FEMA to institute martial law.

Read the whole thing. I’m still guffawing over “ERECTED, NOT EJECTED”.

I’m surprised that nobody seems to have asked the obvious question: “Since you knew that there had been an incident at liftoff, why didn’t you have the shuttle stand off close to the ISS and have the ISS crew film and observe the underside of the shuttle?”

But they both suck.
Just rebuild the towers exactly as they were (with obvious structural enhancements, but externally identical). That would be the best FUCK YOU we could send to the enemies of freedom.