THE WORLD’S going to end tomorrow. I wonder if it will be before or after my rabies shot.

NEWT GINGRICH, NASCAR CANDIDATE? “[O]ne who can draw big crowds as anxious to witness a shocking crash as they are in seeing who finishes first.”

THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT: does your cat have an iPad yet?

TEXAS GOV. RICK PERRY giving thought to a presidential run?

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT and laws of physics will always win.

Well, yes, the “laws of physics” aren’t voluntary. But it would be nice if more people - like the author of this letter - understood them.

RETIREMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY: keep working until you drop. “It's a wonderful opportunity ....” Yeah.

QUOTE OF THE YEAR:

Thanking Obama for killing Bin Laden is like going into McDonalds and thanking Ronald McDonald for the hamburger. It's the guy cooking the burger that should get the credit, not the clown.

INTERESTING OBSERVATION:

1. The sport of choice for the urban poor is BASKETBALL.
2. The sport of choice for maintenance level employees is BOWLING.
3. The sport of choice for front-line workers is FOOTBALL.
4. The sport of choice for supervisors is BASEBALL
5. The sport of choice for middle management is TENNIS.

And ...

6. The sport of choice for corporate executives and officers is GOLF.

So we can conclude the higher you go in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls become. There must be a ton of people in Washington playing marbles!

Both from my email.

DEBATING SPACE: [The] National Forensic League — the national honor society that promotes debating skills for high school students ... has announced their policy topic for the 2011 – 2012 debating season.

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its exploration and/or development of space beyond the Earth’s mesosphere.

The comments are great, but the punch line, I think, is this: “The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space–each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.”

AFTER A FOX ‘beat up’ one of our cats (she’s okay) and my wife and I having to take the precautionary rabies shots (no big deal beyond having to put up with the ER martinets), we put out a trap in the back yard. Here’s Br’er Fox:


This one’s a healthy kit, and I released it back into the forest this morning. I expect it’ll be a little more suspicious of the next “free lunch.”

SARAH PALIN on the National Labor Relations Board fiasco: "Does the President realize the real concern here is not that businesses will choose to locate in one state over another? It’s that businesses will choose to locate in other countries because thanks to the Obama administration’s job killing policies and over-reaching regulatory boards the business climate in the United States is growing toxic."

BOEING IS JUST THE BEGINNING: “The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) raised a lot of eyebrows by filing a complaint against Boeing for opening a new plant in a right-to-work state. But that action is just the beginning of the board’s aggressive new pro-union agenda.”

Under current NLRB rules, companies can make major business decisions (like relocating a plant) without negotiating with their union — as long as those changes are not primarily made to reduce labor costs. For example, a business can unilaterally merge several smaller operations into one larger facility to achieve administrative efficiencies. Companies only have to negotiate working conditions, not their business plans.

The NLRB apparently intends to change that.

Let the unions start their own businesses and compete with the rest.

WHITE HOUSE tries to shut the Boston Herald out of press pool.

Don’t I recall someone once saying words to the effect that you don’t want to start a fight with an organization that buys ink by the barrel?

MANY USES FOR PRINTED COMPONENTS AND TRANSPARENT ANTENNAS: “IEEE members at Drexel University, in Philadelphia, are developing transparent antennas that can be customized along with inkjet-printable RF components to form circuits applicable to all sorts of things. These include tracking military troop movements, monitoring health conditions, preventing shoplifting, and warning of impending car collisions.”

And, embedded in your clothing without your knowledge, tracking you. Think about it.

EXCITING FIND: possible planets without orbits.


And if as thought they’re more common than stars, then the universe is beginning to get a bit crowded.

LAWS ARE FOR LITTLE PEOPLE: Nearly 20 percent of new Obamacare waivers go to gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, fancy hotels in Nancy Pelosi’s district.

MOTHER NATURE STRIKES AGAIN: Biofuels can be dirtier than fossil fuels.

JUST GREAT: these are the people charged with developing the President’s budget.