The big story here? Finally a worthwhile contribution from NASA!

News Item:
Kennedy Space Center, Florida -- The push is on to launch Space Shuttle Atlantis one more time, adding another mission before all of NASA's shuttles are retired.

My suggestion...have it land directly over the BP Oil Leak, sink it, and presto - two problems solved at once: A place to retire the shuttle and the leak is plugged.

If that doesn't work? Mix all the leftover Tang from the 60's with some concrete and fill it up with that. (The leak, not the space shuttle.) You know there's a warehouse full of the stuff somewhere.

Just wait to see what they do with the drab uniforms

From CNN:

Most Americans say people who are openly gay should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday indicates that 78 percent of the public supports allowing openly gay people to serve in the military, with one in five opposed.

"Support is widespread, even among Republicans. Nearly six in ten Republicans favor allowing openly gay individuals to serve in the military," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "There is a gender gap, with 85 percent of women and 71 percent of men favoring the change, but support remains high among both groups."

To borrow from my friend Jim Burger, who made a similiar remark when speaking to whether or not women should be allowed to serve in the military...I'm against gays serving in the military, but then I'm against straights serving there too.

My answer: Yes it is, but no it doesn't!

Which would surprise you more after 12 years together with your partner: that the romance was still as strong in your lives, or the sex? It would be interesting to ask that question both to people who have been together for that long (like my wife and me) and to people who have recently fallen in love and are intending to get married.

And is it a typical male thing to ask that question, keeping the two things separate? My guess is that women would say you can't separate them, because in the words of Frank Sinatra, you can't have one without the other.

So is it too fast or not fast enough? Make up my mind!

I heard an announcer on a baseball game exclaim excitedly (is that redundant? Can one exclaim something in a bored monotone? And is "bored monotone" redundant? Too many questions?) that a centerfielder "simply outran the baseball" in tracking down a long flyball.

Well, first of all, a 9-month old can outrun a baseball. I mean, really, set them both down at a starting line and put their favorite chewing implement 2 feet away and see who gets there first.

But even in the opposite figurative sense it is wrong. A batted ball, hit in the air to the outfield can never be "outrun" by a human, because the baseball is moving way faster than any human has ever run, it just happens to be moving downward.

DWB or DWI?

Without really putting a lot of thought into it until this morning, I'd say I go days, maybe even a week at a time without seeing any African-American drivers on my commute to and from work each morning, which is noteworthy on its own. But the reason I realized that this particular morning is my realization that I'd say probably 1 of every 3 drivers I ever see pulled over by cops on the side of the road are black.

The conclusion you reach about that probably defines you as liberal or conservative.

Sorta like how Charlie Brown's parents sound

At our Quaker Meeting, during the school year, we start in the school house with a half hour or so of what we clunkily, and misleadingly, call Opening Exercises, where any one person volunteers in advance to run things, and offer a topic either for them to speak about or to lead a discussion on, and we mix in hymns and announcements as well.

Yesterday, the person who was leading it did something I don't remember ever having been done in my 50+ years of going there. He told us he was going to read us a poem and then asked us, in advance, to share one our favorites as well.

It was during the reading of, and my listening to, these poems that I had a revelation.

Now I know what cats hear when we speak to them.

Rtjbo askmjef afh eha dyshj,
asj aefgi dfohthj,
bjhdfv padgvhj.

Sorry about the pentameter, it may not have five metrical feet, but at least it rhymes.

Next you'll tell me that Josiah Bartlett was never President

Amongst all the conversations the whole country seems to be having this morning on what the true meaning of the TV show Lost was, I'm tempted to say snarkily that my theory is that it's a TV show and it doesn't mean anything, but that might also mean that Maxwell Smart never really existed and I'm just not ready to accept that yet.