- Maybe we aren’t paying our airport employees enough…either that, or many of them are thieving, lying, duplicitous scumbags. I’ll let you decide after I tell you about a counterfeiting ring at the Newark Liberty Airport in which $2 million worth of U.S. Treasury checks were stolen and their security features copied by a group that included several baggage handlers working at the airport. Federal authorities in Jew Jersey say that the operation started with those baggage handlers stealing the checks from luggage and then passing them on to others in the ring who copied security features from them and subsequently cashed $2 million worth of bogus paper. See, this is why you always put your millions of dollars in U.S. Treasury checks in your carry-on bag, because you send them through the baggage-handling department and they’re going to be stolen. Ideally you wouldn’t be traveling with large amounts of these checks, but I understand that’s how some of your roll. Welcome to the Newark Airport, where you can’t carry on a toothpaste tube bigger than 3 oz. because of an alleged security hazard, but our security isn’t good enough to protect a multimillion-dollar counterfeiting ring. Yet another reason why air travel is a nightmare more often than not….
- I loves me a good conspiracy theory just as much as anyone, but the Chinese government is barking up the wrong tree in accusing followers of the Dalai Lama or staging violent clashes with police in the hopes of sabotaging this summer’s Olympics in Beijing and boosting their campaign for independence from the brutally oppressive Chinese rule in their country. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made those accusations this week, but I regret to inform Jiabao that he’s missing the point here. Yes, Tibetans and their supporters are violently clashing with police and trying to end your forced rule in their country, but they don’t have some ulterior motive. Their motive is clear and openly stated - returning their exiled government, led by the Dalai Lama, to power. Maybe having the eyes of the world focused on their region because of the Summer Olympics helps, but I don’t think they’re looking to sabotage the Games, because you all are doing a great job of that already by having such polluted air that athletes fear for their health if they compete in it, trying to use ‘roided-up chickens to feed athletes and continually oppressing human rights to the point that the world recognizes you as one of the absolute worst in that category. You trying to put a spin job on the resistance effort is actually comical and no one believes you, but keep on selling it if you want.
- Planning on catching the beginning of the Major League Baseball season? Looking forward to tuning in on TV or radio on a sunny spring afternoon or evening as your favorite team kicks off its season? Think again, friends. If you want to catch the official start of the season, you’re going to need to either stay up really late or wake up between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. (depending on the time zone you live in) if you want to see the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A’s start the 2008 season live from Japan. Yes, in a terrible tradition that MLB insists on continuing, those two teams will start the season for AMERICA’S national pastime in Japan. I understand the importance of reaching out to baseball-loving nations like Japan, I truly do. I also get that the logistics of a Japan trip are a bit easier if you put the trip at the start of the season and then give the teams playing aboard a few extra days off. That being said, you can’t start the season on foreign soil. Play the first games in this country as long as MLB is a U.S.-based league. You’re throwing them on at a time when 99.9 percent of people in this country can’t or won't watch. Plus, you’re having the defending World Series champs play in these games, further compounding your error. I know this will fall on deaf ears and that MLB is going to keep pushing these season-openers in Japan year after year, but that doesn’t mean it’s right or that someone shouldn’t stand up against the practice.
- Well this is one of the more bizarre reenactments of the Boston Tea Party that I’ve ever seen. Some Nicaraguan drug smugglers were looking to move a little product this past week and for some odd reason, the Nicaraguan authorities weren’t down. Being the typical sticks in the mud that those in authority tend to be, officials in the country went hard after the smugglers and their stash of 3,300 pounds of cocaine. The U.S. Coast Guard, ever the squares and party-poopers, joined in on the pursuit and these poor drug traffickers had no choice but to dump more than a ton and a half of coke overboard and escape. The smugglers did get away, but all of that blow is now lost forever. The price of coke will skyrocket as a result and cocaine addicts everywhere will feel the pinch. But just like those revolutionaries in Boston more than two centuries ago were taking a stand against the tyranny of British rule and the principle of taxation without representation, I can’t help but see a message being sent by these intrepid, modern-day revolutionaries off the coast of Nicaragua. No seizure of our blow without proper payment, that’s the new battle cry. In related news, Keith Richards and Amy Winehouse have announced that they will be taking an extending deep-sea diving trip off the coast of Nicaragua immediately….wonder if there’s a connection here I’m missing….
- People often use the space program as a point of comparison when talking about advanced technology and sophisticated, advanced activities. “It’s not rocket science,” they’ll say. It gets me to thinking and wondering if our space program is really as advanced and sophisticated as we think it is. For example, say there’s a problem with the physical structure of a space shuttle or station and some sort of repairs are needed. Do our astronauts have some über-advanced technology, something “space age” that will allow them to pinpoint the problem and fix it in a way that would confound mere mortals. Oddly enough, the answer is no. When tiles on the international space station, the tool of choice for fixing the damage is a caulk gun and some putty. Astronauts from the shuttle Endeavour arrived at the space station last week to deliver a robot and the first section of a Japanese lab to be installed, but their duties have expanded to include puttying up damage to the station. Using the pink goo and a caulk gun-like contraption, they are now fixing up the holes like modern day, space-walking handymen. When they’re done patching those holes, maybe they can move on to fixing that pesky space station garbage disposal and finding a way to keep the station’s toilets from clogging up. Good work, guys, I’m sure Neil Armstrong would be very proud of your efforts.
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