Higher standards...

Re: The Kate Moss 'caine scandal (really? A 42-pound supermodel...snorting coke?):

In the latest blow to (Kate) Moss's once glittering career, the British cosmetics group Rimmel earlier joined fashion retailers Burberry and H and M as well as French fashion house Chanel in deciding to review or scrap contracts with her.

I guess someone's lucky that 50% of the voters in this country are of lesser moral character than those in Chanel's public relations department...

Relevance, redefined...

NASA has offered to put a man on the moon...at a cost of $104 billion, and claims to be able to do it by the year 2018. Apparently, there's an entire generation or two who've never experienced the thrill of seeing man walk on the moon. These future "astronauts" can expect to find a lot of rocks, and...um...traces of the missions that were sent there over thirty freakin' years ago. The Crayon-tinted graphics that were shown on the news channels yesterday looked like they wouldn't have seemed out of place when JFK announced the first-generation moon ventures. The two scientists shown discussing the upcoming missions were sitting on a set that appeared to be made up of items pulled from a high school science competition. Granted, our moon rock supply was probably exhausted years ago, but is this really necessary? If I were a Sony product developer, could I expect to keep my six-figure salary by announcing a product that looked and functioned suspiciously like an old Atari game console (I'm digging for an analogy--I don't think any sort of game console existed 36 years ago).

Burt Rutan (SpaceShip One) could probably do this for $37.50, and he'd have you bouncing around on the moon in two weeks' time.

Why? Why? Why?

Why are there thunderstorms in L.A. at the moment? Is it because I didn't bring a jacket? Is it because I want to fly home today? I lived in Southern California from 1987-1994, and remember hearing thunder only once during that time.

I should mention that my motorcycle, which I mentioned earlier, averaged 41MPG for a 100-mile trip yesterday. This includes some city miles, as well as a 90MPH average on the interstate. With gas prices where they are at the moment, the bike's just a bit more frugal than the 25MPG car was last week. Still...
If anyone's interested in getting on a bike for the first time, for fuel economy and/or FUN reasons, just let me know.