Very Local News

• Obama's stimulus package will spend a hell of a lot of money. Our children's money. There are "Buy American" rules involved that look a bit like protectionism. So What? America needs to stick up for herself. We are not any better than them. We are us, and they are them. We need to look out for us. Trust me, they are looking out for themselves.
• My neck hurts. It has for weeks. It is an old injury from being rear-ended with my ex-wife many years ago. It was over ten years. My neck hurts to turn right too far. It hurts in my shoulder. The pain gets worse after hours on the computer. It is whiplash. When the wreck happened, I turned my head just before to figure out where the screech noise was coming from.
• Ft. Leavenworth doesn't want the Guantanamo 'detainees'. Some spokes person said Leavenworth Kansas is not ready for the logistics of a prison in a prison. Nor is the small city prepared for the protests and terrorists attacks that would make the city a target. The citizens are genuinely concerned.
• Any trials are going to be a circus. No evidence for a conviction. Can't let them go because they are so dangerous.
• If they are transfered to foreign countries, what guarantees they will be held and not just released?
• If they set foot on U. S. soil, they suddenly get rights.
• We could just release them, wait for them to surface again as a terrorist and take them out then. This is what I'm betting on.
• I have an idea. Let them go. Let a rumor leak to the terrorists that these guys have some kind of tracker in them and we know everything they know. They won't last five minutes on the street.
• I listened to a podcast that started off with a sound that I thought was children playing. It had young voices shouting in an excited way and thump noises like little feet running. The announcer came on. The first word out of his mouth was "Riots in ..." The sound was of people rioting. It kind of made me sit back and think about my auditory filters.
• Honey bees are dying off at an alarming rate. They have been around far longer than most mammals. I heard somewhere bees came before flowers. It will seriously crack me up if the end of civilization is brought on by sick bees. i should write a post-apocalyptic dram with the extinction of bees as the catalyst for the upheaval.
• Tuesdays are light on delivering mail. No one mails stuff on Saturday or Sunday. The USPS wants to drop Tuesday delivery to save a buck. Whatever. I have no opinion on this except if the USPS needs to start paying taxes just like every one else. I know it will run the cost of some things up, but so  be it. Charge a dollar for a stamp. That is where it is headed anyway.
• A story about a battle in Gaza is discounted by the press because there is so little evidence on the ground of a fight. They site the lack of shell casings for AK-47 and RPGs as evidence. Those things are worth money. I guarantee they are picked up by someone to be sold for the metal or for reloading. Lack of evidence is not proof one way or the other. Frigging NPR.
• My little USB sound card thing came in handy. Someone came in to run a demo of some kind on our of our lab machines. None of which have a sound card. The demo went well. The crappy quality of the sound that comes out of that device didn't appear to be a factor. I wonder if we will end up with a sound card in one of the lab boxes. $3 + $5 shipping well spent. I have no idea where they found the speakers. I put on my earphones twenty five times throughout the afternoon. Knew I should have bought a half dozen of those things.