There are less than three weeks to go, so this may end up being my favorite story of the year:
A pair of gay penguins thrown out of their zoo colony for repeatedly stealing eggs have been given some of their own to look after following a protest by animal rights groups.
Another way we know times are tough:
We all have heard of eggs "fresh from the farm". How about fresh from the back yard?
It's legal to keep chickens in Chicago.
One East Garfield Park resident who keeps five hens in a coop outside her home tells the Chicago Tribune the birds are "like pets with eggs."
Slaughtering the birds is prohibited in the city.
Do we still get what we pay for? Price tag of the bailouts so far (maximum commitments): $8.5 trillion. Inflation-adjusted cost of the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the race to the moon, the S&L crisis, the Korean War, the New Deal, the invasion of Iraq, the Vietnam War and all of NASA's efforts, combined: $3.92 trillion. Who can possibly defend this insanity?
For the "Let's pretend your vote counts" file (it's like those "Thank you for not smoking" signs -- you mean I have a choice?): Time invites readers to help select its Person of the Year. Here's how the Fark link describes it:
Time magazine invites people to vote for 25 choices for 2008's Person Of The Year before they pick Barack Obama regardless
Any bets against Obama?
RIP Bettie Page, who helped kick off the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Her soft-core porn look seems almost chaste today, but she was considered hot stuff back then.
USA Today makes the current economic crisis personal and understandable by visiting a quaint little town where the simple folk are dazed by the goings on:
KOKOMO, Ind. — Ever since Elwood Haynes revved his horseless carriage up to 7 mph on the Pumpkinvine Pike in 1894, this has been a car town. It calls itself "City of Firsts," site of the first American gas-powered car, the first carburetor, the first pneumatic tire, the first push-button car radio.
Nobody listened when I warned about their attacks on our cars. Nobody paid attention when I pointed out their suicide missions of jumping from overpasses. Now they're going after our children:
A fourth-grade class in Michigan learned firsthand about animal behavior when a deer crashed through a window and into its classroom.
Hallelujah -- looks like I'll have time to do some of those things I've been putting off this year:
Along with the economy, the Earth itself is slowing down, requiring timekeepers to add an extra second to their atomic clocks to keep in sync with Earth's slightly slowing rotation. So an extra second will be tacked on to Dec. 31 after 6:59:59 p.m. and before 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Remember "My country right or wrong"? Isn't "Buy American" the same sort of thing? Never mind how bad the product might be or how expensive it is, it's your patriotic duty to choose it over that evil foreign product. But it's not always that easy:
For example, some Ford Focus automobiles are actually produced south of the border, at a factory in Mexico, and Nissan Altimas are built right here in the United States - in Tennessee.
