I'm on vacation and in slacker mode. Plus Blogger has been uncooperative on the few occasions when I felt like blogging something. Blogging is likely to continue to be light for the rest of the month. Here's the stuff I didn't write about.
The Flaming Pope: Perhaps you saw the news story last week with the picture of a bonfire, with the flames resembling the late John Paul II. Some called it a miracle; I suspected Photoshop.
Chocolate Jesus returns: Fox News was running this story about the return of the life-sized anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus, which the artist is going to exhibit at an art gallery in New York. My take: It's like when you shop on Amazon.com, and they make a recommendation that says "Better Together," about two related items that can be purchased at the same time. Flaming Pope and Chocolate Jesus: Better Together, with the end result a melted chocolate puddle.
Benazir Bhutto's explosive return to Pakistan: What were they thinking?! She's going to drive in a motorcade for hours through the densely crowded streets of a city of 15 million people, which is chock-full of Muslim extremists. She's gotten death threats from Al-Qaeda and the local Muslim terrorist groups. And she thinks she's going to be able to just ride through the streets and NOT have suicide bombers try to blow her up?! So they ended up with over 130 people dead and hundreds more injured. The only good news is that this is likely to make the Pakistani government become a bit more serious about dealing with the extremists in their midst. Good luck to them; they'll need it.
Joe Torre and the Yankees: The Yankees made their former manager an offer he could refuse, with a lower base salary and up to $3 million in incentives. Torre rightly saw this as an insulting offer, one that showed that the Yankees management brain trust didn't really want him back, despite the fact that the Yankees made the playoffs every year for the past twelve years and won four World Series championships under Torre. Of course, those World Series wins were all back in the 1990s, and the expectation in New York is that the Yankees should have won the World Series twelve times in those twelve years. It's an impossible situation for whoever the Yankees hire to replace Torre: The Yankees will spend a ton of money on the best players that they can get, and the expectation will be that the new manager will win, or else. Contrast that with Trey Hillman, who was just hired by the Kansas City Royals, a team that hasn't been to the playoffs at all since winning the World Series in 1985. No pressure there.
Orionids meteor shower this morning: You can't see meteors when it's raining. Maybe I'll have better luck with the Leonids next month.
