Years of experience and exposure have taught this woman a thing or two about celebrity, personal focus, and the important things in life.   This is a well-written and thoughtful piece from what many would consider an unlikely source.    Read here.

This is one strange looking cloud.  I’d like to hear your ideas after you see it, and read about it here.

A song popped into my head this evening.  It’s from an old band called Buffalo Springfield.  Steven Stills sang it…

…There’s something  happenin’ here.

What it is ain’t exactly clear…..

A fired worker comes back to the job and methodically shoots several  co-workers.

An elementary school teacher blasts his principal and assistant…critically wounding one of them.

A college professor opens fire in a meeting, and kills three colleagues, and critically wounds three more.

A woman drowns one child, and nearly drowns a second, then kills herself while on the line with 9-1-1 dispatcher.

And this afternoon, a man burns down his own house, then takes a small plane on  a one-man suicide mission, crashing into a government building… but not before he posts an on-line “manifesto” of his series of gripes

And this all in the past month, the ones that come to mind with no research into news archives.

It ain’t exactly clear.

There’s a lot of rage in America right now.   Some of it is person-against-person.  Other times, it’s person against anything- everything.

It would be easy to blame the economy.  The recession wiped blank so many of our futures.

Some say our government policy is driving people to the brink.

I have heard other folks place the bloody bodies  at the feet of our permissive society.

At the same time these stories are developing a group of doctors in Canada push for government guidelines for when mercy killing can be legal.  But they don’t call it mercy killing.  It has a more medical sounding name… but accomplishes the same thing: deciding when to kill somebody.

Are all of these stories connected?

Is there a thread that is unraveling in our society that is prompting so many of us to act in such bloody, bizarre, un-natural  ways?

After the September Eleventh attacks, we were all afraid of the terrorist from overseas.

Now, it appears we need to worry about the terrorist who lives next door and is about to blow their stack.

Oh, you say that’s not terrorism?   The people who managed to live through the violence  might argue otherwise.

Terror, is terror, is terror.

Are we turning against ourselves in fits of rage?   I hope more intellectual and influential people can come up with that answer.

The fear of a terrorist from somewhere else is rapidly fading this week into a fear of the terrorist time-bomb maniac who might be working in the next cubicle.

One of the latest things in firefighting tools is a camera.  Many fire departments allow their crews to wear helmet cameras- small “lipstick”  cams to record their efforts.   Far from being a way to re-live the thrill, these cameras are often invaluable aids in reconstructing fire-rescue efforts for training.   Watch the companies from Dover, New Jersey fight this house fire.  A woman in her 80′s perished.  Her two sons got out okay.  And one firefighter is slightly injured in a fall as he bails out from the burning upper floor, where flames have chased him to the window.

Here in the dead of winter…. this video should be a reminder of what fire-ems-rescue-and law enforcement folks do for us every day.

This piece is worth reading:  warning over national debt,  from The Financial Times

I have heard about this treat.  I’d like to hear from any of you who have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed a slice or two. Here’s the story.

These works of art would likely sell more for the artist than the art.  At least I hope so.

And if not, I’m  in the wrong business, and I’m headed to Hobby Lobby for some gloppy red paint.

Somehow, I can’t see this demonic looking visage staring back at me from over the fireplace, or worse… from over the headboard of the bed.

It’s not that I dislike abstract art…. But let’s just say this photo looks like it came from Jack The Ripper’s art rehab class. Maybe his landscapes are prettier.

The F-22 is our nation’s newest fighter. It’s an amazing  combination of performance, power and stealth.   Because of its unusual engine and thrust design, the aircraft can do some things that would make a buzzard want a throw-up bag.  The pilot flying this demonstration , and for that matter all of the fighter plane drivers in our military,  must have their nerves removed somewhere along the line in their flight training.

Click here to watch the video.

My friend, Tom Pierce sent this illustration to me.  It explains perfectly why I like NHRA drag racing:

Top fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light! Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.  The redline is actually quite high at 9,500 rpm.

Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimate $1,000.00 per second.  The current top fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.428 seconds for the quarter mile (11/12/06, Tony Schumacher, at Pomona , CA ). The top speed record is 336..15 mph as measured over the last 66′ of the run (05/25/05 Tony Schumacher, at Hebron , OH ).

Putting all of this into perspective:

You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter ‘twin-turbo’ powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a top fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a quarter mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start.You run the ‘Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and pass the dragster at an honest 200 mph. The ‘tree’ goes green for both of you at that moment.

The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums and within 3 seconds, the dragster catches and passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter mile away from where you just passed him.

Think about it, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 mph and not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1,320 foot long race course.

Federal agencies push for increasing ability to track your cellular telephone call.  Here’s the story.

In the case that’s before the Third Circuit on Friday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, said it needed historical (meaning stored, not future) phone location information because a set of suspects “use their wireless telephones to arrange meetings and transactions in furtherance of their drug trafficking activities.”