Eric Ringham1) To start off, I think we need to have a good laugh.
Are these people for real??
Yup. Looks refreshing, at least.
2) The east coast experienced an intense heat wave over the weekend, making Blagojevich sweat even more. Maybe his lawyers should take a hint from all of these people.
When commuter trains in Connecticut broke down this month, officials said extreme heat snarled the system. Some racetracks across the Northeast canceled horse races, citing the heat.
False notes at an outdoor concert? Midday nap at the office? An abrupt aversion to skinny jeans?
You know what’s to blame.
And we complain about Minnesota weather!
At his Middle Eastern food cart in Astoria, Queens, Malhmoud Mohammed, 55, said on Sunday that business was down almost 25 percent this summer, a trend he attributed to the lack of customers outdoors. In his native country, Egypt, he said, this would never happen.
“In Egypt, it is dryer,” he said. “It is better.”
The Boston Globe had photos earlier this month that demonstrate a hot summer.
3) Online watchdog Wikileaks has released over 90,000 incident reports out of Afghanistan, some of which have been compiled into an interactive map by The Guardian.
The New York Times also has completed a story that uses the Wikileaks information to describe previously downplayed situations:
Over all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements — attributing the downing of a helicopter to conventional weapons instead of heat-seeking missiles or giving Afghans credit for missions carried out by Special Operations commandos.
Good thing we’re winning the war. Wait, what’s that? Oh… good thing we’re getting out of the Middle East! Hmmm… only Iraq, huh? Well, good thing we’re still the richest country in the world… oh… oops.
4) Take a submarine dive with the BBC as they go deep into the gulf in a submersible vehicle. That’s a part of the spill we haven’t seen yet… BP may have a new plan on how to raise enough money to cover all of the damages: oil spill tourism?
5) Finally, as I was driving over the weekend, I heard Weekend Editions story on the end of NASA, and needed to promote it here. It’s a funny, sad, historical account of one of the human race’s greatest achievements; frivolous spending to go straight up and come right back down again.
