A classic Jewish story I just got via email

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Standing on the shore, a Jewish lady watches her grandson playing in the water.

She is thunderstruck when she sees a huge wave crash over him. When it recedes, the boy is no longer there — he had vanished!

Screaming, the woman holds her hands to the sky and cries, “Lord, how could you?”

“Have I not been a wonderful mother and grandmother?”
“Have I not scrimped and saved so I could give to the temple?”
“Have I not always put others before myself?”
“Have I not always turned my other cheek and loved my neighbors?”
“Have I not–!!”

A deep loud voice from the sky interrupts. “Enough already, give me a break!”

Immediately, another huge wave appears and crashes on the beach. And when it recedes, the boy is there smiling, splashing around as if nothing ever happened.

The deep loud voice continues. “I have returned your grandson. Are you satisfied?”

The grandmother responds, “He had a hat.”

I’ve known about this deal for a while, but this is the first story I’ve seen that includes an artist’s concept of the vehicle. It’s a pretty bird. There are some more pics at the XCOR site.

Basically, the story is that XCOR and Space Adventures have teamed up to raise funds to develop a suborbital passenger vehicle.

In which I discourse on emergent stupidity.

A man is suing several fast-food chains, blaming them for his obesity.

Here’s a cautionary tale for young people who think that perforating their skin with inky needles is a cool idea.

I like Hank Hill’s take on tattoos and body piercing: they’re a major societal advance because they allow you to tell, with a mere glance, that someone’s not quite right.

They also provide a vivid daily reminder, well into your dotage, of just how stupid you were when you were young.

Fox News is reporting that the two Williams children who support the suspension have filed court documents, including one signed by Ted Williams a year and a half ago, stating that he wanted to be frozen, with his children.

I presume that he didn’t expect them to be frozen at the same time as him, like some weird, frigid form of suttee–it probably just means that when it’s their time, they should be frozen as well, rather than buried.

If these documents are authentic, it should settle the matter, and hopefully end the other daughter’s attempts to kill him for good.

[Update at 10:45 AM PDT]

Here’s the story from Sports Illustrated.

Christian (but not Catholic) Dave Trowbridge basically takes my side in the debate over the viability of cryonics and its relationship to souls, with an interesting comment on an aspect that I’d considered in the past, but forgotten:

So in reality, whether or not one believes in the existence of a soul as defined and delimited by Mark matters not at all to the cryonics debate. In fact, the Catholic Church has already, in effect, come down on Rand’s side, for, as far as I know, the Church teaches that the frozen embryos used for in-vitro fertilization are human beings, endowed with a soul from conception, and that to destroy one is to destroy a human life. Yet, all metabolic functions have ceased in the frozen embryo, and prior to the birth of the first frozen embryo baby in 1984, medical, legal, and religious opinion would have been unanimous: a frozen embryo is dead, or, in Mark’s terms, there is no human being present.

Though as far as I know, the Church has taken no position on the issue, it would seem that to be consistent (not by any means necessarily a requirement of Church doctrine, I hasten to add), then they should endorse cryonics, or at least the notion that suspended patients retain their souls.

Lou Grinzo has some words of wisdom that will have to be followed if Linux is ever to be successful on the desktop.

Does this essay partially explain the apparent affinity of some Brits for misogynistic Arabs?

Well, that’s actually not the headline. It’s “Rep. James Traficant Expelled from Congress.”

But I found this line from the story amusing. There was only one vote in favor of retaining the congressman–by lame-duck Gary Condit, who was described by Reuters as “…a California Democrat who was defeated in a re-election bid this year after being romantically linked to a missing federal intern.”

Oh, well, just as one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, I guess that one man’s murdered intern is another’s missing intern…