Flying so low
The air overhead was abuzz again out there today, especially right over the Hudson:
Today's special bonus feature: Yet another installment in our intermittent series, You Can't Make This Stuff Up (and why would you want to?) An actor playing Jesus was struck by lightning during the filming of "The Passion of Christ" in Italy. That was the second time lightning had struck the crew, and one assistant director was struck twice.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @5:58 PM
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25.10.03  |
Shameful, shameful, shameful
"I think that our representatives of government deserve a pay raise consistent with the work that we've produced." -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn)
"At a time when our country is facing record annual deficits, this automatic, stealth, pay raise system is absolutely wrong. The financial markets have been rocked, wiping out a large portion of the life savings and retirement accounts of many families. Thousands of workers who were laid off have not returned to work, and families face increasing financial pressures. How can Congress give itself a $3,400 pay raise while nearly 9 million people are unemployed, and 2 million have been out of work for more than half a year?" -- Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis)
The U.S. Senate has given itself yet another pay raise. Here's a trivia question for you: are all 100 of them millionaires? Are more than half of them?
Our next shameful item is this nation's abysmal treatment of its wounded American war heroes.
And speaking of wounded American war heroes, U.S. Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, shot in both legs while she was a prisoner of war in Iraq, has been notified she will receive a 30 percent disability benefit. Meanwhile, famed Private Jessica Lynch will receive an 80 percent benefit for her injuries. Lynch is white; Johnson isn't. The Urban League has called for an inquiry, and rightly so.
So apparently we all need a refresher course on what it means to
Support our troops
Supporting our troops doesn't mean buying a bunch of made-in-China flags and waving them around. It doesn't mean giving citizen-soldiers injured in service to their country second-class status for treatment of those injuries. It doesn't mean that if they lose a leg or an arm, we should look them over and say, "There appears to be about 60 percent of you left, therefore you get a 40 percent disability." It doesn't mean giving them a choice between those disability benefits and the retirement pay they earned from their service before they were injured. It doesn't mean promising them health care for life when they're recruits and then cutting back on that when they need it most.
Shameful, shameful, shameful.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @5:53 PM
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24.10.03 |
Busy skies
One flying object is being grounded, but plenty of birds, planes, and helicopters remain aloft, especially on this chilly day. The gulls can fly as low as they want, but I wish the helicopters and airplanes would maintain a higher profile, a few thousand feet higher at least.
You can't see them very well unless you look at the full-size image, but there are five helicopters (one between the tug and the barge), an airliner, and a seagull in this photo:
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @6:27 PM
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23.10.03 |
Cruise to nowhere, and back again
When the journey matters more than the destination, as well it should on the five-star cruise ship Seabourn Pride, you can venture off to another world without ever leaving the neighborhood. The Pride is sticking close to home on this journey, exploring Long Island Sound and the Hudson River before returning its passengers to their everyday lives.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @5:49 PM
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22.10.03 |
Night lights
I was out going to meetings and running errands all day, and by the time I got back it was already dark. So today's post will be brief: a couple of recent photos of cruise ships at night, all from the trusty Towercam:
Unfortunately there was not a cruise ship in sight when I rode the ferry home this evening.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @7:03 PM
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21.10.03 |
Big sky, little skyline
All it takes is a few clouds to put the looming Manhattan skyline into perspective, especially when the clouds are this spectacular.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @5:47 PM
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20.10.03 |
Squirrel Appreciation
Darn. We missed Squirrel Appreciation Day (January 21) AND Squirrel Appreciation Week (Oct. 5-11), not to mention Red Squirrel Week (Sept. 13-20).
We did have some squirrel awareness going on, as we'd noticed quite a few of the critters out harvesting nuts on the sidewalks of Hoboken. That awareness intensified yesterday when we noticed our electric power flickering, only to learn later that the flicker was caused by an inadvertently exploding squirrel that wandered into a Jersey City power substation.
It couldn't have been this particular squirrel, as we took this photo a few hours afterward.
Hope we've got the squirrel awareness and appreciation taken care of for another year.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @7:59 PM
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19.10.03 |
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