You Missed It: Ethics of steel edition

Sooooo, how are things? Yeah? How’s work going for you? That’s cool. Me? Eh, things are slowing down, you know how it is …. Yeah, well, um …. I should get going, but it was great running into you like this. Oh, one other thing. If you were busy downloading peephole videos of sports reporters this week, odds are you missed it.

But enough about that, let’s talk about important things, like Michael Vick being freed
Did you hear that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was accused with sexual assault this week? If you did, you did not hear about it from ESPN, who remained eerily quiet on the topic. The story broke earily in the week, when a worker at a Nevada casino filed a civil suit, saying that Big Ben called her up to fix his television, then, well, you know. The point here is that until last night, ESPN was not talking about it. Yes the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” was mum on the quarterback of the reigning Super Bowl champs being charged in a civl case with probably the most career ending charge, other than murder. We don’t want to offend toothless Ben, after all.

The Eagle has landed and provided us with news in a dry week
Forty years ago this week, man walked on the moon for the first time. It’s the kind of thing that makes you stop and pause. Or, if you’re the media, it’s the kind of thing that makes you cover the story from about every conceivable angle. Did you know that Neil Armstong is very reclusive regarding his fame? Did you know that Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin legally changed his name to Buzz in 1988? Did you know that the astronauts had to go through customs when they came back to Earth? It’s all true. Now, let’s move onto talking about the long bureaucratic process the Apollo program took, or President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech, or ….

Put him altogether, then take him all apart
Michael Jackson’s nose. It’s been the butt of jokes, the subject of wonder, and quite possible the target of a surgery or two over the years. However, it seems now that the King of Pop’s nose is missing! Reports are that while his body was in the morgue, witnesses said the nose was not on his face while he was on the autopsy table. Don’t worry, everyone. Inspired by Mister Potato Head he had 16 different, changeable noses, from the skinny and pointed looking to the downright elven.

The McBournie Minute: This election is tame

A lot of people say that politics are ugly today. They aren’t. They are actually way, way more civilized than they ever had been in any other point of American history and you can credit that to gun restrictions and television cameras. Without those, it would probably still be a free for all.

Sure, things may be heating up between the Obama and McCain campaigns. We certainly have seen some nasty ads from Sen. John McCain and some responding spoken criticisms from Sen. Barack Obama. But really it’s timid, compared to what it has been in the past. Yes, politics in America may be more civilized than they ever had been. Hit the jump for more. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: This election is tame

The McBournie Minute: Finish the space station already

With a space shuttle landing yesterday and the Discovery Channel’s three-part documentary about NASA, When We Left Earth, space has been in the news a lot lately. Of course, space is all about cooperation and brotherly love these days. But for the first 40 years of space flight there was more of an “eff you, we’re going to beat you there” mentality. Perhaps we need to go back to that, if for no other reason than to get things done.

I remember first hearing about the International Space Station when I was in fourth grade, this was 1993 One of my teachers put on the overhead projector a snapshot of how the ISS would look when it was completed. A couple years later, I remember stumbling across it in an encyclopedia, I was probably looking for the definition of “isthmus” or something. There again was a computer-generated model of the huge structure orbiting the Earth. The caption underneath it said it would be completed around the year 2000.

It’s 2008 and the damn thing still is not finished. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Finish the space station already

Bay of Pigs: Mission Accomplished

We did it!  The operation launched by Kennedy in 1961 to overthrow the Communist “government” has finally succeeded: Castro is calling it quits.

Yes, Fidel Castro sent a letter–presumably from the spider-hole he’s hiding in–to the Cuban Communist Party newspaper, Granma, announcing that he is too old and unfit to run the island nation any longer.

A lot of you naysayers out there said it couldn’t be done, that the initial CIA-invasion was an “unprecedented disaster” (imagine we’re pinching our noses while saying these things), that the United States military would remain in Cuba for the next century. Well, it only took 47 years, so don’t you feel like a coward now?

This blog has received no word from our government as to when Guantanamo will be shut down, but rest assured, our boys are comin’ home soon!*

*By “soon,” we mean as soon as a flourshing capitalist democracy is in place.