Medary.com

Season four is now available on DVD, according to Tor.com.

In 1983, Jim Henson created Fraggle Rock, a groundbreaking piece of children's television that still feels fresh and relevant 25 years later. To celebrate the release of season 4 on DVD, as well as a 20-DVD, extras-packed set of the entire show run (both coming in November), Red Fraggle was on hand (with her "friend," Karen Prell), for a sing-along with a packed audience:

If you're a science fiction fan and you haven't been to Tor.com . . . just go there, OK?

Over The Water And Back Again—A Transatlantic Trip

By Snookums, edited by Filbert, photos by Filbert

Part 3-- below (or at the "read more").

May 3 (Saturday, Day 7, At sea) –

Snookums read her book today while lounging beside the suite's picture window. Filbert worked out and burned 1067 calories in 55 minutes. While he was there he saw a guy in a “Teahen 24” Kansas City Royals t-shirt. The guy had to be from KC since nobody else (Filbert figured) would be wearing a Royals free giveaway t-shirt on a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic. Sure enough, the guy was an entertainer on board and will perform on Monday night. He said that he always references KC in his show, so we decided we would have to go to his performance.

It was formal night so we got all dressed up and went to the concierge lounge for drinks before dinner. We were stopped the other day from taking our drinks out with us so now Filbert brings his insulated coffee mug in with him and when he doesn’t finish his red wine, he pours it in his mug and takes that to dinner. Snookums takes her backpack and puts a few cans of Diet Coke in it each time she goes to the lounge. Sneaky little cusses, aren't we? I suppose the cruise companies will read this online and shut down our little game. Oh, well.

Filbert ordered the prime rib which was very good. For the fourth dinner in a row, Snookums ordered the vegetarian Indian option. Tonight it was chickpea and cauliflower stew. Every night the Indian entrée came with rice, raita and papadams. Each night there had been different types of curry (or biryani) but pretty good.

Prime rib

Who really, really thinks that the U.S. Federal Government isn't big enough?  President Bush's proposed FY2009 budget is 3,107 billion dollars, growing to 3,399 billion dollars in FY2013.

The FY2009 deficit is projected to be 407 billion dollars.  Discretionary spending is 1,062 billion, meaning that over 2,000 billion dollars are "non-discretionary."

That is nuts.

Everything the Federal Government does needs to be considered "discretionary."  I don't know what laws you'd have to pass to get this done, but we need to do this.  And anybody who opposes that needs to be run out of government as too irresponsible to ever hold office.  We can't afford to let 2/3 of the Federal Government's budget be completely on autopilot, immune from any kind of review or check on waste, fraud, abuse, and governmental bureaucratic business-as-usual.

It's time to cut.  If the managers in the Federal Government can't find 10% in their budgets to cut, then we know where to start:  Start firing the managers and getting new ones.

I just saw on Fox News that Delta is going to charge $50 for a second checked bag.

It's nice to see that the airlines are still (apparently) following the advice of an Alienating Your Customers for Dummies book.

If you need to raise your revenue, than raise your damn fares, for crying out loud.  The BEST way to piss off your customers is to nickel and dime them the way the airlines are right now.

It doesn't take much research or reading to quickly determine that Pakistan's ISI espionage agency (or "elements" therein) are . . . how do I put this delicately . . . not counted among the good guys.

The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants.

Via Hotair

That much is very obvious.  He can't help it.  It's who he is.  It's why he's been with nine different Major League Baseball teams in his 12-year career.

Decree that poor people should not have access to "fast food" in Los Angeles.

The vote of the city council was unanimous.

Unanimous.

UNANIMOUS.

These people want to run your life, too. They want to dictate what light bulbs you use, how much (if at all) you can drive your car, what medical care you receive.  There is no aspect of your life which is beyond their reach.

Many of these people (not all, by any stretch) are Democrats.  One of them, I firmly believe, is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President.

Think about that when you step into the voting booth this year.

Hmm.  We have Sprint (pity us).  We can see a cell tower from our house, but sometimes our phones can't get signal.  In our house.  And don't even get us started on when we go visiting Filbert's sister up in rural South Dakota, where Sprint service is, to be polite, nonexistent.

Sprint AIRAVE™ is a device that creates a CDMA signal for your mobile phone (like a miniature cell tower). AIRAVE provides enhanced and reliable mobile phone coverage in your house or office even if your existing wireless coverage is poor.

Hmm, again.  Another way for Sprint to extract money out of customers.  Skimp on your nationwide network coverage, then sell folks a do-it-yourself cell tower.  Genius!

Update:  Ars Technica's take:

The potential advantages of the service are obvious, but Sprint isn't exactly giving it away. The Airave unit itself is $99.99 and must be activated when purchased. Customers must also pay a monthly Airave enhanced coverage charge ($4.99), and purchase an Airave plan ($10-20 per month, depending on your plan). The total monthly cost of Airave should run $15-25 before taxes and fees. $15 isn't much, considering you're buying cellular service for an area that (presumably) lacked it, but it's extremely ironic that Sprint is charging users for the dubious privilege of providing their own backhaul.

. . . 

Paying for the right to backhaul over one's personal Internet connection isn't a great deal for consumers, but the benefits of femtocells could easily erase the negatives, especially when it comes to providing coverage in hard-to-reach areas. Deployed en masse, these miniature towers could offer truly ubiquitous coverage, and make random dead zones a thing of the past.

Science News has the details:

A team of Jackson Laboratory scientists have figured out a simple, cost-effective process to freeze mouse sperm and get it to achieve high fertilization rates with mouse eggs. The breakthrough will greatly reduce the cost of developing and distributing new mouse models of human disease.

OK, yeah, it's important for medicine and science and stuff.  But it's more fun from here just to meditate upon the phrase "frozen mouse sperm."  Then giggle uncontrollably.

Some day I'll grow up.

We've received nearly five inches of rain in the past day.  Hello, Dolly, indeed.

I had to take a couple of inches out of our pool . . . it was getting close to overtopping and possibly flooding the entire neighborhood.  Oh, the humanity!