Bad Time for Continental Airlines

Houston-based Continental Airlines just can't seem to catch a break lately. Pilot error crashes a commuter partner plane in Buffalo, killing all on board; three children sent to wrong cities in the last week or so, and now a pilot died today during the flight of a Boeing 777 with 247 passengers on board. The flight originated in Brussels. A backup pilot took over on the flight deck for Captain Craig Lenell, who quietly died of a heart attack during the flight. Lenell, who was 60 years old, had been with the airline for 32 years.

The plane landed safely at Newark.

The Defendant Did Not Speak in His Own Defense

There is a sad, but odd story out of Queens, New York this week. The New York Daily News reports that while the body of a 59-year-old man sat dead in his van, the city continued to place parking tickets on the vehicle over a period of several weeks.

The daughter of the deceased is asking how this could happen. That seems like a reasonable question to me. The window was slightly open, so you would think that a decomposing corpse would have drawn some olfactory attention. The body was so far gone that the only thing left was skeletal remains and the heart.

The photo is not the actual vehicle in this incident, but is here for illustrative purposes only.

A New Toy Yoda

Okay, I know this isn't new, but it did strike me as funny. The Hooters waitress in the picture thought she won a new car. She doesn't look very happy with her prize...a brand new toy Yoda!

Poorly Written Headline

Newspapers Online - 1981 Style

Today, both newspapers and television stations are struggling, largely due to competition from news delivered on the Internet. But 28 years ago, it was 1981, and KRON-TV in San Francisco had this report about how a few newspapers were starting to be available to download the text onto a computer. A harbinger of things to come:

Fox Broadcasting - Rotten to the Core?

Do you trust the news media to tell you the truth? Do you think it is fine that deregulation has concentrated America's media into just a few hands, such as News Corporation, Clear Channel, and a handful of others? Does it not trouble you that media magnate, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation owns The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Sky News, and a slew of local TV stations among others? Well, look at this video about Fox 13 in Florida, a Fox-owned outlet. Watch it, and tell me if you believe advertising dollars don't dictate what is passed off as news...in this case, outright lies.

The media plays an important role in a society. By caving to threats of lawsuits and withdrawal of advertising revenue, they abdicate their responsibility to the public.

See Ya O. J.

The Moody Blues sang, "Isn't life strange, a turn of the page, can read like before, can we ask for more." Well, the turn of the page didn't quite read like before for former football star, former actor, former murder suspect, former golf course hunter for the "real killers" , and now convicted armed robber O. J. Simpson. Thirteen years to the day from his acquittal for the brutal slashing murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman, O.J. has been found guilty of armed robbery in Las Vegas.

Jurors deliberated 13 hours before finding Simpson guilty of all 12 counts against him. Based on his age of 61, he could conceivably spend the rest of his life in prison. While I believed the evidence proved his guilt in the murders, the jurors found him not guilty. That decision set him free to grab a golf cart and begin his hunt for the "real killers". Of course, besides enjoying a round of 18 holes while on the hunt., O.J. has been in trouble for one thing after another over the intervening years.

Last year, Simpson had the cajones to publish "If I Did It", a book telling how he would have done the killings "if" he had done them. The outrage caused a movie based on the book to not be released, and the Goldman's eventually got the rights to the tome.

So, maybe O.J. thought he was invincible, that he could beat any rap against him. But this time there were no slow band of police cars chasing a creeping white Bronco at slow speed. Only the sight of O.J. being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs to await sentencing for the counts of which he has been found guilty. I am sure the Brown and Goldman families will sleep well tonight. Oh, there might be a tee time available at his favorite golf course in Miami. O.J. won't be taking it.