Apple Computer is biggest company in history

As measured by market capitalization, the number of shares outstanding times the price per share.  Apple is worth $623.52 billion on Monday.  That's way ahead of Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, IBM, GE, and all others.  It's  a long way from Wozniak and Jobs making the Apple I (just a mother board, no casework) in a garage.  A lot of that growth comes from Mackintoshes, Ipods, and Ipads, new products created by Steve Jobs.
   With a few more guys like Steve Jobs doing new product development, and we could grow our way out of Great Depression 2.0.

You know Detroit is dead

When your college age offspring cannot tell the difference between a Mercury and a Mercedes.

Where have all the giblets gone?

Beats me.  But the last two whole chickens I bought didn't have giblets.  Remember them?  The liver, the neck the gizzard and the heart, all packed in a little paper bag inside the bird?  The liver, sauted, did good things for the stuffing.  The rest of it made the gravy.  Boil them all for as long as the chicken needs to oven roast with some Bell's Poultry seasoning added to the water.  Pick the neck meat, chop the others, and add 'em to the gravy.  Use the broth in the gravy too.
   Cannot understand what's happened here.  Packing the giblets with the bird allows the store to sell offal at chicken prices.  I cannot imagine anyone else who would pay $1.29 a pound for chicken necks and gizzards.

Social Security stocks up on Ammo

According to CBS news, the Social Security Administration placed an order for 174,000 rounds of .357 pistol ammunition.  Damn, that's a lot.
The article goes on to say that Social Security employs 295 special agents who have arrest powers and work armed.
   Social Security should not have armed agents.  If they need to have someone arrested, they can call the cops, just like everyone (nearly everyone) else does. 
   Looks like another good place for a little sequestration to happen. 

Chronicle

A 2012 movie.  Three American high school boys are featured.  They are an unattractive lot when the movie opens.  Loud, rude, given to hooting like chimpanzees.  Somehow (pure magic?) they are endowed with real Superman type superpowers.  They can fly, leap tall buildings with a single bound, are bullet proof, everything.  Way cool.
   But nothing comes of it. They remain unattractive anti social jerks. They fail to rise to the occasion and slay dragons, rescue pretty maidens, save the world, or even get a decent suit of clothing. 
  Depressing movie.  Clearly the gift of superpowers does not uplift jerks into defenders of truth justice and the American way.  Which may be true, but I like the DC comics legend better.
    None of the names in the cast mean anything to me.  Camera work is mediocre to poor.  Lots of "shake-the-camera" shots.  Sound is adequate, you can understand most of the dialogue.

Ballast shipped all the way to Mars

Curiosity depended upon dropping ballast weights to maintain it's attitude during re-entry (entry?) to the Martian atmosphere.  The amount of ballast is surprising.   Two heavier weights were dropped to bring the nose up and allow aerodynamic maneuvering.  Then six more 55 pound ballast weights were dropped to level the craft off.  Six times 55 pounds is 330 pounds of ballast.  That's a lot, considering the entire lander only weighed 1924 pounds. 
   I hate to Monday morning quarterback a successful mission, but you would think they would have used some kind of steering fins sticking out in the airstream.  That's a lot of dead weight to blast all the way to Mars.

Words of the Weasel Part 27

"The fiscal effort becomes more difficult because the cyclical contraction is more challenging compared with the base line macro economic scenario of the second [bailout] program."  said Nikos Magginas, an economist at the Nation Bank of Greece.
And this means  what, exactly?