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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Thursday, September 25, 2003

Some bad news; some good news. Fowler's has been "going downhill" noticeably the past few years. Maybe some of the remnants will be sold at a discount. If so, I'll be there. It's the store where I bought a truffle last December. A Southern Season opens at their enlarged location on the same day....   Popular downtown market closed, for now PAUL BONNER : The Herald-Sun Sep 24, 2003 : 8:36 pm ET DURHAM -- Disappointed seekers of espresso and other goodies at Fowler's went away empty-handed Wednesday. Some read the notice that sheriff's deputies had posted on the front door. Accompanying state revenue officers, deputies closed the gourmet market and sandwich shop Wednesday morning and had its locks changed. The store, a popular downtown destination among epicures, owes more than $50,000 in state sales tax and penalties for part of last year and July of this year. The officers executed a tax lien, seizing the business's equipment and inventory until the debt is satisfied. If it isn't, the state could sell the assets. 8:35:41 AM    comment []

In Goodfellas, when a restaurant owner lost more gambling than he could ever pay back, the mob took pver his place. Then they bought food on credit and resold it "on the street" until there was no more credit. The sales were pure profit and the restaurant owner went bankrupt. This also appears to be the Republican approach to the US budget these days. As in Iraq, there is no planning for the aftermath. Since default is out of the question, the money will first come from the Social Security trust fund (bankrupting it, which will "prove" it always was a bad idea) and then will manifest itself in either greater dollar devaluation or inflation. Someone else will be left holding the bag on inflation, as Jimmy Carter was for the off-budget excesses of Johnson and Nixon for Vietnam spending. Devaluation means foreign goods will be more expensive, so it is effectively consumer-only inflation. Economists like to say that a lower dollar is good for exports, but what the hell do we manufacture in this country anymore? I don't have the answers, but why isn't anyone asking the questions? 6:41:53 AM    comment []

Wordplay – it is rocket science!   Sometimes I’m really stupid. Until I read Moscow, We Have A Problem in the September 2003 Popular Science, I had no real idea of the origins of the expression “to go ballistic.” On the surface, it appears self-explanatory, so there is no motivation to dig any deeper. Besides, the expression has been replaced by the more humorous “to go postal” in the vernacular, so why bother? But, hey, if it just lands in your lap, why not share it? These few paragraphs demonstrate the origins without being self-congratulatory – it’s just another space age expression, like “A-OK” and “The Right Stuff.”   THE SITUATION:  2:43 am, Moscow time, May 4, 2003. After 163 days in orbit, Right engineer Nikolai Budarin, International Space Station command, Kenneth Bowers and ISS science officer Donald Pettit finally undock from the ISS ad begin their journey home Their ride is Russia's newly upgraded Soyuz TMA- I spacecraft, and if all goes according to plan, they'll touch down in southern Kazakhstan in three and a half hours. (With the space shuttle fleet grounded, these Soyuz taxi missions have become critical.)   Landing minus 26 minutes: The Soyuz's descent module, which contains the crew, jettisons the habitat and service modules and orients itself to enter Earth's atmosphere. The plan calls far a "controlled entry" with the vehicle's guidance system maintaining a shallow 4-G trajectory. But I minute before entry interface - a point 75 miles above Earth, surface where the thickening atmosphere begins, screens suddenly shift into ballistic made. The crew's eyes widen. The Soyuz will now execute a much deeper and more punishing 8-G trajectory and land far short of the planned recovery zone.   THE RESPONSE: Bowersox glances at Budarin. Ballistic made can be triggered through a button on the control stick, but Budarin has that button securely covered. The problem must be deeper within the automatic control system. "At that point there was little we could do," recalls Bowersox "Ballistic mode is irreversible."   To end the story, the cosmonauts (or whatever they call them nowadays) did land safely but 285 miles from the anticipated landing zone. Since they did not use the word “ballistic” in radio transmissions, the recovery crew had no idea that anything had gone wrong. After they landed, they could not deploy their emergency antenna because the vehicle had rolled over on it. They eventually got a transmissions out, and recovery happened 4 hours after it was scheduled – not much worse than a typical airport delay. 5:59:45 AM    comment []

Cat dreams 4:12:53 AM    comment []