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Life in Layman’s Terms

Tickets

I’m getting too old for this. Of course, I don’t know if I’ve ever been young enough.

I’m 28 and it’s my first time. I feel like I should be standing in front of a group of people, admitting with an ashamed aside that “My name is Kristin and I’ve never waited in line for tickets.” I guess I am standing in front of a group of people and admitting that. I just don’t have to look you in the eyes or shoes, which is about as high as I could lift my own eyes.

I’ve never waited in line for tickets. Now, I’m not talking about showing up ten minutes before a show and waiting for the family of 12 to decide that mom and dad are absolutely not watching the same fart-filled movie as little Jimmy or the princess dreams of the twins. I’m talking about the cold, cement and caffeine-filled nightmare of a wait for concert tickets that I’m not even sure I’ll get.

I go to concerts fairly regularly. Until I stepped up the travel schedule, I think I averaged a concert a week. I can barely listen to a station without hearing a band that I’ve seen. Actually, I have more trouble finding a band I haven’t seen. I just don’t wait in line.

With the information superhighway, I log into the virtual box office and buy tickets within seconds of opening. I’ve bought tickets from online auctions and I’ve bought tickets from scalpers. I even win tickets on a regular basis. (Hint: You actually have to call to win. It doesn’t hurt to have the radio stations on speed dial or to listen to the radio during the twice-daily rush hour commute.) Nevertheless, I’ve never waited in line for concert tickets.

Not until the Blink 182 DollaBill Tour.

That’s right, ladies and gentleman. Blink 182. For $1. Given the low, low cost of the ticket, the size of the venue and limited number of tickets and the popularity of the band, the 9:30 Club (your favorite venue and mine) decided to sell tickets at their box office only. Saturday morning at 10 a.m.

My friend Michelle is a big Blink fan. Huge. She’s paid a lot of money for very cheap tickets in the past and we’ve been to more concerts together than I can count, but Michelle plays flag football on Saturdays. She asked me to buy the tickets. In the same breath, er, line of email, she apologized and said it was the biggest favor she’d ever asked anyone and I didn’t need to do it and we could just try to win tickets.

Michelle won tickets once before and I tend to win a lot of tickets. I just don’t necessarily win the things I want. I haven’t quite learned to control my power. And so, without really promising anything, I told Michelle that I would see what I could do.

Friday night came and I went to happy hour. Happy hour generally turns into many happy hours but I headed home after only a couple of beers and tucked myself into bed for my 10 o’clock General Hospital hour. (Normally, I skip the Thursday and Friday episodes, preferring to pick them up in the week’s replay on Saturday morning.)

At four a.m. the alarm sounded and after stumbling across the room and swatting at the alarm, I threw myself face first into the downy softness of my bed. I groped for the remote and flipped on the late, late show to try to motivate myself out of bed. A half hour of Conan O’Brien pulled me out of bed and I started layering.

Long-sleeved T. Button-down. Sweater. Tights. Socks. Jeans. Boots. Peacoat. Hat. Gloves. I dug out my discman, batteries, a book. I grabbed a few packs of fruit snacks and a granola bar and waddled out to the car.

I planned an early morning driveby. The 9:30 Club’s in a pretty shady neighborhood. If the line were nonexistent, I would stay in my car. Too long and I would just go home. By the time I got there, the line stretched about halfway down the block, not too short, not too long. I found a parking spot close to corner, grabbed a blanket and checked my watch. 5 a.m.

Walking up to the line, I looked around nervously. What’s the proper etiquette? Nod to the waiters? Talk? Keep to myself? I smiled, threw down my blanket and started to sit. Mid-crouch, with my assets displayed for the world to see, I heard a voice.

“Don’t make yourself too comfortable. Gotta get a number,” I looked at the teen in the chair beside me. “Guy at the corner. He’s wearing a Foo Fighters shirt. You’ve got to get a number. They want to keep track of everyone.”

“That is such a good idea,” I exclaimed as I picked up my gear and walked toward the corner to get a number. 119. Yeah, baby. I walked back to the kid in the chair, his dad and his sister, and I pulled up a slab of concrete.

Techno music, eyes closed, and arms wrapped around my knees against the cold October morning. Head bobbing, I whiled away a good half hour or so until I noticed the line growing beside me. Foo Fighters guy and friend walked down the line, matching numbers and names with the list on their clipboard. 114. 115? 115? 116? 117? 118 (Nicole – “I know Nicole’s here.”) 119. Me. 115? Still missing with all of his friends.

I thought evil thoughts, “Don’t come back and I can move up three spots.”

After roll call, the line shifted a couple of kids settled down beside me, a girl in a peacoat, a boy with a sleeping bag and a killer smile. Next to them, the infamous Nicole, 118, in her clubbing clothes.

I pulled out my book, A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, definitely a nerdy book. After a while, the boy with the smile asked what I was reading. I closed the book, marking the page with my finger and turned my head to look at him. We talked for a while. Jamie, bless his heart, asked where I went to school.

“Well… I went to Bowling Green,” I answered. “I graduated.”

I don’t look anything like a college a student. At all. Even in the grimy, early morning, orange glow of a streetlight, I don’t look like a college student. I think I fell in love.

Nicole and Becca, the girl in the peacoat, the me of eight years ago, joined the conversation. The three of them cuddled on Jamie’s sleeping bag. (Jamie and Becca didn’t know Nicole before joining the line, but the girl wore clubbing clothes including a silk sweater, wildly impractical faux fur trimmed jacket and a pair of sexy strappy sandals. In October. At 5 o’clock in the morning.)

The cowboy came over, light Nicole’s cigarette and offered him her leather jacket. She politely declined and he draped it over her knees. He wandered off with his drug-addled stagger.

“Hey! How you doing? Everyone all right here? How are you?” Number 57 rolled onto our slab of concrete. He clapped his hands, jumped around a little and talked to everyone along the line. He talked to Becca about organizing a field trip to the local fast food joint. Becca strongly encourage 57 to consider moving a group around the time that biology dictated. He took the suggestion under advisement and moved on to motivate 120 and beyond.

57 moved a little to slow, however, and between the 5:30 roll call and the 7:30 roll call, my new friends ran to McDonalds to use the facilities, warm up and buy sustenance in the form of really greasy food and coffee. Lots of coffee. I watched their gear and they returned with tall, caffeinated goodness in a cup.

And, because of the really big drink, Nicole and I returned to Mickey D’s between the 7:30 roll call and 9 a.m. At this point, Nicole managed to find a pair of sneakers in her car, returning feeling and a bit of color to her bluish feet. She also called a client and put off her 9 a.m. appointment. Car trouble. AAA. Towing. The whole lot.

Jamie, Becca, Nicole and I sat in the cold October morning watching the impromptu games of touch football that ebbed and flowed on V Street. The man watching a DVD in his car got out to protect the hood from oncoming bodies and the ball.

When day broke and as the fateful hour approached, people moved closer to their actual positions in line and Nicole and I made a new friends – very nice, foul-mouthed hackey-sacking juvenile delinquents of football fame. Several other people came back to hack with the boys and a young Anthony Michael Hall look-alike (Breakfast Club/Sixteen Candles AMH, not Johnny Be Good AMH) brought back a 40 (or two).

A girl from the local radio station rolled up in the HFS van and Anthony Michael Hall shouted out in a malt liquor-induced rage. “It’s about time you showed up,” he shouted. The 9:30 Club man told him not to swear at the radio station girl. A minor scuffle ensued.

Finally, they told us to line up along the wall in the order of our assigned numbers. New 9:30 Club men came along and handed out red tickets, telling us to get out two bucks, cash only. Only people with red tickets could get real tickets and the special little red ones stopped at #143. (Actually, they stopped at 141, but 142 and 143 were friends with the JD’s in front of me and were up talking to them when they distributed the red ones.)

Everyone past 143 just sort of drifted toward their cars. Some lingered around the box office hoping for extra tickets. A really shady crackhead talked one of the JDs into selling his second ticket for $40, turning around to sell it to someone in the 190’s for $80. A poor 16-year-old, Malcolm in the Middle who looked like he was 10 and had hacked with the boys stood with his hands in his pockets, kicking at the curb.

By 10:15, I picked up my tickets and hauled my jittery, caffeine-shot nerves into the Jeep, Sam, for the drive home. A bit anti-climactic, really, but the concert’s yet to come.

Me and Liberace

This year I get to be on the Orange Team, it’s the team everyone wants to be on ‘cause they always are the winners at the end of soccer season. Last year I was on the Blue Team and Liberace was on the Green Team. I was bummed out because we never got to be on the same team.

I was either center or one of the wings when I played in the past. Liberace always sat the bench until close to the end of the 3rd quarter and the game was already decided at that point. It’s not that he was really that bad it’s just that his patent leather white shoes didn’t really have any tread so when he ran he was slipping a lot and falling in the grass. When you wear white shoes they are bound to get grass stains on them.

Liberace sure could run though, he was fast when you really got him going. He get going so fast that all you could see behind him was his white cape with white fur trim just blowing in the breeze. He was one big white blur that guy was.

When I first started playing, the coached always stuck me in the front of the net. I hated being goalie and never was really good at it. I remember the first time I was goalie and they just kept on scoring, I eventually started crying. It was sad.

But this year will be different, I want to be center and Liberace will be my wing man. I could use his speed to our advantage. We are going to be good this year I tell you, serious man. We have this new coach, Philipe (that’s Spanish for Philip) he is from a Hispanic country somewhere in Spain. I saw him one day in practice and he and coach Jerry liked to kick the ball high in the air with out kicking it off the field and hitting the church or the little kids feeding the ducks. Nobody really cared if they hit the ducks though. So Philipe kicked this ball high in the air and ran a little to get under it and he laid flat on his back. He was under the ball perfectly, when it came close he kicked it bicycle style right into the net. I was impressed. So was coach Jerry, he was too big and slow to do that but he sure could kick a ball.

Before soccer this year, my mom took me and Liberace out to get our gear at K-mart. I usually get a new ball, some shin guards and socks, shorts and shoes. Last year Liberace didn’t wear any shin guards and kept getting kicked in the shins, it is so painful. This year he bought special ones with rhinestones covering the border of the guards and emerald and diamonds the formed a big “L” in the center of each shin guard. I never did ask him if they were real gems or not I thought that might hurt his feelings.

If we win this year my mom will take me and Liberace and my friend Brandon out to Pizza Hut so we can have root bear and play the pin ball. Liberace always cuts his pizza into time little squares and puts a little cheese and a little pepper on each piece. He is so funny, we’ll all be sitting there eating a big pepperoni pizza and he will have a neckerchief tucked into his shirt and eat the little pieces of pizza with his pinky sticking out in the air. He does it when he is drinking out of those red cups of soda they have at Pizza Hut too. Never once have I seen him get any sauce or spill any of his pop on his white jumpsuit. The one time we went and he had all those feather sticking out of the back of his pants he sat on one really weird and it poked him in the butt. We all laughed until pop came out of our noses.

Stop Drive-Through Mastectomies

On September 25, 2003, Lifetime Television delivered more than 5 million petition signatures to Capitol Hill, urging Congress to ban “drive-through” mastectomies — the practice in which women are forced out of the hospital sometimes only hours after breast cancer surgery. Sign our petition now to help end drive-through mastectomies once and for all.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) introduced bipartisan legislation that mirrors the House bill sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) which would end this horrific practice. The petitions were collected by Lifetimetv.com as part of Lifetime’s campaign against this practice with DeLauro, Landrieu, the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO), physicians, advocates and survivors across the nation.

Lifetime Television, NABCO, Rep. DeLauro and Connecticut physician Kristen Zarfos, M.D., have been fighting for this type of access to quality care for all women since 1996. The legislation would require insurance companies to cover a 48-hour minimum stay for mastectomy patients and a 24-hour stay for a woman undergoing a lymph node dissection. The legislation ensures that a doctor and a patient will make a decision together about staying at a hospital after a mastectomy. (Lifetimetv.com)

The End of the Oil Age

“The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”This intriguing prediction is often heard in energy circles these days. If greens were the only people to be expressing such thoughts, the notion might be dismissed as Utopian. However, the quotation is from Sheikh Zaki Yamani, a Saudi Arabian who served as his country’s oil minister three decades ago. His words are rich in irony. Sheikh Yamani first came to the world’s attention during the Arab oil embargo of the United States, which began three decades ago this week and whose effects altered the course of modern economic and political history. Coming from such a source, the prediction, one assumes, can hardly be a case of wishful thinking. (Economist.com)

REVIEW: ITunes Music Store a Standout

Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes music software rips and burns songs. It links you to a legal music store. It’s easily downloadable. And now it’s available to the 95 percent of computer users who depend on Microsoft Windows operating systems.

ITunes for Windows is as fully featured as the Mac software — and it’s just as easy to buy songs online at Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The catch is that if you want to transfer songs to a portable player, you’ve got to use an iPod, which start at $300. (Yahoo! News)

Sentate Lays the Smackdown on Spam

The Senate has voted to impose tough new limits against sending unwanted commercial e-mails, but supporters warned computer users not to expect any immediate end to offers for prescription drugs, cheap loans, herbal remedies and pornography.

The “Can Spam” bill, approved Wednesday by a 97-0 vote, would outlaw the shadiest techniques used by many of the Internet’s most prolific e-mailers, who pump out millions of unsolicited messages daily. (Yahoo! News)

Life in Layman’s Terms

Baby Doll

I awoke at five yesterday morning, reveling in the realization that I could sleep another hour. I rolled over, closed my eyes and nestled into my bed, prepared to fall back into sleep. One eye popped open, squinted through the dark room and I rolled onto my side, drawing the downy comforter with me. I sighed, flopped to my stomach and pulled a pillow on top of my head.

Thoughts raced through my head, careening from topic to topic before coming to rest on, of all things, a baby doll.

“Hey, Lodi,” my sister called days before, ushering children into my house. My nieces shied away from me, wrapping their arms around her legs and hiding their faces. She pulled herself, the girls, their bags into the house. “Come on, girls; inside. Boys?”

Her nephews, seven and twelve, respectively, bowed their heads and shuffled through the door. I picked up the nearest tiny body and held her close as she squirmed and wailed, “Mommy!”

Completely immune to her daughter’s voice, my sister pushed bodies into the house and nudged the door closed behind her. “We spilled juice in the car so everything’s wet and our bag broke. Come on, boys! Laney said she’s wet, but we don’t have anything for her to change into and I mean anything. At all. I didn’t bring any extra clothes. I’m just going to run to the hospital for a little while. Laney, go potty, sweetie. Lodi, would you turn on the light? Where do you want me to put the bags? Boys, go upstairs! Remy, come on.”

With a rush, my sister breezed upstairs and I looked down at the still wriggling, apparently wet charge in my arms. I deposited her in the bathroom, turned on the light and closed the door. I followed the noisy crew up the stairs and found my sister dropping a rather large number of bags on my living room floor. With a guilty, apologetic glance she handed me a doll.

“I’m sorry,” she offered. “Somebody” nodding her head toward the nearest child “found her. I tried to take her away, but… You don’t mind do you?”

I shook my head.

“Good. She won’t go anywhere without her. She sleeps with her, carrier and all. Laney? We’re upstairs, honey! Anyway, you know how her name’s Maggie Raina? We just call her Maggie Rain. Okay, girls. Mommy’s going now. I’ll see you soon! Boys, be good and let Lodi, Kristin, KD know if you need anything. Bye, sweetie. I’ll be back later. Bye!”

With a rustle and a bang, my sister rushed down the stairs and out the door, leaving two bashful boys, two howling toddler girls and my own astonished self in her wake. I glanced at the doll in my hands. Maggie Rain.

In 1982, the world expanded just a bit to make way for Xavier Roberts’ orphaned dolls from the Cabbage Patch. The dolls burst into my little corner of the planet and stole the hearts of every child I knew. Like all of our friends, my sister and I wanted dolls. Even my brother wanted one.

We weren’t rich but we always had everything we needed and most often, the things we really wanted. My mother labored long hours to make a plush body, buying the dimpled head from a craft store and handcrafting clothes. She proudly presented the doll to my sister, who appeared far less appreciative of the hours of work than the shiny packaging at the local K-Mart. Wounded, my mother bought generic versions of the preemie dolls for my brother and me for Christmas.

I liked my doll, and it looked just like the real thing, but it didn’t come with the pedigree: no birth certificate, adoption papers or tattooed bum.

I cast sidelong glances at my friend’s legitimate babes as I absently rocked my bastard doll. During our weekly Sunday after church shopping trip, I watched the shelves for the pretty flowering cabbage-covered boxes, but the dolls found homes as soon as the stores found them. Eventually, I found my 8-year-old self at the customer service counter, week after week, asking when new dolls would come in.

Finally, one glorious Sunday, I tapped up to the counter in my patent leather mary janes and spied box upon box in the customer service office. Oh, beautiful boxes. Perfect plush bodies with dimpled plastic heads and flowing yarn hair. Oh, heavenly day.

“Do you have any Cabbage Patch Kids?” I asked with a slight tremble in my voice, keeping my eyes on the boxes, knowing they would disappear if I dared look away.

“Sure do, hon, but they go fast,” answered a voice through the crackle of gum. “Do you want one?”

Did I want one?

I don’t know if I answered before I skittered off through the store in search of my mom. (This was a time and a place where 8-year-olds could wander through the K-Mart while parents shopped early on a Sunday afternoon.) I ran up one aisle, looking left, right, down the next, endlessly looping until I found my mother.

“Mom!” I exclaimed, the single syllable escaping from my breathless lips. She turned and looked at me.

“No.”

“But, Mom. Puh-lease?” I implored. “They have Cabbage Patch Kids. Finally. They have them. Here. Can’t I, please, have one?”

“No. You have dolls.”

“But, Mom. Not like this. Not a real Cabbage Patch Doll with a birthmark and adoption papers and everything. Please, Mom. Please?” The words rushed together as my dream whirled away from me as bathwater down the drain.

“If you want it, you’ll have to pay for it yourself,” she advised, turning back to the shelf. End of discussion for her. For me, it had just begun.

I slid on thin leather soles back to the customer service desk, afraid that I’d find the boxes gone in a mad Cabbage Patch rush in a small town at noon on Sunday.

“How much for layaway?” I asked. Twenty percent down on 30-some dollars. At 8, I really didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what layaway meant either, but I’d heard people talk about buying things on layaway. The patient, gum-cracking grandmother of a customer service agent leaned over the counter and explained it to me. For about $6 down and regular payments, I could bring home a doll.

Another race through the store to my mother, promising my life, my allowance and the entire contents of my piggy bank if only she would help. Thus, it began.

Week after week, I turned over grubby, sweat-soaked dollars and the coins warm from my palm. On the rare Sunday when we skipped the store or visited another, I yearned to visit my unseen, unknown baby in a box, my baby. I envied my friends with one, two, three (!) of the special deliveries.

And then, one day, she became mine.

I don’t remember if I paid it all on my own or if my mother took pity on me, but I remember wiping dust from the clear plastic window and looking into her painted brown eyes, at her brown yarn hair. I carefully opened the box and pulled her out, holding her gently and I reached inside for her birth certificate. Maggie Raina.

When my sister handed her to me, 20 years later, she looked nearly as perfect as she did when I gazed through the dusty plastic. A prize too dear for everyday wear, Maggie Raina accompanied me in a car seat/carrier, to be touched only with clean hands and then only rarely.

When my tiny, crying, almost 2-year-old niece reached up for her Maggie Rain, I handed over the doll and watched the tears dry to salty streaks. I got out a box of crayons, coloring books and a lollipop and I forgot about the familiar dimpled smile until a little after five yesterday morning.

I thought of my Betha, a doll in a box under my bed with a lolling head and misshapen body, her hair standing permanently on end, from years in a ponytail, defying frequent brushings. Her cheeks are stained from hands and tears and kisses.

I thought of the doll I’d had when I was four, a doll I’d gotten for Christmas when I was three, according to a recently unearthed Polaroid. The poor, unnamed doll wore a faded blue dress, with a pink sash and pink and white striped stockings. Her ratty hair poked unnaturally around her soiled face and when squeezed, a low keening sounded from somewhere deep inside. She used to say, “Tell me a secret” and “I love you.” Sometime in the late 70s, I squeezed the last words from her. I still have her in a box somewhere.

Maggie Rain and Remy Claire danced in my dream-addled, early-morning mind. I worried about my darling doll, worried that she might be loved too much, like my tattered toys.

I worried that I might never have kids to share my toys.

I worried that I would have kids and I would have given my love, my toys, my everything to my sister’s children, saving none for my own.

I considered a beautiful, blue-eyed girl, real and crying in the middle of my living room: my niece, my godchild, my baby doll.

The alarm clock rang at a half past six, in the middle of my musings. With a Pavlovian response, an instant, uncontrollable urge arose, and I fell fast asleep, leaving my worries behind.

Why Do Such Talented People Die So Young?

Yesterday, while reading the RSS feeds on my aggregator, to my own shock and horror, I read that Elliot Smith had killed himself. Now who the hell is Elliot Smith? To a generation of folks just getting out of college or only a few years passed, he was a pretty talented and accomplish singer/song writer who could encompass in a song the woes and realities of a generation. He was talented, extremely talented. He was nominated in 1997 for an Oscar for one of his songs and his albums X/0 and Figure 8 are critically acclaimed. He was a musician that never peaked on the charts, wasn’t a top 10 album seller but every 20 something year old music lover from Mt. Pelier to Sacramento will mourn the loss of this artist.

I remember my first instance of sorrow in 1992 or 1993 when reading the Daily Jeffersonian in my hometown. Sitting in front of the television and browsing through the paper, the heading “Kurt Cobain Found Dead” or something to that effect struck me as sureal. It was so non chalantly placed in the last article on the last page of the paper. Not only was he the lead singer and guitarits for Nirvana, he was a hero and an icon to a lot of kids at the time. He was the Gen X spokesman and my favorite musician, but alas, he was unable to bear the responsibilities and stress of his fame.

In 1997 I had just started listening to Jeff Buckley and his famous and only album made while he was alive, Grace, was like an emotional tide, a whirlwind of thought and inspiration. I loved that album and listen to it to this day. Buckley’s voice and falsetto strength were almost fragile but never weak. He sang songs about me and my life, he sang to me if not about me.

But by the end of the year, I would hear that he too had died seemingly prematurely. He ventured into flood waters in Mississippi to take a swim and there he drowned. He was in the midst of creating his follow up to Grace and eventually the album, Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk was released.

Every generation has their lost musicians, from the Buddy Holly to Jim Morrison to Kurt and 2Pac, we all have a favorite artist that is gone forever. The music can be a roller coaster for all of us and especially for the musicians. The intense passion and extreme emotion are what made their music so beautiful in the first place and maybe what ultimately takes them in the last place.

Oakland, California Bans Wal-Mart Supercenters

Oakland has become the latest California community to ban Wal-Mart “Supercenters” that sell discount groceries alongside other bargain goods. The Oakland City Council voted 7-1 Tuesday night to approve a measure to limit the size of “big-box” grocery stores allowed in the city. The ordinance bars discount retail stores with full-service supermarkets that exceed 100,000 square feet, or about 2.5 acres.

The measure targets Wal-Mart Supercenters — gigantic shopping centers that average 187,000 square feet, about twice the size of the typical Wal-Mart store. (Arkansasnbc.com)

The State of Massachusetts Adopts Open Source, Peeves Microsoft

With more than $32 billion in sales last year, Microsoft Corp. doesn’t usually worry about losing one customer. But this one may be different.

In a memo sent last month, Massachusetts Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss instructed the state’s chief technology officer to adopt a policy of “open standards, open source” for all future spending on information technology.

The directive likely wouldn’t completely cut out Microsoft from the state’s $80 million technology budget.

But it may have been the clearest example yet of a state government taking sides — against Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft — in the most important struggle in the software industry.

Microsoft’s software generally uses “proprietary” code that the company closely guards. Its biggest threat is from “open source” operating systems led by Linux, whose core components are public, and which users are free to pass around and customize as they like.

Governments are a huge market, accounting for about 10 percent of global information technology spending, according to research firm IDC. Federal, state and local governments in the United States spent $34 billion last year on huge systems to track everything from tax collection to fishing licenses.

“I think they’re correct to be concerned,” said Ted Schadler, principal analyst at Forrester Research, adding that government switchovers could doubly hurt Microsoft by persuading big corporate customers that, if huge public bureaucracies can adopt platforms like Linux, so can large companies. (Boston.com)

Justice Scalia Has Recused Himself from the Upcoming Pledge of Alliegence Supreme Court Decision

Justice Antonin Scalia has taken himself out of the Supreme Court’s review of whether “under God” should be in the Pledge of Allegiance. With a Ten Commandments dispute awaiting the court, some people would like to see Scalia sidelined from that and other church-state cases, too.

Scalia had been asked not to participate in the marquee case of the court’s new term — the constitutionality of the regular morning classroom salute to the American flag in public schools — because he mentioned the case in a speech in which he complained about courts stripping God from public life. (Newsday.com)

Fiery Object Mystifies Scientists

A digital picture of a spectacular and apparently explosive event in the sky fooled a pair of seasoned NASA scientists, has other researchers around the globe mystified, and made a minor celebrity of a teenage photographer.

Jonathan Burnett, 15, was photographing his friends skateboarding in Pencoed, Wales when one of them noticed a colorful fireball in the sky. Burnett snapped a picture, then sent it to NASA scientists and asked if they knew what it was.

Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, who run NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), posted the photograph on Oct. 1 and wrote that “a sofa-sized rock came hurtling into the nearby atmosphere of planet Earth and disintegrated.” They called the picture “one of the more spectacular meteor images yet recorded.”

Problem is, it turns out, there was no meteor. (Space.com)