Tragedy

Well, today the news is dominated by the large earthquake in Haiti.  Tragic scenes on the news and the Internet show the devastation and the despair as Haitians walk around dazed and helpless, trying to comfort the injured and pull  others from the wreckage.  The earthquake was the most severe
since the 1770 and registered 7.0 on the Richter scale. My older son watched the video with me and is now asking at school to see if he can start a fundraiser. If anyone knows how a teen might initiate a fundraiser, please drop me a line.

The news from Haiti eclipses the relative triviality of the Leno-Conan fiasco, where Mr O'Brien says no the NBC's deal to offer him a 30 minutes delay on his Tonight Show. Both Leno and Conan have made the most of their plight in their monologues which have been quite entertaining.  I feel for both of them, but for Conan most of all.

A small UFO will fly withing 76,000 miles of Earth today (that's closer than the moon, see link for trajectory).  Scientists say the object is either a small asteroid or a piece of space junk (which means exactly what I wonder...).  If it should fall to Earth, it will not cause damage apparently, but by all accounts will burn up as it enters our atmosphere.

Snippet from Twitter:  Remember John Hurt in Alien?  Here's a really nasty little video of a parasite breaking out of its host.

Drug companies are under fire from the FDA for inappropriate promotion of their products. Lilly, Bay, Amylin and Cephalon are all warned about inadequate information on side effects in their marketing materials, and are saying they withdraw the offending materials.

Banks in the news again as President Obama gets a commission going to figure out what went wrong.  Regardless of what started it, the resolution has been ugly. Here is the timeline: banks in trouble, banks get tax-payer funded bail-out, banks recover partly due to ridiculous practices such as holding deposited checks for 10 business days, meanwhile bouncing and re-bouncing checks in order to charge $35 a pop, banks makes billions in profit within one year of bail-out, banks payout huge bonuses, customers (ie the tax-payers who bailed them out) still getting stiffed.  I'd like to give a personal thank you to Bank of America for opening my eyes on this one. I don't expect banks to actually be on my side, but I did think when I signed up, that certain ethical standards could be taken as read.  Live and learn I guess.