This and That

Must they do without?

Students from Mexico, Peru, Venezuala, Bolivia and other countries often spend all they have to attend Rio Grand Bible Institute in Texas. This means they often simply do without items like shampoo, toothpaste and other necessities. When Mary Newman, a missionary from World Gospel Mission realized this, she knew she had to help them. She was studying Spanish at RGBI at the time and decided to put together packages for the young women there. Newman and her mother prepared bags filled with shampoo, toothpaste, detergent, lotions, first aid supplies, and other things. Then, the young women were all invited to a party where the bags were distributed.

I think that’s a very good idea.

Thousands Remember 9 S.C. Firefighters

Nine caskets lined the front of a coliseum Friday as thousands of firefighters from across the nation, their hats in their hands, honored nine colleagues killed in a furniture store blaze. With an orchestra playing, uniformed escorts walked the men’s wives, siblings and children to their seats in a long procession of red carnations, tears and hugs. The fire Monday night created the single largest loss of firefighters’ lives since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Beside the caskets, the faces of its victims looked out proudly from large photos: Capt. William “Billy” Hutchinson, 48; Capt. Mike Benke, 49; Capt. Louis Mulkey, 34; Mark Kelsey, 40; Bradford “Brad” Baity, 37; Michael French, 27; James “Earl” Drayton, 56; Brandon Thompson, 27; and Melvin Champaign, 46.

So, if you know or meet a firefighter (or a paramedic or a police officer), thank him or her.

I saw this over at Wizbang:

The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call caught legislators trying to pass off stacks of empty boxes as the “million letters” they supposedly received on behalf of the McCain-Kennedy Immigration bill.

Whoa!

I wonder what would have happened if someone at the press conference could have exposed the “problem” with an approach similar to this one:

😀

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” he said.

He also said, about the Wall:

“For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth.”

Did you know that?

If I did, I’d forgotten.

Speech links:

• text
• MP3 audio
• YouTube video

By the way, faith in what or whom?

No, not her husband. Her hub. As in hillaryhub.com — here’s a fresh screen shot:

That’s a funny name, I think. I wonder how long till some anti-Hillary launches hillarityhub.com as a counter. (Or hillarychub or hillaryflub or hillarybub or hillarybob or billaryhub or…)

I know there are more important things going on out there, but here are three more quick observations about the site as I saw it a bit ago.

Clintons Liquidate will surely resurrect comments about Vince Foster and Ron Brown. The folks at HH should have been more careful with that headline.

For these next two, you’ll need to click the above image to see a larger version providing detail in the grey bar.

Send us your tips makes her sound like a waitress.

Clinton’s Campaign Boss Also a Pioneer left me wondering (albeit, very briefly) if he enjoys listening to plymouth rock. The assertion of Pioneer-ship seems to go along with some other far-fetched claims made by Mrs. Clinton. At least some wag is bound to make such a connection.

NASA battles failure of space station computer — says the headline.

So what’s with the first three words of the story?

U.S. and Russian flight controllers worked to fully restore computers aboard the International Space Station on Thursday after a system crash that could force the $100 billion outpost’s crew back to Earth. NASA said it did not regard the problem as critical and believed it was a long way from having to contemplate abandoning the space station, a 16-nation project. But the U.S. space agency made plans to keep the visiting space shuttle Atlantis attached to the station for an extra day to help steer the massive complex if the Russian computers, which control navigation, continue to malfunction.

Russian computers, eh?

Maybe somebody should inform the nations of the world that international space projects are hereby declared obsolete and out of vogue.

Then again, maybe the conspiracy theorists could “figure out” that the Russians decided this was a good time for the hidden virus to kick in. NASA and the rest of the internationals abandon the station. The Russians decide to mount a rescue mission of their own. Problem fixed. And the space station becomes the new crown jewel of the international Russian space program. Something like that. 😉

“We’re still struggling to understand what the real problem is here,” said NASA’s associate administrator for spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier. “There’s an extremely remote chance that this problem would lead to abandoning the space station,” Gerstenmaier said at a briefing. “We’re still a long way away from where we would be to de-man space station.”

Wait. Isn’t there a woman on board? So they’d leave her to fend for herself. Somebody better tell NOW.

Hold it just a minute! This isn’t a Russian conspiracy, it’s a NOW plot! “Women of the world stars, unite!”

Update: May 15 at 7:12 am — “It’s not our fault!”

A source inside the Russian space agency has told ABC News that there could be a “fatal flaw” with the station’s main computer. After working for a couple of days, the Russians still have no idea what the problem is, and they are pointing the finger at the Americans. They say that setting up the solar array sent electromagnetic interference into the computer, shutting it down.

So maybe it isn’t NOW after all. Or else they’re manipulating the Russians. 😛

Whatever.

At least Drudge has a neat picture right now:

Update: June 16 at 3:45 pm — Space station computer crash a mystery:

Crews aboard the space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station revived the third and final part of the station’s prime computer network on Saturday and scoured the complex for the cause of the crash. […] The computers are German-built but have Russian software.

Obviously nobody has pointed them to this blog.

Yet.

Oh well.

😀