Sky scape

Day's end

The season

Just shut up and eat that box

Pentagon looks to microbes to feed troops with air, water, maybe even trash turned to protein

“There is more energy in the packaging of an MRE than in the MRE itself,” ReSource program manager Dr. Blake Bextine said in a statement, using an acronym for Meals, Ready to Eat.

 In days of old the field rations we got included a canned "entree," one each, of which there were four or five varieties, each one of which featured noodles, as I recall. We would get a big pot of water boiling and then all throw our canned entrees into the water to heat them up. This had the added advantage of soaking all the labels off, so we could entertain ourselves by guessing what it was we were eating.

Each packaged ration also included a small pack of toilet paper, half a pack of cigarettes (this was before cancer was invented), and a hot chocolate tablet. The tablet, about the size and consistency of a hockey puck, when soaked long enough in a canteen cup of hot water would soften enough to be gnawed and chewed. It tasted like…a hockey puck. But chocolatey.

Maybe our mistake was not eating the labels.

Waxing gibbous

Cleanliness is next to…but not exactly…but maybe…

Has COVID made us too clean?

For more than two years…cleanliness has been dispensed in squirts, wipes, and sprays, and is often seen as an unalloyed good.

And welcome to another day

‘Large, pink & elusive:’ S. Carolina police seek ruinous pig

Officers warned people not to try to approach the hefty hog, writing that “its size alone is of concern.”

Seriously?

Record-high 5,674 guns seized at TSA checkpoints in 2021

Eighty-five percent of the firearms that were confiscated were loaded with ammunition – and the airports with the most seizures were Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, CBS News reported.

A quick review

 There is a 2010 movie called The Debt available for streaming on Amazon Prime that's definitely (according to our correspondent, who shall remain anonymous) worth watching, if for no other reason that Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain both, and also a terrific story with an ending we will not reveal here.

[ALERT] There is a little kissing in this movie, but it does not get too out of hand.

It might be a bit cynical…

…to suggest that Time magazine's Person of the Year might be more aptly named Person Most Likely to Sell a Lot of Magazines in December. But the magazine itself points out the designation does not necessarily mean most laudible or even most popular—but something more like most influential.

Time magazine points out that controversial figures such as Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957) and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) have also been granted the title for their impact on events. [Wikipedia]

The Person of the Year in 2006, in fact, was…wait for it…you.

Wasn't that fun?

Still, it's difficult to see Elon Musk fitting comfortably into any of those categories.

Maybe more like Person Least Likely to Get Us Into Too Much Trouble This Year.

The thing about Wednesday mornings

 Every week. I lug the garbage out to the curb, come back in, take off my jacket (hey, it's December)…and peel a banana. You see where this is going, right?

And yes, I've tried peeling the banana first, but it didn't help all that much. Because then something else was first, and it didn't take much time.

And don't even get me started on laundry.

Bah. Humbug.

Well, one other country, at least

A retro feel to Biden’s plan for covering OTC virus testing

Estimated prices for at-homes [sic] tests in the U.S. now range from about $15 to $30, compared with about $1 in Germany.

It might be nice to have a little more information there, AP. (In the UK, they're free.)

Nonetheless, it's way past time to do something about providing more equitable health care in the US. Medicare For All doesn't seem to be going anywhere (I've always thought VA For All would have been a better approach, but that's just me). 

Now, it's time to bite the bullet, call it National Health Care, and get it done.

A note in passing

 "Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do"

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Red sky in the morning