well THIS is embarrassing.  Number 4,900?  How about The Atomic Submarine  Been doing a lot of late 50's early 60's sci fi and this one just happened to hit.  Per IMDB: In the far and distant future of 1968, many ships and planes are crossing the North pole to transport passengers and cargo. However lately more than eight ships and seven submarines have vanished mysteriously. The Tigershark is sent out to investigate their whereabouts and - if possible - remove the cause of their disappearance. But the life form Commander Vandover and his crew encounter may be too powerful even for their weapons of newest technology.

Trust me, it's not that good.  Currently sits 4,845 out of 4,900 on my list.  Bright spots?  How 'bout a small appearance by Bob Steele?  Not enough?  How about this guy as Yeoman Chester Tuttle.  And you can NEVER go wrong with John Hilliard as the "saucer voice."

Can't recommed it.  Watch "Red Planet Mars" or "Angry Red Planet" instead.

Bill Cosby had a GREAT bit about a horror movie / giant chicken heart.  If started in his live show, showed up in the "Fat Albert" cartoon and made its way into his recordings and movies.

Today durig my semi-regular old time radio listening I happened across an episode of "Lights Out" called "Triple Feature."

And there it was.  The Chicken Heart that ate New York.  

The Alameda incident: ‘First responders’ who don’t.

On Memorial Day, a suicidal man waded into San Francisco Bay outside the city of Alameda and stood there for about an hour, neck deep in chilly water, as about 75 bystanders watched. Local police and firefighters were dispatched to the scene after the man’s desperate mother called 911, but they refused to help. After the man drowned, the assembled “first responders” also refused to wade into the water to retrieve his body; they left that job for a bystander.

The incident sparked widespread outrage in Northern California, and the response by the Fire Department and police only intensified the anger. The firefighters blamed local budget cuts for denying them the training and equipment necessary for cold-water rescues. The police said that they didn’t know if the man was dangerous and therefore couldn’t risk the safety of officers. . . . After a local TV news crew asked him whether he would save a drowning child in the bay, Alameda Fire Chief Ricci Zombeck gave an answer that made him the butt of local talk-show mockery: “Well, if I was off duty, I would know what I would do, but I think you’re asking me my on-duty response, and I would have to stay within our policies and procedures, because that’s what’s required by our department to do.”

If you stand a better chance of being rescued by the official rescuers when they are off duty, then what is the purpose of these departments, which consume the lion’s share of city budgets and whose employees — in California anyway — receive exceedingly handsome salaries?

Greg Mankiw points to this Charlie Rose interview with Larry Summers, which includes this very good quote (starting around 21:50):

Never forget, never forget, and I think it’s very important for Democrats especially to remember this, that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed.

My dad (HS class of '51) learned more about quite a few subjects in HS than I did in college.  Still I think my BA's, earned in the mid-70s is at least a little more than a glorified HS Diploma.

HS, with its "social promotions" and other nonsense now cannot make any guarantees to empoyers.  All it means is that someone may have taken up space in the government provided facility for the requisite period of time.

So now the Bachelors degree is what confers the presumed existance of basic skill sets to employers.  Associates degrees are actually somewhat stronger (IMHO) beause of thier occupation-specific course content.

And so the BA/BS is now no better than the HS Diploma was a generation ago.  Want a better job?  You'll need a Masters.  And in a generation perhaps it too will resemble a glorified HS diploma.  And then you'll need a Doctorate.  Or nothing.  Because it won't matter any more.

seed for this post planted from The Master’s Degree As The New Bachelor’s Degree.

Obama operates under the ratchet theory of government. Once ratcheted up, spending cannot ratchet down. Spending that was not missed yesterday is imperative tomorrow, once it has been adopted today. Which means that doing any deal based on Ratchet Man's promises that he will cut future spending is a mug's game.

Addressing the nation's long term—and not really that long term, actually—danger of government insolvency cannot be done in the context of annual budgeting. The crux of the problem is entitlements, and attacking that problem requires fundamental restructuring of the programs, where this restructuring will likely require features (e.g., supermajority requirements) that make it difficult for future Congresses and administrations to renege on the commitments inherent in the legislation mandating the restructuring.

That will not happen while Obama is in office. Period. Which is exactly why 2012 is the only thing that matters, and that doing a deal today or forcing a triggering of the debt ceiling that will have extremely unpredictable economic and political consequences is foolhardy.

A month or so ago I made reference to the tax levied by the State of PA to help the good folks of Johnstown rebuild after the great flood.  Eighty-some years ago.   The city's been rebuilt but the tax is still being levied - and going into the general fund.

Here's another.  Alabama is still collecting a tax to compensate Civil War vets, the last of whom died over a decade ago.  Read the whole thing here. Remember this next time you hear some politicians talking about the need for a “temporary” tax hike to deal with some very specific funding need.

Lots of talk the last few weeks about "closing loopholes" and "making more money than you need" and things of that ilk.  Sick of it? Here's a remedy of sorts from a George Mason prof:

In his counter-argument to the popular lefty assertion that taking advantage of things like tax-free 529 college savings programs or the home mortgage deduction or health savings accounts count as net benefits received from the government, Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution makes this absolutely crucial point:

People who use 529 programs and who think that they have not used a government social program are not willfully ignorant, they are demonstrating a healthy if fading appreciation of the distinction between civil society and government.  What Rampell et al. implicitly imagine is that the natural state is slavery and any departure from that state a government benefit. Thus, if the government taxes your saving for a college education less than your other savings, you should be grateful for how government has benefited you and your children.

And if the government doesn’t jail you today, you should be grateful for how government has granted you the benefit of liberty.

This is the attitude of a serf not an American.