Things I'm thankful for (December 1st edition):

My wife

The freelance life

Our cat

Our guinea pig

The Brothers

Our decision some months back not to put all our dough in the market

Books

Things I'm not thankful for:

The continued absence of my Dad (who passed away in October of 2006)

The hijacking of my political party by idiots, gasbags and flagrant fiscal, social and religious hypocrites

The market crash

The cancellation of "Pushing Daisies"

Here's a picture of a Sea Harrier taking off from the deck of an amphibious assault ship. This is a variant of the plane that helped the British win the Falkland Islands skirmish back in the day.

This is the only VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) capable fixed-wing fighter in the Western inventory, and has been for several decades. Though it cannot reach supersonic speeds, it has served as an effective close-support weapon for the Navy and the Marines. Its special abilities make it ideal for amphibious operations, allowing it to operate from flight decks on many of the same ships that also transport and land Marines and their equipment. This largely negates the need for these landing forces to be accompanied by conventional carriers or to be within range of land air bases.

I'm posting this mainly to test the placement of images on my blog. And I think it's kinda pretty. 

Stop the Badness! Revisited

We've elected ourselves a new president, and I feel, right now, that maybe we, as a nation, have done something that could really make a difference. Sure, it's nice that Congress is also weighted to the new prez's party, but history – recent history, at that – has shown that's no guarantee of equanimity between the executive and the legislative. We'll just have to see how that plays out, but the fact remains that history has been made, a rubicon has been crossed, and maybe, if we're careful, we might, as a nation, make something that could genuinely be called progress.

Okay, so the markets didn't calm down after the election as much as I'd hoped…in fact, didn't calm down at all. I remain hopeful.

At least OPEC's latest ploy to keep oil prices above $100 a barrel didn't pan out. I don't imagine those folks will have to cry in their beer for long, but it's nice our pocketbooks get a little relief from the recent succession of hammer blows.