Bolt the door.

WASHINGTON — Higher costs for energy and food last year pushed inflation up by the largest amount in 17 years. Consumer prices rose by 4.1 percent for all of 2007, up sharply from a 2.5 percent increase in 2006, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Consumers felt the pain when they filled up their gas tanks or shopped for groceries. Prices for both energy and food shot up by the largest amount since 1990.

No kidding. Unless you're making your own consumer goods or buying stuff that doesn't have to be transported, you're screwed. Energy prices impact the price of everything if it has to be moved to the point of purchase. Does anybody want to go back to that Agrarian Society and use the barter system? Me too. We could still have the Internet, which would be a cool thing, but we'd need solar powered computers.

This is hilarious ...

WASHINGTON - Steel plates connecting beams in the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis were too thin by half and fractured, "the critical factor" in the collapse that killed 13 people and injured 145, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday. Investigators found 16 fractured gusset plates from the bridge's center span.
"It is the undersizing of the design which we believe is the critical factor here. It is the critical factor that began the process of this collapse. That's what failed," NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said at a news conference.

So, all that crap about our aging infrastructure was only partly true - and a small part at that. It turns out that the initial design and build were bad. Can the government have its money back? I don't know what happened where you live, but here in the Delaware Valley, the local authority that controls the bridges over the river proposed a toll increase of 25%, partly to fund the inspection of our aging bridges, as a result of the 35W collapse. All they really need to do is pull the design plans. How much would that cost?

Sure, the bridges are old, but this reactionary junk that we go through every time something goes wrong usually winds up costing us money, time or both. Something blows up, collapses, a kid brings a gun to school, a drunk driver runs over a guy, an airplane is hijacked - you name the catastrophe - and there's some reactionary judgement that is supposed to make the world a safer place, but is it really?

We have this thing called Megan's Law here in New Jersey that is supposed to target child predators and make people aware that a pedophile is living in your neighborhood. Are kids still being sexually assaulted? Sure they are. Do drunk drivers still run over guys? Yep. Another bridge will collapse as sure as shit, and it won't be prevented because they increased the toll a dollar.

The gang at MySpace is implementing tougher security measures to keep kids from being targeted by men who like kids in a sexual way. Will it stop? Maybe a little, but it will never stop completely, because people who like to do crap like that will always find a way. Drinkers drink and drive, child molesters molest children and bridges fall down. We do what we can, but when it becomes intrusive on the general public perhaps the measures are a bit extreme. You can't get in a commercial airplane without taking your shoes off first. Do you feel safer?

Just make sure you bolt the door.