Yew herd 'bout that missing aero-plane, right?

The disappearance of a U.S.-made jetliner carrying mostly Chinese passengers also highlights contrasting styles of rival powers, each with an interest in the investigation.

"If you were a country torn between the two, which country would you turn to in a time of crisis?" asked a person close to the investigation in Malaysia. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board "have all made substantial contributions to finding out what happened," the official said, adding that the U.S. has also had "meaningful and direct impact" by supplying critical equipment like a black-box location device, a Bluefin-21 submersible and P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft.

Almost every day brings new and stronger indications that American leadership in world affairs is unlikely to be challenged for a very, very long time.

Crid, I was just reading the other day about some of the conclusions that the NTSB is arriving at in regards to the Asiana crash in San Francisco last year. Third World cultural factors are looming large in that crash. The cockpit was a kabuki-theater exercise in deference to authority vs. training and decisive action. And it's emerging that two of the pax that died after being ejected from the aircraft during the crash were not wearing their seat belts, which apparently is common in Asia. There were pax who were closer to the hull breach than the fatalities who were wearing their belts; they remained in their seats and survived.

All of which goes to my point: just because a Third World nation can afford First World trappings, that doesn't make it a First World nation. You don't know what's behind the pretty exterior until you look. Remember that the next time you fly a Third World airline.

Americans are far too eager to conflate matters of good and evil with judgments about health... And in the last few years, we've seen that the reverse is true as well.

But in this onnnnnnnnnnnne little case, we can probably all agree—

A 25-year-old man who describes himself as a performance artist was ordered held for evaluation in a psychiatric facility Wednesday after he was charged with carrying a hoax explosive device near the finish line of the Boston Marathon hours after a ...

"If this is the new women's movement, no wonder girls don't want to call themselves feminists".

Word.