It seems others are interested in fancy toilets too!

Catching a blip on cnbc.com today made me curious. It seems that the former Merrill CEO, Thain, was ousted by Bank of America today. There aren't any reasons I know of that have been directly stated but it seems that he was a pretty extravagant spender. It has only been about a month since his firm was taken over by BofA and he decided to spend $1.22 million on his new office. After reading through the list of improvements I was struck with one line item. A commode on legs costing $35,115. I decided to find out what could be so nice about a commode on legs and a quick google search revealed the following option.

Its price tag was much lower than what Thain spent though. I can hear Firecracker George saying, "It better reach up and give you a massage for that price." Of course, I believe it might come out a little less polite than that.

I just might link this up in my sidebar...

I've been really digging this new photo blog from The Boston Globe website which basically compiles a bunch of nice photographs about a particular current event or obscure news story for the day. Some of the shots of Saturn and its moons by the Cassini Space Probe or a rare picture of uncontacted Amazon tribes in Brazil were some of the coolest things things of late. A couple of examples are below:

Suddenly, living in this part of the country doesn't seem like such a great idea anymore...

From CNN:

Man kills, cooks, and possibly eats girlfriend, police say

TYLER, Texas (AP) -- A man killed his girlfriend, then filleted and cooked parts of her body before calling police to tell them what he was doing, authorities said Sunday.

Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, called 911 on Saturday and told an emergency dispatcher he had killed Jana Shearer, 21, and was boiling her body parts at his mother's home, said Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith.

When authorities arrived at the home, they found Shearer's mutilated body, one ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a fork sticking out of some human flesh sitting on a plate on the kitchen table.

Authorities said it was unclear whether McCuin consumed any part of Shearer's body.

That's some sick stuff, guys.  Sick!

Wouldn't you like to own the North Pole?

According to a news blip I heard on CNBC today, and doing a quick internet search on the topic, it appears that all you have to do is plant a flag on the North Pole to own it. There is one problem with that though. There is no land mass, just a big block of ice floating around.

This is no problem if you are one of the richest men in the world (possibly THE richest). Vladimir Putin has decided that all he has to do is plant a flag at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean in the right location and then that area belongs to Russia. So he got together some Russian Lawmakers, a big ice breaker ship, and a mini-sub. Supposedly today they planted the Russian flag there.

How do you keep the flag from deteriorating? Just make one out of Titanium and that should do the trick.

Why would you want to do such a thing? Because this area could contain 1/4 of all the undiscovered oil in the world.

Too bad the moon doesn't have oil on it. We were the first to plant a flag there. I think that we should charge other countries to use the moonlight and the tides it creates. Or better yet, why don't we go ahead and let everyone use it for free and just hurry up and find another source of energy besides oil.

Because it's time for a new post ...

I just read about three former and current executives for Purdue Pharma, just plead guilty to misleading the public that their painkiller OxyContin has a high risk for addiction.

You know, I often give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to how evil we can be. I have seen movies about drug makers and the horrendous lengths they will go to so they can make money, but I never think that it is as bad as Hollywood makes it out to be. I just can't see how it is possible to lose your humanity so you can pad your wallet.

Guess I was wrong.

On a positive note, the execs will have to pay out $634.5 million in fines.

Sacrifice

At some point in time, I subscribed to CNET gadget reviews on my TiVo, and managed to catch a random report by James Kim. So when I heard about the search for him in the Oregon wilderness a few days ago, I paid attention with some interest to the daily news updates. As most of you know, this whole ordeal ended with a miraculous rescue of his wife and two children, but ended in the death of James Kim himself as he made a valiant attempt to find rescue in the freezing temperatures and rugged terrain of the Pacific Northwest.

It's sad enough knowing he sacrificed his life trying to save his family. I think, though, it's even more tragic that he likely died thinking his family would freeze to death just as he eventually did, and that he wouldn't be with them in the final moments. Sadder still, is despite the 10 miles its thought he hiked, he was found only a mile from his car.

Reading about him, he seemed like a really decent, good guy. Writing gadget and electronics reviews for a living, running two trendy clothing stores with his wife, having what sounds like a wonderful family--he seemed to have a life we could all envy. But it all ended. Literally, just one wrong turn. Wow...