A Medicine for Melancholy

China wants to build 48 new airports. Fortunately, the good folks at Raytheon are proposing to make shale-oil recovery cost-effective and environmentally safe, apparently by using some form of death-ray:

"Raytheon is an expert in RF technology," said Lee Silvestre, director of Mission Innovation at Raytheon IDS. "What makes this effort a breakthrough is that similar RF technology that we have been applying in core defense products -- radars for tracking and guidance systems -- has demonstrated applications in the energy crisis."

Whatever Raytheon's scheme is, it was probably foreshadowed in The Comic Book Periodic Table of the Elements.


Even with Raytheon on your team, you can't be absolutely sure that your short-sighted, midbogglingly stupid decisions will lead to an optimal outcome for you and your cronies. That's why the SurvivaBall is vital to your contingency planning:

Fred Wolf and a colleague at Halliburton demonstrated yesterday at the Catastrophic Loss conference in Florida three SurvivaBall mockups, and described how the inflatable units will sustainably protect managers from natural or cultural disturbances of any intensity or duration. The devices will include sophisticated communications systems, nutrient gathering capacities, onboard medical facilities, and a defense infrastructure to ensure that the corporate mission will not go unfulfilled even when most human life is rendered impossible by catastrophes or the consequent epidemics and armed conflicts.

If you're a Titan of Industry - like the ones who are lobbying to end buyer incentives for hybrid cars - you'll definitely want American taxpayers to buy you enough SurvivaBalls for the non-expendable personnel on your org chart! Especially since Project BioShield isn't working out too well:

The new developments are merely the latest problems in a program that was supposed to showcase the Bush administration's commitment to developing a broad national defense against bioterror attacks...but lately members from both parties have criticized the government's handling of it and demanded more progress. The anthrax program is by far the biggest contract awarded under BioShield to date.

If you can't afford a SurvivaBall, don't despair. The Inflatable Breasts Dress is better than nothing:

With large inflated breasts, she felt like she had a protective zone.

UPDATE: Just in case I've confused anyone, please note that at least one thing described in this post is a joke.