Snakes On A Plane?

Where's Samuel L. Jackson when you need him?

I was excited when I read the headline ("Baby pythons escape during flight in Australia"), but after reading the story--see below--I was a bit let down. Pythons are not as scary when they're 6 inches long. And non-venomous. And Samuel L. Jackson is not involved. Oh well.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – Four baby pythons escaped from a container aboard a passenger plane in Australia, leading to a search that forced the cancellation of two flights, the airline said Thursday.
Twelve non-venemous Stimson pythons were being transported Tuesday on a flight from Alice Springs to Melbourne in the plane's cargo area in a bag inside a plastic foam box with air holes.

When the flight landed, it was discovered that four snakes had escaped from the package, a Qantas spokeswoman said in a statement.

A reptile expert searched for the 6-inch (15-centimeter) -long snakes but did not find them. It was not known if the snakes were still on the plane or if they had somehow escaped outside after the plane landed.

In the meantime, the plane missed two flights it had been scheduled to fly and the passengers were transferred to other flights.

When the snakes were not found, the airplane was fumigated and it returned to service on Wednesday. Stimson's pythons, which can grow up to three feet (one meter) long, live in western and central Australia and are not an endangered species.

Regarding the Stimulus and AIG: who's to blame?

Everyone’s so angry. They’re incensed. They’re indignant! After the stimulus bill was rolled out, people were mixed on whether the money was not enough, whether it was too much, how it was going to be spent, who was going to get to spend it, and so on. And surprise—some of it wound up going to the bonuses for the same executives who ran their companies into the ground.After all, if you've had the worst financial quarter in the company's history, why wouldn't you reward that?

(My imagined conversation between AIG chairman and one of the execs:
Chairman: You've just posted a $61.7 billion fourth-quarter loss, the worst in U.S. corporate history. What are you going to do next?
Executive: I'm going to Disneyworld?
Chairman: No, that's just silly. But we will give you more than $1 million in a bonus.)So now the senators are angry at the executives and the Treasury. The President is angry at the executives. Heck, even the executives—the chairman at AIG—is angry at someone. The kicker is, even the people at AIG is angry at the people at AIG. They’re all so incredibly mad. The real winner here is us, the American people. Because we get to be angry also. And we get to do what we do best--blame everybody but ourselves.But whose fault is it? Well, whoever “they” are angry at. Because the thing I’ve come to see is that everyone is ready to point the finger. Everyone is ready to fight, but no one wants to accept the slightest blame.Reminds me of that poem:This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.There was an important job to be done and Everybody was20sure that Somebody would do it.Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.