2001.03.23 No Taco For You! or Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around Old Glory.
Well, Mir made it down without killing anybody (at least not right away--refer to yesterday's entry about what might survive the landing). In all fairness, I'd like to note that Mir was designed with a life expectancy of three years, but survived for almost fifteen. That kind of puts the mishaps (the Russian word here is 'oopskis') in perspective.
Did you know there's a group of people who believe you can dodge most U.S. laws because almost all courtrooms have gold fringe around the U.S. flag therein? To this group, that makes the court an Admiralty court instead of a Common Law Court, and all kinds of pseudo-legalistic jiggery-pokery comes into play. Like writing "Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207" underneath the signature on your driver's license and thus becoming immune to any traffic ticket that does not stem from an incident harming another person. How well does it work? Ask this guy.