I'm a tweener. I watched the Moon Landing - we'd come back from a summer in a bungalow colony to see it - but I didn't get the significance of that, or of seeing the Mets winning the World Series on that same B&W TV a few months later.

We beat the Russkies. We fulfilled JFK's vision. We came in peace. We learned about Tang and Velcro.

What's the point? As many have said, a robot can do the job just as well. If we can terraform the Moon or Mars as a backup plan for when we crap this planet up, we can re-terraform this place too. It has to be a lot easier to fix a place that's already got water and oxygen and is just a few degrees too hot. (I think I've just advocated for the ultimate staycation.)

They saying is "If you build a better mousetrap, people will beat a path to your door."

I've seen the traditional mousetrap with the spring and the wire that snaps, and the Rube Goldberg thing from the game, and glue traps (in the store, and in a Looney Tunes cartoon), and boxes with trap doors, and boxes with a little ramp so when the mousey grabs the peanut butter at the far end, the entrance lifts up and a door slams shut.

Question: What was the best mousetrap when that was first said?  (I know that sounds like "What was the best thing before sliced bread?" but these seem like more recent inventions.)

Willow Pond Kitchen, Concord, MA

Happy Anniversary.

Over on the Volokh conspiracy they were talking about zeugmas and syllepses.  If I have it right, zeugma is any yoking in a parallelism (I went to work by bus and by bike) while a syllepsis has a mismatch (She blew my nose, and then she blew my mind.)

What is the word for a word that can be split two ways?  For instance:

• Is Petsmart "Pets mart" or "Pet smart".
• On Arrested Development, the combined Analyst and Therapist was called the AnalRapist.
• The site penisland wasn't about stationery, it was about penes.
• Is the online world Runescape "Rune scape" or "Run escape"?
• I used to work in Billerica - when I use that as a user name, people think it's Bill Erica. 

Remember when oil prices spiked in the summer? At the time, the blame was placed on speculators. (Other sources did not blame speculators.)

I didn't understand this. A speculator doesn't make the market, the speculator is betting on the market. (I've noticed that every time the weatherman says it's going to rain, we get rainly weather. I wish he'd stop saying we're getting rain.) For everyone who commits to buying oil at a certain price, for a price, there is someone who takes that price now, betting that he'll be able to buy the oil to sell at that price at a lower price.

I was wondering who those speculators were. Now I know, because the Boston Globe said I'm supposed to feel sorry for people who locked in their home heating oil contracts at $4 per gallon.

 I fear government ownership of the means of production more than I fear a depression.

 Here I am worried that gas or heating oil might go up another fifty cents, while overnight the federal government has spent several times my annual petroleum budget to buy worthless paper.

 Somebody said "If you owe the bank $100,000 they own you; if you owe them $100,000,000 you own them."  NOTHING is too big to fail.  What good did we get out of the 9/11 settlement fund (whose purpose wasn't justice, or compensation, but to keep the airlines from going under)? From the Bear Stearns buyout?

 If houses are foreclosed, for a while the neighborhood might be more blighted -- occupied homes, and especially owner-occupied homes, have positive externalities -- but eventually someone will buy the house at a lower price: Affordable housing.

According to an article in today's Boston Herald, Fan arrested for unruly behavior

Officers on paid detail assisted Fenway Park security in removing 24-year-old Warren Woods and another fan for their behavior during the game. Police said the men became verbally abusive and continued to be belligerent once outside the park. Woods was charged with being a disorderly person and drinking in public.

It seems he was drinking before he was ejected, that is while he was at Fenway Park. If drinking at Fenway Park is drinking in public, then there are tens of thousands of people guilty of that every game (assuming the stuff they sell as "beer" contains alcohol.)