Wednesday: Nuclear Bombs, Far-Flung CEOs, and Golf Carts Run Amok

• Attention Washington:  The Central Intelligence Agency, as in “CIA,” says Iran has achieved the capability of building a nuclear bomb – you know, that generate 30-million-degrees of heat and stuff? – right now.  Not years down the road. Today.  And a guy runs Iran who thinks a ghost is going to jump up out of a well and take over the planet for him if he can just drop one on somebody.  Thought you might like to know… 
• Boeing’s flight-testing program for its trouble-plagued 787 Dreamliner is behind schedule – as was the entire preceding “design-and-build” program – but company says it will still deliver the first of the planes by year’s end…even if they have to be sent to customers in kit form in wheelbarrows.  Company says delivery schedules will, by god, be met.  Not sure how well they’ll fly…but, don’t wear us out with picky details. 
• Nerd solves problem, loses mind.  Grigory Perelman, 43, unemployed, living with mom in St. Petersburg, Russia; pocket protectors in every hue of the rainbow, awarded the $1-million Millennium Prize by Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Mass. for solving the “Poincare Conjecture” that stumped mathematicians for a century. Grigory can now stump psychiatrists for another century.  He says he doesn’t want the money.
• Toyota Planning to License Prius Hybrid Technologies to Mazda.  That’s one way to eliminate a competitor.
• Commuting sucks.  Chief execs of some of the nation’s most troubled companies bailed out by the U.S. taxpayer – not exactly punching the time clock: They live too far away.  Robert Benmosche, CEO of Manhattan-based AIG lives in Florida; Michael Carpenter, head of Detroit’s GMAC lives in Connecticut; Sergio Marchionne, CEO Chrysler Group, lives in Italy.  That’s keeping your “finger on the pulse.”
• Good News for Bug-Phobes.  Half of this year’s brood of Monarch butterflies is dead.  Rough weather, hail, rain, did ‘em in.  Some entomologists believe the numbers may be even higher than that.  Significant percentage of population that hates anything that crawls, flits, squirms or leaves mucous trails, rejoices.
• Newtonian Motion and Mass Problem:  If a tractor trailer truck traveling 40 mph collides head on with a golf cart traveling 10 mph, is anything left of golf cart driver?  Or golf cart itself, for that matter?  We’re about to find out.  New city ordinance in Lyons, Kansas allows golf carts to be driven on town’s streets.  “Membership vacancies” expected soon at Lyons appropriately named, “Paradise Pastures Golf Club.” 
• Alstead, New Hampshire teen seriously injured when hit by projectile fired from potato gun.  Device made of PVC piping and used highly combustible hair spray as propellant. After being struck in face by spud while examining gun, victim rushed to hospital for peeling, boiling and “As Seen On TV” appearance for “Combo Cooker” deep fryer.”