Saturday and Sundry Tid-bits from the Week That Was

Creepology by Michael Doliner at Counterpunch.
I've commented to my husband, recently, on how rare it is to see accusations of sexual harassment where the accused was a charming good-looker. Here's Mr Doliner's view. His piece begins:

Harvey Weinstein, Louis C K, and James Toback are creeps, but they did not become creeps because of what they did. They were already creeps. Creeps are born not made. At an early age, creeps make a girl’s skin crawl. A girl will recoil violently at a creep’s touch. Creepiness, to a large extent, is a matter of fate...............

A fantastical ship has set out to seek Malaysian Airlines flight 370
A swarm of submarine drones will scour the depths for the plane

Good! I'm so pleased there'll be one more attempt to solve this mystery.

The plan is for Ocean Infinity’s search to be paid for, on a “no find, no fee” basis, by Malaysia alone. Contracts have yet to be signed, but Oliver Plunkett, Ocean Infinity’s boss, has decided to go ahead anyway, to take advantage of the window of good weather that opens in the southern Indian Ocean in January and February.

Ocean Infinity aims to cover the ground [to the north of the original search area] much faster than Fugro did. In prior cruises in the Atlantic, the firm has, according to Josh Broussard, its technical director, managed to scan 890 square kilometres a day using six autonomous submarines. With eight, Mr Broussard thinks that the new mission will be able to manage 1,200 a day—enough to have covered the original search area in just 100 days..................

What happens next, if Ocean Infinity does locate what is left of the missing aircraft, is unclear. Friends and relatives of those aboard it will doubtless derive relief from knowing where the flight ended up. But merely finding the wreckage will not explain what happened on board the plane. That will require the discovery of the aircraft’s flight recorder.

That object is therefore Ocean Infinity’s ultimate target. If it is found on this mission, Mr Broussard says the firm plans to bring it to the surface and then deliver it for analysis to the Australian authorities, who have the technical competence to assess it

A question I noticed at Quora during the week:
What is the origin of the joke phrase “this is why we can’t have nice things”?

I'd wondered about that myself - it appears that the answer (or one possible answer) is in this video of American comedian, Paula Poundstone, from a 1990 HBO Special. Paula tells about the time in her childhood when she dropped a Flinstones jelly-jar glass in the kitchen, her mother complained: “Damn-it! We can’t have nice things!”
It comes at about 1 minute 30 seconds in.