The Truth About Empty Grocery Shelves and Product Shortages

The abundance of food in a grocery store is every bit as much a hallmark of Americana as Bugs Bunny and Major League Baseball, so it’s eerie to see those shelves bare. What exactly is going on here? First, we're not running out of food. There are plenty of pigs and enough chickens for every pot. There’s also plenty of wheat, but it has to be ground, baked into bread, and delivered. Before you can eat a sausage, somebody has to slaughter a pig, cut it up, and get it onto the shelves. That’s where things bottleneck. The distribution system isn’t designed for everyone to buy everything at once. There’s only so much space on the shelves in every store, and it takes a while for grocers who need more products to figure out who has excess and negotiate a new deal. So what’s going on with toilet paper? Actually, panic buying is no longer to blame. The larger issue is that supply chains aren’t cut out for the shift in demand. If a grocery store has one semi-truck showing up at their back door from the warehouse, what do you tell the warehouse to fill that truck up with? Toilet paper is big and bulky: It doesn’t take a lot to fill up the back of a semi truck. If your choices are toilet paper or bread and pasta you are going to choose the bread and pasta. Things will get back to normal in the near future. In the meantime, try to remember that everything can’t happen at one time, and patience goes a long way.

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The World’s First Computer Virus

The idea of a computer virus preceded computer networks. German mathematician John von Neumann first theorized the concept in the late 1940s. He envisioned a computer virus as an automatically self-replicating entity, but it was another 30 years before someone actually created one. ARPANET — an experimental network — existed years ago and would eventually give rise to the Internet. Imagine the surprise of its few users (mostly computer scientists) when one day in 1971, connected teletype computer screens displayed the phrase: “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” Although they didn’t know it at the time, they were the first computer virus victims. What did the mysterious message mean and who sent it? It turns out it wasn’t a hacker who coded the first computer malware. Instead, Bob Thomas, a researcher at Raytheon BBN Technologies, a packet switching network, had created Creeper. It was a worm — a type of computer virus that replicates itself and spreads to other systems. However, it wasn’t malware like we associate with today’s computer viruses — displaying its enigmatic message was all Creeper did. It didn’t encrypt files, demand a ransom, destroy data, steal Social Security numbers, or render centrifuges inoperable. It only displayed its taunting challenge. Thomas said he simply wanted to create an experimental, self-duplicating program to illustrate that it could be done.

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The Story Of A Pilotless Soviet MIG-23 Over Belgium

July 4, 1989 was an Independence Day to remember for the U.S. Air Force 32nd Tactical Fight Squadron based at Soesterberg AFB in the Netherlands. As Captains J. D. Martin and Bill Murphy were scrambled in their F-15C Eagle fighter jets, they couldn’t imagine that their mission was to intercept a very strange MIG. A Soviet MIG-23M and its pilot, Col. Nikolai Skurigin, had taken off for a routine training mission from Kolobzreg in Poland, but during the mission, the MIG suffered what seemed to be an engine failure that forced Skurigin to eject from his jet. Because the MIG’s engine still had some residual power, instead of descending it began to climb towards NATO airspace. That’s when Martin and Murphy were scrambled to intercept. To their surprise, they found that the plane was not only unarmed, but also unmanned. Pilotless and escorted by two F-15s, the MIG climbed to 39,500 feet before it ran out of fuel and plummeted to the ground. Unfortunately the aircraft hit a farm in Belgium, killing an 18-year old resident.

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The Bizarre Death of Charles Morgan

Charles Morgan allegedly worked as an agent for the federal government. After fearing for his life, the 39-year-old was found clad in a bulletproof vest with a bullet wound to the back of his head. Nevertheless, his death was ruled a suicide. It all began on March 22, 1977, when he disappeared without a trace. His family heard nothing from him until a couple of days later, when he burst through the front door of their Tucson home. He looked disheveled and had handcuffs hanging from each wrist as well at one set hanging from an ankle. As he silently rummaged through the house, he grabbed a pen and piece of paper and detailed a bizarre story. He wrote down that he was unable to speak because he had been kidnapped, tortured, and then had hallucinogenic drug poured down his throat, rendering him unable to speak. He eventually told his wife Ruth that he had managed to escape from his captors. Ruth urged Morgan to go to the police, but he refused, saying doing that would sign a death warrant for the entire family.

Around two months later, Morgan disappeared once again after failing to show up for a meeting. On June 18th, Morgan’s body was found alongside his car on a dirt road about 40 miles from his home. There was a bullet wound to the back of his head; the bullet traveled all the way through and settled between his teeth. Morgan was clad in a bulletproof vest and armed with a knife and holster. He had been shot with his own .357-caliber magnum which was found nearby, completely devoid of any fingerprints. Even more bizarre, one of his own teeth was discovered wrapped up in a tissue in his car as well as a pair of sunglasses that didn’t belong to him. Investigators found that his car had been modified so that it could be unlocked from the fender. Pinned to his underwear, was a map and directions for how to get to the murder site, as well as a $2 bill. The $2 bill had seven Spanish names written on the front, as well as a Bible citation – Ecclesiastes 12:1-8.

Despite the peculiarities surrounding his demise, Morgan’s death was ruled a suicide and the case was closed on August 10, 1977. What’s clear is that Morgan, fearing for his life and clad in a bulletproof vest, couldn’t have shot himself in the back of the head on that lonely desert road.

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