No, this post isn’t about the little boy who can fly — it’s about peanut butter.

As you may know, all Peter Pan peanut butter was recalled in February due to a Salmonella outbreak. Well, if you’ve missed it as much as Becky and I have, you’ll be happy to know that it’s expected to return to store shelves later this month. Wikipedia says “mid-July,” while TheStreet.com says “late July.” The Wall Street Journal says simply “July.”

Regardless, it’ll be not a moment too soon, if you ask me. Skippy and Jif just aren’t as good, darn it.

P.S. Alas, it seems another favorite food product of mine, C2, is well and truly dead. According to Wikipedia, “An inquiry to the Coca-Cola company in February of 2007 revealed that only one bottler in the South Eastern United States still produced the product, and that it had been discontinued.” This comment from June 21 suggests that bottler may have been right here in Tennessee:

Up until just a few weeks ago, C-2 was available only in 12 packs in Smyrna, TN. It was available in all of the major grocery chains only - Kroger, Publix, Food Lion. Then it just disappeared off of everyone’s shelf at the same time with no advance warning. When I contacted the Nashville office, I was informed that Coca Cola stopped making C2.

Dammit.

Abducted BBC reporter Alan Johnston is released in Gaza after more than 100 days in captivity, The Associated Press and Reuters report.

Visit CNN for the latest.

Following up on Brendan’s earlier post on how the NHC director received a reprimand for pointing out that forecasts might not nearly be as accurate as hoped due to the possibly of a satellite failure:

Today, word’s in from the Miami Herald that the NHC was inspected yesterday. In addition, “Meanwhile, for the first time, one of Proenza’s hurricane forecasters expressed public concern about some of Proenza’s actions since he took the job in January.

Lixion Avila, a lead forecaster and a center employee for more than 20 years, said he believes Proenza meant well but unintentionally has undermined public faith in hurricane forecasts.”

Money quote: “Reached Monday night, Proenza confirmed the surprise inspection, but — in a departure from his usual practice — he said little else.” I wonder why?

Asked if he believed his job was threatened by the NOAA inspection team and its mission, Proenza said:

“I await their finding and, hopefully, their support.””

It sounds to me as if Proenza knows his days are numbered.

I hate Xoxohth, but now and then, it has its uses — like this thread about bar-exam practice-test scores, and what they mean.

“What’s all this fuss I hear about President Bush commuting G. Gordon Liddy’s sentence? Mr. Liddy already served four-and-a-half years in prison, and then had his sentence commuted by President Carter. You can’t have your sentence commuted twice. And furthermore…”

“Oh. Never mind.”

If we adopt nationalized health care, the terrorists will win:

An Iraqi junior doctor and a brilliant neurologist working for the NHS are among the suspects being quizzed over the series of bomb attacks across Britain, it emerged today.

For those who don’t know, “NHS” refers not to Newington High School, my alma mater, but to the National Health Service, Britain’s much-maligned, Michael Moore-endorsed public health-care system. Which, we now learn, breeds terrorists. So, y’see? HILLARYCARE = TERRORISM. Now there’s a bumper sticker for you. ;)

Either somebody is having a good laugh at our expense from beyond the grave, or the Roswell alien landing really happened:

[L]ast week came an astonishing new twist to the Roswell mystery - which casts new light on the incident and raises the possibility that we have, indeed, been visited by aliens.

Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the base in 1947, and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash [initially reporting that the military had captured a “flying disc,” then changing the story to say it was a mere weather balloon] on the orders of the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard.

Haut died last year, but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.

Last week, the text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story, and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar. He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies. …

He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 12-15ft in length and around 6ft wide. He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.

He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin. They are described in his statement as about 4ft tall, with disproportionately large heads. Towards the end of the affidavit, Haut concludes: “I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space.”

(Hat tip: Slashdot, via InstaPundit.)

UPDATE: According to The Blog That Goes Ping, “The possibilities here are not, as you might think, restricted to ‘he’s lying, deluded, or crazy’ and ‘aliens crashed at Roswell.’ UFO writer Nick Redfern has argued in his book Body Snatchers in the Desert that small, ‘alien’-like bodies were in fact observed in crash debris at the site, as so many claim, but that they had nothing to do with outer space — they were, he claims, bodies of deformed or surgically altered humans,” the subjects of “a highly confidential, U.S. government-sanctioned program to conduct medical experiments on deformed, handicapped, disfigured, and diseased Japanese POWs.” (And then whisk them around in flying saucers?)

On the other hand, maybe they were immigrants from the future. If so, thank goodness they crashed, so they couldn’t take our jobs. ;)

I need a blog-maintenance favor from a regular reader who is not a Harry Potter fan (or at least, who doesn’t mind possibly being exposed to Harry Potter 7 spoilers). If you might fit the bill, could you please e-mail me at brendanloy [at] alumni.usc.edu? Thanks!

UPDATE: I’m all set. Thanks!

Becky is 14 weeks pregnant as of today, which means she’s officially in her second trimester — and little Baby Loy has officially graduated from “jumbo shrimp sized” to “lemon sized.” Here’s some of what BabyCenter.com says about Week 14:

Head to bottom, your baby’s 3 1/2 inches long — about the length of a lemon — and weighs about 1 1/2 ounces. Her body’s growing faster than her head, which now sits upon a more well-defined neck. By the end of this week, her arms will have lengthened and will be in proportion to the rest of her body. … You still can’t feel your baby’s movements, but her hands and feet (which are now half an inch long) are more flexible and active. Thanks to brain impulses, her little facial muscles are getting a workout as she squints, frowns, and grimaces. She can grasp now, too, and she may be able to suck her thumb.

As an aside, what’s the rationale behind using “her” instead of “him” in gender-nonspecific writing? I understand the objection that always using “him” is sexist and patriarchal, but how is using “her” any better? Is it, like, linguistic affirmative action?

P.S. Baby Gaga (which prefers the gramatically incorrect “their” to the politically incorrect “his” or “hers”) has more on Week 14: “[T]heir little body and limber limbs are coordinated enough for loads of complicated motions. In fact, their whole body is moving right now!—only their current size is still a bit too small for you to notice. … Your baby is also starting to develop the ability to move their eyes this week, although the eyelids still remain fused shut. What’s more, they can make all sorts of fun facial expressions as they practice squinting, frowning, and grimacing.”

President Bush commutes the jail sentence of I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, The Associated Press reports.

Visit CNN for the latest.

The U.K.’s Evening Standard reports:

Anti-terrorist detectives swooped on five members of the gang across Britain after gathering crucial clues from phones found in the two London car bombs.

The phones were meant to trigger a blast when they were called. The bombers twice called the car outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket, and the one in Cockspur Street four times, but the bombs failed to detonate for technical reasons.

“Technical reasons,” eh? Wouldn’t it be great if it turned out the terrorists were trying to set off the bombs with newly purchased iPhones, but failed because they couldn’t activate them? ;)

Notre Dame just recently finished revamping Irish Online, its online alumni directory. As I was editing my information today, I noticed that they have added a feature where alumni can list their children’s names, and, if applicable, the year their children graduated from ND. Obviously this isn’t that surprising at a school with so many legacy students. So what did surprise me and prompt me to write this blog post, you ask? The form includes space for the names of up to 15 children! Only at an Irish Catholic school…

That’s how many Apple sold on the device’s opening weekend. Wow.

In other news, the replacement for my broken AirPort Express is ready for pickup at the Knoxville Apple Store. Hurrah!

Daniel Briere and Chris Drury are no longer Buffalo Sabres. Pout.