Here's to your health

In all seriousness, as people are turning on the heat and using natural gas in this part of the world, be careful and use your nose. If it smells like gas is leaking, call your provider before you end up like this hotel (whose inhabitants are in my thoughts and prayers). It doesn't take much to spark any time of gas explosion as I can well testify from a few previous lives.

Speaking of your nose, it seems that they have linked a good sense of smell for food to the incidence of obesity. I wouldn't jump to any conclusions yet though, this seems pretty far-fetched. Maybe they need to find a way to quantify self-control first, because I'm pretty sure that every time I smell food I'm hungry, but that doesn't mean I go and eat at every Burger King I drive past. In fact, I don't eat at any of them, because I know that they small far more tempting than they taste.

Fish and their oily grossness yet again provide hope for our medical well-being in the future. Read more for yourself.


Finally, "How to get on and off a train". Next week's special, how to drive a car in town. Just because you put these things together, it doesn't mean that people will read them, or care about them, or remember to follow them. I can speak from personal experience riding the subway in Rome and with the train not even stopping at the same boarding location every time, it was madness to get on board. Faced with a brutal environment which included a man putting his hand around my neck to yank me off the train, I, despite my knowledge of ideal traffic flow, resorted to the same method of taking care of myself. I turned, stiff-armed him in the throat and waved goodbye as the doors closed and we rushed away. Just because you know what should happen, this doesn't mean that you have the power to sit there and let other people abuse you because they don't care.

BBC compilation

The news today is a pretty wild assortment on my Mozilla BBC feed. Everything from French oil blockades to prisoners in Iran who will be tried for espionage after they allegedly crossed the border whilst hiking in Iraq. Why were they hiking in Iraq in the first place? It's amazing how much comes up in a week that I never would hear about on my local news or CNN.

Drug war news in Mexico continue with the capture of the largest stash of marijuana yet confiscated in Mexico. Again I uphold that if we just legalized and then taxed it, prohibiting its use in vehicles or on the job, the capitalist market in the US would solve this problem on its own.

Also, there is a gene identified that allegedly contributes to faster drunkenness. My bet is that they found it in Asia, but what's more important is that they think it could be a possible preventative drug in the future to help people react badly to alcohol and thus prevent alcoholism. Crazy stuff and I think it's kinda like Scotland's proposed ban on smoking in cars. Isn't enough, enough? To me, a ban on smoking in cars would be a serious breach of freedom of choice but I also don't live in Scotland. I do think that's something we're headed to as we try to socialize medicine. Socialized medicine will turn our medical treatment into a kind of technology warranty. If you don't take care of things in proper order and let specific people help you then the warranty or in this case your medical coverage is void. We can't expect to be allowed to make our own choices if socialized medicine comes to pass because people will be furious about being taxed to pay for someone else's poor life choices.

All for now, I'm headed off to lunch.

Crazy stuff

Trent Loos is pretty worked up about this one. It's worth listening to.

My thoughts on BP.

Brits are complaining amidst calls in US for BP to stop paying dividends until they can prove that they have enough cash to pay for their clean-up. Just in case you were wondering if the company would go under... yes, I think that would probably be easier, and less environmentally responsible. But then again, it's hard to tell if they care that much about that anyhow.

New estimates for past flow indicate that BP vastly underestimated the extent of the damage they created in terms of spilled oil. It's absolutely incredible how stupid this corporation full of MBAs and Engineers can make themselves sound right now. I don't wish for BP to go under, because I know people who work for them, but I sure as hell believe they ought to pay every cent it takes to clean up the mess they've made as well as can be done. And to those Brits complaining about your pensions... get over it. This world is cruel and you should sit down and wait for your turn after this mess is cleaned up. Or buy a lot of BP gas, since their revenue directly impacts your income. It's not that I don't care about you, I just want you to get grip on how huge this thing is, or how little attention has been paid to the BP workers who died, or how many other people's entire lives have been destroyed by this.


Also, in case you were wondering, I have inserted the BP plan for collecting oil. Apparently it has been moderately successful, capturing about 50% of oil that spills every day. How long until we get the other 50%? Talk from BP says August. Great. Alternatively, if we ever wanted to compete with the Sun, we could just light the Gulf of Mexico on fire and see how it feels about it's new sibling.

On totally different news - I was in Cuidad Juarez and continue to be surprised about all that happens there, or that we ever visited there for a mission trip. Crazy stuff...

And I have finally uploaded a picture of the bike.