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Diskage:
Books Lying
Open Soul-Devouring
Worry When I Grow Up:
Curse of the Day:
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Saturday September 28, 2002 |
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of the Day Dogs are dogs, they do the same thing everywhere... It's just that there are no dogs in China because they eat them -- Claude Bebear, president of Paris' Olympic bid, responding to China's comments that rabid dogs make Paris too dangerous and dirty |
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Daily
Update I have to work Saturday and Sunday, and had been under the impression that I'd be working Saturday night, when the local college football games usually are, and Sunday afternoon. This week I've been going to bed around 9am, and getting up around 4pm. I'd actually prefer to sleep about two hours longer, so I could get up once it was dark, or at least around sunset. I really enjoy that, knowing I'll have hours and hours of darkness once I wake up. Later in the winter that gets easier, when it's cool all day and dark by 5pm or so. Anyway, I was scaling that back a bit the last couple of days, since I have to get up around 10am Sunday, and would prefer to have more than the 3 hours of sleep I got before work last Sunday. Friday I got up around 1pm, with about 5 hours of sleep, in order to be tired earlier and get up Saturday by noon or 11, and then get a full night's sleep Sunday. When I got up Friday I checked my one phone message, and it was someone from work saying that Saturday's check in time was at 9:30. AM! Which is about 8 hours earlier than anticipated. I vaguely recall hearing that the UCLA game was going to be in the day, but hadn't factored that into my sleep time calculations, and now it turns out that the game isn't just in the day, it's in the morning, kick off at 11am. So there's my whole cleverly-engineered sleeping cycle gone to hell. It's 3am now and I'm wide awake, but hopefully I can get a couple hour nap around dawn, and then I'll crash after work, assuming I live that long. Being as they print up the game time schedules months in advance I don't really have any excuse, but I'm annoyed nevertheless. Fortunately I'm all full of greasy goodness. I cut up a big potato into thin wedges, and grilled/stir fried it in olive oil with slivers of carrot, half a white onion, some slices of red pepper, and threw in 8 chopped up mushrooms at the very end (longer and they'd get all soggy). Seasoned with lots of coarse ground pepper, red pepper flakes, a generous sprinkling of garlic, and some Italian seasoning. It's not just good, it's goddamn hella tasty! So to speak. It's basically a sort of home fries deluxe, eaten with a fork with a little bit of ketchup to dip them into. Next time I need to get the potatoes in first and let them go for about five minutes, since some bites are still sort of starchy, then throw in the rest. I also need more of the rest, especially onion, and need to not cut the carrots up so small. Someday there will be a recipes section on this site. Right after the other eleventeen planned content sections. In other food news, check this out. Weird, huh?
Since I do grapefruit like oranges (peeling them by
hand, rather than the more common bisection technique) I didn't chop it
in half, so now I can save it forever and ever. Or not. I should
probably just plant the damn thing, it's obviously eager to grow.
Now for the news.
In surprising
news, the lead singer of Nu Metal band Drowning Pool didn't
OD. He was found dead in the tour bus a few months ago, during Oz
Fest, and being as he was 30 and in a rock band, everyone assumed it was
another Layne Staley or Shannon Hoon thing. Preliminary autopsy reports
are that he died of a heart attack, and no deadly levels of drugs were
found in his system. If you were wondering,
yes, this costs them a bonus point in the Band Names score section.
You've probably heard
the stories of how more and more antibiotics are no longer working, due
to bacteria evolving resistances and immunities to them. This is a
direct reaction to patients demanding and doctors overusing antibiotics,
and has hastened the bugs' evolutionary response. We'd probably
have been in the same place ten or fifteen years from now in any
event. The time may
soon come when there are infections that no medicine can cure. WASHINGTON (Reuters)
- It was reported on July 5 -- no surprise to doctors but an
unpleasant revelation nonetheless -- a patient infected with a
bacteria that shrugged off vancomycin, the "antibiotic of last
resort."
It was the first case
of vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the United States. Called VRSA for
short, this bacteria was a real "superbug," oblivious to
virtually all antibiotics on the market. It is a real-life example of
how the overuse and abuse of antibiotics has diminished the power of
what once were wonder drugs.
We're all for non-discrimination in job hiring, but this
one from Australia might be going too far. Eyesight and other
medical tests imposed on flight crew have been found to be in breach of
anti-discrimination laws.
Where did you first get laid? Probably at home, probably late at
night, at least according to this
survey. I fall into the majority on this one, I must admit. 56 percent said they
first had sex at their familys home or at the home of their
partners family. An additional 12 percent first had sex at a
friends house, 9 percent at a teens own home, 4 percent in a
truck or car, 3 percent at a park or other outdoor place, and 3
percent at a hotel or motel. Ten percent said someplace else.
I saw a link somewhere to this, a Simpson's
Trivia Quiz. I got a big fat 32%, which means I got a whole 16 out
of 50 questions correct. Being as I've seen at best 20% of all
Simpson's episodes, most of them one time only, and most of those at
least 7 or 8 years ago, I'm relatively proud of my effort. Now if
you can find me a South Park trivia quiz, I won't have any excuses.
Other than the sheer amount of questions that are utterly trivial and
about minor plot details or one time guest characters. Of course
given that it's a triva test, complaining that the questions are trivial
is a bit suspect. Well I had to look, and
of course there are South Park trivia quizzes. |
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Well, maybe not. There's been yet another E. Coli outbreak from tainted ground beef, though no one from it has died yet.
Would other foods continue to be sold if they regularly sickened hundreds and killed dozens? I mean imagine if people were dying all the time, and others were getting horribly sick from contamination that will inevitably creep into the product due to how it's prepared, and the product was... Graham crackers. Wouldn't the government demand the plants be shut down, and manufacturing processes be changed until they prove they can do it safely? I'm not necessarily advocating that, but given the dietary Russian Roulette that eating cowburgers is, isn't it strange that nothing is ever done to fix the problem? The USDA inspects beef, but it's vastly understaffed and underfunded, and depends almost entirely on manufacturers voluntarily complying with industry regulations. Since cutting corners and lowering safety raises profits, there is continual presser to do so. The other question is why people don't worry about this more. In the past there have been scares with poison in Tylenol and other types of pills, and every store in the country has pulled them from the shelves, the companies have done national recalls, laws have been passed for better tamper-resistant packaging, etc. And that sort of thing happens once a decade, and effects two or three people, and is always found to be the work of one isolated nut. Ground beef manufacture is inherently unsanitary and will inevitably result in harmful bacteria being introduced into the product, yet people don't seem to have any problem with it. You are advised to cook beef long and hot enough to kill any potential poisons. And people are fine with that! Imagine if you had to be sure you got a bowl of tomato soup to a two minute roiling boil in order to be sure it wouldn't kill you when you ate it? No one would stand for that. I guess the conclusion to draw is that the beef industry, and meat-packing in general are just so big and economically/politically powerful that they can thwart any serious efforts to regulate or reform them. However we can't just blame gutless politicians for the problem; where are the millions of Americans out boycotting beef until it's proven to be safe? Demanding their congressman investigate and beef up (pardon the pun) the USDA's regulating abilities? It just doesn't happen. Eating cow is such a big part of life for most Americans it's practically sacrosanct. It's like, "I'm eating this if it kills me!" And given the obesity and heart disease that generally results, it eventually does. |
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All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007. |
eef!
Tasty beef! Good, and good for you!