The Elephant's Child

There's Chemical Fire Extinguisher In Your Cake!

A story about flame retardants in soda is floating around. 

For the moment, let's put aside the discussion of whether brominated vegetable oil is safe or not. (The FDA says yes, in limited quantities, but I do understand that not everyone trusts the FDA entirely.) For now, let's consider only the fact that materials, chemicals, ingredients, and elements can be used for various (and often widely differing) purposes. 

Does the fact that an ingredient is used for one purpose mean it is unsuitable for any other purpose?

By that logic, since many dry chemical fire extinguishers rated for B and C class fires are filled with baking soda, that cake you just bought from the local bakery has chemical fire extinguisher in it!  And you're going to DIE if you eat it!  Eating that cake is like sucking on a fire extinguisher! 

 

 

Appearance, Weight Loss, and Women of a Certain Age.

I've noticed something about women over the age of 40.  When they lose a significant amount of weight, enough weight to bring them back to what they weighed when they first got married, or, say, fifty pounds or more, many of them look older.  Thinner, yes, but older.  

Conversely:  I've noticed that extremely thin younger women, women in their twenties, the type of gals who bemoan their lack of a curvy bum and their stick-legs, who have perfect body-mass-index numbers, often become much more beautiful with the added 10-30 pounds that many women retain after their first pregnancy. 

To give an example of how ridiculous our society's ideas of "healthy weight" are, to be in center of the "normal" weight range per the standard BMI tables, I would need to weigh forty pounds less than I did on my wedding day in 1996, when I wore a size six wedding gown.  I would need to weigh thirty pounds less than I did on my eighteenth birthday.  I would not be considered "underweight" per the BMI guidelines until I weighed, as a grown adult, approximately what I did in fifth grade. 

Everyone wants good health and everyone agrees that being severely overweight isn't healthy.  But maybe a healthy weight for each of us is not a number on a chart, but the weight at which the age lines of our faces are softened and our bones do not poke through our clothing.

 

Storm Update.

I checked the weather just a bit ago, at 9:30 pm, and we're currently at 998.3 milibars of barometric pressure.

The wind is a constant howl and the curtains on the window beside my desk are wiggling back and forth in the draft.  Before night fell, I couldn't see the library's back door even though it's just across the street and three doors down from us.  The precipitation alternates between sleet and fine snow.

The forty gallon trash can that serves as rain barrel at the side of the garage was half-buried as of about 6:00 pm.

At 6:30 pm I bundled up and went out on the porch to move my birdfeeder off the railing.  I was afraid of the high winds blowing it down and breaking it.  The wind was such that I really had to push to get the front storm door open.  There was an 18" high drift across the front of the porch already, and it's supposed to snow all night yet. 

Whooo-eee, what a storm!

 

I'm Going To Have Fun Watching This.

This was screen-captured right around noon or so.  Since then, that low pressure cell has pushed north a bit. 1003 mb is low, but not freakishly so. For comparison, the Great Blizzard of 1978 bottomed out at 953 mb. Hurricane Katrina's lowest barometric pressure measurement was 902 mb.  

The rate at which the pressure drops is important in measuring storm severity too, not only the actual pressure readings.  I'm going to have fun watching this roll in as long as my electricity doesn't go out due to the 40 mile-per-hour gusts that are forecast.

You Don't Have to Drive; You Can Walk.

UPDATE: Warning: this is sarcastic allegory, and intended to be commentary on the TSA's assertion that people do not "have to fly" but can choose to drive.  Not always, TSA.  Plenty of people have to fly for their work and do not have employers amenable to the extra time required to drive, say, from Seattle to Dallas-Fort Worth or Minneapolis to Miami.

Beginning January next year, the Federal government will be requiring a change to all state drivers' licenses.  Although they are normally issued by each state, the DEA feels the change they are requesting is due to an important enough issue that they have asked the Federal government to withhold funding for certain road projects in order to ensure compliance. 

On the face of the card, below your picture, your weight, marital status and credit rating must be displayed in black text. The DEA says this is neccessary in order to put a stop to illegal drug traficking across state lines.

Your new liscense will not be issued until the motor vehicles office recieves a written statement from your doctor certifying your current weight.  You will also need to submit your social security number (which is never stored by staff at the Department of Motor Vehicles) so that a credit check can be run.  The credit reports themselvs are also never stored, says the DEA; only your score will be displayed on your license.  Copies of a marriage certificate or divorce papers will also be needed.

When asked about the new requiremnts, which some Tea Party members are calling "draconian," a DEA spokesman replied, "We are frequently reminded that drug traffickers are creative and willing to go to great lengths to evade athourities.  After all, you don't have to drive.  You can walk."

 

 

Our Future is Taxed.

Great Britian has a VAT, a value-added tax.  It's similar to what Americans might recongize as a national sales tax although the amount of the tax is figured a bit differently than just taking a straight percentage of the final cost of each item sold.  You can read about how it works if you'd like, but it might make your brain hurt.

In the US, state sales taxes range from as high 8.25% to as low as zero.  We have no VAT or national sales tax, although the idea has been suggested (and shot down) in the past.

Currently, the VAT in Great Britian is 17.5%. 

I'll let that sink in a bit.

Seventeen and a half percent.

And guess what? Come January 4th, 2011, it's increasing.  To twenty percent.

Not only that, there are a huge series of budget cuts, pay freezes, and other changes that can only be called draconian.

This is our future, Americans.  This is what the enormous cost of national health care will buy us. 

 

Chance of Fire Hurricane: Zero

A map from Google of the the path of the BP oil spill superimposed on NOAA's computer model of the possible paths of Tropical Storm Alex. 

Along With Higher Prices, Less Stock.

I've noticed more empty shelves.  I've noticed slightly less selection in stores.  And I've noticed, especially at online catalog company sites, that there simply isn't as stuff available as there used to be.

It's not even the 4th of July weekend yet, the traditional half-way point of summer, and my go-to company for kids' better quality clothes is sold out of much summer gear already.

I think that companies are hedging their bets and not ordering and buying as much inventory as they might have in years past.

Goes Fast, Turns Corners.

Added bonus: blows things up.  Oh, and it's designed to use public thruways for landing and takeoff and can be refueled and rearmed in ten minutes by a 5-man ground crew working out of a single truck.

The Swedish Air Force and the air force of the Czech Republic fly the Saab JAS-39 Gripen.  And the Hungarian and South African Air Forces.  Soon, the Thai Air Force will as well.

American airmen fly on equipment that is, on average, twenty-three years old.

That ain't right, people.  That just ain't right.

Voting Principles.

I voted for a man I didn't really like all that much in the last presidential election.

I could have, when I voted last November, chosen to vote my principles like many of my conservative friends did; I could have voted for a man whom I felt had close to zero chance of winning the presidency but whom was much more conservative than the leading "conservative" candidate.  My friends argued that it's important to vote for the candidate whose platform you really agree with the most; to vote for the man who is most likely to win is simply selling out.

But that is what I did.  I voted for a man from my half of the political spectrum whom I felt had the best chance of winning.  I did not believe that my political party of choice put forth a very good candidate. At all.  And yet, I voted for this man.

Why?  Did I sell out my principles? 

No.  Because over everything stands tall the Supreme Court nominations.  They are, more than anything else in the country, where much of the true governing power lies. And there, in the control of the Supreme Court, my dear readers, is where my "principles" lie. 

There was much about Ron Paul's platform that made sense to me, especially fiscally.  But in the end, he could not win as an independent; you may hate that we have a two-party system, but we do.  In the end, he split the vote of the conservatives in this country, and helped to elect President Obama, much the same way that Ross Perot voters help to elect Bill Clinton in 1992.

And now, President Obama is appointing Supreme Court judges. 

It's all about the judges.  While John McCain is in so many ways a "RINO" (a Republican In Name Only) and while there is so very much about the Republican party that has gone so terribly, terribly wrong, when it comes right down to it, Senator McCain, had he become President McCain, would have appointed judges that will do less damage to the Constitution than the judges that President Obama is appointing.

See?  I did vote my principles, even if I didn't.