all about food

It says here that I don't bake like people make mudpies, I just bake like people used to, just like I essentially wash clothes by beating them on rocks.

I also make from scratch every food I eat that contains more than one ingredient, which avoids interesting surprises like the one where Kraft guacamole's avocado content is 2% or less.

In less edible food news, some bus shelters in San Francisco are going to be chocolate-chip cookie scented, but in proper San Francisco form, the article about it includes the information that a scent marketing campaign is asking for a lawsuit because chemicals are bad for people. If I ever have anything to do with a big city again, it'll be San Francisco.

car batteries, dogs, termites, and idiots

Today I learned that car batteries' average lifespan in Tucson is 22 months, and it's the heat that kills them. The AAA Battery Replacement guy said they are busiest in the summer, and it hadn't been too bad this morning, when it was 26 F (-3 C). I guess our car, which lived back East for 20 years before we took it to retiree-land, just has habits.

In other news, I faced down a three-dog pack this morning so one of the neighbors could get her dog home safely, so I learned that I may be broken, but I'm still good for something. (If only there were a stipend for Neighborhood Dog Pack Chaser.) Then we went and hung around in the street with another neighbor whose cat had been treed, waiting for animal control. His cat was only outside because the termite guys were drilling at his house, and the cat couldn't stand the noise inside. The upshot was that I learned that I can't be anywhere near a conventional termite guy truck even if they haven't started spraying yet, so nicotine really is a whole lot safer than conventional pesticide.

Last but not least, I learned that sometimes people who get thrown out of clubs announce to the bouncers outside that they intend to come back with guns, but they don't get very far.

the North American Union

Today I learned that State Senator Karen Johnson (R-Mesa) believes President Bush has secret plans to merge the US with Canada and Mexico by 2010, and he won't involve Congress until it's a done deal. She's apparently not the only one because there's a not-up-to-standards Wikipedia page about it, too.

Since I'm not used to seeing conspiracy theories in the newspaper, or more accurately, articles about politicians who believe them, I wondered about the source. Capitol Media Services has an address in Maryland, but in Arizona, it appears to be one guy: Howard Fischer (scroll down), who covers politics. Since he's written a bunch of articles (including the third link I put here) for papers all over Arizona, the only reason I hadn't heard of him or Capitol Media Services before is that I'm incredibly unobservant unless I'm paying attention, in which case I can learn things like Mr. Fischer goes by 'Howie' and uses a hotmail account, but probably only for published lists of media contacts.

Anyway, various commenters on the Star website are worrying seriously about merging with Mexico, but they're not seeing the bigger picture: the sooner we form a world government, the sooner the space aliens will decide we're civilized enough to visit.

polonium, wild geese, mayhem, and back strain

Today I learned that:

• You can buy polonium-210 on the internet for $69, but the article I read cagily did not say for how much or how much you need to poison someone, and now my mighty (not so much today) broken physicist brain is working on how you'd calculate that without just compar-- never mind.
• The Esplanade Association in charge of keeping the banks of the Charles River tidy has a professional wild goose chaser.
• The Chicago Tribune is always good for reporting mayhem. It's all car accidents and shootings, and I'm sure it's not any worse there than other big cities, but the only other paper I ever noticed having that much violence is the Reading Eagle.
• In non-mayhem-related news, the Tribune reports that slouching puts less strain on your lower back than sitting bolt upright.

sleeping in a good place and groceries

Overnight I learned that if I use four yards (4 m) of almost two-year-old, ugly conventional cotton terry cloth for a bed pad instead of my stupidly-expensive organic cotton bed pad that is stubbornly retaining detergent residue, I can sleep in the bed in the master bedroom again. I have thus reduced the time it takes for me to get back in the real bed after losing another detergent from something like three months to three weeks. To be fair, I'm pretty sure I avoided screwing up my immune system this time, so everything is going better.

Since I slept well and felt good, I went out grocery shopping, which unfortunately still makes me kind of stupid, so I can't think up anything funny to say about learning a British term for misplaced apostrophes:

Shopkeepers sometimes advertise apple's and pear's for sale, hence the term greengrocer's apostrophe.

I know there's a good snarky comment out there somewhere, but I'm going to go commune with the nice bed again.

elk and air quality

Today I learned that there are tule elk in Silicon Valley.

In other news, and I'm recording this so I know what to expect next year, except I expect to be a lot better by then, if the PM 2.5 reading at Rose Elementary gets up to 80 μg/m³, things will not go well.

carcin-what?, newspaper flames, and banana skins

Today I learned that bugs are eating the Oregon coastline. Tiny Australian crustaceans, which are a type of arthropod, aka bug, came over roughly 150 years ago and are burrowing into everything, including trash, and causing coastal erosion. Also, the study of crustaceans is called carcinology, which makes you wonder if carcinologists can use 'carcinogenic' in a confusing fashion.

In other news, I'm not used to editorials starting out with sentences like this: "It sounds like a late-night parody of President Bush’s bad habit of filling key posts with extreme ideologues and incompetents." Besides not being too impressed with President Bush, The New York Times is not overly impressed with President Bush's choice for the national guy in charge of family planning, Dr. Eric Keroack, who is apparently completely against family planning. A quick search of the web revealed that pretty much anybody with web access who has expressed an opinion agrees with the New York Times, except for one blogger who reposted a news article from the Center for Moral Clarity's website saying that Pastor Rod Parsley and his Center for Moral Clarity insisted that Bush appoint someone who was a wholehearted and enthusiastic supporter of abstinence. I think what I learned here is that, as a product of the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons of the 1970s, I think 'Pastor Parsley' would be an excellent name for an educational cartoon character.

And in case you were curious, here's the history behind the story about smoking banana skins making you high.

new virus and cranberries

Today I learned that there are some parts of the South that have mosquitoes all year, so if somebody brings Chikungunya there from in and around India, where it's mosquito season now, we'll be stuck with it here, too. So, we're all gonna die, etc., etc., except for that thing where it's not all that fatal usually, but the article said it's a up and coming disease, so you never know.

In case you were curious about how to kill the virus, here's a helpful hint from the Public Health Agency of Canada:

PHYSICAL INACTIVATION: Inactivated by moist, dry heat > 58 ^oC; Sensitive to drying

In other news, you can eat whole cranberries without putting sugar all over them or anything. You just shouldn't have sensitive teeth if you want to do it very much.

corn

Today I learned that, after two years, I am pretty much ok with corn again. This is a good thing because the way I tested that was by eating a whole lot of cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner. And so you know, we were all properly historical by having a duck instead of a turkey. Not that we really care.

In other cornbread news, there are a lot of cornbread snobs out there whose recipes require the use of a cast-iron skillet. That's all well and good, but then a surprising number of them list corn meal mix in their recipes, which, since I'm a different kind of purist, is pathetic. I fully admit to not growing my own corn and making my own cornmeal out of it, but stirring together flour and baking powder and/or soda isn't that hard, not that I bothered with the baking whatever.

a silly song and otters

Today I learned that if you can't understand one of the words in a silly song in Death to Smoochy, you can track down the script on IMSDb.

Since that's not overly thrilling, or even all that interesting, have a picture of two otters:

why telemarketers should not call sick ladies

Today I learned that the Dove Foundation is a non-profit that calls people up to find out if they agree that Hollywood makes more movies now that are not family-friendly than ever before. I hemmed and hawed (telemarketers can be high entertainment when you're sick) and finally allowed as how, sure, there should be family-friendly movies. I wasn't in good enough form to properly answer the question about calling me back with more information, though. I started out with yes, but then the lady wanted my full name with the appropriate spelling and pronunciation, and all I could come up with for that was 'no.'

It only took me about three seconds to realize what a foolish mistake that was because that's how long it took to google 'Dove Foundation,' which took me here. Apparently they're in cahoots with a company that tries to sell you family-friendly movies, and armed with that kind of information, the next call could have been pretty entertaining.

flu shots and science museum exhibits

Today I got to reading the Chicago Tribune health blog comments again and was directed to this review article (pdf), where I learned that flu shots aren't good for much, at least in pregnant women, and that thimerosal, the mercury-laden preservative, is used in most flu shots in concentrations that the EPA says aren't safe for pregnant women, fetuses, or little kids.

It's information like that that makes it easy for me to justify my I'll-stay-home-a-lot-and-probably-not-get-sick approach to flu shots. This, too, which says flu shots don't work on kids or the elderly.

In other news, an exhibit consisting of 200 human corpses or parts thereof is coming to Phoenix on Jan. 26. Apparently all the bodies donated themselves to an institute started by a guy who learned how to preserve bodies using plastic instead of formaldehyde. If it were free to get in, I weren't sick, and I were ten years old, I'd be bugging my mother to take me. As it is, I think I'll stay home.

Nutmeggers on the loose

Today I learned that there was a large-scale brawl at a Connecticut shopping mall, and there wasn't a sale or a PS3 in sight. If that doesn't support my radioactive zombie theory, I don't know what does.

biking, air quality, and huge taxes

Today I learned that El Tour de Tucson, at the right place at the right time, looks like a never-ending stream of brightly colored jerseys. I was pleased that I didn't need to cross the street for anything.

I had meant to cross the street and go for a ride myself, but the air didn't feel quite right, so then I learned that we're going to have an air quality issue around here probably until Wednesday.

In other news, I learned that we Arizonans passed Proposition 203, where we institute an 80 cent per pack cigarette tax and use the money for early childhood development programs. I have to admit that my first inclination when I heard about that was to vote in favor of it because cigarette smoke makes me so sick, but fortunately the newspaper had a very sensible article about how that was a really stupid way to fund something important, so I came to my senses and voted no. Assuming it makes it past the probably-impending court challenge, it will be interesting to see if it actually does decrease smoking.

big day

Today I learned that even with a bad laundry fume exposure this morning, I could still spend an entire hour wandering around inside the Tucson Convention Center, which today is all filled up with biking gear. El Tour de Tucson is tomorrow morning, so beside needing to register about 8000 riders, the organizers needed to make sure all the sponsors got a good shot at separating people from their money. We were there to try on a jersey. We didn't buy anything.

If you don't get out much, going into a place like that is pretty impressive. It's all corridors that look like, um, airport concourses without cranky travelers, and then when you get to the booths, they're in a room the size of Home Depot, but without all the formaldehyde. I did start to get kind of disoriented toward the end, but in general the air didn't seem too bad.

While jerseys were being considered, I wandered around and got:

1. a nylon drawstring bag that you can wear as a backpack from my car insurance company,
2. a magnet clip thingy for the refrigerator from the local heart care hospital (and I learned we have a local heart care hospital), and
3. a thing that looks like a green reflector with a clip and a button on the back from another hospital. If you hold down the button, a red LED flashes in the middle of the green reflector. I have no idea what this is good for.

My husband got something, too. The car insurance company gave him a buzzy little hand-held fan, which, the way it's been handled around here, has a cringe factor worthy of a three-inch (7.5 cm) mosquito.

nutcases and echoes

Today I learned that people with Morgellons disease are being diagnosed with delusional parasitosis. A while ago I read an article (that I can't find) about Morgellons disease that described a specific set of symptoms: skin lesions with fibers that emerge and hurt a lot. That sounded pretty real to me, and since some doctors would diagnose me as a similar sort of nutball, I'm inclined to side with the people with the extremely painful fibers in their skin.

Also, since I am familiar with the concept of diseases caused by intracellular pathogens, which are really hard to detect, I thought, I wonder if Morgellons is caused by some kind of intracellular pathogen. Lo and behold, the doctor who invented the treatment for that kind of thing, thus curing himself of sarcoidosis instead of dying, thinks that is the case.

Which leads me to think that members of the medical profession who can't accept the idea of new kinds of diseases are delusional parasites.

In other news, my living room floor without its carpet smells a whole lot better than any of the other floors we've uncovered. That's a good thing because it's the only one that isn't flat (think nonlinear periodic waves with a wavelength of about 12 ft (4 m)*), so we can't seal it until we decide whether to shave off the peaks or fill the troughs.


* So I'm a nerd. I miss my job.

I knew it

Today I read the following sentence from this article in the New York Times:

The problem is not unique to Florida, although it is especially severe in Miami-Dade County, which has one of the nation’s largest percentages of mentally ill residents, according to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, an advocacy group.

I got to wondering if the mentally ill congregate in cities because that's where the services are or something, or maybe there's something in the water. In any case, I seem to need confirmation for statements like that, so I then I went over to StateMaster: Where Stats Come Alive!, which I had handily bookmarked for just such an occasion. I must say that this map didn't disappoint*.

In other news:

• Sir Isaac Newton was an alchemist, and
• There is such a thing as a bike box that holds two bikes, but it's hard to get on airplanes.

* Ok, so California is the most populous state, so it's bound to have the most of any illness, but it just played into that California nutball stereotype so well.

it says I'm from where?

In my American accent quiz results below, which are supposed to tell me where I came from, the black lines were originally long rectangles partially filled with a red line, but they didn't copy correctly. The first one, under The Midland, is supposed to be 2/3 filled. The next five were 1/2 filled, and the last two were 1/3 filled.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
The Inland North
Boston
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

I will admit that I absorbed the Illinois accent when I was there to the extent that I couldn't hear it until my mother pointed it out, but I thought I'd gotten it out of my system. So there are several possible explanations for these results:

1. I'm permanently warped from living in Illinois,
2. My parents, who were military brats (different services), raised me with a screwy where-the-heck-are-you-from accent, and it stuck,
3. I may have absorbed parts of my husband's accent, which I could not fake to save my life, even the part where he says 'New Orlee-ans,' or
4. I filled this thing out wrong.

ancient history: poop and asteroids

Archaeologists can identify 2000-year-old latrines, and the people who used the one in this article were not allowed to poop on the Sabbath. They also managed to make sure they all had worms.

In other news, you can use Google Earth to identify characteristic sediment deposits left by super tsunamis, and from there you can identify craters in the ocean floor left by asteroids or comets. The most recent impact and giant tsunami occurred about 5000 years ago, and if you analyze 175 flood myths from around the world and appropriate astronomical data like when the most recent full solar eclipse was, you can come up with the morning of May 10, 2807 BC.

pediatric psychiatry, Tamiflu, and flooring

Today I learned by reading this article that I probably had oppositional defiant disorder as a kid! For a few months! At which point my mom removed all the milk from my diet, and I became a normal(ish) kid again. Also, my stomachaches went away, so thank goodness my mom took away ice cream instead of feeding me full of pills.

Speaking of drugs, it's all over the news that Tamiflu can cause seizures, confusion, aggression, and suicidal thoughts. Since I've gotten half of those just from the air in the grocery store, I think I'll try not to get the flu.

In other news, I'm apparently mildly sensitive to the wood flooring itself, not just the cork underlay, which we contained pretty well in the room we finished yesterday. The room we finished a week ago is noticeably better than the one we just finished, so I'm hoping they'll both be fine in a month or so.

pack up your stuff - we're going to Hell

Today I learned that you can interpret the First Commandment to mean that worrying about global warming is a sin, but reducing pollution is fine. Here the problem is spelled out:

In 1994, the U.N. commissioned [U.N. Earth Summit director] Maurice Strong to write the Earth Covenant that was introduced in 2000 as the Earth Charter. The new edict was written on papyrus paper, placed in a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, ceremoniously ushered into the U.N. and called "the new 10 commandments," a "Global Ethic" that will transcend all religions and countries.

So that goes against the whole 'no gods before God' edict. I had no idea global warming was that evil.

In other news, if I hadn't been to Fark.com, I wouldn't have learned that squirrels use lightsabers (scroll down).

hanging scars and trees

Today I finally saw Hang 'Em High, so now I know where Clint Eastwood's character got that hanging scar. I don't remember my parents watching a lot of tv when I was little, but I remember asking about that scar when I was way too young to have any idea what was going on in the movie.

In other news, I think we have mistletoe in one of the trees in the front yard. It says here that you can cut it back every so often, but you won't get the roots unless you cut up the tree it's living in. That sounds like a lot of work, and it apparently doesn't kill the tree too fast, so I guess that tree is just going to have some character.

important cake-related information

I grew up out West, where we had Hostess cake-like substances that my mother wouldn't let us eat, so I never could keep them straight. My East Coast source informs me that Tastykakes are far superior, but without further ado:

Ding Dongs are disc-shaped, filled cupcakes dipped in chocolate. Ho Hos are like small jelly rolls dipped in chocolate, but with that ubiquitous whipped trans-fat and sugar filling instead of jelly.

Now that we have that straight, we're moving on to the stuff you find on the East Coast:

• Yodels look just like Ho Hos.
• Tastykake cupcakes look a lot like Hostess cupcakes.
• Krimpets look sort of like Twinkies.
• Ring Dings look the same as Ding Dongs.
• Devil Dogs look like elongated whoopie pies to me, but what do I know? Kreamies look pretty similar.
• Yankee Doodles look like a poor kid's version of a Hostess cupcake.
• Kandy Kakes have no direct competition except maybe Girl Scout Cookies, which have always made me sick.

We'll consider straightening out all the pies next week.

setback

Today I learned that I no longer tolerate that construction-type respirator I love so much.

I suppose this is that hubris thing, where you think you're all god-like for being able to go into a few stores, put down hardwood flooring, and use laundry detergent, and then you get all smote to heck.

So, I think I learned not to push it, and you get a picture of town:

bread, soap, and Floam

I'm making progress on the detergent residue front, so last night I got six whole hours of sleep all at once. Since things are looking up, you'd think I'd have learned something interesting today, but so far all I really have is a recipe (with yeast in it, so I probably don't tolerate it anyway, but it sounds kind of mudpie-like) and what happened to Marissa on Fox's "The O.C." sometime last year.

And I'm still a bit too sleep-deprived to properly enjoy announcing this, but here you go anyway: Floam'll kill you!

warning: sick lady rambling

Today I learned that November is not only write-a-novel month, but write-a-blog-post-a-day month. I pretty much do that anyway, so that shouldn't be hard, and there are prizes and everything! Unfortunately, it's too late to sign up for the prize drawings, but since I imagine 30-day novels are of incomparable quality, this post ought to fit right in, so:

Today I learned Trader Joe's fragrance-free laundry detergent is harder to get out of things than borax was. Either that, or what with the pollution and all I'm going to feel like death warmed over no matter what, so no amount of beating my quilt to death on 'air fluff' is going to make much of a difference today. I'm still optimistically beating it to death in the hopes that I get to sleep with a blanket tonight. Sleeping sounds nice.

In an effort to distract myself from myself, I learned that according to this site*, Mr. Rumsfeld, who just resigned as Secretary of Defense, is responsible for poisoning people with aspartame. Ok, keeping in mind that everybody knows somebody who gets a headache from aspartame, it's not clear to me that aspartame is any worse for the general population than perfume, which I believe I've said several times should only be handled by a hazmat team.

So, I completely agree that aspartame is evil, even if that article sounds like extremist nuttiness to me, just like the anti-fluoridation articles from the '90s. It'll all how you pitch it. Anyway, since today I'm just looking for distractions, I'm going to make up my own crackpot theory. Here it is:

Since there are a bunch of people who agree that aspartame is toxic but the FDA isn't taking it off the market, it's obvious that the government wants to poison some portion of the population. The people who consume the most aspartame-containing products are probably obese, so this is just the government's way of reducing the obesity epidemic.

I think we need to start an email campaign to get this important information out. But please, I'm far too humble to want my name attached to it, so you should probably attribute it to someone, you know, credible.


* "The Most Format & Content-Plagiarized Site On The Net," which, I'm sorry if I offend anyone, appears to me to be mostly populated with made-up, nutball conspiracy-theory bulls***. I'm just saying what it looks like to me.

No s***, Sherlock

Today I learned that I'm sensitive to yet another laundry detergent. Detergents lull you into this false sense of security, of cleanliness, and then, when you finally decide they're harmless, you put a little in with your sheets. Then BANG, what with the cork and pollution excitement, suddenly at 12:30 am, your heart is hammering in your chest, and you decide to go sleep outside, where, surprisingly, nothing changes. It's all the same on the kitchen table, too, so you give up on sleeping. Then, about 3 am, while reading about things like laptop battery fires and an exceptionally pathetic use of carbon dating, you realize: you feel better, so it's not the air. It's your freakin' bedding. Again.

Since I only got about three hours of sleep last night, we all need a quote of the day, so here's one from the battery article:

What if a laptop ignites in an overhead compartment? Or under the seat in front of you?

Or worse, in the baggage compartment of the plane?

United Airlines, apparently not eager to discuss this issue in detail, responded to my inquiry with this e-mail: "When it is safe to use electronic equipment in-flight, for example not during take-off and landing, our customers can use their laptops."

aluminum foil and ethernet

Today we covered the edge of the cork underlay in the 'safe' room with balled-up aluminum foil, thereby making the room a whole lot safer for me.


The next room we work on is getting Tu-Tuff over and under the cork, at least around the edges. So yeah, the problem was not the ceiling fan.

In other news, I learned that I have not lost my touch when it comes to fishing wires through little holes in existing walls. This is an important skill to have when your husband has snaked ethernet cables through every house you've lived in, and since I'm highly sensitive to whatever's inside walls, I'm very pleased that not only have I mastered this skill, I'm fast.

air quality and cookies

Today I learned by comparing all the PM2.5 and PM10 Comparison Data on this page that particulate readings in town don't change much even when we have an air quality problem, so they're pretty useless. What's not useless is what J. Paul writes here about the air in Phoenix. He says I'm going to feel lousy until Thursday, which is a bummer, but at least it's useful.

In other news, I learned how to make cookies using coconut flour, coconut oil, sugar, and water. First you measure about a cup of coconut flour. Then you add about a half a cup of sugar and several spoonfuls of coconut oil and stir. Put in more coconut oil until you realize you should have creamed the oil and sugar together first, and then added the flour. Taste it. Add more sugar until it seems good. Add enough water that it looks like cookie dough, roll it into little balls, roll those in sugar, and flatten them on a cookie sheet. Bake for a while at 350 F, and surprisingly, you have a dozen yummy cookies, but you realize that you now bake like most people make mudpies.

Sigh.

a new kind of stool

I'm not really sure how to introduce today's quote of the day. It's from the Ted Haggard scandal, which people find either really upsetting or freakin' hilarious.

If I felt better this afternoon I might be more inclined to be charitable, but I'll take my hilarity where I can get it today, so here it is, from about the third-to-last page in the comments under the first article:

This is why we shouldn't put people on pedal stools.

* NEW RULE *

Today I went into a conventional grocery store with a three-item list. I knew the location of one item, but I had to hunt for the other two, and it did not go well, even though I was wearing my respirator and it had new filters. Today's experience has resulted in the creation of a new rule:

If I am to enter any large store known to carry toxic products, I must already know the location of everything on my list.

Penalty for violation: living up to the crazy-MCS-person stereotype at the cash register, except I did manage to use the words 'getting really sick.'

what makes my neck hurt

This morning I think I learned that if there is Mexeseal drying anywhere in the house, I can't sleep inside, even in the safe room. At four am, it was a toss-up between that and the ceiling fan we put up last night, but in the light of day, c'mon, a ceiling fan? When none of the other ceiling fans seem to do anything to me?

You know this means now I'll be sniffing ceiling fans suspiciously.

voting under the influence of particulates

In honor (sort of) of my filling out my vote-by-mail ballot this morning, today I looked up the claim that people look left when they're lying. Apparently it all depends on who you're watching how accurate that would be, but it still makes watching politicians more entertaining.

In other news, which I suspect is going to be dominated by air quality for the next few days, the PM10 reading in town today got up to 100 μg/m³, and it sucks. It's different from pollen because my normally-useless cotton mask works, but I need it in the house, too, so I'm sort of stuck in the safe room. Which has a gorgeous floor and a big window with a nice view of the back yard, but still.

the safe room and turkey meatloaf

Today I learned that I can sleep in the room we just finished, although you can't really call it finished because there aren't any baseboards. Sure, I need an air cleaner, but it's a whole lot better than anywhere else in the house.

The rest of the house has particulates in it. Apparently Tucson has air quality issues in November, which I definitely noticed last year (see the radioactive zombies post), but it wasn't this bad.

In food news, I learned that you can make turkey meatloaf with about a pound of ground turkey, around a cup of water chestnut flour, poultry seasoning, and a little water. It comes out kind of gooey and stiff at the same time, but it's much better than bare turkey burgers.

it works again

I bet you were just now thinking that your day would not be complete without some really ugly caterpillar pictures.

marketing

Today I learned that marketing is inherently evil. In a stunning move, tobacco companies produced ads encouraging parents to talk to their kids about smoking, and just seeing the ads makes kids view smoking more favorably. I suppose that since tobacco companies are involved, that makes it a little less stunning, but it's still pretty impressive.

In other marketing news, today I learned that the picture posting stuff on this blogging platform still doesn't work, and as a properly paranoid consumer, I suspect this has something to do with their wanting us all to switch to their new beta version, which requires a Google login.

They're going to switch us all in the next few weeks anyway, and in the comments under the part where they say that, people are discussing bailing before their blogs get broken. I'm a little concerned. I mean, the Kmart of blogging has been working fine for me so far, but y'know, Kmart's big move in recent years was to close a bunch of stores. In standard broken physicist tradition, I'll probably handle this by thinking about it until I find out this blog has already been switched, just so I don't have to make any decisions.