What Caught My Eye Today

Fred's Note: I don't know what is was about today--Mardi Gras, perhaps--but I hit the mother lode of peculiar news stories. Enjoy.

Food - I'll warn you ahead of time, this is kind of gross It's nothing new for processed foods to contain certain levels of what the FDA calls "natural contaminants". This can't be good. Tomato juice, for example, may legally contain "10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots". Sauerkraut can contain up to 50 thrips, "those tiny, slender, winged bugs.". An 18-ounce jar of peanut butter may legally contain 145 bugs parts or five or more rodent hairs. All told,"you're probably ingesting 1 to 2 pounds of flies, maggots and mice each year without knowing it". According to the FDA, there is no reason to worry; these are mere "aestetic" issues. Suddenly, a hot dog is looking much more appetizing isn't it? Here's what I want to know. How did the FDA come up with 145 bug parts and 5 rodent hairs for a jar of peanut butter? Perhaps I'm just a snob, but I'm thinking any bug parts or rodent hairs in my Jiffy are way too many.

India - Okay, so if that one didn't gross you out, perhaps this will. A Hindu nationalist group in India is developing a soft drink made from cow urine. The drink will be marketed as much for its health benefits as for its taste. Um, okay. According to the group, "it has been established that cow urine is capable of curing even cancer, so imagine a drink which would not only be tasty, but also healthy". I was pretty sure that nothing would restore my faith in the FDA after that last story. Turns out I was wrong. These dudes are pimping piss. I'll take my chances with the bug parts, thank you very much.

Numbers - Frequent readers are familiar with my fascination of all things numeric, so this next item won't come as much of a surprise. Numbers, when they are large enough, simply blow people's mental fuses. They often find anything with an "-illion" on the end incomprehensible. But any time a reporter or a politician tells of millions or billions spent, cut, lost, added, or saved, it is worth asking, in all innocence: "Is that a big number?" One useful think is to imagine those numbers as seconds. A million seconds is about 11.5 days; a billion seconds is nearly 32 years. What is usually needed, though, is a way to think about a number on a human scale. If you divide a big number by all the people it is supposed to affect, is becomes more manageable. A convenient number to help in this sort of calculation is 15.6 billion (15,600,000,000), which is the U.S. population (300 million) multiplied by 52, the number of weeks in a year. This is about how much the U.S. government needs to spend annually on any program for the program to cost $1 per American citizen per week. So, let's apply that theory to say, oh, I don't know; how about the Iraq War. According to estimates (click here) we've spent in the neighborhood of $600 billion on the war. That works out to just under $3,850 per citizen per week. I'm cheating a bit by assuming all that money was spent in one year. However, let's say we fix the denominator to reflect the 6 years that this war has been going on. In that case, you're only looking at about $6.40 per citizen per week. $6.40, that's like what, and Big Mac, fries and a drink?

Teenagers - Frankly, I'm surprised the human race has lasted as long as it has. Here's the latest novel idea to come out from the ranks of teenagers. The latest teenage craze is called "sexting". Sexting is the act of sending naked photos of yourself via your cell phone. Why that's just...oh what's the word I'm looking for? Ah yes...that's just brilliant. In a new survey, one in five teens admits he or she has sent or posted naked photos of himself or herself, which wind up getting sent around to other kids, and posted on websites. I totally did not see that coming. Prosecutors in 11 states are charging kids who send or receive these photos with "child pornography". If convicted, those kids can be classified as sex offenders. Okay, that's a little extreme. I'd be more in favor of convicting them of stupidity and putting that on their records. Imagine, if you will, one of those morons filling out a job application. When asked if they had ever been convicted of a felony, they had to put down that they were convicted of been stupid. That would be a punishment fitting of the crime.