What Caught My Eye Today

Influenza - I don't want to diminish the importance of urgency in dealing with this swine flu outbreak, but there is such a thing as overreacting. Case in point... Egypt ordered a pig slaughter (300,000 pigs) even though there hasn't been a single case of swine flu there and no evidence that pigs have spread the disease. Britain, with only five cases, is trying to buy 32 million masks. And in the United States, President Barack Obama said more of the country's 132,000 schools may have to be shuttered. At airports from Japan to South Korea to Greece and Turkey, thermal cameras were trained on airline passengers to see if any were feverish. And Lebanon discouraged traditional Arab peck-on-the-cheek greetings, even though no one has come down with the virus there. Seriously, people. Get a grip. It's the flipping flu for crying out loud. Lest you had forgotten, thousands of people every year die from the flu. As for this being a strain that we don't have an antidote for, again this is nothing new. That flu shot you get every year--it's pretty much a crap shot as to whether or not the pharmaceutical companies guessed the right flu strain or not. Rather than flip out, here's a more practical response--wash your friggin' hands once in a while. You'd be amazed at how effective that can be.

100 Days - Guess who's been on the job for 100 days? In any other line of work, this would be not big deal (in most states, after 90 days, it much harder to get fired). However, being the leader of the free world isn't your run-of-the-mill job. Here are some highlights from President Obama's 100 days in office press conference.

• Obama said that waterboarding authorized by former President George W. Bush was torture and that the information it gained from terror suspects could have been obtained by other means
  I'm shocked. I would have thought that Obama would have moved heaven and earth to protect Bush's legacy.
• Obama expressed much greater optimism now than a month ago that Chrysler could remain a "going concern," possibly without filing for bankruptcy or with a "very quick" one.
  Dude, it's Chrysler. I think Obama would be doing the world a favor by putting Chrysler out of our misery. How many people do you know that would miss the Sebring? Sure they gave us the minivan, but is that really a legacy to be proud of?
• The president gave assurance that one way or another Pakistan's nuclear arsenal would not fall into the hands of Islamic extremists. He said he was confident "primarily, initially" because he believes Pakistan will handle the issue on its own.
  Well, I'm glad he's confident. Me? I'm petrified.
• The president also gave his strongest public admission yet that the overhaul of the current immigration system that he once promised to tackle in his first 100 days will not happen in 2009.
  Seeing as this is the 100th day of his presidency, and we haven't heard much on the immigration thing, this is sort of a no-brainer. Though in the dude's defense, he has been rather busy on other stuff.

Antarctica - Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from a shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice — an area larger than Rhode Island — was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is not a good thing. The falling away of Antarctic ice shelves does not, in itself, raise sea levels, since the ice was already floating in the sea. But such coastal tables of ice usually hold back glaciers, and when they disintegrate that land ice will often flow more quickly into the sea, contributing to sea-level rise. Average temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years — higher than the average global rise, according to studies. In geological terms, that equates to spontaneous combustion. The Earth is a living organism so change is to be expected. Hence geological evidence of past ice ages. The problem is that humans have managed to compress events that usually take thousands of years into several decades. Mother Nature doesn't respond very well to rapid change. One way or the other she's going to sort things out, which does not bode very well for us.