What Caught My Eye Today

Obesity - As the United States battles an obesity crisis, ambulance crews are trying to improve how they transport extremely heavy patients, who become significantly more difficult to move as they surpass 350 pounds. And caring for such patients is expensive, requiring costly equipment and extra workers, so some ambulance companies have started charging higher fees for especially overweight people. Transporting extremely heavy people costs about 2 1/2 times as much as normal-weight patients. This is more of a rhetorical question--"normal-weight" according to what metric? It takes more time to move them and requires three to four times more crew members, who often must use expensive specialty equipment. It's not like there isn't precedent for this sort of thing. Those penny pinchers at Southwest Airlines started charging our plus-sized brethren for two seats years ago.

Italy - More than 100,000 women have signed a petition saying they are offended by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — an initiative launched by a newspaper after the premier made a sexist remark to an opposition politician. One can only assume the rest of the female population either had not heard about the remark...or didn't care. This is Berlusconi we're talking about, after all. This wouldn't be the first time he said something stupid. Berlusconi made the jab during a call in to a late-night talk show that featured a former minister who dresses conservatively, wears glasses and has short, gray hair. "You are always more beautiful than intelligent," Berlusconi told her. Being a bit of a simpleton, myself, I'd take that as a compliment, but that's just me. Berlusconi has acknowledged he is "no saint" and loves beautiful women, but insists Italians want him that way. Atta boy, Silvio. Embrace your chauvinistic side. That will certainly endear you to the masses.

Space Flight - A special independent panel told the White House that NASA needs to make a major detour on its grand plans to return astronauts to the moon--that NASA has picked the wrong destination with the wrong rocket. Well, at least NASA covered all its bases--wrong plan, wrong planet, wrong rocket. I'd say that's everything. Instead, NASA should be concentrating on bigger rockets and new places to explore saying that it makes more sense to put astronauts on a nearby asteroid or one of the moons of Mars. I vote for Uranus...sorry, I couldn't help myself. The commission wants NASA to extend the life of the space shuttle program and the International Space Station. Space shuttles are due to retire in 2010, but should keep flying until sometime in 2011 because they won't get all their flights to the space station done by that date. Sounds like a good reason to me. And the space station itself — only now nearing completion — should operate until at least 2020, allowing for more scientific experiments, part of its reason for existence. NASA's timetable calls for plunging it into the ocean in 2015. Well, hell if the joint isn't going to be complete until 2010 or 2011, I'd kind of like to see it operational for awhile. Christ, it's take almost 3 times that long just to build the stupid thing.

Computers - Microsoft Corp launched Windows 7 in its most important release for more than a decade, aiming to win back customers after the disappointing Vista and strengthen its grip on the PC market. Oh goodie. The world's largest software company, which powers more than 90% of personal computers, has received good reviews for the new operating system, which it hopes will grab back the impetus in new technology from rivals Apple and Google. Forgive the techno-speak here. Duh! Of course the reviews are going to be better than Vista. When you set the benchmark for improvement that low, you are bound to impress somebody.

Sex - It was the headline that drew my attention, I swear. Why do women have sex? It's an intriguing question once you get beyond the obvious reasons: to perpetuate the species and because it feels good. I thought it was because they were tired of listening to us men begging for it and gave in just to shut us up. University of Texas researchers conducted an online survey of more than 1,000 women ages 18 to 87 and found, to their surprise, that women aren't all that different from men. Right. Call me a skeptic, but I think most men and women could come of with plenty of differences. But that is for another day. Let's see what this bogus survey reveals. The top reason women have sex is because they're attracted to their partner, followed by their seeking of physical gratification. Lower down on the list, the reasons were connected to love or emotional bonding. Many women said they had sex to bring them closer to God. No, I won't comment on this one--too easy. And revenge sex was a big theme--getting back at partners who weren't faithful by having sex with someone else. Yeah, no emotional baggage there. Many women wrote about having sex simply to get another notch on their belt while others engaged in "sympathy sex" because they felt sorry for their mate for any number of reasons. That's always been my ace in hole.