A Halloween Meat Hand

The folks at Not Martha have provided you with a step-by-step recipe to create a memorable Halloween menu item - the Meat Hand. As the blogger there says, "Since August, I've had a post-it over my desk that simply said 'meat hand'." I'm sure co-workers were a bit concerned to see the phrase "meat hand" hovering over your desk.

From the onion fingernails to the wrist-bone, and melted cheese and ketchup, I have to say that a meat hand lying in a mashed potato bed would likely be an attention-getter for your holiday gatherings.



The post mentioned above will also take you through various versions of the recipe before perfection was attained.

If you'd like a Halloween libation, then you might like to try the Brain Shooter.



Recipe is here.

Still, for a plain old gross out food, it is hard to be more disgusting than Kitty Litter Cake. As for me, I would sample the meat hand first and avoid the catbox cake.



And since we're talking meaty Halloweens, perhaps you'd like to learn how to make your very own Bacon Halloween costume.



BONUS!!!

15 Bogeymen from around the world! Includes the nefarious persimmon from Korea!!!

Col. Sanders Dupes U.N. Into Playing Chicken

A publicity stunt last Thursday by Kentucky Fried Chicken worked a little too well as a United Nations security guard allowed an actor dressed as Col. Sanders into some "secure" areas of the U.N. The fellow got so far as approaching a host of U.N. TV crews and began speaking of the importance of the "Grilled Nation".

U.N. officials are "still trying to find out exactly what happened" according to reports, which must mean they have not yet decided who to fire and whether or not to prosecute the marketing department of KFC.

As mentioned in the report linked above "UN TV crews eventually raised the alarm after being stunned when the impersonator approached cameras set up for diplomats ... At that point, additional security guards arrived and escorted him from the building."

Yes, both Burger King and Mayor McCheese are still in the U.N. waiting room seeking an audience with diplomats. Maybe they can all meet for lunch.

My Feeble Computer Code Skills

I noticed this weekend that for readers who use Internet Explorer, this page is not loading correctly and all the sidebar items -- the right-hand side of the layout -- don't work and end up sliding down to the bottom of the page.

For other web browsers, the page here looks fine -- well, I think it does, you'll have to notify me if it does not look right for you.

So I am tinkering a bit with the layout to try and puzzle out why and suddenly I notice the message that IE sees an error in line 1,073. Now the thought of counting lines of code is as appealing as brushing my teeth with a roll of barbed wire.

So as I ponder my layout design and add new items and trash some old ones, here's my advice to you folks who view this blog via IE -- stop, get Firefox or Chrome or Opera or something else. And since there are so many who do view this blog daily using IE, I appreciate your willingness to read here even though the layout is borked. You should have told me. Or maybe it is just my IE browser which is having problems.

Thanks for your patience. And as always, thanks for your readership, however and whenever you do read.

Just Going to See Grandma in Knoxville for the Holidays is Going to Be a Problem

That's the quote from a Charlotte Observer story on a massive rock slide which is so big, it will take about 3 months or more to clear both lanes of I-40 for safe traveling.

The Asheville Citizen-Times has lots of pictures of the huge slide, and here is a sample.



Some of the comments at this Asheville C-T report shows that some folks consider this a vast conspiracy, a sign of impending national doom, the fault of one or several groups of people who act or think or dress certain ways or a mini-earthquake. A sample:

"Seriously though, this rockslide is just the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of the Pigeon River Gorge screw-up. This all started back in the 1960s, if not earlier. The highway engineers stated that the best route for the proposed I-40 was through the French Broad River Gorge, not the Pigeon River Gorge. However, big money (especially tourism interests in both North Carolina and Tennesse) bought off the right politicians in both North Carolina and Tennessee and got this borderline disaster built through the Pigeon River Gorge. Special interests just had to get this road closer to Gatlinburg and Cherokee. It cost a million dollars a mile to build it. It is probably going to cost a million miles PER FOOT just to maintain it. What a legacy to leave future generations. Big money plus corrup- politicians equals a great big screw-up with no end in sight."

So far, I'm surprised no one has blamed the lack of prayer in schools for this event. Maybe you could just tell Grandma you were abducted by aliens.

Frightmare Manor - Can You Take The Challenge?

UPDATE: Check out Frightmare Manor 2011 here.


The way it's being going this year, I'd expect the Haunted House attractions for Halloween 2009 would be a place populated with doctors and health insurance companies. Oh and of course the Super Spooky Liberal Democrat. Or are the Right Wing fringe-folk more fear-inducing this year?

Anyway, a new Haunted House site this year is just a few miles from my front porch, called Frightmare Manor, right off of Highway 11-E straddling the Jefferson County/Hamblen County line. (spookily straddling, I should say.)

Their website is here and for the past two weekends huge crowds have been facing the fears for many long hours. There's no missing the gigantic inflatable pumpkin in the front ... but really, once you say "inflatable pumpkin", scares are scarce. Still, this attraction boasts a "Nightmare At Frightmare" event which if you can endure it, you'll be refunded your admission price.

What is the Nightmare at Frightmare? The website explains you'll have to sign a release and then you must "eat something, drink something and do something". A friend who has attended tells me the experience includes some real spiders and snakes and is sort of akin to something you might see on a reality-tv game challenge.

One item I usually post this time of year is a wee scene from Mel Brooks' "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" set in a dank crypt as two vampire hunters tackle a ghastly, funny task.

An All GOP Tennessee Government Fails To Serve Residents

The state's government - according to an opinion piece by ACK at Post Politics - is poised for a complete Republican domination:


"The question is not whether there will be Republican rule, but rather what kind. One-party leadership doesn't mean there aren't any bold and important fights along the lines of ideology and policy. It just means that those fights evolve from partisan skirmishes to intraparty civil war.

Republicans will run Tennessee but which Republicans hold power and in what capacity will make a huge difference. Traditionally, Tennessee Republicans have talked a conservative game, but there's a difference between being conservative — adjective —and being a conservative — noun."
---
"It wouldn't be too much to say that the statesmen of the Tennessee Republican Party, U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, through sheer neglect have allowed this slow creep of state-rooted ideological conservatism. Alexander's political machine has dipped its big toe into state races only very rarely. The moderate Howard Baker-type conservatism that had long defined Tennessee Republicanism has been slowly dying, and the harder stuff has been growing in its place.

The moderates seem to be trying to rectify that with Bill Haslam's gubernatorial campaign. Haslam is a true moderate — more so than either Corker or Alexander. Haslam is also much worse at cloaking his discomfort with rigid right-wing ideology. He seems reluctant to utter even the most cursory red meat rhetoric that conservatives want to hear.

If Haslam is victorious, he would have to contend not only with former opponent Ron Ramsey serving as lieutenant governor, but also with an increasingly reactionary legislature looking to move the ideological ball further down the field.

It'll be one-party rule alright — but hardly a harmonious march toward right-wing nirvana."

My take is vastly different. Nationally, voters are headed to the center and are fleeing the right-wing. Doubtless, the state's Democrats have fallen far behind in organization and media appeal, but the recent legislative session with Republicans in charge for the first time in decades offered little but petty squabbles and cheap political grandstanding at the expense of what was need by the residents of Tennessee. Education continues to get short-sticked, infrastructure is in need of immense repair, and the state faces major budget cuts in the coming year.

Real leadership isn't about demands to see President Obama's birth certificate or accumulating political power for it's own sake. It's about moving the state forward into the 21st century and not backwards into some idea of "right-wing nirvana".

So far, the state's Republicans have provided very little in wise governing though that's what is most desperately needed. By the time the governor's race gets up to full steam, our economic bust will drive voters to the polls in search of someone who has a plan for the future and not one for the past.

The Psyience Detectives and The Mysterious Balloon Adventure

The endless hours of television and internet coverage of young Falcon Heene who was not inside a big helium balloon flying over Colorado yesterday is surely one of the oddest things of 2009. His father, Richard, is also a co-host on a video series called The Psyience Detectives where they talk about UFOs, the End of the World and other fun things. Their website has crashed due to massive amounts of online traffic, but here's part 5 of a 6 part video series about UFOs. Richard is on the right. Cool theme music, too.

A Machine's Warning From The Future: Don't Build It

"For those of us who believe in physics,” Einstein once wrote to a friend, “this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

What might happen if a few billion dollars were spent to make a gigantic Supercollider machine, meant to create a particle called a Higgs boson (though no one knows if it really exists or has ever detected one) -- and the machine sends signals back to itself from the future to ensure that it will not work?

That's a theory being offered by a few scientists about the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland since efforts to make it work have all failed. Perhaps, they say, the future machine (or maybe the scientific principle it uses) knows more than those of us in the present and are sending back a warning from the future. The machine is set to try once again to create that unique particle in December (the last time they tried to use it, a gigantic magnet in the machine melted.)

The NYTimes offered an essay on the idea of time-traveling anti-colliders this week:

"A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.

According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass.

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

Weird or not, I'm sort of intrigued that some are considering the oddity of the machine's failure.

In the meantime, other scientists, working in China, have successfully constructed a table-top sized Black Hole. Since we are all still here and not been sucked into the vast nothingness (yet) then it is a case of 'so far, so good'. But if messages start popping out of the black hole, I sure hope someone takes good notes about the message it conveys.

Alexander, Corker Protect KBR, Ignore Rape

It is very good news that the U.S. Senate voted to end forced arbitration of Defense contract employees who are raped by their co-workers. (as I noted earlier this week). But the bad news is how the Tennessee media has ignored the votes cast by Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker who voted against such a change.

How could they vote to protect such a vile crime? Why does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support arbitration as a "benefit" for employees?

Said Sen. Franken: "She has not had her day in court, she has litigated for four years to have her day in court. She was drugged, she was raped, and she had to have reconstructive surgery. If that's a better workplace, what was the workplace like before?"

The two Tennessee senators were joined by 28 other Republicans voting against the protection of Americans and instead voted to protect the multi-billion dollar contractor Halliburton/KBR.

Rage and anger at accusations against the group ACORN dominated the news for weeks. Meanwhile, gang-rape victim Jamie Leigh Jones faced a 4-year battle to encourage Congress to halt the employee abuses of Halliburton/KBR. In September, she finally was allowed to take her case to court.

Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart pointed out the shame of those 30 senators.

MTSU State Survey: Most Oppose Gun Law Changes; Unsure On Other Topics

The annual survey among Tennesseans from MTSU reveals strong opposition to allowing guns in parks, eateries and especially bars -- but much ambivalence remains on many other topics. Some highlights from their survey:

State: Most disapprove of handguns in public places

• Most disapprove of carrying handguns in parks, eateries, bars.
• Two in five to get swine flu vaccination.
• Bottle-return bill draws strong support.
• Economy also No. 1 state problem.
• State mood barometer rises a bit, still higher than national barometer.
• Which party should wield power? Tennesseans shrug.
• Bredesen, legislative approval edge up.

"Meanwhile, as the clearest-yet outlines of health reform legislation emerge in Congress, Tennesseans agree on little about the issue other than its importance. While about two-thirds of state residents consider health reform either very or extremely important, only 36 percent generally support the proposals that have been discussed in Congress so far, 46 percent oppose them, and a sizable 17 percent are unsure.

And, as in Washington , attitudes here in Tennessee toward health reform divide sharply along party lines, with Republicans generally opposed, Democrats generally supportive, and independents wavering in the middle and often saying they just don’t know,” Dr. Ken Blake said.

The poll also finds that majorities of Tennesseans oppose letting handgun carry permit holders take their weapons into public parks, restaurants and especially bars. Fifty-four percent of state residents oppose allowing permit holders to carry handguns in parks; 60 percent, in restaurants; and 80 percent, in bars."

Asked which party should control the Legislature, 31 percent say the Democrats, 33 percent say the Republicans, and 35 percent say they don’t know.

Indecision is even higher regarding the governor’s race, despite the candidates already campaigning to replace Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen. Twenty-five percent say they want a Democratic governor, but another 22 percent want a Republican governor, and a 51 percent majority say they have no preference right now. The rest give no answer.

Finally, 71 percent of Tennesseans say that the recession has hurt them financially, up from spring’s 66 percent. But worry about the future economy has decreased to 33 percent from spring’s 43 percent. These and other economic indicators in the poll suggest a cautious optimism among Tennesseans that the recession is abating."

Conducted by Middle Tennessee State University ’s College of Mass Communication , the telephone poll of 716 randomly selected Tennessee adults has an error margin of plus or minus four percentage points at the 95 percent level of confidence. Theoretically, this means that a sample of this size should produce a statistical portrait of the population within four percentage points 95 out of 100 times.

The Survey Group at MTSU provides independent, non-partisan and unbiased public opinion data regarding major social, political and ethical issues affecting Tennessee . The poll began in 1998 as a measure of public opinion in the 39 counties comprising Middle Tennessee and began measuring public opinion statewide in 2001.

The full report is available here, both nationally and here in Tennessee.

Alexander, Corker Vote No On Punishing Rapists

Tennessee Senators Alexander and Corker decided to vote against a proposal to allow victims of rape to have a day in court - along with 28 other Republican senators this week. I'd bet that vote will not be mentioned in their campaign fliers and stump speeches for re-election. Tennessee voters and Tennessee media outlets should ask them to explain why they oppose allowing rape victims to prosecute their attackers in a court of law.

The case has been lightly covered by the national media, despite congressional hearings which examined the sexual assault of a 19 year old American woman, Jamie Leigh Jones, who was working in Iraq with Defense contractor Halliburton/KBR. Jones was drugged by male co-workers and gang raped in 2005, she was sodomized and her breast implants were ruptured during the attack. When she complained to her bosses, they locked her into a shipping container with no food or water for 24 hours under armed guard. She was able to get a cell phone thanks to a sympathetic guard and contacted her parents, who then contacted Congressman Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas, who helped encourage the State Department to remove her from KBR custody.

A long battle then began - KBR argued that Jones signed an agreement that disputes with her employer would be handled via arbitration only - no public court hearing allowed. They added a new policy for employees, too, banning the use of cell phones for personal calls. In September of this year, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she does have a right to bring her case to court, that being gang-raped, drugged and held prisoner are not actions to be regarded as "work-related".

Sen. Al Franken introduced and passed legislation to withhold tax payer dollars and contracts to Defense companies if they restrict employees from taking cases of sexual assault and battery to court. And 30 Republican senators - including Alexander and Corker - voted against the legislation. Even America's Chamber of Commerce lobbied against the legislation.

Senators who voted No include Sen, John McCain and others:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/meet-the-senators-who-vot_n_312976.html

Since Jones first brought her case forward, many more other women working with the contractor have told how they too were sexually assaulted by Halliburton/KBR employees.

It's a shame the Senators Alexander and Corker support lawless and brutal crimes, hold Defense contractors above the law and consider rape and assault worthy of secrecy.

Giants Mark 20th Anniversary of the Fall of Berlin Wall

The Boston Globe has some amazing pictures of part of the ongoing celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, part of a massive photo essay. The story being enacted is performed by the French street theater company, Royal de Luxe. It tells a story of a young girl and her uncle, a deep sea diver, who helps to destroy the wall which separates him from his niece and is entitled The Berlin Reunion.

Estimates of the crowd say nearly 2 million people watched the unusual giant marionettes enact their story on the streets of Berlin.

Here's a sample of the images taken as the giant diver strolls past the Reichstag, Germany's parliament building and below an image of his giant niece. The full photo essay is here.

Glenn Beck Sees No Humor In Joke Website

A website which parodies the witless and base tactics employed by radio and TV talker Glenn Beck does not seem amuse Beck, so he's trying to shut it down. The satiric website has the grim name of Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder A Young Girl In 1990?

Very rough stuff, no doubt, and what's worse, the site uses all the exact same rhetorical style Beck himself uses to concoct their outlandish posts, usually by demanding someone disprove or prove a negative comment, akin to the old cliche question of "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

Representatives from the parody website note "... the owner of the website "has merely presented Mr. Beck with a mirror. If Beck does not like what he sees, the Respondent is not to blame."

Beck filed a formal complaint with an international Internet governing body asking the domain name be stripped from the current owner. And even that action is good material for the parody website, which posts: "We find it ironic that Glenn Beck, realizing that the U.S. Constitution would stand in the way of trying to shut us down via the U.S. court system, decided to bring action against us before an international domain name arbitration panel. We're not saying he's not patriotic, but why would a patriotic American seek relief outside the U.S.? ... [we] will ensure that no matter which panelist is assigned to this case, the First Amendment will illuminate these proceedings like rays of light from the Torch of Liberty."

Ed Brayton at ScienceBlogs points out some pretty funny and fierce defense of the owner of the website from their attorney's filing about the complaint:

"There is no indication that the Respondent has intentionally attempted to confuse anyone searching for Mr. Beck's own website, nor that anyone was unintentionally confused - even initially. Only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to the Complainant.

We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent's website wondering "where did all the race baiting content go?" We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent's website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent's website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck's very rhetorical style. Beck's skin is too thin to take the criticism, so he wants the site down. Beck is represented by a learned and respected legal team. Accordingly, it is beyond doubt that his counsel advised him that under the First Amendment to the United States' Constitution, no action in a U.S. Court would be successful. Accordingly, Beck is attempting to use this transnational body to circumvent and subvert the Respondent's constitutional rights."

Read more of Ed's take on the controversy here.

Still Some Fun Left In American Politics

Here's a political announcement that's one-of-a-kind. (thanks to Brittney for pointing this one out, and like she says, just watch it through to the end, it is worth it):

Working On "Golden Pond"

Yes, I'm working as a Director again and also I'm in this play in a small role as a dentist who is afraid of bears and afraid of his fiancee's father, Norman. You can get your tickets to the show online right now at LakewayTickets.com. More information available at the Morristown Theatre Guild website

Gorilla Tweets and Space Clowns

It might be called the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and National Park, but the digital world has penetrated it as part of an effort to raise awareness for the fading population of mountain gorillas in Uganda.

Launched Saturday, the "Friend A Gorilla" campaign is using Twitter and Facebook and blogs to provide constant daily information about the gorillas. Using GPS tracking, users can follow the movements of as many gorillas as they would like -- all for a fee of course.

Wild animal Twitter and wild animal Facebook updates are sure to rise now. (In a world of 24-hour possum and raccoon cam websites, why not gorillas?)

In other odd tech/science news, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberte, is headed to the International Space Station for an unusual mission he says is meant to blend art and science and environmental issues. Dubbed the "space clown" by the press, Laliberte says he's very serious ... mostly.



"This [nose] is a symbol of my mission, but it is also what reminds me that I should never forget that once I was a kid," Laliberte said. "I'm not a professional cosmonaut, an astronaut, so what I'm bringing up there is what I am. And what I am is an artist, a creative.

"We're doing a multimedia event - the first one from space to Earth - including artists from all over the world talking about the situation of water."

In addition to his passion for the arts, Laliberte has nurtured a passion for social issues. In 2007, he founded the non-profit ONE DROP Foundation to fight poverty by advocating for sustainable access to safe water. Laliberte donated $100 million of his own money to the organization, which uses dance, art, music and acrobatics to communicate water issues.

"Water is a vital resource for a human being and unfortunately it is put in danger," Laliberte said. "In the near future there is a real problem in front of us in regards of access to clean water."

Limited Online Access to Local Government

Sunshine Review is a website tracking transparency in government and it also compiles state by state reviews on how much information is available to the public via local and state government websites. Tennessee has a token presence online but more than one-third of the counties don't even have a website (35 counties have no website).

Hamblen County scores an "F" for their website, despite some recent improvements (more on those new changes is here at noe4acccountability). UPDATE: Speaking with County Mayor David Purkey, he points out there are several errors in the Sunshine Review evaluation, noting that the most recent county audits are available via the Hamblen County website, which the SR scores incorrectly, also that vendor info is available. Other improvements are underway but Purkey again pointed out that the scoring had old information and was not current.

Statewide, the current status of online information has plenty of gaps:

• 21 Tennessee counties put their budgets on their websites.
• 23 counties include information on their websites about public government meetings.
• 51 include information about the county's elected officials.
• 56 include information about the county's administrative officials.
• 12 give information about permits and zoning in the county.
• 16 of the counties put information on their websites about audits that the county government has had performed.
• None of the counties provide information about their contracts with county vendors.
• None of the county websites disclose whether or not they belong to any taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.
• None of the counties provide information on how to request public records using the Tennessee Open Records Act.
• 16 county websites provide some information about county taxes.

Southern 'Birther" Infomercial Scam

The bizarre anti-Obama madness about his birth certificate took a new twist this week as a 28-minute infomercial hit the airwaves in seven Southern states, including Chattanooga, TN. The pitch for this slab of strangeness comes from one Gary Kreep .... yes, Kreep is his name. He claims for a mere $30 from your pocket, he can send some faxes out demanding a copy of President Obama's birth certificate. Oh and you get a free bumper sticker too.

Talking Points Memo has some video from this scam.

"The guy at the center of the informercial is a California lawyer named Gary Kreep, the head of something called the United States Justice Foundation. But it turns out this is not the first time TPMmuckraker has come across the work of the aptly named Kreep.

Back in March 2008 we found him running a robocall operation called the Republican Majority Campaign, then running a scattershot campaign of robocalls against both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The RMC also seemed awfully similar to and had a lot of weird connections to those bogus groups has-been Republican luminary Linda Chavez and her husband had recently been discovered running -- the ones that actually did little to nothing in the way of political work but provided Chavez and her family a steady income."

Self-serving money-grubbing for paranoid delusional right-wingers? Guess that is nothing new.

But the ever-rising hatefulness about the president has some eerie coincidences to the angry and eventually deadly screeching which surrounded President Kennedy back in the early 1960s.

A Thursday Web-Walk

I'm still a bit down and out from the Ham flu or the nasty cold or whatever illness has my head in the swamp. Here's a taste of the web-walking I've been doing of late and I hope to be back to a more fortified writing very soon.

-- Newsflash: The regional and national economy is still tanking

-- It should be no surprise that a wise person has started the Cat Cafe franchise - a place for you to spend time doing some heavy petting if you have no pets at home.

-- The endless search for the perfect potato for McDonald's french fries is, well, endless.

-- Are the ever-expanding digital worlds part of a new kind of evolution? Stephen Hawking says: "I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race

-- Is it possible to keep the Internet alive and thriving with the "Net Neutrality" rules? Some new plans pushed by the FCC and the Obama administration wants to make it so.

My Turn At Sickness, No Options Available

It was inevitable, I suppose, given the time of year and the large number of un-well folks I have been around lately that I would contract my own version of a cold or flu or something. Seems like everyone has been exposed to colds and wheezing and breathing woes.

Great - I've got no time to be wasting on being sick.

Likewise, I will not be wasting time or money on visiting a doctor since I do not have health insurance, it costs far too much. And since I already have some sniffles and coughs, all I might be told is to do what I already know to do - drink fluids, rest, wash hands and face often, maybe take some vitamins and wait for 5 to 7 days to feel better. Should I become really, really sick -- I still lack the insurance most doctors would require to see me. Unless maybe I attend a RAM event, which is still the best treatment I know for those who need medical attention: it is free.

I was also reading some today from R. Neal at KnoxViews about the multitude of conditions which insurance providers regard as "pre-existing conditions" which would prevent health care coverage: things like being a victim of domestic violence, having a toe fungus, or pretty much any minor or major medical problems. The list is mind-boggling. Makes me think either a lot of folks are forced to lie to get coverage, or more likely, get an illness and find their insurance abandons them completely.

More than once in recent months, I have been to a few Knoxville area hospitals, amazed at the marble floors, the espresso stands, the vaulted ceilings, the pianist playing a grand piano in some semi-waiting area, the endless hallways and endless referrals and delays in getting an appointment, the voluminous paperwork needed to receive treatment, and on and on it goes.

At this point, it seems reforming health care and health insurance into an affordable system is about as likely to occur as a cure for the common cold. There is very little reason to reform anything on the provider end - it's a way to make billions and billions of dollars and no matter what happens, people will always need medical care. They can only lose and they know it, so the endless howls of fear and anger clog the halls of political change will insure nothing changes for them.