Good morning, y'all. It is only 42 degrees outside this morning. We expect the temps to get barely into the 60s later today. The weather people are promising a 'warm up' over the week---into the 70s. I finally got off my butt and harvested the peppers on three plants then took out the plants. I still have a lot of peppers on my False Alarm and Cow's Horn cayenne plants. I plan to take all of the False Alarm and freeze them since they can be taken green or red. I don't know about the cayennes yet because only a couple of them are anywhere near red. I also took cuttings from my stevia, lavender, and sage. My first attempt to root cuttings from these failed but I am hopeful of this one. I used the rooting hormone and put them in dirt rather than water. Last night the the stevia looked a bit droopy but this morning it is standing straight up. Good sign I think. I want to take out the parent plants of all my herbs and dry the leaves. I will start with the stevia since it is the most temperature sensitive and the overnight temperature is likely to get into the mid-to-upper 30s tonight.

I found this New York Times article by way of HuffingtonPost this morning that makes provides some interesting information and analysis of the Dod-Frank bill that is supposed to put in new rules for the finance industry that will 'make sure this (the financial crisis of the last two years) doesn't happen again.' The author provides some interesting reasons why 'this' is all too likely to happen again. Another example of capitalism with all its risks for most of us 'little people' (to use Alan Simpson's dismissive and disparaging phrase) and communism for the big boys who can make the case that they are 'too big to fail.' Or as the pigs said in Animal Farm some of us are 'more equal than others.'

HuffingtonPost's Dr. Mark Hyman has an interesting study that isn't a surprise but is disturbing nonetheless. According to a recent review of a year's worth of peer-reviewed articles published in major medical medicine, the French investigators found that 40% presented positive outcomes that were contradicted by the actual data presented. In other words, they claimed that the treatments were efficacious when they, in fact, did not work. As Dr. Hyman noted, medical practitioners, consumers, and government regulators use such studies to determine whether to approve, provide, or accept a treatment or medicine. But we can't rely on the results.