Good morning to you all.  Looks like clear skies today but frosty for now.  They say the temperature should reach 40 today--again.  Sorry for the messy look to yesterday's post.  I thought I had set things up for nice, tidy columns but, evidently, the actual post is several spaces narrower than the composition space.  Oh, well, next time I will know better.  Let's see if there is anything worth commenting on this morning.

Yes, indeed, Nicola.  It will be busy and it is rewarding, as you say, to the eye and the tummy.  It is also rewarding spiritually and intellectually.  It is far better than a therapist.

I have read a couple of stories lately about law enforcement using drones in U.S. skies.  This Washington Times story indicates that it may become very common before this decade is out.  I had heard that the FAA reauthorization had passed but as usual our useless mainstream media totally failed to cover what was hidden in it.  Just as they have failed to cover the use of drones.  Ties in nicely to the story on our local news concerning the approval by the Illinois state legislature of a bunch of new traffic cameras in Chicago.  We are quickly becoming have become a highly surveilled society.  What is next?  Travel permits issued by the local or national police?  We are very near that with the TSA's 'Trusted Flier' program.  Simply give then all your private information and endure a 10 minute interview and they will issue you an identity card allowing you to bypass TSA scanners and gropers.

And here comes Monsanto yet again.  So they have tweaked aspartame, called it neotame, and have gotten the FDA to approve it without anyone having to list it on the ingredients label.  Isn't that loverly.  And I did go to the link for the FDA pdf and, frankly, it is incomprehensible gobbledygook.  I really don't care how 'onerous' it would be for a producer to list all his ingredients because I should have the right to know what is in the 'food' I eat.

For another installment in 'Pity the poor businessman' bull$hit look at this article.  They say the minimum wage is 'killing' them so they decide to push the legislature to let them pay starvation wages to their employees.  Or I should say pay less than the starvation wages they are required to pay now.  And having worked as a waitress a long time ago I can testify to the fact that the tips don't make up the difference for most servers.

These two stories (here and here), found by way of the Oil Drum, are disturbing.  It would seem that so-called 'targeted' measure directed against unfriendly governments are about as surgical as the drones targeting 'terrorists.'  There is always collateral damage.  I wonder if Elizabeth I would have described embargoes the same way she did wars: I do not like wars. Their outcomes are unpredictable.

I found this interesting story by way of Confessions of a Remedial Stitcher.  I would say we should all give thanks to our humble tools when they have outlived their usefulness.  Perhaps, even before.