Good Tuesday and hope yours is a good one.  Ours is a better one since the colds are abating somewhat.  Thankfully we can do what the experts say we should do--rest, drink plenty of fluids, eat lightly and let it run its course.  Later in the week we have a gardening class scheduled and we should be physically capable of attending.  The cold came at as convenient time as such things could come--we had nothing planned for nearly two weeks.  The only activity it interrupted was our mile at the Y.  We think that can resume next Monday though we might cut back on distance for a bit.  Now let's see if there is anything on the 'net.

Is it just me or is our media focused on whether an American will become Pope?  That seems to be the lead question on any segment on the Papal election followed quickly by thumbnails of the leading American candidates with briefer nods to a couple of other non-European Cardinals that may have a chance.  Somehow the whole question is....inconsequential.  I thought one comment was rather illuminating and appeared in several stories all of which could have been written by the same person.  The reporter noted that a lot of people (Europeans and Italians in particular) aren't comfortable with the notion of an American in the Papacy.  Evidently they fear such a Pope would be controlled by the American Government.  Isn't this the mirror image of the argument leveled against Kennedy seventy years ago?  My own feeling on this issue--any American politician who would hope to dictate to a Pope who happened to be born American should read the history of Henry II of England and his picked Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett.

Well, evidently a judge has decided that Nanny Bloomberg's ban on large size drinks is unfair.  Basically it disadvantages some commercial establishments over others who don't have to comply.  That's ok as far as it goes.  What I wish is for some judge to uphold a person's right to make stupid decisions.  Or validate another person's right to make a smart decision for what ever reasons s/he might wish.  I remember the point where I realized that I really didn't want to supersize my lunch.  And yes, at the time I didn't mind eating at McDonalds and its ilk.  Things have changed.  As usual the clerk asked if I wanted it super sized.  I hesitated because I didn't really want all that food and I certainly did not intend to take any part of it home--and I also knew, sure as hell, I would stuff all that food down my gullet.  After all, my parent's generation had encouraged my generation to clean their plates while thinking about the poor starving children in other countries.  And as I hesitated the clerk did as she was trained to do--reminded me that the larger size was actually 'more economical' and I would get more for 'less' money.  That is when something went click and I told the clerk (politely I hope because I was a bit irritated by the whole thing) that her (and her company's) argument was spurious because I would be leaving half of the meal in the trash so I would actually be paying more for what I really wanted in the first place.  Since that time I have had no trouble at all applying the same argument to similar offers or to two for one sales for things I don't really want at all (Sorry, I'll increase my saving by not buying anything.)  If a slow learner like me, thoroughly indoctrinated from birth in the American commercial myths, can make that imaginative leap, I don't see why others should be denied the chance to do the same.  I won't even start on a rant about the so-called nutritional 'experts.'

I saw a brief mention of this story on the morning broadcast.  I gather there are more questions than answers at this stage--including the question of veracity.  They don't really know if the data released is real or simply made up.  The reporter this morning claimed that one of the celebrity phone numbers was actually for an east coast business. Then they don't really know who is behind this.  I love the comment in the article about the tweet from the alleged hacker being in 'bad Russian.'  I am neither a technophile nor a technophobe but I do recognize that all technologies have negatives that come with them and, the more you depend on them, the more the negatives have disastrous potential.

And this was also featured for a brief line on our evening news yesterday.  I wondered how much fun people might have with it.  What the hell would ancient peoples have done to cause atherosclerosis?  Of course, they had to have done something.  So which kind of diet works?  Actually--none of them.  All of the mummies showed atherosclerosis no matter what area they were found and no matter what the typical diet might have been.  As I said above--I won't go off on a rant about nutritional 'experts.'  We assume that by studying ancient artifacts like mummies we can discover some kind of natural diet which will allow us to defy old age.  Now how many of these assumptions will bite us in the ass?  The one about discovering a natural diet (as though in our artificial modern world who would we even know) or the one about defying old age or the one that assumes the results from mummies are applicable to their general society much less to ours.