Saturday.

Another pot of lipstick peppers is sprouting.  I am thinking of reversing my decision of last fall not to plant pole beans again.  We haven't had a package of commercially produced green beans without biting into stems or that tasted good.  Mary is getting more than a bit contrary on the issue of the lack of quality we are getting in the goods we buy.

Sing it, Brother!!!  The inane and vacuous coverage of the Malaysian jet mystery is another thing that is pegging my contrary meter to the extreme.  The tragedy has been converted into a meaningless soap opera and that infuriates me.  And the assessment of two "old fossils" in the Senate is right on the money.

Found this by way of Undernews and the theme has been a rising one on the financial news channels. It doesn't really surprise me.  We don't often visit the big enclosed malls in the area.  They don't have much of interest.  The strip malls are another story.  Many of the small stores that carry what we normally buy are located in those malls.  But we have noticed that the retail spaces in those malls have been slower to rent than a decade or so ago.

I didn't read all of this item but what I did read made me wonder why some of our regulators were so upset with BofA and others for hiring the children of high ranking Chinese officials.  It seems to me that the practice is as American as apple pie.

Marian van Eyk McCain has an interesting post concerning the recent push (which has received plenty of free advertisement on news programs) to have physicians prescribe more cholesterol controlling medications to more people--even those without family history or symptoms.  I am not really surprised that the studies providing the ammunition for the efforts to increase the population who will be taking those medication are funded by Big Pharma.  That alone makes them suspect.  But I have a further quibble:  I don't see the need to give people a drug on the mere possibility that one in ten of them might develop heart disease--which may or may not be linked to cholesterol levels.