Wednesday.  Starting cool and overcast.   Had enough rain Monday night so I didn't have to water anything yesterday.  The weather people are calling for possible scattered showers that may or may not hit here.  Right now most of the activity in the gardens is inactivity--waiting for the plants to do their thing.  Some of the strawberries and the lemon thyme are the only plants blooming right now.

Found this post on Daily Kos this morning.  I noticed fewer honey bees last year.  I plant flowers they and the hummingbirds like but I didn't see many honey bees at all.  And only one bumblebee so far.  We have neighbors who have a goodly crop of dandelions which bees are said to like for an early season snack but I haven't seen any bees.

Thursday.  Cool but clear to start today.  Another errand day.  Our car needs a bit of attention and we have an appointment for that.  Otherwise nothing else planned.

Ah, yes--one metric where we are still number one!!  Though the rest of the world is catching up in this category as well.  But surely it isn't all that surprising since you can hardly go anywhere in the world without finding a KFC, a McDonalds, or any of our other fast food companies.  You know--the ones that supersize the salt, fat, and sugar (and the waist lines.)

I have been reading about this for some time now.  It makes me wonder how minutely governments can try to control our lives.  Thankfully, I don't live in Europe but I can easily see attempts to push similar legislation here if Monsanto, et al., and ALEC combine to push it.  Hopefully, the latest elections over there will make Brussels rethink some of their policies.

Just saw a segment on our TV morning news that hit my skept-o-meter.  Evidently there is a new study out from Sweden that claims that cynics are more likely to suffer from dementia (as well as heart disease and other such problems.)  I was "skeptical" enough of the report to do a quick search on Google and I think my skepticism (cynicism if you will) is thoroughly justified.  The researchers used a definition of cynicism resembles paranoia and not the dictionary definition of the word.  And, as happens so often, the study shows a statistical correlation which is not causation.  Question: did the "cynics" suffer dementia because they were cynics or were they cynical because they suffered dementia?

A "graduation address" with a difference!!  Thank you, Tom Englehardt.