Tuesday--

Looks like a good day to stay inside.  The weather people are showing a nasty mix of rain, sleet, and snow in the area.  I thought I heard rain last night just before I drifted off and we saw ice on our storm door.

We laughed all the way through this article.  I did a double take to make sure it was indeed the Guardian and not the Onion.  I love the author's comments on the DEA agent's hypocrisy concerning agricultural deforestation and erosion involved with commercial marijuana growing while the same goes on with other commercial crops but doesn't seem to elicit the same level of concern.  I find it disturbing that the jerk thinks he is dealing with "science" and "facts."

On the surface this sounds like a good idea.  But on second look I don't think so.  I remember a saying often attributed to Daniel Moynihan that we are "entitled to our own opinion" but "not our own facts."  The problem is defining what are "facts."  Using software that rates posts on how few statements conflict with the received wisdom of what the net consensus agrees are true facts is no better than relying on the consensus of public opinion.  That consensus might be very wrong.  Think about the dueling "facts" concerning the downing of that airliner over Ukraine:  the Russians claiming that it was shot down by a Ukrainian military plane while the U.S. claimed that Russian backed rebels shot it down with an surface to air missile.  Whatever evidence either side presented to bolster their case the other side pooh-poohed as fabricated, misinterpreted or otherwise suspect.  Which "facts" do you trust?  I don't like the notion that Google will be the gate keeper for the 'net and especially not one that relies community consensus to determine fact.

Another article that had us laughing all the way through it.  We stopped using most prepared foods because we realized we didn't like the taste and wondered why we put that "crap" in our mouths.  We produced much tastier food when we made it ourselves.  When Mom had an bit of an elevated blood pressure her doctor worried about we looked at salt and decided to cut our use of salt here at home and began looking at the salt content of the food we bought.  (Her blood pressure spike was due to something other than the salt--as her other doctor discovered.) Because of that concern, driven by medical advice, we buy very few canned veggies anymore, having already cut out processed foods, and only those that have no added salt.  We have since loosened up on that a bit but we still don't buy many canned veggies or soups.  We have lost our taste for the salt and added sweeteners in commercially produced foods.  They just aren't palatable anymore.  If that is "orthorexic" behavior, I am orthorexic and proud of it.