Beware the Cheese!

You may have criminals living right next door to you! In your very neighborhood lurks an evil so insidious that it must be snuffed out. Terrorists? Small time stuff. Meth Lab? Please. There's only one thing I can be talking about: illegal cheese making. According to a CDFA Secretary, “Illegally produced is cheese is serious threat to public health.” That's right, so all you people making cheese in your bathtubs better watch out because we're onto you and you are now considered part of the Axis of Evil!

Funny, but all the cases of people getting sick from food that I've heard of have been from mass produced food. Spinach springs to mind. Bathtub cheese, as far as I know, is fairly low on the list. Just to be safe, please stop making cheese in your bathtub and go back to making alcohol. Thank you.

Reflect on This!

The Illinois House and Senate have decided to mandate a period of "silent prayer" or "silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day" for all public school students. Yes, this is an actual law that was passed just this week. We're one of eleven states with a similar law. Here's an idea, if you feel your children need a moment of silence, wake the little darlings up ten minutes earlier and let them reflect at home. Here's an even better idea, how about if people stop repackaging thinly veiled religious agendas and cramming them down our throats? No prayer in the school? Then lets try silent reflection. No creationism? OK, here's some intelligent design for you. Don't want them to teach about birth control? Appoint Susan Orr to oversee family planning for the Department of Health and Human Services. What you do in the privacy of your own home or on your own time is your business but the children go to school for one reason: to learn. If they aren't learning, we are wasting their time and our money. I'm sure whatever deity you worship will find it in their infinite wisdom to forgive the children for taking six hours a day to better their minds! After that, they can have all the silent reflection they need. Oh wait, that might cut into football practice or band, or any of a million other things that are less important than actual classroom work. I'm not saying religion has no place in our society, I am saying that it has no place in our public schools.

Mmmm, Hardee's

Check out the new breakfast burrito from Hardee's. 2 omelets, bacon, sausage, ham, cheese, hash browns, and don't forget the sausage gravy all wrapped in a nice warm flour tortilla. At only 920 calories and 60 grams of fat, you only have to eat two a day to meet your caloric requirements! It's convenience food. Now, if they could cram a ground up monster thickburger into that shell, they'd have the perfect meal. You'd only have to eat once a day. Think of all the time you'd save. Strangely enough, this monster still has less calories than a Hardee's chicken salad. I think they probably feed these burritos to the chickens they use in the salads.

Public Service Announcement

Just a warning for parents (and regular people) out there. These bandages claim to seal in the wound to protect it from dirt and infections. As the web site puts it, they provide a "100% waterproof, germproof, dirt-proof seal" and, I can tell you that they work as advertised. The problem is, if you don't get the wound 100% clean, you are trapping the germs inside the bandage with the wound. That may sound like one of those "well, duh" statements but, the problem is, if the wound becomes infected, it is very difficult to tell because you can't actually see it. Also, the infection is sealed in with the wound. I think this is probably a case where good old fashioned bandages are the best bet. Of course, when I was a boy, we just slapped some pine sap on the cut after letting a dog lick it, and that's the way we liked it!

Kiss of Death

Lead isn't just a problem for toys. It seems that 61% of lipsticks contain detectable levels of lead. In case you're wondering, there is no safe level of lead. Any exposure to lead is considered harmful. You can download the full report on lead in lipstick here. I (wrongfully) thought lead had been eliminated from the products we use. I guess not.

Don't Throw that Toy Away

Here's an issue that never occurred to me: what happens to all those recalled toys? Especially important is what happens to the ones that contain lead? As a parent, it's tempting to simply throw them away. That may not be the best idea as the lead simply ends up in a landfill and contaminates the ground water. So what are we supposed to do with those 1.6 million Boy Scout patches? Well, even though most manufacturers won't say what they're doing with them, I would say sending them back to the manufacturer is the best bet. Hopefully, they are being regulated. Although, I guess if they were being regulated, we wouldn't have lead in the toys in the first place.

Believe it or Not!

2 six year olds + 1 Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum = 2 crying, horrified six year olds. I knew we were in for a treat when Kevin the disinterested attendant took our money and sent us off into the unknown. It started simple, a horse made out of horse shoes, a suit made from soda bottles, a goose wearing shoes. Then things took a turn for the creepy. Chastity belts, shrunken heads, shark attacks, and an odd unrelated assortment of garage sale fodder. Oh, and a cow with six legs.  What kid wouldn't be thrilled to wander from dark room to dark room gazing at two headed snakes and mouse funerals under glass. Enough nightmare fuel to keep the little gears turning for months to come. As parents we all have those "what were we thinking moments". This was one of them, believe it or not!

Track Ball

My new cell phone has a tiny little track ball on it. One of the first pieces of software I installed on the phone was a program to change the color of the ball. After letting my technically inclined six year old play with it, she decided pink was the appropriate color. I went along with this decision until last night at the Starbucks. It was at that point a tiny voice yelled across the establishment "Daddy, is your ball still pink?" You can imagine the strange looks I got from the other customers. They got even stranger when I replied "No, it's blue." I think I'll stick with green from now on.

rbGH

I've written about the use of the growth hormone rbGH in milk before. Well, there is something of a movementforming against its use. Companies like Starbucks, Safeway, and Chipotle have all decided to stop serving milk that contains it. Leave it to our old friend Monsanto (the only producer of rbGH) to come up with a solution. Ready? They want to make it illegal for milk producers to label their milk as rbGH free because such labels "mislead" consumers. We have the right to know what is and is not in our milk. We also have the right to know how the animals used to produce our food have been treated. If we truly want to "let the market decide" then consumers should be given more information, not less. Our milk is rbGH free and, it's delivered by a very nice milkman (milk carrier?) in a white truck every Wednesday. Kudos to the companies that are listening to customers and actually making changes rather than trying to trick them into buying the same crap.

No Cure for You!

Drug companies are not trying to cure anything, they are trying to maximize profits. If you doubt that fact then read this. There was a time that I thought privatization was the solution to many of our problems now I realize that it has become the cause.  The idea of an activist government that is actually an advocate for its citizens just makes sense.

Protect Your Social Security Number

I can't believe this isn't illegal already but apparently, we need to stop companies from selling your Social Security number, or printing it on documents that can be easily stolen from your mail box or wallet. Legislation is out there that would make this happen. Visit Consumer's Union to send a note to your State Representative to tell them you want this legislation passed.