The Occasional Joke


Nurse: Patient's name?

Centurion: Marcus Licinius Crassus

Nurse: And his date of birth?

Centurion: 115 BC.

Nurse: All right. And what is he here for?

Centurion: Cataphract surgery.


Friday, September 16, 2011

Fresh moves


We've all heard about food deserts -- areas, typically in inner cities, where all you can buy is fast food and convenience-store crap. No specialty food stores, no farmers' markets, no Walmarts or Whole Foods -- apparently the margins on groceries, traditionally razor thin, just don't mitigate in favor of locating in the hood. Other causes exist, including racism, probably, but simple lack of incentive seems to account for most of it. Fresh food, widely available a few miles away, just isn't there for purchase.

In Chicago, which evidently has many food desert areas, some folks got the idea of bringing Muhammad to the Mountain, so to speak, and created Fresh Moves (their website). They've refitted a full-size city bus as a rolling market. Instead of gambling on a piece of real estate and a location, the infrastructure moves from place to place, on a daily schedule, in one of the more desolate (food-wise) neighborhoods. Here's a Google search for pictures of the vehicle and other related subjects. Thanks to Linda for passing this on.

What else could you sell out of a bus (leaving aside the obvious food-truck concepts?) Hardware store stuff? What if there were two or three of these things, moving together (more than that and you'd probably run into parking problems?) Why, it's a shopping center on wheels! And consider: come closing time, you aren't leaving your store and inventory sitting in a dodgy neighborhood, inviting break-ins.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

I may have to do some reading in the next few weeks ...

... to see just how, in legal terms, a "terrorist group" is defined. The Tea Baggers are trying really hard to make the cut.

They were also lining up to call each other "treasonous," too. And making Rick Perry eat every bite of his words about social security. Hey, here's an idea: what if the Innocence Project looked into every one of those 233 executions that Perry says were all guilty (the number he threw around was 234, but one of them has already been strongly questioned by the Project.) I bet that would keep 'em busy -- both Perry and the Project folks -- for a while.

Jon Stewart beat me to the punch on mocking the Tea Bag debate, but I'm allowed to miss a deadline once in a while, especially if I'm making quiche -- bacon and chicken quiche, with blue oyster and lion's mane mushrooms.

On more positive notes, I've got a grocery-desert story to pass along, but first, it's time for coffee.

2011 09 16: update:
That hotbed of corruption populist, small-government, responsible spending, New Jersey, led by its overblown pol widely-admired governor, Chris Christie, funded production of the 2009 "Jersey Shore" season to the tune of $420,000 hard-earned tax dollars.

Monday, September 12, 2011

I'm sorry ...

... but that's not the right answer. Thank you for playing.

"But we have to recognize that not all medicine is evidence-based,” he said. “Some of it is anecdotal, and some doctors use their own evidence. That doesn't necessary mean that it's wrong."

Yes, actually it does. Especially when you're talking about this load of criminally negligent nonsense.

And then there's this gentleman.

He "... runs his own company called Real Cool Futures."

"One of his products is making gift paper and stationery from sheep droppings which has been presented to Prince Charles." (Due to the inept writing in the article, I'm unable to say if the paper has been presented to Prince Chas, or if the sheep droppings have to have been previously, in order for the paper making process to work, subsequently.)

"In 2006 he won a £20,000 Millennium Award for 'social entrepreneurship'."

But this week, he blew up his house trying to make home made vodka. Strangely enough, the entrepreneur in question lives in Wales, and is not part of Governor's Snyder's plans to reinvent Michigan.