The Washington, DC area got hit with the largest snowstorm in years last December, and then in late January a few more inches fell. Despite the fact that cross country skiing was just sublime in both cases, these events caused all kinds of problems, partly because the people responsible for clearing the roads were relying – as usual on chemicals, rather than snowplows and sand.

The pre-treating of the roads with salt has actually created ice under the beautiful, dry and powdery snow. There was no reason for spreading chemicals, particularly in view of the fact that the temperatures were much too low for salt to do any good. What it indeed caused were numerous accidents, and often the inability to slow down, stop, or climb inclines – all courtesy of the Virginia, Maryland and District of Columbia departments of transportation.

Where a plowed (or even unplowed) roadway would have been fairly easily to negotiate without salt, the authorities – that are apparently already running out of money because of their extravagant use of chemicals and hiring of often unnecessary private trucks – the salt-melted and then re-frozen snow created expensive and often very dangerous skating rinks for cars, usually in all the worst places.

Seems like still another example of our tax dollars at work.

As we write this on Friday morning, another snowstorm, which is supposed to last more than 24 hours and dump around two feet of snow in the area, is fast approaching.

The snow blowers, snow shovels and bags of salt have long been unavailable. The authorities – such as they might be – have strongly recommended that everyone stay indoors for the duration and basically get ready to watch the Super Bowl. Consequently, the grocery stores got totally overwhelmed by mobs of often glassy-eyed shoppers, filling their carts to overflowing with milk, beer, Wonder “bread”, pretzels, bottled water and the inevitable soup cans, “flavored” with among other things high fructose corn syrup.

Even late in the evening on Wednesday and Thursday it was almost impossible to find a parking spot at any of the local supermarkets. Inside, practically every person pushing a shopping cart was breaking the indoor speed limits, the shelves were often bare and the lines at the registers snaked around into almost every aisle. It appeared that it would take at least an hour just to get to a cashier, or a self-checkout gizmo.

If six, or even 24 inches of snow can cause such mayhem, we wonder how things would look, if we actually faced a real, serious emergency…

Technorati Tags: Nation’s Capital, Panic, Snow salt, Snowmageddon, stores, washington

There is no doubt that Thanksgiving is a very nice, family holiday and that it holds a special place in people’s calendars and hearts.

There’s nothing wrong with of at all… except that the pervading myth about the whole feast and its de rigueur menu, which supposedly originated with the Pilgrims in the first half of the 17^th century isn’t strictly true at all.

In addition, the Pilgrims were really a very unsavory bunch of Puritans, who had the leave England,  where they have overstayed their welcome by a long, long shot.

So, fortunately, the so-called Pilgrims had very little to do with the whole thing. As it happened, it was a creation of 19^th century Americans, particularly New Englanders, who wanted to have another national holiday. At the time, we had only two of those: Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July. There was also Christmas of course, which wasn’t really counted as a National Holiday.

Abraham Lincoln's presidential order establishing the Thanksgiving Holiday

From the beginning Thanksgiving was a holiday very directly related to food. Something along the lines of a harvest feast, which by that time was celebrated in practically every country of the world in some form.

What really and truly started the whole thing was Sarah Josepha Hale, probably the first female American novelist of note, who has written books, such as Northwood: A Tale of New England and Mary had a Little Lamb. Ms. Hale has written a whole chapter in which she described Thanksgiving in minute detail, with the turkey and the dressing and the gravy and all the other things and ingredients that we now think of as an integral part of the holiday.

Her novel turned out to be extremely popular and Sarah Josepha Hale became the editor a popular woman’s magazine, creating in the process a lot of the mid-19^th century fashion trends, one of which was, as you might have guessed, the Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving officially became a National Holiday in 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln after some important Union victories during the Civil War issued a presidential order, making it official.

We hope that these tidbits of historical information do not disappoint those who believe in the traditional Pilgrim/Indian-related lore. It still remains a very nice holiday. Probably even nicer, without the nasty Pilgrim/Puritan connotations.

If only the artificially-fattened turkeys tasted better…and if the NFL football games were not a part of it all…

We get the feeling that if Sarah Josepha Hale was faced with both of the above, she would have given up on Thanksgiving altogether.

In any case, a Very Happy Thanksgiving to all! Just don’t overeat, please.

Technorati Tags: football, Indians, nfl, Origins, Pilgrims, puritans, Real, Sarah Josepha Hale, Thanksgiving, Turkey

The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the synthetic fertilizer used in the United States, contributing more than any other sector to marine dead zones. It consumes about 70 percent of the water in the American West – water so heavily subsidized that if irrigation supports were removed, ground beef would cost $35 a pound.

In addition, livestock accounts for at least 21 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally – more than all forms of transportation combined. Domestic animals – most of them healthy – consume (not by their choice, mind you) about 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced. Undigested antibiotics leach from manure into freshwater systems, impairing the sex organs of fish. The antibiotic use in animals has also contributed to the growing antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which infect humans.

It takes a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of conventional beef. If all the grain fed to animals fed people instead, you could feed China and India.

Meat that’s produced according to “alternative” standards (accounting for about one percent of meat in the United States) might be a better choice but not nearly so much better as some would have us believe. “Free-range chickens” would theoretically have access to the outdoors. But many of the so-called “free-range” chickens never see the light of day because they cannot make it through the crowded shed to the opening, which leads usually to a patch of concrete, anyway.

“Grass-fed” cows produce four times the methane – a greenhouse gas 21 times as powerful as carbon dioxide – and many grass-fed cows are raised on heavily fertilized and irrigated grass. Pastured pigs are still typically mutilated, fed commercial feed and prevented from rooting – their most basic instinct besides sex.

Deforestation is the single largest contributor to climate change – far larger that all the transportation-related pollution, power generation and livestock flatulence. As it stands, huge tracts of forests are cut down for a variety of reasons – for wood, farming, industry, human habitation and yes: the factory farming of livestock.

Issues of animal welfare are also related to all forms of meat production. Domestic animals suffer immensely, feel pain and may even realize the fate that awaits them. In an egg factory, male chicks (economically worthless) are summarily run through a grinder. Pigs are castrated without anesthesia, crated, tail-docked and nose-ringed. Milk cows are repeatedly impregnated through artificial insemination, confined to milking stalls and milked to yield 15 times the amount of milk they would produce under normal circumstances. When calves are removed from their mothers at birth, the mothers mourn their loss with heart-rending moans.

Then comes the slaughterhouse, an operation that’s left with millions of pounds of carcasses – called deadstock – that are incinerated or dumped in landfills.

If someone told you that a particular corporation was trashing the air, water and soil, causing more global warming than the transportation industry, consuming massive amounts of fossil fuels; unleashing the cruelest sort of suffering on innocent and defenseless beings; failing to recycle its waste, and clogging our arteries in the process, how would you react?

We are looking forward to hearing from all of you out there. This isn’t an attempt to turn everybody into vegetarians, or vegans, but for a variety of reasons we believe that meat consumption and large-scale livestock farming should be reduced by a noticeable margin.

There are horror stories and horrific videos being leaked out of factory farms everywhere. This PETA video is just one example, featuring a factory pig farm in North Carolina. It is patently obvious the the “people” involved in this sadistic acts are the real animals. To put it politely – scum of the earth. And to think that our jails are full of people sentenced for writing a bad check, or for possessing a small amount of marijuana…

Technorati Tags: climate change, cruelty, Environment, factory, farming, global warming, Health, Livestock, meat, pollution, production

This is partly based on a recent AP story

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While we discuss health-care reform, healthy food and environmental conditions, as it turns out, there’s still another issue to be addressed – extremely heavy patients. Although morbidly obese people can probably be found in almost every country and on almost every continent, this could most likely be filed under the ‘Only in America” category.

A panicked Kansas ambulance crew had a critically ill patient, but the man weighed more than 1,000 pounds and could not fit inside the vehicle. And the stretcher wasn’t sturdy enough to hold him.

Finally somebody had an idea. They could use a forklift to load the man – bed and all – onto a flatbed truck. There was no other choice.

As the nation battles the obesity crisis, ambulance crews are trying to improve how they transport extremely heavy patients, who become significantly more difficult to move as they surpass 350 pounds. And caring for such patients is expensive, requiring costly equipment and extra workers, so some ambulance companies have started charging higher fees for especially overweight people.

The move to modify ambulances is just the latest effort to accommodate plus-sized patients. Some hospitals already offer specially designed beds, wheelchairs, walkers and even commodes.

Ambulance companies say it’s time for insurance providers, Medicaid and Medicare, or patients themselves to begin paying the added costs, which are cutting into their razor-thin profit margins.

In the past, ambulance companies often absorbed the extra expense of serving the obese. Now they are adding charges similar to those already imposed on intensive-care patients, people requiring multiple medications and patients on ventilators.

Transporting extremely heavy people costs about 2.5 times as much as normal-weight patients. It takes more time to move them and requires three to four times more crewmembers, who often must use expensive specialty equipment.

Shawnee County Commission last summer raised ambulance fees from $629 to $1,172 for critical-care patients and people who are 500 pounds or heavier.

In Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Nebraska cities of Omaha and Lincoln, the fees are $1,421 for an extremely obese patient, compared with $758 for a typical patient.

Before those ambulances had heavy-duty equipment, crews just had to make do, often calling in burly firefighters to help lift patients.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has long said that nearly a third of Americans are obese. About 5 percent of the population is morbidly obese, meaning they are more than 100 pounds heavier than their ideal weight.

Some critics say the higher fees are a form of discrimination.

Higher payments for heavy patients are commonplace in Oregon and Washington because the insurance industry there acknowledges the additional costs.

Ambulance companies say the insurance industry is their best hope for closing the financial gap.

As with any medical service, ambulance companies bill private insurers or government health care programs. Medicare and Medicaid do not pay extra for transporting the extremely obese, although that’s something the ambulance industry wants to change. The uninsured are charged directly, but many of them cannot pay.

Proponents of the extra fees say obese patients are grateful for equipment that eliminates the need for flatbed trucks and forklifts.

Like many ambulance companies, a unit in Topeka recently spent about $10,000 to retrofit an ambulance with equipment that accommodates patients weighing up to 1,600 pounds. Ambulance services with helicopters also are creating larger patient compartments and adding stronger gurneys.

Sales of specialized lift systems nationwide are expected to reach $193 million by 2012, up from $75 million in 2004, according to EMS Insider, an industry newsletter. The sale of specialized stretchers is expected to nearly double to $50 million in 2012.

Technorati Tags: ambulances, forklifts, heavy, obesity, patients

As the health-care reform efforts gather steam, with even some Republicans, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger urging passage of the reform bill and saying that he supports President Obama in this regard, other reforms, besides the improvement of the health insurance system appear to be badly needed as well.

Even though the United States now spends $2.4 trillion a year on medical care – which is much more per capita than comparable countries – we rank near the bottom in rankings on premature deaths caused by illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy, stroke, influenza, ulcers and pneumonia, according to research by Commonwealth Fund.

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad has commented on these not really surprising findings, saying:

“All of these countries have much lower costs than we do, and they have higher quality outcomes than ours.”

These sad statistics are probably not due solely to the inadequacy of the U.S. health care industry, which has actually proven to be quite good, at least in certain, top facilities. This is not to say that it is good, or even adequate in most places, particularly in view of its exorbitant cost.

Other causes include of course our basic diet; all of those adulterated foods, which much too often are the only ones available to the average citizen. The food additives, the healthy, natural ingredients removed either in order to increase profit, ease of processing and transportation, or simply to cater to our now perverted tastes.

Considering the fact that the average container of so-called full-strength soft drink contains the equivalent of about 17 teaspoons of sugar – which isn’t even sugar, but the ever-present High Fructose Corn Syrup, should give all of us pause. And if it isn’t sugar, it is Aspertame, NutraSweet, or some other low-calorie sweetener, which could be even worse.

Just think how the epidemics of obesity, diabetes and other diseases would most likely fade, if we stopped stuffing ourselves with such totally unhealthy substances.

Meanwhile, it appears that we are at risk even from formerly healthy, natural foods as well. As it turns out, cultivation, processing, storage and transportation introduce all kinds of dangerous food-borne diseases. Most risky appear to be: leafy greens, eggs, tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes, sprouts and berries. Apparently bacteria, from E.coli O157:H7 in spinach to scombrotoxin in tuna, are contaminating more and more of these essential foods. People who have eaten them suffered a range of illnesses, from mild stomach cramps all the way to death.

In addition, potatoes have emerged as threat to health, because many processors and restaurants have been putting them through the same machines, which were already contaminated by raw meat and poultry.

The FDA has been under fire for years for failing to adequately ensure food safety. A wave of recent food borne illnesses has placed increasing public pressure on Congress to do something about it.

As it stands, it appears that we should grow all of our own food, and avoid almost everything coming down the pike from the food producing and serving industry – and that of course includes those awful soft drinks – and providing that we do have health insurance, be very careful which medical establishments we actually trust our lives to.

Another option for some might be to move to another country, where the food supply hasn’t been so totally messed by greed and stupidity. Italy comes to mind as one of the possibilities. The Italians do take their food seriously and are minimally if at all interested in imported foodstuffs, considering their own as the best. This attitude extends to particular regions. As an example:  Sardinians eat “Sardo” food and drink Sardo wine and beer, with hardly anything coming over even from the Italian mainland.

We know that this is impractical for most people, but why should almost everyone be forced to play Russian roulette with their health in arguably the richest country in the world?

This brings up another issue. Much has been said about the dangers of smoking. The funny thing is that in most other developed countries, where smoking is more prevalent than in the U.S. people are generally healthier. Could it be the chemicals added by manufacturers to the cigarettes, rather than the tobacco itself?

Technorati Tags: cancer, contamination, diabetes, E.coli, food industry, medical industry, obesity, processed foods, reform, soft drinks, tobacco, US Health Insurance