pharmacokinetics or better living through chemistry

Before repairing to bashing the industrial standards of Asian maunfacturers for toothpaste with high lead-content, and eliding over our own thiftiness for going with the lowest bidder in the first place, the Western world makes and has made for decades quite enough poisonous products all on its own.  One piece that rather made my skin crawl and left me shuddering for the checkout girl where H and I went shopping just a little bit earlier concerned studies showing that Bisphenol A leeches from thermal-receipt paper through the skin and into the body just from casual handling.  It's nearly as devastating as the formaldehyde that leaks out of new furniture and carpeting.

Though Bisphenol A (BPA) has been synthesized since the 1930s, more familar as the acetone in finger-nail polish remover and paint-thinner--what a compliment to one's home chemistry set--it has never been proven safe, and the substance, ubiquitous and seemingly innocent, sparks the occasional uproar, like not practicing microwave cookery in microwave-safe plastic containers, PVC piping, and because it mimicks estrogen and acts as a replacement for the hormone, it has been attributed to a wide range of disorders that could  seem to have no other explanation, like frequency of breast cancer, premature birth, liver disfunction and even obseity and attention deficiency.  Even places, like the European Union and Canada, that have enacted restrictions against environmental BPA probably are not looking to their cash registers yet.  In Germany, one's receipts are forced on one or left to gather as trash at the end of the shopping conveyor belt, but there was a trend that's gone away not to handle money, at least not to put change in the customer's hand but offer it up on such a tray.  Surely the thermal printer and point-of-sale cartels could be convinced to employ safer means.  Next time, everyone should refuse a printed receipt, when it's not needed, and tell the cashier exactly why.

trojan horse

Results of the investigations were not completely clear and I was under the false impression that a gun powder black ink-jet was the latest cachet noir in concealing terror paraphernalia, but earlier in the week, it was disclosed that the suspected couple of mad bombers from Greece hid their postal bombs in hollowed out charity brochures. This technique, and fortunately falling just short of their targets and without causing serious harm, delivered explosives to the doorsteps of embassies, chancellors and presidents and blockaded all Greek commercial shipping for a few days. Using some innocuous religious books as disguises was a work of diabolical genius, wily like Odysseus: no one would look twice at a load of Watch Tower magazines or Hare Krishna pamphlets. I am sure that spy or terror networks of all ilk make scatter-shot announcements through equally bland and insipid spam and junk mail, and no one would give it a second glance, and hiding in plain sight like the purloined letter and unlike numbers stations or other more lively red herrings.

and now for something completely different

Either overcome by the rapid news-cycle and breaking developments about the US election and mail-bombs or dismissed as totally incredulous, this interesting piece about a life peer in the houses of parliment speaking about a mysterious and shadowy Foundation X was first picked up and circulated by Charlie Stross via Boing Boing.  It appears that the lord's overtures to the assembly actually took place on the evening of 1 November (where is C-SPAN3 when it's needed?) and that the lord is not some unsuspecting penioner about to be taken in by the promises of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan of Nigerian National Bank, PLC, and offer Britian's account information to some friendly stranger on the internet.  This so called Foundation X is prepared, however, to disseminate its enormous wealth, to the tune of an initial five billion pounds of gold buillon, to the UK government to fulfill social projects, with an additional seventeen billion by Christmas--unconditionally.  Who might be interested in extending this kind of charity?  And to what end?  I wonder if MI6 has already complied a short list of possible candidates behind Foundation X, who have courted the member of parliment surreptitiously:
Skeletor
COBRA
The Vatican
Mephistopheles
Dr. No
Madonna
The Ferengi
The Templars
The Illumnati
This is just too strange, and I am sure that this was not, even after twenty weeks of development with the representative, the sort of deus ex machina that Britain expected to revive her economy.  I am certain Britain would not be without competition also interested in entertaining such an unbelieveable bargain.

no theatre

Maybe enough has already been said about the impact of the re-dyeing of the US in redder tints, and what it means to liberals and the progressively-minded--without restoring to sour-grapes.  Maybe a lot of crypto-Republicans were replaced with representatives whose stance is clearer, and the issues that conservatives and opponents of the current regime hope to errode or otherwise gloss over do not simply sublimate, regardless of all the the in-fighting, busking, gerrymandering, filabustering or creation of pseudo-scandals that they can muster.  This vote, and unfortuneately not so different from many campaigns the world-around, was low content and low context, despite advancements that were jeopardized by a populace too weary to abide on patience and promise any longer, and should not be broadly interpreted as more than frustration and opportunism.  Blame excuses nor solves nothing and only serves to make hypocrisies all the more haunting.