Tuna Mercury

So, I'm looking for a better tuna salad recipe, because I'm bored with my current one and I find myself hating mayo and Miracle Whip, so I'm trying everything else and ranch dressing seems to be an adequate lean substitute. . . and in my searching, Google Ads for a test kit to test your hair for mercury keep appearing.  There's a lot of mercury making its way into canned tuna and sushi these days.  Light tuna is safe unless you eat it daily, Albacore (white tuna) has toxic levels of mercury.  Guess who's selling the self-test kits?  Greenpeace.  They are trying to determine if the current government regulations against emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants are adequate.  Mercury damages the central nervous system and is particularly harmful for developing fetuses.  Scary stuff, if you ask me.  Here's an excerpt from their site.

"Why should I participate in Greenpeace's National Hair Sampling Project for Mercury Exposure?

We are encouraging you to participate because we have reason to believe that current and proposed governmental regulations for mercury are not adequate to protect the public health. You have an opportunity to ascertain for yourself whether you have an abnormal level of mercury in your system. Should you find that you do have these high levels, you can take corrective action to protect your health.

Learn more about mercury and Greenpeace's National Hair Sampling Project for Mercury."

I like cheap electricity like the next person, but my take on coal-fired power plants is that they are bad in the long term.  Scandinavian countries burn trees for electricity and the trees grow back and do not contain mercury.  In fact, when trees grow, they take carbon out of the atmosphere.  Taking carbon that's already in the biosphere and recycling it makes sense.  Taking carbon in the form of coal out of the ground and spewing it into the atmosphere in wholesale quantities, along with pollutants like mercury, can't be completely benign.  I always wonder if we would get smart and thin the trees for making power, if we'd have fewer major forest fires, which is a giant problem in the West.  Some of those old stands of treespecies burned so hot, they'll never be restored.  Before we came along there were incremental burns that happened naturally that didn't burn as hot, because there was less fuel on the ground.  We have more trees in this country now than ever were here.  Using them to make energy instead of using fossil fuels seems very logical to me.  We don't use wood to heat our homes much any more.  It's just an obvious semi-clean renewable energy source which isn't discussed much.

No MO income tax!

Looks like we get to vote on replacing MO income tax with a state sales tax this November.  Wow.  I'm thrilled.  I'll be more thrilled when it passes.

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03/11/2008 -  SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON TAX REFORM Voted Do Pass HB2112
Establishes the Fair Tax Act of 2008 which requires the Department of Revenue to develop methods for replacing the state income tax with a state sales tax

8. The passage and approval of the prohibition on the taxation of income and the levy and imposition of a tax upon all use or consumption of taxable property or services under this section shall not become effective unless such passage and approval is submitted to the qualified voters of this state for approval or rejection at the election which shall be held and conducted on the Tuesday immediately following the first Monday in November, 2008, (and that is November 4, 2008!)  under the laws and constitutional provisions of this state applicable to general elections and the submission of referendum measures by initiative petition, and it shall become effective when approved by a majority of the votes cast thereon at such election and not otherwise.

Poker on Facebook

If anyone wants to play a friendly sit-n-go poker tournament among friends.  Let's play on Facebook Texas Hold'Em.  I want to try it out on Thursday night.

Election spoiler

Just when I think The Onion is turning lame, they put up something that gives me belly laughs.  Apparently, when a Diebold electronic voting machine seg-faults a blue screen appears and reveals the rigged results of the 2008 presidential election.  AOL Journals won't allow embedded video from The Onion, so you'll have to click here to see who's going to win.

Obamanomics

The Wall Street Journal keeps using the word Obamanomics.  They should just say abominable economics.  His spendy fiscal agenda exceeds $300 billion.  That's even more than Hillary's agenda (by 36%)[ref.].  If he gets elected, we'll be out of the frying pan and into the fire.  If a presidential candidate is talking about monkeying with the economy and it doesn't involve a tax cut, I'm not really interested in hearing about it.  I'm in a tax bracket which is abusive.  In 2007, I paid more in taxes than the 2006 median income per household member [ref.].  Not just a little more; I could have bought a new car with the difference.  I'm a frequent visitor to the National Taxpayers Union website.  When you read about the tax money that is completely wasted, while you're having to budget to make the money they didn't take last until the next payday, it's truly sickening.

Snake Saturday Soon

There are enough Irish folks in Kansas City to put on a pretty impressive parade.   On March 15, I'll be there to check it out.

The ice at Carriage Club melted on Sunday when it was 74, so they just shut 'er down for the season.  Tuesday night hockey is moved back out to Pepsi Ice Midwest.  I'm not going tonight, because I was so busy yesterday at work, I forgot to RSVP.  Oops.

aoljurlAdd, aoljurlAdd_1

Crazy, wacky, wild weather.

The Kansas City weather roller coaster is some ride.  It went from 74 and partly cloudy to 37 and raining cats and dogs.  They're predicting snow and 17 degree temps tomorrow.  It was the nicest day all winter, and now it's going to flood, freeze, snow, and drop into the teens.  Who ordered this?



I wouldn't want to try to play hockey in 72 degrees.  I went to an outdoor rink today with Drew and Claire, and the water was a half inch deep in places.  You can't move a puck on water covered ice, but you can skate on that as long as you stop one footed.  A two footed stop means one foot is spraying water on the other leg.  I learned this the hard way and my right skate was full of water.  Claire liked skating in the wet part, because it was more fun when she fell. . . it's like a slip 'n' slide.  Timmay's son, Charlie, is a natural born skater and can skate very fast for 6 years old.  I was skating backwards as fast as I could with him chasing me and he fell face first in the deepest part and slid 30 feet with water spraying everywhere.  It was impossible not to laugh, but I felt partly to blame.  I helped him up, but he's built tough and was unfazed.  Drew laughed when Claire fell in the water.  Seconds later, he fell in the water on his back!  He said it was karma, so when she fell again, he didn't laugh.  I laughed at him, and I didn't fall.  I found a diamond ring in the parking garage.  So much for karma.

The warm-up skate was good for my game.  We had a great win tonight.  It was good to have two full lines show up.  It made for a fun game.  And our goalie played well.  Furthermore, we were up by two points in the last period and their team made stupid penalties out of frustration, which pretty much sealed it.