My Sick Mind

My alma mater, Widener University recently banned smoking on campus. Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer came out in support with these words , among others: Kudos to Widener University for taking steps to ban smoking on its campuses, both indoors and out. Other area colleges and universities should follow Widener's lead. For that matter, so should other institutions, including all hospitals and government facilities. The move would help promote public health and reduce health-care costs. Inhaling secondhand smoke is estimated to cause 3,000 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths in the United States each year. Secondhand smoke is also thought to increase the risk of breast cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma. Most researchers say there is no safe level of secondhand smoke. Kudos indeed, but why are we so worked up over secondhand smoke when the real culprit is firsthand smoke? Government has taken steps to eliminate the dangers of secondhand smoke by isolating smokers fro...

OK, so the camera finally arrived. Curiously, it came via the U.S. Postal Service who had taken it from FedEx after it's strange journey from New York to Edison, NJ to Pottstown, Pennsylvania. What is strange (among other things) is that it took 5 days to go the 116 miles from NYC to Pottstown and only 2 days to go the 75 miles from Pottstown to my workplace in southern New Jersey. I still wonder why they would ship it via FedEx if FedEx was only going to hand it off to the USPS. Mine is not to question why. It's a Nikon Coolpix S570. It's a nice little camera. It takes 12 megapixel photos which are way too large (5.5 megabytes) to post here, so I had to shrink one down to post. Of course, it's my goofy cat in repose. Nikon says that the images are capable of enlargements up to 20" x 30". We'll see. One of these days I'll take it out for a run and have one blown up. On a lighter note... In response to my friend from Canada who recently posted an i...

Do you remember that scene in "Cast Away" where Tom Hanks is berating some Russian FedEx employees because they don't seem to understand the concept of "on time package delivery?" Sure you do. He put a timer in a package that came from the United States and opened it to reveal the exact time it took for the package to arrive from the States to Russia. Then he started screaming about getting some packages on a truck and getting to wherever they were going. It was a nice commercial for FedEx, right in the middle of a movie. The whole movie is pretty much an ad for FedEx, except for the part where the plane crashes into the ocean and the packages start washing ashore. I think FedEx would have preferred they left that out, but it's kind of the point of the movie. Last Tuesday I ordered a little camera from my favorite Internet camera store in New York City. What I have found out in the interim is that I should be in the package delivery business - or at leas...

With the wind blowing at about a hundred miles per hour, the last thing either Thor or I wanted to be doing was making a trip to the veterinarian on Sunday, but trip we did. The day started innocently enough, with me waddling around the place wondering whether I'd stay in and watch football or go out and do something constructive, when I noticed the little guy scratching his right ear like a mental patient. Thinking back, I had noticed him shaking his head for a few days as though he was trying to lure something loose - like I do when I think about my social life. I had wondered about that, but since he hasn't been here very long, I figured it was a strange tic or something odd that he does. But, when I thought about the ear scratching I figured it was something more than a strange habit. When I took a look at his right ear, I noticed that it was kind of red and irritated from all the scratching. I grabbed for the phone and called the vet, hoping they could take him on a Su...