For the love of God, don't buy these bulbs!

The CFL mercury nightmare

Apparently, compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs contain mercury...at an amount 6x recommended 'safe' levels. And what happens when the bulbs have finally outlived their usefulness? From the article:

As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine "safety" standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to "safely" contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal.

Wow. That's a pretty big problem. And, how many light sockets are in the United States?

I think I'm going to stick with regular incandescent bulbs until the LED bulbs come down in price.

Doesn't quite add up

U.K. reviewing prince’s Iraq stint - Europe - MSNBC.com

I don't know how many hawks in Washington have children in Iraq, let alone on the front lines; so this statement may be unqualified. But I find it a little strange that such a high-ranking member of the royal family would DEMAND to be serving right in the middle of things in Iraq. Prince Harry has even threatened to quit the royal army if he's stuck behind a desk.

Why?

Why would someone with so much to lose be willing to risk it all in Iraq? Is he crazy? Is he stupid? Is this just blind patriotism?

Or, perhaps, there's more going on here than the MSM and the Dems are allowing us to see.

I don't know. To me, though, this just doesn't quite add up.

I think I just came a little...

A Girl Like You - Edwyn Collins - Pandora Internet Radio

This song is amazing. I've heard it before (of course...the song is 14 years old), but it's the first time I've seen it pop up on Pandora.

It's like David Bowie singing, and Jimi Hendrix on the guitar.

ohhhhh....

Someone get me a towel.

Or a mop.

Whatever.

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED

Unless you live under a rock, you've probably heard that one of the greatest authors and minds of all time died yesterday. There's an outpouring of grief on teh intarwebs as we speak, from all the people who were touched by this man's wit and wisdom.

I stumbled across a little quote from his last (or one of his last) work, and I think it's fitting to use it here:

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:"

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC

If it walks like a duck...

I have no idea how or why I stumbled across it, but it let me on an interesting adventure so far. For some completely illogical reason (other than, maybe, I want 'prosperity' without putting effort into it, like a good-ole-fashioned lazy American should want), I ended up looking for this book.

PS: No blue feathers in, on, or near the book; however, there is a RED feather on the back...which meant SOMETHING, but I forget what now. But I digress.

So, I bought the book for, like, $4.50 (plus $5 for shipping and handling, expedited). It finally arrived yesterday afternoon, and I followed the instructions and lessons therein.

Just this morning, not even 24 hours after I received the book, and did the first few exercises (which, by the way, aren't TOTALLY effortless, but RELATIVELY effortless...just to clear that up), one of my coworkers commented that there was something very different about me.

The first thing that came to my mind was, "Say what!?" I'm just as scruffy as usual...my hair is still long and graying...I was wearing the same clothes I always wear (uh, I do change my clothes day to day, wise guy(s)...I mean, the same KIND of clothes)...so what in the world COULD be so different about me?

I don't know about you, but after this happened, then some other "Donnie Darko" synchronicity I never posted on my blog, and now this, I'm taking a bit of a new approach to things. The timing of all this stuff is ... beyond coincidence. What's really odd is how all the things I learned in Christianity tie into what I learned from Eckankar, that tie into Huna, that tie into this stuff in Bijan's book, that tie into everything else. It's almost a perfect web, leaving me to wonder what it all means.

I looked at this website after getting the book yesterday, and noted first off its extraneous use of Flash (being a bit of a hack webmaster, I can get a little picky about web usability). Then I wondered how much money-grubbing horse manure Bijan's stuff is compared to every other self-help manual. Well, like the old cliche goes, if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck...

So far, I don't think this stuff amounts to just 'quackery.'

What's in that food you're eating?

So, having recently kicked my gym-bunny habit into full gear ... again ... for the third time now ... I started looking more closely at what I eat. I've always considered low-fat yoghurt to be one of the better things you can eat for a snack. But, after being told (you need to sign up to see this page--it's free, so don't worry--and it's page 7 on week 4) that I need to consume at least 400g of protein a day, I wanted to see how much of that protein I'm getting from my yoghurt.

Well, here's the breakdown of what's in my yoghurt:
Calories: 210
Serving size: 1 container (227 grams ... keep a note of this!)
Total fat: 2.5 grams
Cholesterol: 0.01 g
Sodium: 0.105 g
Potassium: 0.300 g
Total carbs: 41 g
Protein: 7g

Wow. 7g? That'll be about 57 yoghurts I'll need to eat. Yikes.

After looking at all the nutrients in the yoghurt, I wondered about something. Do all those numbers add up to the total weight of the yoghurt in the container?

Not even close.

It seems that there is 176.085 grams of ... stuff ... in my yoghurt. Out of 227. Only 50.915 grams of the yoghurt is really accounted for, nutritionally.

So, that left me to wondering... what the hell ELSE is in my yoghurt!?