I often hear people decrying government regulations, all this oversight intruding into business and keeping things from running smoothly, thereby upping the time/cost to produce goods, resulting in higher retail prices, which result in higher sales tax so we can pay for all the oversight...

Regulations do not exist in a vacuum, there isn't a room full of guys going "how can we stick it to businesses this week?"  Regulations exist for (generally) very good reasons.  For example, regulations that prevent people from dumping toxic waste in a river exist because duh, somebody dumped toxic waste in a river to the detriment of the health and well being of others.

Why am I on this particular toxic stream of consciousness?  Perhaps you recall the news stories recently about people who's pets died suddenly (or became very ill) after eating certain brands of pet food?  The trail has led to concentrated rice protein for animal consumption imported from China, which is contaminated with melamine.  Melamine is high in nitrogen, which makes it a useful component of fertilizer, but which also causes it to resemble protein when animal food contaminated with it is analyzed for protein content.  By powderizing melamine and mixing it with pet food, you get food that seems to be very rich in protein and which in turn means you can use lower-grade products that cost less to make the feed.

There are no regulations in China regarding melamine in pet food, and so, surprise surprise, most Chinese animal feed contains melamine.  Is it safe?  Or rather, how much is safe?  Don't know.  You'd have to pay for a study to determine that, and suppose the study found out that small amounts had deleterious effects over time?  Then you'd need to make regulations, and enforce them, and that would cost money (and impact your economy.)  Without any studies, people have been adding it to feed for the economic benefits, without any guidelines as to how much is too much.

From Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China (New York Times):
..."Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed," said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. "I don't know if there's a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says 'don't do it,' so everyone's doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren't they? If there's no accident, there won't be any regulation."...

When ingested, melamine (which is manufactured from coal) is apparently metabolized into various chemicals, one of which is ammonia.  It turns out that the symptoms of the American pets that became sick or died resemble ammonia poisoning.  If the person or persons responsible for the tainted rice protein had been a little less greedy and had used less melamine, maybe several pet owners wouldn't have lost their pets.

Melamine is NOT FOOD.  Therefore there is no nutritional reason for it to be there.  Your cat's renal system doesn't benefit from a feed manufacturer's bottom line.  But corporations are not motivated by civil responsibility, they are motivated by money.  Remember the infamous "Ford Pinto Memo"?  When Ford Motors decided that it would be cheaper to pay off lawsuits from families who's loved ones would die in exploding Pintos, than it would be to effect an eleven dollar repair to each Pinto?  Human or animal life is worth dick to some people (c.f. ULev article Human Wrongs from September of 2005, which also involved China).

This is why we need government oversight.  China has less food-safety oversight than we do, and the result is apparent:

From Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China (New York Times):
...The pet food case is also putting China’s agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country has had a terrible food safety record.

In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim...

This document is going nowhere.  I've deleted it and I'll have to start over.  I seem to be having trouble focussing today.  I think maybe I'm depressed.  It just seems like a lot of things are going wrong.  Also, I am still greiving, I'm constantly catching myself brooding.

I think I need to take a walk outside for a little while.

There's so much stuff going on in my life now I am very preoccupied.  Today it hit home just how preoccupied I am.  I got to work (late) and settled down to get going on this document I need to finish before I disappear next week for my oral surgery and recovery.  But first I tossed my lunch in the microwave and started heating it up.  Then I sat down an ate a plum that was in my lunchbag while I was working and lunch was cooking.  The plum was delicious, according to the label on it, it was "Tree Ripened from Chile".  I worked and ate, worked and ate.  Finished the plum, tossed it away.  Realized I was still quite hungry 20 minutes later and then remembered I needed to get my lunch from the kitchen.  Someone had long since taken it out of the microwave but it was still warm.  So I returned and dove back into my document, but couldn't shake the feeling that I had forgotten something.

About 10 minutes later I finally figured out what it was.  I never took the label off the plum.  Apparently, I ate it.

I'm a little preoccupied.

And apparently, tree ripened, from Chile as well.

It's been awhile since I blogged about my latest finds at 3Hive (a great source for downloading tracks from terrific indie bands.) The pickings have been pretty slim over the last 4 months, and though I have grabbed some things I liked, I haven't found anything that blew my mind.  This is what I've heard recently that I enjoyed (in chronological order)...

1. Tom Rothrock
   Track: Darker Blues
   
   Like the title says, this isn't just the blues, but has a darker bent to it. A piece like this would make fine theme music for the life of a criminal. Thanks Tom for this bit of darkness.  
    
2. Kama Aina
   Track: Hotaru
   
   It's not clear where this piece of meditative slowcore by the Japanese artist Takuji Aoyagi is going, but as it draws me in with it's rhythms I slowly lose interest in the destination and simply enjoy the journey. It makes me think of water gardens and zen gardens as it works through its progressions.
    
3. L.A.O.S.
   Track: Drowning Deep Inside Your Soul
   
   And from Japanese acoustical meditative music, we move to Finnish electronica meditative music. L.A.O.S. (Large Amounts of Soul) may inspire you to move as much as Kama Aina inspires you to sit still, and yet I can't help feeling that there is something common between the two pieces. A word to those who are not broadbandy -- this is a "Large Amount Of Music"... it's approximately a 15Mb download. So if you aren't huge on funky electronica, you may want to give it a pass.
    
4. Missing Numbers
   Track: The Real Realizer
   
   Darker than Darker Blues, this piece will make you feel the power of the drone. It took all of a few seconds of the throaty saxophone at the beginning of this song to make me sit up and pay attention.  The music runs thick with coarse gritty cynicism and the disturbing taste of exhaust fumes. When I close my eyes with this song playing, I can't help seeing a man in a dark trench coat, wearing a fedora, and walking through a dark alley in a city at night. Steam billows from the grates behind him as he stops to consider the bum sitting on the sidewalk and holding out a cup for change, and then just walks away.
    
5. Money Mark
   Track: Pick Up the Pieces
   
   Okay, I'll be honest and admit up front that this song is fairly mediocre in my opinion. I liked it enough to not throw it away while I was looking for something better to download. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the execution. It's decent filler in your background music... not necessarily something you would actually want to pay attention to. But, maybe you'll like it more than I do. It would make decent music for a video game like The Sims.
    
6. Reutschle
   Tracks: (1) Can You Remember?, (2) Don't Turn Around
   
   This pop band comes from Dayton, Ohio, and although I would hardly call these tracks "deep" I would definitely call them "fun". This summery stuff strikes me as both corny and goofy, but if I just let it play I find myself smiling and wanting to clap along. I am not a music afficionado by any standard, so I couldn't even begin to tell you what influences this group, but their music simultaneously reminds me of the Beach Boys and the Partridge Family. Have a listen and make your own determination. There are actually more tracks available for download than these, but I didn't check them out.
    
7. Bee and Flower
   Tracks: (1) Don't Say Don't Worry, (2) Riding on Empty
   
   Of the four tracks available for download, I only liked these two. The vocalist has a great voice and the music is moody and beautiful, but ultimately depressing. If you are in an angsty mood, this might be something you would enjoy. This is not happy music, but instead a wretched downward spiral... particularly Riding on Empty.
    
8. Buildings Breeding
   Track: Emma Wood
   
   I place this piece in the same bin as Pick Up the Pieces by Money Mark, which is to say "well... I didn't delete it." This is background music for sure. There were two other tracks by the same band available, but I actively disliked them.
    
9. The Expos
   Track: Little Red Hook
   
   Now this is a fun piece of music if you like ska. I hear a lot of stuff on 3Hive which is described as ska, but when I hear it I find myself saying "this is ska?" Not so this piece. This gets my head bobbing... the singer notes "I've got a little red hook" and he has caught me with it.
    
10. The Red Button
    Track: She's Going Down
    
    3Hive describes this piece as a "sleepy little pop song". I agree wholeheartedly--what a fun, pleasant little tune. This is music to listen to while you and someone you love cuddle in a hammock and laugh a sunny summer afternoon away.
     
11. Sister Vanilla
    Tracks: (1) Jamcolas, (2) Can't Stop the Rock
    
    Not my typical fare. It's still pop, but it's pop flirting with grunge and a little punk. Sister Vanilla wouldn't sound too out of place in a mix that included Billy Idol, Nirvana, and Garbage. I like both of these tracks. Jamcolas is more on the punky side, and Can't Stop the Rock is more on the grungy side.
     
12. The Bird and the Bee
    Track: I Hate Camera
    
    Here's an interesting song. I definitely want to hear more from The Bird and the Bee. I love eccentric lyrics and eccentric music. One thing is certain in this song, she hates that camera and doesn't want her picture taken. This piece has a retro element to it and also sounds like it incorporates music from old video games in spots.
     
13. Luz Mob
    Tracks: (1) The Selector, (2) Ella Se Fue
    
    What strange mix of styles! When Selector starts, I'm thinking, okay some kind of mellow electronica funk. But then the second layer of music kicks in and I'm listening to the sort of reggae I would expect from The Police. And as I wonder if I'm going to be Walking on the Moon the horns begin. Horns? Is that... jazz? I don't really care for jazz, and I suspect a hardcore jazz fan might not call this jazz, but it sounds like jazz to me... uh, set to a reggae beat with electronic undertones. So then I switch over to Ella Se Fue and I'm bathed in a distinctly latin tune being belted out in goofy synthetic cherps. And there go those horns again.
    
    What the hell do you call this?
    
    Luz Mob, apparently!
     
14. Vapnet
    Tracks: (1) Färjemansleden, (2) Thoméegränd
    
    I'm only 25% Swedish, but I have a soft spot for Swedish bands, and Vapnet actually sings in Swedish (an incredibly beautiful language which I have never been able to master.) This is the second time today I am going to mention the Partridge Family, except in this case it would really be the "Rapphöna Barn". It isn't awesome music, but it is very gentle, and if I allow it, Färjemansleden and Thoméegränd buoy my soul, swaddle me in melody, and carry me away.
    
    Tack så mycket, Vapnet. 

Sadly missing from today's lineup of songs is any really good driving music, except perhaps for Darker Blues or Real Realizer. Hope you enjoy at least some of this music, and BTW if you know any good sources for downloading free indie music (legally), please share them.

Perhaps you've heard of Stacy Snyder.  She was a 25 year old student pursuing a degree in education at Millersville University in Millersville Pennsylvania.  Ms. Snyder has a MySpace page, and on it she had posted a picture of herself attending a Halloween costume party.  She was wearing a T-shirt and a tiny pirate hat on her head, and drinking from a plastic cup.  The caption under the picture said "Drunken Pirate."  As inappropriate pictures go, this one was pretty tame.  I've seen it myself, and if the caption hadn't said "Drunken" you wouldn't have any idea at all what she was drinking, since she didn't look drunk.

Nonetheless she was reprimanded by the Dean of Education at Millersville University based on this picture, and was informed that it was unprofessional and encouraged underage drinking (note that she was not under age at the time the picture was taken.)  She apologized.  But apparently that wasn't good enough.  On the evening before her graduation, she was informed that she would not be receiving a degree in education, and instead received a degree in English.

Just so we're clear, this bright young woman had a perfectly innocent picture of herself drinking from a cup on her MySpace page, with the caption "Drunken Pirate" underneath it, and because of this, her years and expense in college are for nothing and she cannot teach, which is all she ever wanted to do.  Sounds a little harsh to me.  It's not like she was falling down drunk and flashing herself at the camera while a guy poured beer on her.

So now Ms. Snyder is suing the university for $75,000 and her degree in education.  I find myself thinking she deserves both.  Now. 

...So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did...

-- Allen Lee, Carly-Grove High School Student

 Allen Lee wrote some seriously disturbed crap during a "Free Writing" assignment in his high school English class this week.  Apparently the instructions on the assignment made clear that the students were not to censor themselves and should instead write whatever came to mind.  The point was to keep writing and not to stop until the time ran out.  Allen's essay begins "Blood sex and Booze. Drugs Drugs Drugs are fun. Stab, Stab, Stab, S…t…a…b…, poke."  The end of the essay concludes with a message to his teacher: "No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting." The "cg" refers to "Carly-Grove", the name of Allen's school.

It is evident from his essay that he has an extremely low opinion of his teacher, and English in general.  So I suppose it's possible he selected subject matter most calculated to upset the teacher.  If so, the calculations were spot-on.  Allen's teacher apparently called the police, and now he is charged with disorderly conduct according to the Chicago Tribune.  You can read Allen's entire essay here.

I read the last sentence of Allen's essay as a threat, and therefore I am not at all surprised that some sort of discipline is in order, and I fail to see why Allen would be surprised.  But apparently a lot of people are surprised because they seem to be leaping to his defense and claiming that the teacher/school are overreacting.

In the meantime Allen is planning to join the Marines.

The questions here are, are these the ravings of a deranged mind, or a normal high school student attempting to undertake a free writing assignment and making a poor choice of subject matter?  Was arresting him an appropriate reaction or an overreaction?

What do you think?

New Hampshire legalizes civil unions!  I found this particular comment extremely amusing:

...Several senators described civil unions as unnatural and warned that the partnerships would harm heterosexual marriage. "We don't allow our cousins to marry, you can't marry your brother, you can't marry your sister," said Sen. Robert Letourneau, a Derry Republican. "We don't allow blind people to drive or felons to vote, all for good and obvious reasons."...

Thank you for comparing a healthy loving relationship between two people of the same gender to blind people driving, criminals voting, and incest.  What an ass.  What, pray tell, are the "good and obvious" reasons for disallowing gay marriage?  I've yet to hear any, and I've been listening for a long time.  Besides, these are civil unions we are talking about.  Oh yeah, and on that note, Letourneau has more to say...

...Despite the efforts of Democratic senators to distinguish civil unions from same-sex marriage, Republicans cast civil unions as marriage in all but name. "Let's call it what it really is," Letourneau said. "This creates same-sex marriage."...

I'm sorry I was laughing too hard to follow that.  Do you mean to tell me after all the tooth and nail fighting deny gay people marriage and the offering of civil unions as a substitute, now we're going to say that civil unions are the same as gay marriage?  Then what was the point of making the differentiation before we banned gay marriage?  You gays can't have X, why can't you settle for Y?  Okay now we passed a law saying you can't have X.  What you want Y now?  No way!  It's as bad as X!

Good for you New Hampshire.  I'd rather it was same-sex marriage, but at least this is a step in the right direction.

So as long as I am stealing ideas from James, I might as well go for broke.  Aces Full of Links has a great sidebar where James can list links to articles he's recently read, would like to share, but might not have time to write about.  This is a feature of Google Reader and it is very slick.  While reading articles in the reader, there's a button one can click to share the article, and this causes it to immediately show up in a "clip" you can install on your blog.

I really like this idea, so I'm stealing it from James.  Unbecoming Levity now includes a new sidebar called "Interesting Articles I've Read".  It appears at the bottom of the sidebar on the left, right beneath the blogroll.

I often come across something I want to share but just don't have the time to write an article.  I used to use some third party sites for this in the past, but got tired of my blog failing to load because the third party server was down.  I have a feeling Google would be a lot more reliable, so I'll give it another shot.

This is kind of cool.  Punch a phone number into PhoNETic and it will try to find a word phrase or partial word phrase for your phone number based on the conversion of digits to letters on a standard pushbutton phone keypad.  There wasn't anything good for mine, and even if there was I wouldn't post it because duh, then I'd be putting my phone number online!  But it was a little fun to play with so, enjoy.

I served on a jury for a drunk driving case many years ago, what they now call an OUI case (Operating Under the Influence).  Out of the juror pool we lost one potential juror early.  Apparently this juror had been arrested for prostitution at one point in the past and had been acquitted, but both the prosecutor and one of the offficers had been involved in her case, which she felt would taint her opinion.  So the judge dismissed her.  One of the other questions that the pool was asked before the trial began was "If you feel you would be less incined, or more inclined to believe the word of a police officer, simply because he or she is a police officer, you should speak up now."  Point being that would prevent you from dispassionately deliberating on the merits of the evidence alone, instead of who was giving the evidence.

During the case, I became convinced by the defense attorney that the defendant was not actually drunk when she was arrested for DUI.  The officer that had arrested her seemed very young and had only been on the force for a short time, and I became convinced that he was inexperienced.  The other officer, the one who did bookings, seemed a little less than honest.  I found it questionable that he could remember the exact demeanor of a person he had booked months earlier, when his job is booking person after person, day in and day out.  When asked if he felt the defendant was drunk at the time she was booked, he said "yes".  When asked why he said "she had bloodshot eyes, and seemed unsteady on her feet."  When asked if he had testified in a different drunk driving case earlier that same day, he responded "yes".  When asked if his testimony in that case had been, verbatim, "he had bloodshot eyes, and seemed unsteady on his feet" he also responded "yes".  This gave me, and others on the jury, the impression that this guy said the same thing on every case, and basically he was just there to back up the arresting officer.

Finally when it came to the field sobriety test evidence, the defendant had passed most of the tests, and had failed on "stand on one foot and count aloud until I tell you to stop".  According to the testimony, the defendant at first didn't count aloud, was then asked to, and counted "5 6 7 8 9 10" and put her foot down.  The arresting officer asked "Why did you stop?"  She said "I'm done."  And that was the end of the sobriety test evidence.  No breathalyzer evidence was admitted.  The defense attorney even offered in his closing argument that it is hard for a sober person to stand on one foot and count for a long period of time.  I wasn't sure I bought that argument.

Once we got into the deliberation room it took about 30 minutes to reach a consensus.  Some of us had been convinced that the arresting officer was inexperienced, and although the defendant had drunk a few beers during the day, she probably wasn't over the limit for blood alcohol at the time she was arrested.  The testimony of the officer that she was driving slowly and hunched forward over the wheel (what he described as "windshield face") didn't seem all that compelling... there was no mention of erratic steering, falling down, etc.  And where was the breathalyzer evidence?  If she had failed the breath test, it would surely have been brought up in court.

There were a few jurors who weren't really sure either way.  I was in the not-drunk camp, and it wasn't long before I was the spokesman for the not-drunk camp.  Before long the drunk camp contained only one woman who (late in the deliberations) said "Listen, my dad is a retired police officer, and those guys are fully trained to recognize a drunk person."  I asked her if that shouldn't have been grounds to excuse herself from the jury, given that anyone less inclined or more inclined to believe a police officer's testimony was supposed to identify themselves before the trial.  She said "I'm not more inclined to trust a police officer," then after a pause added, "well I guess I am."

I pressed on.  "Is it completely inconceivable that a young inexperienced officer might not have a firm grasp on his DUI training, given all the other stuff he has to learn?  There's good and bad in every bunch, is it impossible that this guy just made a mistake?  Smelled a little beer, saw red eyes and decided the defendant was drunk?  Heck I could drink a beer and pet my cat and I would meet both of those requirements and yet be completely fit to drive."

Eventually, she gave up.  "Well I think she's guilty, but I'll say not guilty because you've all made up your minds."  And so the defendant was able to walk out of the courtroom, avoiding a conviction for driving while intoxicated.

Outside the courtroom, the defense attorney asked to talk to me once the trial was over.  He wanted to know the details of our deliberation, perhaps to determine what arguments were effective and what arguments were not.  The defendant was standing right next to him.  So I went over with him what we had discussed.  When I mentioned that we felt there would have been breathalyzer evidence had she failed the test, the defendant suddenly laughed and said "Of course there was no breathalyzer evidence, I refused to take the test."  This fact, combined with what I read on her face during this admission, a sort of ha-ha-I-fooled-you look, immediately changed my mind.  My heart sank in my chest and I realized I had been instrumental in allowing a person who had been endangering herself and others while driving drunk to get off scott free.

The lawyer explained that under Massachusetts state law it is considered the equivalent of invoking the fifth amendment, you can refuse breathalyzer and sobriety tests on the grounds that it would incriminate you.  Further, the prosecutor in an OUI case is not allowed to reveal if a defendant refused the breathalyzer or sobriety test in Massachusetts.  So this is why we had not gotten any breathalyzer evidence, because the defendant herself believed she was drunk at the time, and had refused the test.  My expression probably betrayed my feelings because the defendant laughed again and said to her lawyer "He's starting to think he made the wrong decision."

I was not amused.  I looked her in the eye and said "If I were you, I'd be thanking my lucky stars I got away with it because you very nearly didn't, so you damn well better not do it again."  I turned and stalked away.  Minutes earlier I was feeling pretty good about doing my civic duty.  Now I was furious, mostly with myself for being such a tool.  The two most convincing and outspoken jurors in that deliberation room had been the lady who's father was a police officer and myself.  Had I not been there, the defendant might have gotten the conviction she deserved.

I fumed about it for days afterward, but like all things, eventually it faded from my consciousness, except for one detail--if there is no breathalyzer evidence, the defendant refused the test.  This one piece of information would likely cause me to immediately feel a defendant was guilty if no breathalyzer evidence was offered, so in order to obey the law, from this point forward I would need to excuse myself from juries for OUI cases.  I'm not sure I buy the "fifth amendment" comparison.  Unless I'm mistaken (always a possibility), if a witness asserts their fifth amendment privilege, they do so on the stand in front of the jury.  The jury doesn't get shielded from the fact that the witness refused to answer.  So I fail to see why the jury should be shielded from the fact that the defendant refused to take a sobriety test or a breathalyzer test.

I was reminded of this story by an article in the Sentinel & Enterprise (the local conservative rag) about the defendant's right to refuse the breathalyzer. 

...When state police arrested a Fitchburg police detective last month for operating under the influence, he refused to perform field sobriety tests or take a breathalyzer, according to a state police report.

And when state police arrested a Fitchburg school district guidance counselor earlier this month for OUI, she also refused to take the breath test, a police report shows.

Both of their trials are scheduled to take place in the next two weeks.

An easy win?

OUI cases are a cakewalk if there is no breathalyzer results and no field sobriety tests, according to attorney Christopher M. Uhl, who defends drunk driving cases...

I will not debate the accuracy of the breathalyzer test--there is evidence both ways.  But this event in my life bothered me for a long time and that is what I wanted to relate.

What do you think?  Should a jury be allowed to know that a defendant refused a field sobriety test or a breathalyzer test?

Added a few random pictures this afternoon:

• In the Car Pictures album, a couple nice snaps of a slick looking two-tone PT Cruiser I spotted on the way to work. (1, 2)
   
• In the Spring 2007 album, some pictures of budding trees, cherry blossoms and dandelions. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
   
• And finally in the Miscellany album, a picture of my lunch... hey I just post the pictures, I don't explain why.

I am giving up on Bloglines.  It's still a halfway decent feed aggregator, but the outages are annoying, and as of a few weeks ago, they performed an update that essentially broke the Bloglines Notifier.  The notifier was a small application that put an icon in the taskbar on your PC (or someplace similar on a Mac) that highlighted red whenever one of the feeds you were interested in had new articles posted.

But some feeds are busier than others, and while I want to know every time a new post appears on, say, Pandora's Tea Room, I do not want to know every time a new post appears on, say, The Boston Globe's news feed.  It's not that I wouldn't read the more active feeds, it's just that they aren't the feeds I would want to stop what I am doing to check on... especially since something new is going to appear every few minutes.  Fortunately Bloglines allows you to specify which feeds will be monitored by the notifier.

Sadly, with their last update, this setting was suddenly ignored by the notifier, and it was constantly blinking at me and popping up a notification bubble saying I had three thousand articles I needed to read.  Essentially it became useless at telling me exactly what I wanted to know.  I notified them immediately of the problem, and here we are weeks later and notifier is still broken.  I realize that Bloglines is free and therefore complaining about it may be unseemly, but if it doesn't do what I want, then I don't want it, free or not.

So the heck with it.  There are other feed aggregators out there.  James mentioned Google Reader to me the other day so I have been trying that and it seems to work nicely.  It unfortunately has no notifier-equivalent that I am aware of, but then again, neither does Bloglines anymore.

Anyway going with Google should lead to less outages, I hope!

As my teeth have declined recently, I've been switching to softer and softer foods (no more apples and ginger snaps... boo hoo).  Grapes on the other hand can be reduced to mush with relatively little pressure so I can still consume them, and while not the healthiest of the fruity snacks, are still marginally better for you than say, spice drops.  At least that's what I tell myself.  I try to eat a banana every day too... lots of potassium and stuff.

Anyway, the thing with grapes is some of them come off the bunch looking pretty nasty, and sometimes I end up throwing away grapes that might still be good.  The sorts of defects I've noticed are:

• Raised whitish puffy areas, usually at the stem-end of the grape (overripe?)
• Brownish bark-like scabs (healed injuries?)
• Brownish discoloration under the surface in regions (bruises?)
• Cracks in the skin that seem to have separated and pulled back (overripe?)
• Bore holes in the surface, usually round and extending a few millimeters inside (eaten by an insect?)
• Shriveling (grape is dead and drying out?)
• Slime/fungus (yechhh!)
• Portions have turned to brown mush (rotten)

For pretty much any of these defects I tend to toss a grape away. Although for the first three, if the affected area is very small or effected in only a slight manner, I may still eat the grape, possibly avoiding the affected area.  But I don't know what really causes any of these things and possibly all of them are safe to eat (except maybe the slimey, fungus-covered variety).  Does anyone else know?

It occurred to me I may be worrying too much.  After all I eat raisins, and it's a fair bet that a grape with any but the last two defects probably shrivels up into a decent raisin where the defect would be much harder to detect.  Therefore, I probably have in fact consumed many a raisin which came from a grape I would have discarded.

How do YOU tell a good grape from a bad grape?

One of the nice things about new cars is that it takes a long time before you need to shell out big bucks to fix them.  For the first couple years or so, there are generally no major problems.  Well Vanessa is about 4 years old now, and that time is gone.  She's been running hot lately, the engine fan is always on, she has a check-engine light coming on, and she is overdue for a manual transmission fluid change.  The dealership where I purchased her is no longer in business, so I took her to a different dealership yesterday to get these issues looked at.

The check-engine light is on because there's a certain emissions-related component which has failed.  Replacing that component will cost $250.

The car has been running hot because the water pump is going, the water pump is covered by the extended powertrain warranty with a $100 deductible, so that will cost another $100.

The manual transmission fluid change will run another $150.  (That is a lot, but apparently the job is difficult to do on this model.  I had previously taken it to Jiffy Lube and they tried but could not do the work.)

The techinician who took the car for a ride said that the engine fan is much louder than normal, which he takes as an indication that the fan is going and will ultimately bind up.  When that happens the car will overheat.  The problem is that the component is extremely expensive ($500+) and installation isn't cheap either.  To replace the fan will run me another $820.

It took 66,000 miles to get to this point, but yeesh, that's a whole lot of damage, and financially speaking, life sucks for me and mine right now.  So, I told them to take care of the first 3 issues but leave the fan for another day.  With the waterpump functioning properly, the fan won't need to be on as much, and hopefully I can get by without having to replace it for awhile.

I hope they finish fixing the car soon.  I miss it already.