I guess the police in Texas are tired of waiting for drunks to be drunk outside the bar, and have started arresting drunk people inside the bar. It’s not legal to be drunk in public of course, so this makes sense I guess. They are trying to protect people from hurting themselves and others, before they drink and drive, or step in front of a bus or something.

It just seems wrong somehow doesn’t it? I’m not sure why this strikes me that way, it must hit me in my liver or something. My mis-spent youthful self would be outraged, but my doddering, tired, 3 beer is the limit, middle-aged self is shaking a mental stick and thinking; “Good for them! Those young’uns shouldn’t be out having any fun! Arrest them all, I say! In my day we didn’t have beer, we had boot polish. Where do you think the term “Polished off another one” came from, anyway? I need a nap.”

An interesting development for asthma sufferers; some researchers have uncovered a relatively surprising discovery that the cells previously thought to be the cause of asthma are innocent, and cells previously thought to be good are actually to blame.

I’m interested because I have asthma, but I also happen to know that these researchers are wrong. “Natural T killer cells” most definitely do not cause asthma, little kitty cats do. And dust and pollen and basically everything else that occurs in the natural world.

Anyway, there you go. What is the Internet good for if not to provide quasi-science and opinion pieces?

Good old Pat. At his age, we would normally look the other way and call it “hardening of the arteries” or “the vapors” or “crazy old stick-shaking geezer syndrome”. It gets a little harder to ignore him though when he owns a television network, and he is continually aggravating religious tensions worldwide.

Anyway, his most recent comments are what can only be described as inflamatory.

I have talked about him briefly before.

I have mentioned sleep 38 times before on the blog. Just search for it, go ahead. 38 hits out of about 650 posts. Which means that just under 6% of the time I am posting about sleep. That seems disproportionately large, doesn’t it? I mean given the array of topics that I could be writing about? I love it, I will admit it. I’m addicted to it, actually. Nikki is no better. Anyway. Here’s another post about sleep.

First, a really good article on Damn Interesting that talks about how the invention of the light bulb is probably causing a lot of our health problems today. The idea is our body sort of needs and expects darkness and rest, but we fight that with light and awake time. The end result is getting sick, basically.

Then, an article that fits neatly in with that, a story about a father and daughter who suffer from a “genetic condition” where their internal body clocks are moved forward and they can’t sleep in. They go to bed by around 6:30 or 7:30 at night and wake up at 3:30am or so. Now, I’m not a science-feller here but really, does this sound like a genetic problem? It sounds, well, awesome. It sounds like any typical farmer’s schedule from the turn of the century to me. They themselves admit it’s not really that bad, they have adapted to the schedule so well they don’t often notice it at all.

As much as Clay and Bethany like the benefits of more time in the morning, there are downsides. Clay has to take caffeine so he won’t fall asleep behind the wheel at night. Bethany misses out on evening events.

Well, call me an idiot, but basically everyone does that. Taking caffeine to stay awake while driving is called coffee, and staying up late to attend events in the evening makes me very very very tired. Anyway, there you go. Soon we will “cure” ourselves of this sleep disease altogether.

Which brings me to the next link: a sleep disorder drug causes people to sleep-eat, sleep-drive, etc. The shocker here is that people who have trouble sleeping take a drug to help them sleep, and then find themselves doing things in their drug-induced sleep. What a strange turn of events that is, eh?

I’m not making light of people who can’t sleep, I’m well aware that I am certainly far from that category of unfortunates who have trouble sleeping at night. I know I feel crappy when I don’t get enough sleep. But I am a little skeptical of taking drugs for too many of life’s ailments. I can’t help but wonder how many of these prescriptions would be unnecessary if the patients were exercising enough and eating better, for instance? Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that, I guess. Just wait for the first lawsuit, though. Maybe a little Ambien murder, or Ambien adultery? Way cool defense for the trial….

A puzzling story out of Pakistan, apparently they hate kites there so badly they arrested over 1000 people for kite flying at a recent kite-flying festival (go figure the crafty detective work there). Apparently this just isn’t “the man” stomping on some light-hearted fun, these are some hard-core nasty kite flyers. The police report that some 500 people are injured yearly during this kite festival:

“…from sharp kite strings and others from stray bullets or pellets fired into the air to celebrate the festival.”

Yes, apparently these guys use metal and glass coated strings to have kite dogfights and cut each other’s strings, pretty and nasty. Apparently 7 people died last year from string lacerations. Wow, these kite guys mean business. I can’t help but think that they would be left alone if they sort of refrained from the kite skeet shoot part of the celebration.

Read this just developing story for yourself.

Make your own tartan, and then order yourself up a mighty kilt to show off your design skills. Nothing more manly than actually wearing a dress of your own design, eh Kyle? Aye.

It’s actually pretty cool idea and a good use of the web.

Link