I am sure that most people out there don't really care if their car puts out a lot of carbon dioxide or whatever other bad gasses and liquids that leak from their choice mode of transit. I am sure, though, that most people care if they are getting really good gas mileage. Or if they don't care about the mileage, yes I am talking to you Hummer and other SUV owners out there (and don't tell me it's for car pooling! I never seen more than two people in a SUV ever), they do care about saving money. Which buying gas less often can do for you. Recently I have seen what GM has been experimenting with in the saving the world with better designed cars venture. I know that it will not acutally become a real car but the concept is really interesting. It's refreshing to see that car companies still know how to be creative, and it touches my tree-hugging hippie heart that they still care about the environment. Or, at least they noticed the sales of hybrid cars and decided they needed something fresh and innovative. Let's think about what could be cooler than a hybrid car. Something eyecatching and easy to remember. Something special. Something kinda rediculous and not manly at all. So, what am I talking about, you wonder? None other than the Hummer O2. Pretty clever, eh? Here's a picture: This is a car that is run by algae. And other stuff like hydrogen fuel cells. But look at the aglae. All that aglae is going to turn your louting and polluting CO2 into O2, perfectly breathable by animals and stuff. Probably people, too. The whole car is supposed to act as a leaf, with the algae consuming the byproducts of the motor (the carbon dioxide) and turning it into oxygen, just like a leaf would do in nature. This car would be doing it all the time, even when the car was not running. GM is incoperating a lot of different little car tricks into this vehicle as well showing that they have studied the industry: the hybrid breaking mehcanism for reclaiming energy in the tires, hydrogen fuel cell for the power source, the ugliness of a Hummer, ect. So, it's ugly and probably not going to be voted 2008s cutest car. But, it's the idea that counts. I mean, it's smart to use a reuseable resourse for our fuel, right? Right. I know, I hear the outraged cries of all of the enslaved algae but I think there will be benefits for them as well. I just don't know what yet. I mean, they would be getting all of the sunlight any chlorophyll owning specimen could ever ask for. It's an all you can eat sunlight buffet. Of sun-shiny goodness. Unless you live in Ohio. Then it's a lot of cloudy days. So, live in Florida and this is the ugly little car for you. And I hope you like green because there aren't going to be a lot of customized colors on this one. Maybe blueish (blue green algae) or reddish brown (red tide or dinoflagellates) if they can figure it out. On the website there is also a pretty colored schematic of how exactly they think this car will work. The man driving the car is sitting directly inside the hydrogen fuel cell as far as I can tell. And it looks like he has a tree growing out of his head, possibly a result from sitting inside the hydrogen fuel cell. But look at all the sunlight. I told you it would be a buffet.

A new report on immigration from the Missouri House is making the staggering claim that abortion leads to a shortage in the American workforce and thus leads to illegal immigration to fill the positions that should have been held by these aborted people. First off - I am not making this up. This is not a joke post. Secondly, the report was created by a "Republican-led legislative panel" so considering the Republican stand on abortion, you can be sure that THEY are not making it up - they truly believe that abortion leads to illegal immigration. With the midterms over and the Republicans scrambling to regain popularity they are trying to wrap three huge domestic issues - immigration, abortion and unemployment - into one little study to show how they are all related, and that the Government truly does care about domestic issues (since they ain't winning any voters over with their messes outside the country). I wasn't aware there even WAS a shortage of American workers. If there is an unemployment rate at all (currently around 4.7%) then there is no shortage. Employers aren't begging people to come work illegally. They're perhaps begging people to come work under the table to avoid withholding taxes or to come work for dirt cheap but the problem there is not a shortage of American workers, it's a shortage of employers willing to pay a living wage and pay taxes on & benefits to their employees. According to the article, National Right to Life estimates 47 billion abortions have been performed since 1973. Committee chairman Ed Emery says "If you kill 44 million of your potential workers, it's not too surprising we would be desperate for workers." Let's see...if we had 44 million more people, we'd probably be more desperate for health care too. Probably more desperate for welfare. We'd probably have a larger population of unfit mothers, drug users, kids crammed in schools, and uhm...unemployed Americans! Since all six of the Democrats on the panel refused to sign the report (one called it "embarassing") and all 10 Republicans signed it, this report clearly smacks of partisanism. Either all of the Republicans are flaming idiots or they are just signing whatever comes through to their "Republican Led Committee" inbox. One Republican panel member, says the linked article, contends that he "didn't recall the report linking abortion and illegal immigration." Unfortunately my Google-fu is as weak as the AP writer's is who broke the story, so we won't be able to read the report ourselves to see if the Republicans possibly came up with a million other reasons why illegal immigration is a growing problem in the US or if they have just settled on abortion. They might as well kill two unwanted birds with one stone, eh? What do you think? Are the Republicans crazy? Are the Dems just trying to make them look crazy? Or is abortion actually a good argument for why illegal immigration is a problem in the United States?

Today I have a special treat for all of you interneters out there. I have been granted the special privilage to observe the Mindless Drones (Consumreous obsessiva) standing outside of a local retailer on Tdat. It's 4:30 am and so far I am the only scientist on the scene. There is a line of maybe 75 Mindless Drones all waiting to get their hands on the hottest Christmas items this season at 6:00 am. I locate my specimen, a drone in her mid 40s standing with shopping cart ready at hand. She is dressed for the occastion, wearing a thick scarf and hat, gloves with the fingers cut out and a big ski jacket from 1965. The fire of determination burns in her dull eyes like coals in a fire without oxygen. She looks up at me as I walk towards her and grips her cart fiercely. I see she is threantened and I carefully make the universal sign of good will and guarantee her that I won't cut in line. She looks apprehensive but I think I have won her trust so I approach her with care. The whole idea is to be as careful as possible around these rare creatures since their complaicent attitude could turn violent in a moment's notice due to their incredible territorial nature. This is a great day for science and our study on the flocking patterns of Mindless Drones. Usually these creatures move either solitary or in small groups of family units, but once a year they all gather to frequent the big box community. No one can say exactly why they only group together on this one day in such numbers but some have speculated that it's the low low prices and extra special deals that bring this otherwise reclusive creatures into direct contact with eachother. It is said that some of these creatures can be seen on the day before Christmas in the same areas but it has not been confirmed due to the striking similarity of these Mindless Drones and the more common Last Minute Shopper (Consumerous quixotic). I sense some restlessness in the group. The time is now approaching 5:30 and the flock has more than doubled. I am in shock to see that some of these creatures have brought their young. I wonder if I am the first scienctist to actually see the parenting behavior of these fascinating animals. Most of the offspring are still sleeping in makeshift nests inside shopping carts but some of them are making loud noises, probably to attract attention from their mother. Truely incredible. I notice that our specimen's offspring is with her. I wonder if she has been unsucessful in choosing a mate. Her offspring looks strikingly different than the rest of the young in this group but is dressed in a similar fashion. It makes me wonder if there is some interspecies mating going on between the Mindless Drones and the Last Minute Shopper. It could just be a genetic mutant, as well, but we may never know. The mating habits of these fascinating creatures is a very rare occasion and has never been recorded by a fellow scientist. Tension builds up as I have to leave you, but please, tune in next time for the exciting conclusion to this very groundbreaking nature documentary.

As you know, we are only a few weeks away from that time of year where people lose whatever sanity they had and head out into the icy world in search for the elusive TMX Elmo or the PS3. These herds of mindless drones pushed on by consumer desire and 10 year olds are the most dangerous creatures known to mankind. The most dreaded/anticipated day of the year is coming up, The Day After Thanksgiving. The day that, for most retail workers, must not be named. So, from here on out, we will refer to it as Tdat. Or, as they call it in the world of retail, Blitz. Most of the mindless drones will spend the whole day of Thanksgiving plotting their course through the rapids of early morning shopping to get the best deals on toasters and TV sets, to find the toy of their spoiled rotten child's dream of the minute or whatever they happen to be standing in line at 4 in the morning to buy. Where will they be, you ask? Probably at one of the major retailers that you happen to have in your hometown area. I believe that your choices are displayed in the picture below. I don't know which one is Walmart or Target or whatever but I know that they are all there. Personally I like to think of the one in the green bikini as Walmart and the one with the Leopard print as Target. So, in order to help you through the holiday season, I am going to put up a series of posts to guide you through this otherwise tramatic and dangerous season of getting cut off pulling into a parking space, having the last basket pulled from your hands by trailer trash, seeing the toy/item you really wanted stolen from your shopping cart while you wait to purchase it, punching said trailer trash in the face for doing all of these things to you and then spending the night in jail next to your mom, who inadvertantly did the same things as you so she can't bail you out of jail. So, stay tuned!

Hooray! After 27 years of suffering through being Really Really Fat I have FINALLY been given the answer I was looking for - it is NOT my fault and my fatness is a disease with a name! No, it's not diabetes or hypothyroidism. Those have been around for many years and all Really Really Fat people have been tested for those at least twice in their lives. The new disease is Metabolic Syndrome. It's symptoms are:

• Obesity (particularly around the waist)
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Insulin resistance

OMG I am so stoked. The Mayo Clinic says if I have any one of these symptoms, I'm totally in the running for Metabolic Syndrome. Now my obesity can be attributed to my high blood pressure and high cholesterol and not the other way around! This Syndrome was brought to my attention by the latest issue of Wired magazine, which usually just tells me about science I can't understand, technology I'll never be able to afford and biological & environmental achievements the government can never get behind. So why are they talking about my Fatness? Well, this new Metabolic Syndrome is a big hit with "Big Pharma" (and Wired loves to write about Big Pharma). Give a group of symptoms a fancy name and the pharmaceutical companies will find a miracle drug for it. Apparently the old name for Metabolic Syndrome - obesity - was just not.....selling. In the Wired article, they cite business owner and Kentuckian Karen Cunningham who gained weight after her pregnancy. She "couldn't shake the weight" and went to "various specialists" to tell her what was wrong. Apparently "lose weight and you won't feel like shit anymore" was NOT the answer she was looking for. Her answer was "Metabolic Syndrome."

The breakthrough came last December when her new endocrinologist diagnosed her with something called metabolic syndrome. She'd never heard of it. As she Googled to learn more, her chronic ailments – the weight, the high blood pressure, the lack of energy – started to make sense. They even seemed treatable. She's now on Glucophage and Avandia (which both regulate blood sugar) and has lost 20 pounds by cutting out carbohydrates. "Getting a diagnosis was a relief," Cunningham says. "I have hope now, whereas I didn't have any before."

Wow ok so you have....the beginnings of Type II diabetes and eat too much sugar and starch. That's pretty much what Dr. Robert Atkins was telling the world for 30 years before he died in 2003. Some people - not all people, but a good chunk of them - have bodies that just can't deal with insulin-raising carbs. Some are diabetic, some are just plain fat. People went berzerk over this claim. Doctors yelled and screamed, scientists wagged fingers. Me, I lost 90 lbs. But fuck all of that healthy eating stuff. I mean, "going on Atkins" means cutting our sugar and starch, eating more low-sugar fruits and veg, and eating whole grains. Yeah, and eating meat too (but not gobs of butter rolled in bacon smothered in cheese). Why should I have to eat like that if there's a PILL that will "cure" me of my new-found disease? You bet your sweet bippy there's a pill, too. Now that Atkins has died things have gotten awful skeevy on the "low carb" frontier. His company is pretty much a manufactured crap food warehouse now. Doctors and scientists are taking his ideas seriously now. But instead of having to claim he was right while he was alive and giving people the non-pharmaceutical way to fight your body's stupidity, they waited until he was dead so there'd be no one around to tell people "just stop eating sugar" so they could instead say "try this magic pill." The new pill is rimonabant. So far, human trials have shown that the only side effects are depression and anxiety. But those also happen to be side effects of being Really Really Fat. So what's the harm? It doesn't quite matter, because now Big Pharma has a disease and a pill to combat this disease. Without a disease, HMOs aren't likely to let you get the pill. And like any drug, doctors are going to be eventually pushed into prescribing it - to quell the pushy pharm reps and to quell their fatass patients who say "nothing I do works." I will come clean and say that while I did lose 90 lbs, I am still fat. I lost 90 and put back on 50 (truth be told, I was still fat after losing 90). Why? Well my body sucks. It's high maintenence. And I am too lazy to maintain it. It's my lot in life that I have a high maintenence body. Some do, some don't. I'm living proof that "get up off your butt and move" doesn't really mean the same for everyone. I could eat and move the same as someone else and probably still be fat. But I recognize the difference. I do have to watch what I eat and I do have to bust my ass. C'est la vie. I didn't gain weight because what I did didn't work for me. I gained weight because I stopped doing what worked for me. Duh. So now it seems that I have a choice. Get back on that high-intensity workout regimen again, or go with the "Metabolic Syndrome" wave and get a pill to fix me. I don't think I'm ready to give up the fight just yet. Maybe it's the Puritan in me that feels like I should be punishing myself for my "failing" instead of taking the insta-cure. The lack of serious side effects (such as bleeding from the eyes and exploding diarrhea) is pretty tempting if you consider some of the side effects of previous "fat" drugs like uh...speed and phen-phen. All you get is some depression (which, like I said, most of "us" already have). But the side effects of ass-kicking exercise are lack of depression and a good night's sleep. Perhaps some weight loss along the way. For now, I'll stick with that and not let myself be pigeonholed into some "disease" which has caused my "affliction." What would you do it you could take a pill and cure your "fat"? Would you do it? Would you even believe it could be possible? Check with me in 20 years, though. If I'm in my late 40's and still fat and single, perhaps I will have changed my mind.