Pete's Revised BLOG - Day 7.

Today is Thursday, March 15, 2012 and is the Ides of March. On this day in 44 B.C. Julius Caersar was assassinated by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius. And in 1964 Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton in Montreal; it was her fifth marriage, his second.(Ides means the 15th day of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months in the ancient Roman calendar.)

This is day 26,016 for me. It is another beauty with an expected high of 74 degrees and sunshine all day. We are getting May weather in March this year. It is unbelievable to have this wonderful weather in the middle of March. I can't remember having this kind of March weather in my 71 years. Our golf course opened today. Hurray!

I did my yoga today, spent 10 minutes on the exercise ball and walked 54 miles which = 3.0 miles. My March total is now 33 miles.

Ruth Ann looks wonderful after her day of pampering yesterday - new hairdo, painted finger nails and painted toe nails. Plus she got a back massage from the chair she was sitting in when they did her toes. And a foot massage and calf massage as a side benefit when they painted her toes. I think she's spoiled. Men don't get to be pampered like that - life ain't fair.

This week, for the first time in my life I heard there was something in our hamburger called "pink slime." My first thought was, "What in the hell is pink lime and why is it in our hamburger?" I learned that pink slime is "lean finely textured beef," a low cost ingredient in grouind beef made from the fatty bits of meat left over from other cuts. The bits are heated to about 100 F and spun to remove most of the fat. The lean mix then is compressed into blocks for use in ground meat. Next, it is exposed to "a puff of ammonium hydroxide gas" to kill bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella.

It has been around for years, and federal regulators say it meets standards for food safety. Anyway, there is now a big controversy going on over how safe it is for our school children and the general public. It can't be too bad if we've been eating it for many years with no problems. My thought is if it was called something other than 'pink slime" there probably wouldn't be a problem.

WHERE'S THE COMMON SENSE? I can't believe some of our state legislators in Iowa. Some of these clowns have been pushing a bill to do away with traffic cameras that monitor the speed of vehicles, mainly on city highways including interstate highways. On Interstate 380 which goes through the heart of Cedar Rapids (over the last two years) these cameras have dramatically reduced the number of motor vehicle accidents and fatalities and have encouraged drivers to obey the speed limit and other traffic laws. When the camera determines that a vehicle is speeding the camera also records the license number and a ticket is sent to the perpetrator in the mail. No traffic officer has to spend time writing a ticket and can use his/her time more effectively in other areas of the city. It is a win-win situation in my estimation. The supporters of this bill say it is an issue of fairness, it goes to due process, it goes to liberty. They say people hate these cameras It's more than the fear of getting a ticket in the mail: It goes to our sense of fairness and liberty is why people don't like them.
What a bunch of BS. If these cameras prevent accidents and save lives what is wrong with that? People are supposed to obey speed limits and other traffic laws so if these cameras help people do that then let's keep them. It's simply good common sense.