Y'all got me.

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

15% Yankee

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Ura!

Your Inner European is Russian!

Mysterious and exotic. You've got a great balance of danger and allure.

Who's Your Inner European?

More from our government ...

This is the lead to an article in today’s NYT:

People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers said.

Last time I checked, the odds of death are 1:1 regardless of what you weigh. Am I missing something? Is an occasional Big Mac the key to immortality?

This other piece was on ESPN.com on Monday:

The Defense Department has completed an investigation into [former NFL player and US Army Ranger Pat] Tillman’s death that was aimed at concerns raised about whether the Army held back information, but its findings won’t be made public, Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman at the Pentagon, said this past week.

So, they are withholding information about the potentially withheld information?

Amtrak is in the news as well. El Presidente wants to shut it down because it hasn't turned a profit in the past 30-some years. I am supportive of the idea so long as that philosophy is then applied to other government entities as well. For example, the White House and Congress haven't turned a profit in over 200 years. Those entities are completely subsidized. Unless they can show their ability to run in a fiscally-responsible manner without being bailed out by us taxpayers year-after-year, I suggest that we outsource.

A Tale of Two Ironies

Some ironic tidbits in the news this morning:

Irony 1:
Dr. Wilfred G. Bigelow, the Canadien surgeon who a) discovered by inducing hypothermia it is possible to conduct an open heart surgery and have the patient still alive at the end and b) invented the pacemaker, died of heart failure last week. Granted, he was 91, but still ...

Irony 2:
After the Vatican threw its miter into the Schiavo debate contending that by removing the feeding tube, the husband and courts were murdering Terri and besmirching the sanctity of life, word comes out now that the Popes death on Saturday followed his decision to not return to the hospital even though he, his doctors, and many of the holy folks in attendance, knew his condition was "increasingly grave." Based on what they told us last week, the cardinals were obligated to strap his papal ass to the bed if that's what it would take to get him plugged into a machine that would keep him alive. But no, here they are now talking about how serene he looks after finally being relived of all his suffering from the past several years.