Very Local News

Me

There is a European company offering some employees five years of time off at one third pay. That could come in handy. I would go find a job somewhere else, or write a book. I couldn't afford to live on 95% of my current salary. We would loose the house. Still, would be fun I bet.

Many people in the bad spots of Mexico drive around at night with their interior lights on so the drug traffickers will not mistake them for any one else and shoot them. The Guatemalan drug dealers complain that the Mexican drug dealers are giving them a bad name.

The king of Saudi Arabia promises to reform government. Give women the right to drive and vote, not hold office or anything. Oh, women's testimony in court will still count as half that of a man. Rape victims would still have to prove they were rapped or be punished severely for bringing it up. We wouldn't want to go nuts.  His motto is "Yes we can." "Change takes time." Yup.

Podcast Learnings

One of the most influential technological advances affecting warfare was canned food.

Hunter Gatherer peoples worked about two days a week or so. Farmers work 6 to 7 days a week. They also lived longer. Farming made it easier to feed an army and support a larger population, but it caused disease and shorter life spans.

Carrots were yellow or purple back in the day. Orange carrots were selectively bred for the Earl of Orange.

The Air France flight that went down recently used some sort of text message technology through satellites to transmit errors to the maintenance people as systems failed. I don't know about you, but I do not want to monitor the Twitter feed of the plane I'm flying in. "Shit! My left engine is about to catch on fire. I'm so screwed."

More people are run over by trains than die in airline crashes. It is more dangerous for a pilot to drive to the airport than fly the plane.