In Waterton National Park, in early July, the Poplar fluff lays on the ground like snow.
Click play on the video below or watch it on YouTube.
I am not allergic. But if I was, I would call in the chain saws. This is ridiculous.
Category: health & fitness
Clinton – a nightmare, insane, a colossal waste of money
globeandmail.com : Avoid U.S. health model: Clinton
(Bill might be ramping up the rhetoric towards coming US elections.)
Clinton said Canada should stay the course. And review similar health-care systems — in Germany, Denmark or Sweden, for instance — that have solved problems such as overly long waiting times.
I disagree. The only solution is a FREE free market system for health care.
Regulated health care is like regulated phone service. Now that there is competition between VOIP and traditional carriers, my cost today dropped to FREE for all long distance Skype calls and now all local calls from North America to North America from SkypeOut.
the war on indoor tanning
William Saletan wrote a great piece on Slate.com
“Here come the health police. First they came for the cigarettes. Then they came for the sodas. Now it’s the tanning salons.
The cigarette war is winding down, as one country after another bans public smoking.
A week ago, the top three soft-drink makers surrendered the first big battle of the junk-food war, agreeing to remove sodas from elementary and middle schools. A few days later, spooked by the outcry against fast food and childhood obesity, Disney fled an advertising deal with McDonald’s. Nobody wants to be the new Joe Camel.”
read the full article …
video – Spring skiing at Sunshine
Garth and Rick half-day mid-week in “slurpee” snow. The hill was deserted.
Click on the digitally enhanced video clip below. Or watch it on YouTube.
video – Sunshine Ski Resort
I hooked up with one of the original local snowboarders, George, and we lucked into some new powder at Sunshine on Sunday, April 30th.
To see Rick meet The Big Woody, click on the video below:
drug companies in it for the money
Drugs companies ‘inventing diseases to boost profits’
Do you believe this headline? I’m not so sure.
For example, shyness is diagnosed as a “social anxiety disorder” and treated with antidepressants.
Get your drugs for:
IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROMES, SEXUAL DYSFUNCTIONS, OSTEOPOROSIS, SLEEPY IN THE MORNING SICKNESS … (OK, I invented the last one myself.)
conditioning – CrossFit exercises
CrossFit is an advanced strength and conditioning program used by police and military. It is popular with the martial arts community.
Firefighters, too, like CrossFit because it does not use weight machines, preferring free weights. They use many gymnastics exercises in which body weight provides the resistance.
Many video clips and photo sequences are linked from their exercises page:
team sit-up using a log for resistance
enticing third world youth to smoke
Travelling through South and Central America in 2005 I often saw fresh-faced, attractive, very young people handing out free cigarettes. In Guatemala I even saw free cigarettes available on the counters of convenience stores.
Be sure you do not own any stock in tobacco companies.
Big Tobacco Is Accused of Crossing an Age Line
By GREG WINTER, NY Times, 2001
Sara Bogdani had just turned 17 last summer when she slipped into a short skirt and started working as a Marlboro girl.
While the rest of her high school friends spent their vacation laboring in
restaurants or lounging at home, Sara donned a red hat, a T-shirt with a
cowboy on the back and a knapsack full of Marlboros and other Philip
Morris cigarettes.
Then she hit the streets of Tirana, the capital of Albania and her
hometown, offering a smile and a free pack to anyone who professed a love
of smoking and looked, well, almost as old as she was.
“As long as they weren’t 14 or something, it was O.K.,” Sara said in a
telephone interview, noting that a co-worker was also 17. As for her
bosses, “they were just glad if you gave out all the cigarettes,” said
Sara, who now works with an antismoking group.
Just as it is in the United States, giving cigarettes to teenagers is
illegal in many countries, including Albania, where Marlboro girls stroll
the streets. But while the practice has all but disappeared from American
cities, it goes on with striking regularity in many developing nations,
and Philip Morris is far from the only tobacco company that the World
Health Organization has accused of crossing the line in trying to entice
those underage with free cigarettes. …
what is the matter with smokers?
There seems to be something effeminate about smoking. Sometimes a cigarette is not just a cigarette.
Perhaps it is time Marlboro rethinks their gay cowboy advertising campaign.
I do not like cigarette smoke and live, fortunately, in a part of the world with very little second hand smoke.
One of the worst things about travel is being force fumigated. I write from Miami which is filled with posing 50cent wannabes, smoke yourself thin beach hotties, cheese-eating surrender monkeys and other chain-smoking Europeans. There is zero consideration for the non-smoker here.
Now I sympathize with confused youth who try smoking. I understand that it is more addictive than crystal meth and heroin combined.
But I still cannot fathom why smokers do not quit.
Many have. It’s possible.
What’s the matter with smokers?
