Projo Offbeat Blog

A sticky problem has prompted Mexico to tell its people to swallow their gum.

An Associated Press story under the headline "Gulp! Mexico tells citizens to swallow their gum" reports that the average square yard of Mexico City sidewalk has 70 blobs of discarded gum.

For your reference, I'd estimate that that average square yard of sidewalk in the United States has 10 blobs of gum, but another 100 discarded cigarette butts.

In Mexico City, discarded gum has apparently become such a problem that you can't walk down a sidewalk in a pair of loafers without losing your shoes.

People who dare walk in bare feet face an even bigger problem, the prospect of getting stuck to the sidewalk for hours while thousands of their fellow citizens shuffle by spitting gum at them.

The swallow command has alarmed at least one pediatrician, who says swallowed gum usually passes through the digestive system, but that it can ball up with other objects and cause intestinal blockages, according to the AP story.

But I think it's great advice, and if we could only get American smokers to swallow their cigarette butts.

Vegetable oil may be great for cooking, and not so bad for pushing a little car to the corner market, but do we really want to rely on coconut oil to carry us across the ocean at 30,000 feet?

The airlines are beginning to experiment with biofuels to save money and reduce carbon emissions. And that scares me. You can get out and walk if your vegetable oil-fueled car stops running, but you've got bigger problems if your plane stalls.

Again proving that pilots are braver than the average working stiff, two pilots for Air New Zealand spent two hours yesterday testing whether something called jatropha oil could fly a Boeing 747-400 aircraft.

Granted, the jatropha oil was blended with jet fuel and used in just one of the plane's four engines, but I've got to wonder if these pilots felt the need to pack parachutes.

According to a New York Times' story, "Virgin Atlantic in February became the first airline to test a biofuel blend in a commercial aircraft, using a 20-percent mixture of coconut oil and babassu nut oil in one of its four engines."

"Two more airlines are to test their alternatives next month. Continental Airlines on Jan. 7 will conduct a test flight using a blend that includes algae and jatropha, the first biofuel test flight of a commercial airliner owned by a U.S. company.

"And Japan Airlines is planning a test flight Jan. 30 using a fuel based on the camelina oilseed."

Maybe I'm not as committed to the go-green effort as I'd like to think, but I sure hope these airlines do a lot more testing before they start running regular commercial flights on algae or babassu nut oil.

Even then, I might start packing a parachute in my carry-on.

-- If you're bummed out about Christmas being over, don't feel bad. I'm sure a few radio stations will begin playing Christmas music within a couple of weeks.

-- The bad news for the economy: Americans spent less this holiday season. The worse news: We consumers are still broke and will be even more broke when those credit-card bills arrive. We did what we could, but it just didn't work.

The couple in the AP photograph to the left were married on Christmas Day in an ice chapel built for the occasion in Fairbanks, Alaska. Why would anyone get married on Christmas Day? From my childhood, I remember friends with birthdays near Christmas complaining that their relatives would give them just one gift to serve as a birthday/Christmas gift. I wonder if this couple received wedding/Christmas gifts.

-- Doing some last-minute stocking shopping on Christmas Eve, I noticed that Valentine's candy had already started pushing Christmas candy off the shelves. And there were still 53 shopping days until Valentine's Day. Look for those end-of-the-summer sales to start sometime around March.

-- If you nearly pull a muscle playing baseball on the Wii you bought your kids for Christmas and then get out of breath boxing one round on the Wii, does that mean Wiis are cool and realistic? Or does it just mean you're really out of shape?

-- Did you grow tired of your Christmas guests? Consider the Pennsylvania family that found a man had spent several days in its attic during the holidays. He had allegedly climbed down occasionally to help himself to food and clothes. "When he came down from the attic, he was wearing my daughter's pants and my sweat shirt and sneakers," homeowner Stacy Ferrance said. I'd hide too if I were dressed like that.

-- Are you overwhelmed and saddened by the idea of taking down the Christmas lights? Don't rush. If you can put it off until about the middle of June, you'll reach the halfway point, and you can just leave them up. Then you can try to convince your neighbors that your ahead of the game, like some radio stations, instead of behind it.

It turns out that some shoppers have gotten really good bargains this Christmas and not just because stores have slashed prices.

Some secretive Santas are filling their stockings and pockets with stolen gifts, according to media reports that Christmas shoplifting has increased because of the poor economy.

No wonder so many seem so stressed this season.

Christmas shopping can be exhausting enough, but the pressure of Christmas shoplifting must be relentless. Imagine constantly having to worry if that's really Santa Claus sitting in the corner or a store detective in disguise. And it can't be fun having to wrestle with another thug to get the last Wii before they're all sold, or, in this case, all stolen out.

Then what if your spouse finds out how much you didn't pay for her gift?

And what do you do if you steal the wrong gift? You won't be able to come up with a receipt. Do you come clean and tell the recipient to go back to the store and steal one in another size?

Or do you return to the scene of the crime yourself? Are there honorable, conscientious shoplifters who only steal what's on their list and would actually return the wrong sweater to the rack before stealing another one in the right size?

Some shoplifters, apparently the more experienced ones, prefer to steal gift cards, but how much thought goes into that?

I guess Christmas shoplifting does have its advantages. You don't have to drive all over town in your (stolen?) car to ensure you've found the best deal on the necklace at the top of your wife's list.

And you don't have to worry about that January spending hangover when the credit-card bills show up in the mailbox. I bought what? The kids already broke that.

Christmas shoplifters might even receive some new jewelry (a pair of handcuffs) and a new home (a jail cell) where they can spend the holidays with a new group of friends.

If you find yourself at a cemetery visiting a dear departed loved one and you hear a phone ringing from somewhere below your feet, don't worry.

You're not necessarily getting a call from the great beyond.

Under the headline, "Trend: Dead Take Cell Phones With," Robert Roy Britt reports on the Website Livescience.com that more people are getting buried with their cell phones.

Britt picked up on the trend from an msnbc.com story, which reports,
"While statistics on cell phone burials don't exist, funeral professionals agree it's a fairly common occurrence -- at least among the tech-savvy and the young -- and some believe we're only seeing the tip of the wired-to-the-end trend."

Britt notes that those who are cremated or buried at sea would probably get lousy reception.

I'm wondering how those departed techies can rest in peace if their cell phones keep ringing? But then they probably couldn't hear their phones over their iPods anyway.

AP photo
President Bush shows impressive reflexes in ducking a shoe thrown by an Iraqi reporter during a press conference Sunday. (Check out video)

Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing talk show hosts probably thought it was another example of the liberal media's bias when an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at President Bush.

But I think we should try to keep an open mind.

There's plenty of talk about the importance of objectivity in journalism, but a former editor of mine made a good point when she claimed that objectivity is a myth. (After all, journalists -- with the exception of some TV anchors -- aren't robots.) With our human limitations in mind, journalists must strive for accuracy and fairness, even if we're writing about, say, the Patriots, and we know in our hearts that the only reason they lost was because of a vast conspiracy against Bill Belichick.

Reporters can challenge their sources, pepper them with tough questions, but when it's time to file, they must put aside their biases in an effort to produce an accurate and fair report. In this case, it's clear from the photographs and videotape that the reporter was throwing a shoe, not a question, at the president. His actions seem over the top, but we shouldn't jump to a conclusion and indict the press in general or this reporter in particular.

Maybe he was just trying to get the president's attention, which can't be easy if you're working one of these presidential press conferences, and you're not from Fox News. It looks like the reporter threw just some regular old shoes. If he'd been trying to hurt the president, wouldn't he have thrown a steel-toed boot or something with a spiked heel?

And who got hurt?

President Bush didn't seem shaken by the exchange. He joked about it. Some public officials actually enjoy sparring with the press. They thrive on the give and take. For a guy who has spent eight years in such a stressful job, the president showed great reflexes in ducking the shoes. He looked like a guy who's had some experience.

For his part, the reporter is being treated like a hero by some of his countrymen, which is nice since the public usually holds reporters in low regard, right down there with politicians.

All that being said, I'm not endorsing his news-gathering approach. All I'm saying is that we need to wait to see his report on the president's visit to Iraq before we judge whether he can put his apparent ill feelings aside and produce a fair and accurate report.

Of course, we might have to wait a while -- until he gets out of jail.

AP Photo
Strange things result when people mix Halloween and Christmas, which is apparently what happens in German's Bavarian mountains. In the weeks before Christmas, during the darkest time of the year, it's apparently a tradition for children there to dress like bushes and go from door to door at dusk to ward off evil spirits. It must be an unsettling sight for a homeowner who's already gotten into the Christmas spirits to see a small forest descending on his front door.