Mcnorman's Weblog

LOSER.

This newspaper has had its share of differences with Rep. Charlie Rangel over the years, but one word we never thought to associate with the Harlem lawmaker is “coward.”

Yet what other term is appropriate when a 79-year-old political veteran, the dean of the New York delegation and chairman of one of the most powerful panels on Capitol Hill, ducks responsibility for a pretty obvious personal ethical lapse by throwing his staff under the bus?

via Charlie the coward.

A New Addition to Your Diet.

A doctor in Australia has come up with sufficient research that states that what we don’t know is that after we eat it, the boogers actually acts like a low grade flu shot. We eat the bacteria, the immune system fights off the bacteria, causing our immune system to strengthen. It acts just like a medicine would.

After watching Uppity’s post on a hoarder yesterday, I thought about how this man continuously wipes his snot with his hand and a tiny Kleenex.

Think about it, he presses the elevator button, opens the door, touches his money when he pays his check at the restaurant and spreads whatever is released from his nose.  Multiply that times infinity and now you understand why illness has a super highway to your body.

I truly had a difficult time getting through this one.

In December, Soichi Noguchi promised to become the first sushi chef in space. But, though we’ve been avidly following his Twitter feed and impressive Twitpics from the ISS, there’ve been no sightings of the astronaut’s culinary side.

Until now.

In this hilarious interview with Fuji TV, Soichi prepares salmon sushi in zero gravity.

A penny for your thoughts.

I came across this video on GoodEater.org (which incidentally has also posted an impressive analysis of how to produce the best homemade ricotta cheese). It features a panel discussion between Michael Pollan (Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual) , Hugh Grant, the President/CEO of Monsanto (the world’s leading producer of genetically engineered seed), and Sonal Shah, Director of Global Development Initiatives at Google.org.

Here’s a quote from Sonal Shah to whet your appetite:

“A woman who earns $2 a day spends a dollar a day on food [in India]. When food prices increase by 77 percent…now you spend $1.77 on food. Now the trade offs are between health, education, clean water, clothing, and food…What are you going to choose when you have $.23 left? What happens is girls don’t go to school.”

More.

White House social secretary Desiree Rogers will leave her post. Rogers was criticized by some lawmakers after an uninvited couple infiltrated President Obama’s first state dinner.

Somehow, I don’t think anyone is going to let you off the hook like the White House did.

The White House turned down the House Homeland Security Committee when it requested she testify about her role in the incident.

The Chicago native and longtime friend of the Obamas has been working to make the White House more of a “people’s house” and has presided over 330 events in her time there, according to Sun-Times.

She said she “completed that work,” telling the newspaper that “our office has been able to lay the foundation for what will be known as the ‘people’s house’ and it has already taken shape.”

Buh bye Desiree, happy job hunting. Hope FLOTUS & POTUS can do without you.

Life goes on.

Additionally, every Thursday—since long before the earthquake—Frechette and a band of Haitian volunteers trek to the city morgue and claim the nameless dead, who lie naked in bloated heaps on a blood-streaked concrete floor. “You’ve heard of Tuesdays with Morrie,” Frechette smiles, “this is Thursdays with the Krokmo” (a Creole pejorative term for undertaker. It translates as the “death hook,” meaning the show is over). The place is jammed and the dead often piled seven or eight high. The workers there are so inured to the stench and spectacle, that Frechette has seen a morgue attendant slaloming on roller blades around the bodies and workers eating their lunch while sitting on stacks of cadavers as though on breaktime in the office kitchenette via Love Among the Ruins | The Weekly Standard.

The Mudville Gazette had an interesting post on how certain people were allowed on the ground immediately while doctors and nurses had to wait to fly into Haiti.