So I started to write about the 2012 Copenhagen Consensus findings. About how these brilliant economists — several of them Nobel Laureates — got together to study affordable real-world solutions to the problems of underdeveloped nations that would have rapid and lasting beneficial effects on the global economy. About how, every four years, this project keeps returning to the same straightforward conclusions: spend pennies preventing malaria, dysentery and tuberculosis rather than dollars treating their effects; educate impoverished citizens on the power and potential of education itself; distribute inexpensive nutritional supplements and promote higher-yield farming techniques of healthier crops to more than offset the cost of dealing with health issues that arise from poor diet.

It’s kind of nauseating to learn how cheap and easy it would be not only to improve the health of some Third World populations, but also to ease the world’s financial crisis a bit by freeing up some of the billions wasted on the back end due to inattention, ignorance and the glacial pace of bureaucracy.

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Todd Barry is a marvelously sardonic comedian. Kii Arens is a kick-ass artist and designer. Put ‘em together and you get this simple, clever, somehow very human bit of awesome:

When thieves stole half a million dollars’ worth of medical equipment from Orlando’s Florida Hospital Center for Diagnostic Pathology, they got a little something extra: “a substance that could eat away at human skin.”

Here’s the Orlando Sentinel story, via Gizmodo.

We’re never gonna find the Higgs Boson if we don’t learn how to PUT GARBAGE IN AN EMPTY DUMPSTER. Sheesh.

Welcome to the new blog look, which is still a thing in progress.

Many, many thanks to Norcross, Reaktiv Studios and Joey Neill for their ongoing assistance in my bloggerly endeavors.

This site is now the destination for three URLs which may be used interchangeably – lifeasweblowit.com, scottharrell.co and scottharrellonline.com.

I’ll have some writing news in a bit.

I have had the good fortune to visit a few of the world’s great cities. Paris. London. Madrid. New York. Los Angeles. While they vary in age, each of these metropolises exists as a symbol of mankind’s ability, ambition and drive.

Each is also notorious for its terrible traffic, and its alternately inept and murderous drivers. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. And if you haven’t been exposed to the incredible breadth of culture — and attendant lethal transportation — any of these places has to offer, I can assure you everything you’ve heard about getting from point A to point B in each is true. That shit can be terrifying.

So it is with some degree of experience that I assert that the stretch of State Road 60 from I-75 east to about Parsons Avenue in Brandon boasts THE WORST TRAFFIC ON THE FACE OF OUR EVER-LOVIN’ PLANET.

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Our cat Lucy passed away Saturday night.

Lucy was a feral kitten in Rebecca’s old neighborhood, rescued by an elderly couple running their own “trap, neuter & release” program. While she never completely lost her suspicion of people in general (we have friends who have been to our house many times without ever seeing Lucy, even though Lucy was roughly the size and color of a fully grown Holstein), she came to trust and love Rebecca very much, and even warmed to me to a degree after I’d lived with her for several years–late at night, after the house quieted down, she would sometimes venture away from her preferred places to demand that I rub her with one foot while I worked.

Of course Rebecca and I will miss her, but we are saddest for our other cat Bagheera, who has lost a friend and bed-mate and cried all night in his grief and loneliness. We’ll find Bagheera another companion for his remaining years, but we won’t ever forget Lucy’s singular personality, nor the fun and friendship she brought into our home and lives.

I used to have this theory about Pizza Hut.

I suspected that someone very high up in the Pizza Hut corporate structure, someone wealthy and influential, had an adult son or daughter. And this adult son or daughter lived under the misapprehension he or she was actually a visionary, a genius, an IDEA PERSON — sort of like Michael Keaton’s character Bill Blazejowski in the classic 1982 comedyNight Shift. The adult son or daughter couldn’t hold any sort of real, regular job, and at the behest of his or her wealthy, influential parent, was eventually given employment at Pizza Hut, where he or she was supposed to just kick back, shut up and collect a paycheck.

Unfortunately, this adult son or daughter had too many BIG IDEAS to just kick back, shut up and collect a paycheck. He or she kept saying things like, “What if we put cheese in the crust?” and “Check this out — we make a calzone, but it’s, like, a gross low-rent version of a calzone, and we don’t call it a calzone, right? We call it … the P’Zone.”

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I was walking around the bar the other night, and as I passed a couple of guys I heard them trying to remember the name of the movie Pan’s Labyrinth. You know, they were doing that thing – “It’s got the, watchacallit, the fawn!” “Yeah, that was rad!” “And the douche bag Mexican general!” “Holy shit, why can’t I remember the name of that movie?!”

So I sort of leaned in as I passed and said, “I think you’re talking about Pan’s Labyrinth.”

And they both looked at me, and then one of the guys held up his drink in what I’m sure he thought was a philosophical way, with one finger pointed up, and he said, “you know, you’re right!”

And I thought, Why would he say that? Of course I’m right. I generally don’t offer unsolicited input into strangers’ conversations unless I’m pretty sure I’m not full of shit. I only put the “I think” at the front of my statement so I wouldn’t come off like a dick. Do people actually just interject completely unrelated bullshit into private discussions among people they don’t know?

And then I thought, Actually, that might be fun.

So that’s what I do now.

“She said she likes that place, but the hibiscus tea has too much sugar in it.”

“What’s a hibiscus?”

“It’s a flower.”

And I lean in and say, “Actually, the hibiscus is among the most dangerous of the Caribbean fighting eels. They make delicious tea, though.”