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My birthday presents today included a quake that mustered up a 5.4 on the Richter scale. But it did highlight a couple of things. First, the company I work for only managed to tell about a tenth of the employees the emergency plan which involves going outside on the patio that's not covered in glass. And second, God hates me.
The Guardian ran an article today that defeats many misconceptions about universal health care. A few interesting tidbits: The US spends more per person than any other country on health care; if the US had the same level of health care as Sweden, which is ranked first, 20,000 more babies a year would live until their 1st birthdays (the US has the same infant mortality rate as Croatia, Cuba, Estonia, and Poland); and, on a slightly different note, the US is home to 5 percent of the world's population, but 24 percent of its prisoners.
Flying back to London from Spain yesterday we landed in Heathrow about half an hour late not because we were delayed taking off, or because we didn't fly fast enough, but because once we reached London we had to fly around in circles for half an hour waiting for our turn to land. I had just been thinking earlier in the flight that it was somewhat miraculous that I had never seen a plane in the sky from another plane. But as we were waiting to land it was visibly apparent that we were in a line of planes, a flight jam if you will. I tried to take a photo of the one of the planes we could see out the window. You can just make it out above. What I missed due to a full memory card was when it flew directly under us as it went in to land.
Photos from the Celina Zambon flamenco show I participated in are up for viewing here.
I just got back from the Andalucía region of Spain. Most of the time I was in Granada with my grandparents and sister, but we managed to get in a day trip to Córdoba. Out the bus window on the way I saw more olive trees than I ever knew existed, and fields of sunflowers. They're grown as a crop, presumably for oil, and maybe for seeds. You can see them here, with each of them facing the same direction to catch the sun.
A little culprit with a big appetite has made a home in my basil plants. I haven't found the voracious eater yet, but if he's planning on continuing in the vein of his comrade documented in print, I may have to perform a forced relocation.
