[thenightwriterblog] The Night Writer: Dying easy

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Posted by The Night Writer:
Dying easy
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1176490999.shtml


   When I walk outside to get the newspaper in the morning I never think
   to check first for skulking lions or packs of wolves. I drive to work
   with my seatbelt fastened and six airbags surrounding me and don't
   bother to keep an eye out for bandits. I go to work in a building
   that's never had a cave-in or been attacked by a whale and doesn't
   even keep a tally board of how many accident-free days in a row have
   gone by. I come home to a delicious dinner that I didn't have to risk
   life and limb in acquiring (and we haven't bought any hydrogenated
   foods in years). If one of my children develops a cough I don't worry
   that it's the plague. My government hasn't threatened to drag me away
   in the middle of the night for years.
   Yep, our lives are pretty easy and danger free these days -- or so I
   thought. I mentioned to my wife the other day that I had a case of
   bottled water in the trunk of my car if she needed any. She said I
   should be careful not to let the bottles get too warm because she
   heard they'll release a toxic gas into the water. A few weeks ago I
   was eating with a group of folks and the discussion was about how
   cooking food in a microwave alters the molecules and destroys its
   nutritional value. This is supposedly especially true for vegetables,
   which I generally avoid anyway, but it makes me wonder what would
   happen if I microwaved a Twinkie. It seems to me as if the only way to
   go is up in that case, nutrition-wise.
   Now when I was growing up I often heard that if you sat too close to
   that new-fangled color television set it would make you sterile (today
   they say that about [1]laptops). I sat close to the TV anyway and it
   doesn't seem to have had any effect. Of course, as a kid, I also drank
   out of the garden hose all the time -- something else they now say
   you're [2]not supposed to do. The TV didn't stop me from having
   children, and the laptop came along too late to impact our family
   planning (bringing one home all the time, however, does seem to have
   an affect on my sex life).
   It's hard to tell just what to take [3]seriously anymore. I suppose
   anything that makes our life easier has just naturally got to have
   some insidious, toxic trade off (if only Eve had paid attention to the
   warning label on that apple!). I did some on-line research on the
   always reliable internet and there might be something to the
   microwaving thing ([4]here, [5]here and [6]here, -- oh, and don't use
   one of these to dry your pet after a bath) and to the [7]toxic water
   bottles, though there appears to be more concern about reusing bottles
   than the amount of PET that might leach into your premium H20. Still,
   it's got to be safer than drinking tap water, right? [8]Maybe not,
   unless of course you're trying to avoid the harmful effects of
   [9]fluoridation.
   It's enough to make you want to get your water direct from a clear
   mountain stream, as long as you don't think to much about what all
   those fish and ducks have been doing in it.
   I don't know, I suppose the next thing they're going to tell us is
   that watching television makes you fat.

References

   1. http://www.engadget.com/2004/12/09/your-laptop-might-make-you-infertile-for-dudes-at-least/
   2. http://www.health.com/health/qanda/0,23514,1076976,00.html
   3. http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/toxins.asp
   4. http://www.life.ca/nl/103/microwave.html
   5. http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100141498&wa=wsignin1.0
   6. http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/sc/0601/sc0601-microwave.html
   7. http://www.cleanairpurewater.com/contaminated_bottled.html
   8. http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/nbw.asp
   9. http://www.townsendletter.com/Jan_2003/fluoridecontroversy0103.htm