Life...As I See It

A 9/11 Tribute

via www.youtube.com

"People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing." ~Walter H. Judd

Carpool Lane

I've hesitated but just can't resist giving my .02 here. I've been hearing all week if not longer on national news about carpool lanes and pregnant women. First let me say I'm a huge carpool lane user. If it's available I'm on it! NO being pregnant does not give you carpool lane access. I didn't use it when I was pregnant and man would I have loved to! With my first pregnancy I was commuting from Irvine (Orange County) to Long Beach/L.A. area. If you look at the main purpose for the carpool lane, which btw is to encourage people to carpool which means fewer cars on the freeway and mostly conserve resources b/c fewer cars are being driven. Now...how is this purpose being served with being pregnant. One could argue that access to the carpool lane when you have children in the car and only one adult is the same thing and yes I would totally agree. How does driving my 9 or 7 year old around conserve resources...it doesn't. If the rules changed to exclude access unless more than one adult is in the vehicle then so be it. Granted I wouldn't like it but it would make sense. Not sure why this is bugging me so!

Interesting yet useless bit of info...

I read in USA Today this week that trained wasps could someday replace dogs for sniffing out drugs, bombs and bodies. No kidding. It's called the Wasp Hound Research...I kid you not. They use a Pavlovian type method to train the wasps in as little as 5 minutes compared to 6 months to train man's best friend. The Wasp Hound could be available for sale in three to five years. This just fascinated me and they reportedly don't sting humans which is one thing that came to mind while reading the article. Actually the first thing that came to mind was "No way!"