An Idle Thought

If PETA had been around in the early days of mining, would we still have the expression "a canary in a coal mine"?

Random Thought

I was walking around an area not far from my neighborhood when this thought struck me: Does it seem feasible to anyone else that any fresh water shortages Japan may suffer could be caused by the clusters of soap lands scattered throughout major metropolitan areas?

For those of you unfamiliar with soap land, you can read wikipedia's entry here. *

*Please note that this does not constitute an endorsement of wikipedia, but rather a laziness on the part or the idle monkey trainer. And the first few sentences seemed fairly accurate.*

* Or, so I have heard from a friend of a friend.

Learned something new.

You learn something new everyday, or so the saying goes. Here is what the idle monkey trainer learned over the last few days:

• 10% of world GDP is related to the aviation industry
• 94.3% of Japanese females in their 20's own a Louis Vuitton item
• It is possible to cleanly shave 99.99% of one's face and still leave intact a clump of 6-inch long hair growing from a solitary mole on the face. (This really is anecdotal and based on the Thai guy and Chinese guy I met over the weekend. At first I thought it was simply neglect or obliviousness to the hair, but realized that the shampooing and styling of one such patch of mole hair constituted a conscious effort at cultivation and required, I would assume, great patience.)
• The toilets in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo are the nicest public restrooms on the planet. Each stall features floor to nearly ceiling walls and door (to prevent unsolicited advances by rogue Senators, and others), a "washlet" (heated seat with shower function) and soothing classical music kept at a reasonable volume. The soap dispensers and faucets are all automatic, so one does not have to touch anything.