Food Day

About three times a year someone in the office here in KC will send around an email suggesting their should be a food day. They always mention how its been so long since the last one and instruct everyone to bring in an item of food. This is not something that really happens much in the UK so I am always interested to see what people will bring in.
Today was just such a day and in true American style a mountain of food was brought into the office and everyone took part. There wasn't much in the way of healthy food and I was amazed no-one slipped into a diabetic coma. At lunchtime a delivery of bar-b-que meat was brought up to our area and everybody tucked in. The amount of food was truly amazing. For those that know where to look I have put a few pictures on flickr.
Enjoy.

Another treat for a Friday. Do you think this kid had a tough time at school?

Another story caught my eye this week that falls into the ‘Only In America’ bracket. Here is the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6173535.stm Basically the folks in Texas are trying to pass a bill to allow ‘blind’ people to go hunting with guns. At the moment the blind people of Texas feel they are being discriminated against since they don’t have the same chance of shooting a wild animal as their sighted friends. They want to ability to fit a laser sight to their weapon. Currently these are banned, as are torches and car headlights.
I read the article a few times and couldn’t quite grasp how a laser sight would help. If you are blind or partially sighted how would a tiny red dot help you hit anything? I asked a few of my American friends and they said the laser sight was for the ‘hunting buddy’ who would accompany the blind person. The new bill will insist that a blind person must have a sighted person with them when they go walking through the woods with a loaded gun.

So the way I see it, the pair of them will creep up on the deer, the blind person will raise his rifle and switch on the laser. The sighted guy will then give it the old, left a bit, right a bit, ready……aim……fire. Boom, the blind guy has fired a gun at something. I really can’t see the satisfaction. What’s to stop the sighted person congratulating his mate saying he has just made the perfect kill when all he really did is put a hole in a tree? It all seems a bit bizarre to me but then I don’t hunt wild animals so probably haven’t really grasped the whole concept. It occurred to me it was just another way to sell more hunting licenses and guns and bullets but I’m sure that not the motive.
When I asked my friends at work who I know own guns about this they didn’t really react. The blind being given license to hunt isn’t really that dramatic to an American gun owner. They take that sort of news in their stride. They told me about a service that was setup a few years back and I found this even more amazing. Apparently an area in a forest somewhere in Texas was roped off and a number of webcams were trained on it. They then allowed, for a small fee, a “hunter” to logon to a webpage that had access to these webcams. The hunter could then look around the area of forest and control a crosshair using a mouse. Now here is the bizarre bit. By moving the mouse the hunter was actually moving a real gun that was mounted in the forest. If they spotted a deer they could take aim and with the click of a mouse fire a round.
Now this really is bizarre to me. Surely part of the attraction of hunting is sitting out in the cold for hours on end, stalking your prey, outwitting it and then killing it. How would sitting in your living room with a cup of coffee and a biscuit be compared to that. You might as well buy an Xbox. I then wondered if this service included shipment of the dead animal to your house.
To all the non-American readers out there I’m sure you will agree this is all “Only In America” stuff and to all the Americans reading I really have to commend you on dreaming up ways to allow so many people to hunt that would normally be excluded.

The mid-west of the USA is leading the way!!

Often slated for being a bit behind the times and very poor at conserving the environment it was interesting to see this website:

http://www.onebillionbulbs.com/

As it stands today the mid-west is doing a good job.

Well it’s another chilly day here in Kansas City. This blog seems to have turned into a “what’s different between the UK and the USA”. Well, one thing that is very different is the weather. Typically in the UK you might expect the temperature to drop below 0 degrees Celsius in winter, maybe you get the odd -2 or -3 day but not here in Kansas City!! Right now I would love it to be zero degrees.
When I got into my car this morning the temperature was -12 degrees. For a Brit not used to these temperatures that’s mighty cold. I drove the first few minutes laughing out loud at how cold it was. I think I was going a little insane, I just couldn’t get warm!! When I got to work the car had not reached full temperature. Usually that would happen after a few minutes of driving. Stepping out of the car I experienced the other chilling factor here in KC, wind chill. The stiff breeze dropped the temperature another few degrees. I think it was probably the coldest I have ever been and that’s including various skiing trips up lots of cold mountains.
It’s good fun though. The weather in the UK can be a bit bland. It’s not often you get exciting weather. So far this month I have experienced a foot of snow falling in four hours and temperatures below -12. Apparently this weekend is going to be sunny and warm again. It really is all over the place. A few friends at work have warned me today won’t be the coldest day. Each year there is usually a day that goes below -20. That should be fun!! It’s actually a bit dangerous walking around in those sorts of temperatures. Any moisture on your exposed skin will freeze. Happy times.
Well, that’s the end of my weather report. It’s safe to say Kansas City and the UK are very different when it comes to weather.