Captain Trips

The CDC is reporting that 22 million people have been sickened by the H1N1 virus, leading to 4,000 deaths. Compared to the fact that about 9,000 people a year die from food poisoning, I'd say a "pandemic" with a .0002% mortality rate isn't quite the Black Death redux. In related news, the Dept. of Health & Human Services estimates that by 2018, 43% of American adults will be obese. Granted, that's six years after the Mayan calendar kills all of us, so who cares? But, could there be a connection between increasingly compromised immune systems and being grossly overweight? Nah. The next step in human evolution won't be anything as dramatic as Terence McKenna or Timothy Leary had envisioned; there will be no super-race. The concept of survival of the fittest will be reduced to people who can see their feet.