Walk To Work, Eat The Fish, and Wash Your Hands

This week on changing the world, eating and health: Potential world changer James Robertson walks 21 miles round trip to work, food for thought about halibut and how it’s caught, and whose health is this anyway?

James Robertson (AP)

James Robertson's car broke down 10 years ago and, given the deplorable state of bus service in Detroit, he's been walking to work and back-- and having perfect attendance. Since the Detroit Free Press publicized his story, he's been the recipient of a massive crowd-sourced fundraising campaign, offers to buy him a car and bicycle, door-to-work-and-back shuttle bus service, and help to manage his new found fortune. I hope he'll be a world changer and continue walking or maybe spur Detroit into reviving its bus system. After all, if you think the traffic's bad now, the US Department of Transportation says it's not going to get any better over the next 30 years with an additional 700 million people joining us-- unless we make some major changes. Walk on by, Mr. Robertson.

If you like food like halibut, you liked the news in the Seattle Times that the International Halibut Commission recommended increasing catch limits to 29.2 million pounds in 2015. Catch limits are set for separate areas off the shores of California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska. One problem in establishing catch limits has been the state of the halibut stock in the Bering Sea where trawlers harvest halibut that have to be thrown back. The commission estimated that more than 8 million pounds of halibut were netted as bycatch last year, discarded and died. But the commission went ahead and allowed halibut catch in the Bering Sea area anyway. Fish to feed over 16 million people wasted in bycatch, sad.

Public health, I always thought, was dealing with the health of the public but some of the recent pronouncements about vaccination have focused on private health, as if it's an individual's right to reject immunization against communicable disease and, if you exercise that right, it's OK to put others, the public, at risk. OK, maybe that wasn't what Sen. Rand Paul meant earlier this week, then recanted as the week went by. [Rand Paul Now Says He Shares Obama's Position On Vaccinations ] Maybe there’s something in the water these guys drink. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis thinks restaurants should not have to make their employees wash their hands after toilet visits. [US senator questions forcing food workers to wash hands ] According to Sen. Tillis, it's a burden when government regulates businesses and restaurants that did not require hand washing would have to alert customers by displaying signs. Uh, oh-- signs which government would have to regulate and enforce. Take another drink, senators.

--Mike Sato