So I don't have anything interesting to talk about today. I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with something, but nada. My morning show has offered no inspiration. All the news is just updates from stuff that's been happening all week.

For instance, the body of the little girl who went missing from north Florida has been found. It was in a land fill in southeast Georgia.

We've been following the trial of a former Alabama judge. His fate is in the hands of the jurors now. They started deliberations yesterday after seven days of testimony. The former judge is charged with 52 felony counts from 11 people. The charges range from sex abuse to kidnapping and even extortion.

Protestors made several appearances in my show this week. Wednesday a group was outside the CDC protesting the H1N1 vaccine calling it a dangerous cocktail of antifreeze, formaldehyde and mercury. Yesterday a group was in Washington to speak out against the private insurance industry.

So nothing interesting for me to talk about since all these stories have been told to death this past week. But at least you now have some current events for small talk!

Texting While Driving Bans

I bet you didn't know that this week is "Distraction-Free Driving Week". AAA Alabama has joined with the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, asking drivers to pay attention to the road and keep both hands on the wheel.

But that's not the end of AAA's quest to combat distracted driving. The company is launching a campaign to ban texting while driving in all 50 states. They are going to lobby to pass laws in states that lack them and to improve existing laws in those states that do have the bans. Their goal is for the nation-wide bans to be in effect by 2013.

A spokesperson for AAA Alabama says, "The new technologies that help us multi-task in our everyday lives...[are] a hard-to-resist challenge to the typically safe driver." He goes on to say that the bans would stop the dangerous practice from spreading.

Right now, 18 states and the District of Columbia have laws addressing texing while driving. Two more states prohibit teenage and other new drivers from texting while driving.

What is "combustible dust"?

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is taking steps to develop standards that will address combustible dust in the workplace. Now if you're like me, you have no idea what combustible dust is or its significance. So today I'm dedicating my blog to this mysterious dust (which you can't always see apparently) and why it's so important to the U.S. Department of Labor.

According to OSHA's website, any type of combustible material can burn rapidly when it is in a finely divided form, i.e. dust. If the material(s) is suspended in the air in the right concentration, it can become explosive.

There is a multitude of different materials that can form this combustible dust including:

• metals like aluminum and magnesium
• wood
• coal
• plastics
• biosolids
• sugar
• paper
• soap
• dried blood, and
• certain textiles

Hazards can be present in several industries, including:

• food
• grain
• tobacco
• plastics
• wood
• paper
• pulp
• rubber
• furniture
• textiles
• pesticides
• pharmaceuticals
• dyes
• coal
• metals, and
• fossil fuel power generators

More than 130 workers have died and more than 780 have been injured in combustible dust explosions since 1980. Last year there was an explosion at Imperial Sugar in Port Wentworth, Georgia, that killed 14 people. In many of these explosions, employees have said they weren't even aware there was any danger. U.S. Secretary of Labor Linda Solis says it's time for workers to stop dying in these preventable explosions.

OSHA will be publishing its proposed rules in the today's edition of the Federal Register. They want comments from the public in the form of suggestions for controlling combustible dust in the workplace. They are allowing 90 days for these comments and suggestions to be offered.

Espionage in the U.S.

The man once credited for discovering water on the South Pole of the moon is now going down in history as a man apparently willing to sell out his country.

52-year-old former government scientist, Dr. Stewart Nozette, was arrested yesterday (Monday, Oct. 19) just outside of our nation's capitol. He is accused of trying to sell top secret national defense, satellite and military information, including the U.S.'s early warning capabilities during a large-scale attack, to who he thought was an Israeli intelligence official. The charging documents say he met with this person twice.

Federal investigators say Nozette delivered the top secret information on two instances and accepted two payments at a secret post office box. Those payments amounted to about $11,000. It turns out he was selling the information to an undercover FBI agent, and officials believe he would be willing to sell more information if presented with the opportunity.

Supposedly Nozette said he liked being a spy. He's due in federal court later today.

Seriously, how long does it take to decide how many more or less troops need to be sent overseas? It seems like I've been hearing/reading "it will be at least two more weeks before the president makes a final decision" for at least two weeks now. But I guess it must be hard to make a decision when you refuse to listen to your chief advisers' advice. Which leads to my next question: why are they in that position if you don't value their judgment? Now I hear that it's all pending on the Afghan government resolving their election crisis. I'm sure I don't know the exact timing, but isn't it true that the Afghanistan election has been in a recount for months? And what's this I've read on the Associated Press' wire about allowing the Taliban to take part in the governing of this country because we need to "focus on al-Qaida"? Since when did the Taliban become the good guys? Have I missed something?

Don't worry about a thing
'Cause every little thing gonna be alright.

Let me just say it right now. I absolutely love Bob Marley. His music is amazing. Never fails to make me feel better about anything. Especially this song - Three Little Birds. He had such an amazing philosophy about life, one that he put into his music. It transcends generations, gender, race, culture and location. Truly a remarkable feat.

So, the Dow closed out over 10,000 yesterday. That's the first time in more than a year that it's hit that mark, much less exceeded it. Some people say that's a good sign for our economy, but I think I'll stick with the economists on this one and agree that the country's financial situation is still shaky at best.

Why do we appoint people to be our advisors, put them in crucial positions and then not believe them or choose to ignore them when they advise us?

I was watching this documentary earlier on GPB by The Frontline, and it really got me to thinking. We have all these people overseas fighting the War on Terror against al Qaeda and the Taliban, but when it comes right down to it the powers that be don't seem to be listening to them at all. They ignore their suggestions, brush off their comments about what's actually happening and seem to be favoring the opinions of people who are sitting safely on the other side of the ocean.

How much sense does that make?

People who want to talk about the issues our country is facing but who don't follow those issues and therefore know nothing about them annoy me. How can they be expected to have an intelligent opinion, or even a truthful one, when they have no knowledge to base their opinion on? I mean, I know the news is boring most of the time, but tune in people! If you ever want to be taken seriously in serious discussions, you've got to really be in the know. Just because you feel some way about an issue doesn't mean a hill of beans if you have nothing to base your feeling on other than your "feeling."