Late-night talk show host Jay Leno spent a fair amount of his Thursday monologue on rampant speculation that Tim Pawlenty is John McCain's choice as a running mate.
The big-jawed comic heckled Pawlenty's last name (sounds like something you'd order at Olive Garden) and his name recognition. Leno said he googled Pawlenty and the search engine's reply was "Who?" The guv may have gotten dissed, but in this case, it was a good thing. A ribbing by Leno is a sign of Pawlenty's rising political star and his arrival on the national political scene.
Smiling through an economic downturn Not too many of the jokes e-mailed by well-meaning friends and family are worth passing along, much less putting into print. But this one, laugh-out-loud gallows humor for tough economic times, is an exception. It's addressed to all those folks (you know who are) who pass along chain letters promising luck, fortune and miracles within days or minutes of e-mailing it to 10 people. This chain e-mail's cheeky and appropriate reply? "None of that worked! In 2009, could you please just send money, alcohol, chocolate or gasoline vouchers? Thank you."
Columbos of bug hunters A salute is long overdue to the Minnesota Department of Health's crack team of disease detectives. Scientific superstars, they work on the front lines of public health, tracking outbreaks and combining brainpower with cutting-edge technology to find the source of sickness. Not surprisingly, it took them two weeks to figure out what the feds could not for two months: finding the source of a salmonella outbreak that so far has made more than 1,200 people ill across the nation and in Canada.
The peppers were the culprit.
Too often this distinguished group's work goes unheralded in the state they serve. To Dr. Ruth Lynfield, Rich Danila, Dr. Kirk Smith and their Acute Disease Investigation colleagues, nice job. Bravo also to Ben Miller and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture for their valuable work in this investigation. We look forward to reading the medical journal article sure to result from the salmonella investigation -- yet another in the long list of prestigious papers published by the state's world-class public health professionals.
