In yet another amazing report from Reuters, a 'black boa constrictor the size of two passenger buses slithered by' the Peruvian village of Nuevo Tacna, deep in the Amazonian jungle. This creature was allegedly 40 meters long and about five meters in diameter, felled trees, and left 'a ditch wide enough to drive a tractor through'. There were five witnesses, and three hundred people felt its passing as it made for the river Napo. The reports were treated with skepticism by Peru's national radio stations, and it was suggested that heavy machinery was misidentified. This idea was dropped when the local authorities pointed out that the jungle in the area was far too dense for such mechanical goings on.
Camomile tea has with it the air of preparedness.
Motorbikes vs Camomile tea is the latest issue of Modest Proposals , a free, weekly, 500-word email column. Information technology makes distance irrelevant. No longer do all the parties in a project have to be in the same room in order to discuss something and make a decision. Complex plans and projects can be developed online, without the need for so many of the long, boring meetings that can turn the most interesting of jobs into a terrible drag. There should be no need to go through the struggle of getting large numbers of people together in a room to make decisions.