I Hate Choices Like This ...

As a general rule, I love pollution and loathe nature. We all evolved from nature of course, but back then we didn't tend to do very much living and we didn't do it for very long. Way back before modern civilization was invented your chances of dying of a preventable disease or being eaten alive by a larger mammal were far higher than they are today.

Life expectancy was incredibly low in those days and families had so many children because so many of them died in their first five years. One of the reasons that polygamy was so fashionable back then was that mothers often died during childbirth.

Not that being a kid that survived was all that great. You were expected to plow fields, hunt for food and otherwise be a tiny adult. The overwhelming likelihood is that you would be illiterate until the day you died, which would happen by the time you were thirty. Life was, as Thomas Hobbes taught us, "nasty, brutish and short."

About 200 years ago, humans got much brighter and far more agile with their hands. Technology and industry created both higher living standards and longer life expectancy. You will probably live twice as long today as you would have in 1800, if you're into that sort of thing. That's a remarkable accomplishment for such a short period in human history.

In the grand scheme of things, pollution is a pretty good standard by which to gauge the advancement of a society in material terms. It turns out that a lot of people making a lot of stuff is going to make a mess. Go figure. And it isn't just we in the modern West that see things that way. It turns out that the godless communists were even better than we are. Modern communist China industrialized in decades as opposed to our centuries. China went from being a largely agrarian society to becoming our bankers in just thirty years. Was that dirty? Sure, but I think you average Xiang would take the trade-off and enjoy his economic mobility.

However, human advancement might have a nasty underside.

Traffic-related air pollution may put women at risk for breast cancer, according to a new study from Quebec.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, looks at links between the risk of breast cancer, a leading cause of death from cancer in women, and traffic pollution.

Researchers from McGill University and the Université de Montréal charted incidences of breast cancer and compared them with pollution maps.

“We’ve been watching breast cancer rates go up for some time,” study co-author Mark Goldberg, a researcher at McGill University Health Centre, said in a release on Wednesday.

“Nobody really knows why, and only about one-third of cases are attributable to known risk factors. Since no one had studied the connection between air pollution and breast cancer using detailed air pollution maps, we decided to investigate it.”

Dr. Goldberg and his colleagues combined data from several studies. They created two air pollution maps which showed levels of nitrogen dioxide, a byproduct of vehicle traffic, in different parts of Montreal in 1996 and 10 years earlier in 1986.

Then, the research team looked at the home addresses of women diagnosed with breast cancer in a 1996-97 study and charted that onto the air pollution maps.

The team says its results were “startling,” and showed the incidence of breast cancer was increased in areas with higher levels of air pollution.

I don't have to tell you what a tragedy that is. After all, all of the best strippers are from Montreal. I'm not against gassing Quebec in theory, but I'm hopelessly devoted to cute girls with great racks and cute little accents, so I guess that something has to be done.

Although I'm not a scientist, I think that man made global warming is probably a reality. I just don't care about it very much since I'll be dead before it gets uncomfortable. I do however care very much about fantastic funbags everywhere. Very, very much. Some folks even think that I care too much. I'm something of an evangelist on the matter, as I suspect you've already noticed.

Thankfully, I put my thinking cap on and came up with a solution that should make everybody happy. We'll all get to keep our jobs and SUVs and the hooters that we've all come to love so dearly will be protected and cherished the way that their supposed to be.

Women in urban areas are just doing to have surgical masks most of the time. That's all. If they want to have fun with it, they can just pretend that the Toronto SARS epidemic never ended and spread through North America. It can be just like a science fiction movie. Doesn't that sound like fun?

And yes, I actually do have all of the answers. Thank you for noticing!

Important Update: Although this post has been up for mere moments; my friend, the lovely Miss J, an world renowned expert all things Ukrainian and knocker related, found this story. Yes folks, your bra can now save your life! More importantly, it means that you won't be wearing a bra, which makes my life worth living.

I try not to use the word "hero" very often, but Miss J might be the greatest hero of all.