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Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week's shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn't mean a thing. It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas - fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they've ever been - the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they're somehow connected.

Ah what a wonderful world we live in - a world where giant agricultural producers regularly feed arsenic to chickens. This, mind you, isn't how they kill the chicken. No, it's how they make them grow bigger, faster, cheaper. Administered in small amounts, arsenic is one of many compounds found in various drugs routinely administered to chickens in their feed. These same giant agricultural producers have maintained for years that the arsenic never makes its way into the actual chicken meat sold at the supermarket. It all gets pooped out! Or so they say. Yet if that's the case, then why did the FDA recently admit that arsenic does, in fact, show up in supermarket chickens?