WARNING: If you have a delicate constitution, don't read this post. It will talk about something disgusting that will cause you to have two or three strong emotional reactions at once. You have been warned.

I read this story about Ed Chrisman, an 88-year-old American who was recently given a humanitarian release from a Mexican jail. I'm not going to go into the details of why he was there or a rant about his treatment. Read the full story if you want all the details.

It was the second-to-last paragraph of the story that just made my blood run cold:

"He told one story - one of the guards there had a guard dog inside the prison and the dog had pups. The rats are so thick in there that rats came and started to drag off the pups and eat them," said Don.

I told this to a person who isn't a "dog person," and even she gave a sympathetic whine for those poor puppies. If you want a way to describe the squalid conditions in a Mexican prison, puppy-eating rats hits it right on the freakin' nail.

Holy crap!

Everyone, from the man on the street to the major candidates for political office, are wondering what we can do about gas prices. They say there's no short-term fix. They propose drilling off the coasts and in Alaska all of which would take 5-10 years to deliver any oil. They propose sweeping changes to the way we make cars, all of which would take years for the re-designing, testing, and re-tooling. No one brings up the quickest fix...

Strengthen the dollar. The value of the dollar against foreign currencies has dropped 30-50% over the past few years. In 2003, the Euro was worth as little as $1.12. Today it's worth over $1.56. If the dollar was as strong today as it was when the Euro was worth $1.12, that $133.60 per barrel for gas would be $95.91 a barrel, and if gasoline moved apace, that $4.17 per gallon gas would be $2.99.

Yes, we need to rein in the speculators and bring these markets out into the light of day to prevent manipulation, but the quickest way to fix things is to strengthen the dollar against foreign currencies. That will bring down the prices of all imports, not just oil, lowering prices at the pump and at the supermarket.

An immediate way to strengthen the dollar is if the Fed raises interest rates. They say that it will slow economic growth, but look at what the cost of oil is doing to inflation, consumer confidence, and a number of other of major economic drivers. Lowering the price of oil by strengthening the dollar will do more good for the economy than the interest rate boost will do harm.

In short... stronger dollar = lower gas prices. Why isn't this being discussed with the fervor that offshore drilling is?

Sharon Stone recently suggested that the earthquakes in China might be karmic payback for the crap China's been pulling in Tibet. And when she did, people lost their minds. People have been calling for boycotts, claiming she's an idiot, claiming she's evil, claiming she's insensitive, and basically suggesting in various degrees how wrong she is. But is she wrong?

“I’m, you know, not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And so, I have been very concerned about how to think and what to do about that because I don’t like … that. And then I’ve been, this, you know, concerned about, oh, how should we deal with the Olympics, because they’re not being nice to the Dali Lama who is a good friend of mine. And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?”

I know a lot of people are ridiculing Sharon Stone for this, but any of them who do and then claim to be a member of one of the Abrahamic religions that considers Moses a prophet and believes in the biblical story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt is a dyed in the wool hypocrite.

Come on. Did some grain merchant in Alexandria really deserve to have his firstborn son die because Pharoah wouldn't let the Hebrews go?

We totally accept God decimating a generation of Egyptian males because of bad policy decisions by the king, yet we pooh-pooh the idea that the earthquake was a punishment from God (or some supernatural power) for China's treatment of Tibet and its people. The parents of all the children who died in all those school collapses had no control over the central government's actions or policies in Tibet, but neither did the Alexandrian grain merchant have influence over Pharoah's actions or policies regarding the Hebrews. He still lost his son, didn't he? Why should all these Chinese parents be any different?

Can it only be a punishment from God if it's predicted by a guy in a robe who looks like Charlton Heston? We obviously believe that the citizens of a nation share the guilt for the acts and policies of its leadership and deserve to bear the brunt of God's wrath. If not, we would reject the book of Exodus. Wouldn't we? Are the plagues upon Egypt now something we can conveniently ignore? Do we really get to pick and choose which parts of the Bible we want to believe? How do we justify a faith in scripture if we only believe the parts we like?

I'm not saying she's right, but that she *could* be right. Although there have been people predicting a punishment from God upon China, no one predicted this particular one. So whether it's God or chance is still up in the air. But for those who would claim it's God, if you believe in the Bible, then you have to admit there is precedent for it.

Reflecting back on the recent parity of the American and Canadian dollars, I decided to play around with the currency calculator at finance.yahoo.com.

Did you know, that while 1 American dollar was buying a mere 1 Canadian dollar a few days ago, it buys 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars? Yup. If you've got $33.34 US, you can turn that into a million dollars (in the local currency) in Zimbabwe. So it got me thinking, how many dollars would you need to be a "millionaire" in various currencies?

Based on today's exchange rates, here are some places where you can be a millionaire in their currency for less than 1,000 U.S. dollars...

And there it is: a list of countries where you can be a millionaire in their currency for less than $1,000 U.S. dollars... Just for fun.