david galland of casey research reminds us not to eat too quickly:

Then, yesterday, while waiting to put in a phone appearance on the U.S. Global Funds Webinar that many of you sat in on, I carefully put my speaker phone on mute (you can tell it’s on because the button lights up) and set about trying to wolf down a chicken salad sandwich before it became my turn to talk.

This led to being reminded of several of life’s little lessons. Including…

• Eating quickly is never a good idea, because it can lead to aspirating, as opposed to swallowing, one’s food.
  
  
• Once aspirated, a fairly decent-sized piece of food – say, for example, chicken salad – can actually make its way up through one’s sinus passages. In fact, with enough coughing, hacking, turning red, grabbing of the throat, choking and blowing, the aspirated morsel can actually traverse the nasal passages and exit through the nose.
  
• And, finally, I was made to recall the fallibility of technology when I learned, after the fact, that a lit-up mute button is no firm guarantee that the phone is actually muted.

It was only when someone stuck their head into my office to let me know that my close run with lunch was being broadcast live that I became aware of the latter point. To which I whispered incredulously, “But that’s impossible… I have it on mute, see!” In reply, I received a shrug and a statement that was as accurate as it was succinct, “Must be broken.”

For those of you on the call, and especially my fellow presenters, whose carefully prepared presentation, I was later told, was disrupted on multiple occasions, my sincere apologies.

And to the technology gods, I supplicate in your general direction.

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