A simple solution

Yesterday, as Delta and I headed back from the movies, we remarked on the amount of old gum stains speckling the sidewalks of New York. Black spots on the sidewalk, that used to be someone's gum some fifty years ago. Everywhere we looked, the sidewalk was a veritable leopard of spots in varying shades of gey and black, flattened into the concrete like fossils from a distant past, darker and darker with age, like rings on a tree trunk.

How could gum from fifty years ago still be around? I thought about the thousands - no, millions, of feet that had stepped on the gum since it was left there. And the rigours of varying temperatures, from scorching summers to icy winters. And the layers of dirt and fumes which are the city.

What was this indestructable substance that could survive all this? And alarmingly, why the hell are we actually deeming it fit to eat?

And perhaps equally importantly, why aren't we using it to plug the cracks in roofs, roads and bridges, where it was obviously meant to be ue? There you go, Senate. Isn't that what you wanted? A cost-effective solution to the country's ailing infrastructure?