Sometimes the overuse of words make them unsustainable and actually reduces their impact.

This work, at http://xkcd.com, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
This means you’re free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). More details.

Two and half men,
Now, it’s a sin,
Old Charlie Sheen,
Screwin’ up a’gin!
(…and a’gin …and a’gin.)

I can honestly say that I’ve never watched a single episode of Sheen’s show.  I also don’t watch much TV at all, but, lately I’ve seen far more of the pompous and erratic Mr. Sheen than I really ever wanted to.

However, I’m not really interested in writing about Sheen’s “situation.”  To me, the real story is elsewhere.

The recent media and public attention has enabled his high profile professional self-destruction.

We’ve seen it over and over again where the problems and  faults of a public personality have been more newsworthy than real world events –  Tiger Woods, Linsay Lohan, Mel Gibson, Britney Spears, etc., etc., etc.  Some stories flame out quickly and you don’t hear about them again until the celebrity screws up again.  Others go on and on because of who the person is more than what the person has done.  Then there are those like Sheen, who jumps on the media whoopla train and rides it to destruction.

The reason these things make it on air, online, and in print, of course, is because people pay attention when someone who has it made fails spectacularly – and, advertisers pay for what people tune in, go online, and read about.

Sheen has crashed, stories about it are are being watched and read everywhere – and his co-stars and all the support personnel for what was the most popular sitcom are now out of work.

I’ve seen more of it than I wanted to and I’m done paying much attention to it.

What about you?

How many times have you seen it? How many times have you done it?
I see it a lot and it’s starting to get scary.

I know —it’s hard not to do it.

Everyone else does it.

I used to do it all the time and, last week, I did it, even though I’ve tried very hard to resist the impulse.

Read the rest of this January 4, 2006 post (recovered February 25, 2011).

A few years back, when moving the blog location, I lost many of my older blog posts and images. Recently, while exploring the Internet Archive WayBackMachine, I discovered much of what I had lost.  I’ll be restoring the lost material and will share some of the better “recovered blog posts.”

Give me a break!

I hear now the board that’s used in a classroom can’t be called a black board or a white board. From what I understand, it’s derogatory to blacks or to whites if you use that kind of descriptive words – it’s either chalk board or marker board.

I guess it’s a good thing that there’s not anyone that might be traumatized by the use of the words chalk or marker.

I don’t know what you would call the boards then.

Read the rest of this October 20, 2004 post (recovered February 26, 2011).

A few years back, when moving the blog location, I lost many of my older blog posts and images. Recently, while exploring the Internet Archive WayBackMachine, I discovered much of what I had lost.  I’ll be restoring the lost material and will share some of the better “recovered blog posts.”

“The coast ain’t clear, __-___”

If I had just a moment and could turn back the clock, that’s what I’d tell the person that waved the kid through.

It’s what I would tell the kid, too.

We had just seen “True Grit” at a new theater that just opened about an hour’s drive from home. On the way home, we decided to go ten miles out of the way to go out to eat.

When it happened, we were driving on a road that  is two lanes in each direction with a center turning lane.

We had just gone through a traffic light as it turned yellow. The next light had just turned green and the cars stopped there had started to move.  We were in the southbound lane next to the turning lane and there were fewer cars ahead of us than there were in the other southbound lane.

Just after we made it through the light that had turned yellow, a car that I hadn’t seen darted through a gap in the other lane of traffic.

They had been waved through by a driver in that lane.

“The coast ain’t clear, __-___s”

We were about three blocks from the restaurant we had decided to go to.

I hit the brakes and thought that we just might make it – but realized, just before impact, that we weren’t going to.

We hit hard, but not so hard that the air bags deployed.  The impact moved us a little sideways, so that the front, driver side tire was over the yellow line of the turning lane.

Shortly after the impact, the kid backed his car back into the drive of the convenience store, clearing one lane of traffic. The __-___ driver that had waved the kid through didn’t even stop to see if anyone was hurt.  The accident happened right in front of their vehicle, but they just drove off.

Our car wasn’t going any place under it’s own power.

“My chest hurts.”

Karen still had her seatbelt on.
_____________

Karen’s brother brought us home after she was released from the Emergency Room.

Karen is still hurting, but nothing is broken – according to the x-rays – and her heart is fine.  She got a shot for pain at the Emergency Room and got a prescription for the same medication – something that doesn’t cause nausea.

I’m fine – no pains that I can attribute to the accident. Tomorrow may be a different story.

The car is 6 years old with quite a lot of mileage on it.  It’s probably totaled. The cost of repair will probably be more than the value of the car.

Yesterday, when I checked my phone as I was leaving the fitness center, I found a missed phone call from a number and area code that was not in my contact list and that I didn’t recognize. I didn’t try to call back, preferring, instead, to wait until after I got home and could find out where the area code is .

It turned out that the call was from Phoenix, Arizona.

Now, I do know some people who are living in the Phoenix area, but they were people from work who either quit and moved there to work or retired and moved there to work.  I wouldn’t expect to hear from any of them.

However, there was a contract coordinator on one of the contracts jobs I did who worked out of Phoenix, though all of the communication with the contract company when I’m not working comes from the home office in Florida.  Still, it was worth looking into a little bit more, but not enough to try calling back, yet.

I decided to try to do a reverse phone number look-up.  For a price, personal information is available for the name a phone is in for almost every land line as well as many cell phones.  There are varying amounts and varying plans that can be subscribed to.  However, I don’t often have the need to track down personal information and I wasn’t about to pay for information about a call that might have been a wrong number.  When I searched on the term “reverse look-up,” all I found were various websites trying to get my money when I tried to do a reverse phone number look-up.

Then I decided to do a search on the phone number in Google.

Sometimes ya just get lucky.

Some of the comments on one of the pages:

A credit card telemarketing scam! They are trying to get you to tell them your credit card number so they can charge your credit cards.

They keep calling me to my cell phone and I never give them my number,I don’t know how they got my number, they are violating my privacy calling to my cell phone I hope we can do something to stop this.

I get frequent "missed call" notices on my cell phone from this number ( ). The caller is always too cowardly to leave a message. As another complaint filer noted, it appears to be a telemarketer. How are telemarketers getting our cell numbers?

The second time they called – same message, and this time I played along.
This is a complete and utter scam
How do I know? because I’ve never applied or carried a credit card – not even a store credit card! I prefer to operate on a cash basis. They have nothing to do with any existing credit card company nor are they calling on behalf of any company from what I gathered from them on the phone they are either a complete scam or an intermediary that will buy your debt from your existing company although he was very hazy and evasive on the phone. So the alarm going off in my head says scam – and under no circumstances should you give these people any information about yourself

They won’t be calling me from that number for a while.

Verizon Wireless lets customers block calls from up to 5 numbers for 90 days.  It’s a temporary measure, but, hopefully, our numbers will have dropped off of their system by December 9.

Question:

Other than telemarketers, have you ever been contacted by a phone scam (or received phone spam)?

Press release from Governor Patterson and Commissioner Ash:

The Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) today put forward a recommended list of closures and service reductions in order to achieve its 2010-11 agency savings target and help address the State’s historic fiscal difficulties.

Governor David A. Paterson issued the following statement:
"New York faces an historic fiscal crisis of unprecedented magnitude. It has demanded many difficult but necessary decisions to help ensure the fiscal integrity of our State. The unfortunate reality of closing an $8.2 billion deficit is that there is less money available for many worthy services and programs. In an environment when we have to cut funding to schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and social services, no area of State spending, including parks and historic sites, could be exempt from reductions. We cannot mortgage our State’s financial future through further gimmicks or avoidance behavior. Spending cuts, however difficult, are needed in order to put New York on the road to fiscal recovery. Going forward through the budget process, I look forward to a productive dialogue with the Legislature on parks and historic sites, as well as other issues."

OPRHP Commissioner Carol Ash issued the following statement:
"The 2010-11 Executive Budget included reductions to every area of State spending. As such, the Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation has today put forward proposed closures and service reductions to meet its agency savings target. These actions were not recommended lightly, but they are necessary to address our State’s extraordinary fiscal difficulties."

###

A fact sheet on the proposed closures and service reductions is included below:
The Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) today put forward a list of closures and service reductions in order to achieve its proposed 2010-11 agency savings target and help address the State’s historic fiscal difficulties. As part of a comprehensive plan to close an $8.2 billion deficit, the 2010-11 Executive Budget included necessary cost reductions to each executive State agency, as well as cuts to education, health care, social services, and every other area of State spending.
OPRHP’s plan includes the closure of 41 parks and 14 historic sites, and service reductions at 23 parks and 1 historic site.
The plan also assumes $4 million in park and historic site fee increases that will be identified at a later date, and the use of $5 million in funds from the Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) to finance OPRHP operations. These two actions were part of the 21-day amendments to the Executive Budget and are intended to reduce the number of parks and historic sites subject to closures and service reductions.

Specific recommended closures and service reductions are detailed below:
Long Island

Brookhaven State Park
Suffolk
Close Park

Bethpage State Park
Suffolk
Eliminate Winter Sports;
Reduce picnic area and polo field

Caleb Smith State Park Preserve
Suffolk
Close Park

Cold Spring Harbor State Park
Suffolk
Close Park

Connetquot River State Park
Suffolk
Close Weekdays

Heckscher State Park
Suffolk
Close Swimming Pool

Jones Beach State Park
Nassau
Close West Swimming Pool;
Eliminate July 4th fireworks

Montauk Downs State Park
Suffolk
Close Swimming Pool

Nissequogue River State Park
Suffolk
Close Park

Orient Beach State Park
Suffolk
Close Park

Trail View State Park
Suffolk
Close Park

New York City Region

Bayswater Point State Park
Queens
Close Park

Riverbank State Park
New York
Reduce Operating Hours;
Close Outdoor Swimming Pool;
Eliminate Seniors Classes;
and Community/Cultural Events

Palisades Region

Fort Montgomery Historic Site
Orange
Close Historic Site

Harriman SP– Anthony Wayne
Orange
Close Park Area

Harriman SP – Group Camps
Orange
Reduce Maintenance

High Tor State Park
Rockland
Close Pool

Knox Headquarters Historic Site
Orange
Close Historic Site

New Windsor Cantonment SHS
Orange
Close Historic Site

Schunnemunk State Park
Orange
Close Park

Stony Point State Historic Site
Orange
Close Historic Site

Tallman Mountain State Park
Rockland
Close Pool

Taconic Region

Donald J. Trump State Park
Westchester
Close Park

FDR (Roosevelt) State Park
Westchester
Reduce Swimming Pool Season

Hudson Highlands State Park
Putnam
Close Arden Point Area

James Baird State Park
Dutchess
Reduce Golf Course Season

Mills Norrie State Park
Dutchess
Reduce Golf Course Season

Olana State Historic Site
Columbia
Close 2 Days per Week

Philipse Manor Hall Historic Site
Westchester
Close Historic Site

Rockefeller State Park Preserve
Westchester
Eliminate Interpretive Programs

Taconic Outdoor Education Center
Putnam
Eliminate Interpretive Programs

Taconic State Park – Rudd Pond
Dutchess
Close Rudd Pond Area

Wonder Lake State Park
Putnam
Close Park

Saratoga-Capital Region

Bennington Battlefield State Park
Rensselaer
Close Historic Site

Hudson River Islands State Park
Rensselaer
Close Park

John Boyd Thacher State Park
Albany
Close Park

John Brown Farm Historic Site
Essex
Close Historic Site

Johnson Hall State Historic Site
Fulton
Close Historic Site

Max V. Shaul State Park
Schoharie
Close Park

Schodack Island State Park
Rensselaer
Close Park

Schoharie Crossing Historic Site
Schoharie
Close Historic Site

Schuyler Mansion Historic Site
Albany
Close Historic Site

Central Region

Chittenango Falls State Park
Madison
Close Park

Clark Reservation State Park
Onondaga
Close Park

Fort Ontario State Historic Site
Oswego
Close Historic Site

Helen McNitt State Park
Madison
Close Park

Herkimer Home Historic Site
Herkimer
Close Historic Site

Hunts Pond State Park
Chenango
Close Park

Oquaga Creek State Park
Broome
Close Park

Old Erie Canal State Park
Onondaga
Close Park

Oriskany Battlefield/Steuben SHS
Oneida
Close Historic Site

Pixley Falls State Park
Oneida
Close Park

Robert Riddell State Park
Delaware
Close Park

Selkirk Shores State Park
Oswego
Close Public Swimming Beach

Finger Lakes Region

Beechwood State Park
Wayne
Close Park

Bonavista State Park
Seneca
Close Park

Chimney Bluffs State Park
Wayne
Close Park

Newtown Battlefield State Park
Chemung
Close Park

Springbrook Greens State Park
Cayuga
Close Park

Two Rivers State Park
Tioga
Close Park

Buttermilk Falls State Park
Tompkins
Close Public Swimming Area

Seneca Lake State Park
Seneca
Close Lake Swimming Beach

Stony Brook State Park
Steuben
Close Public Swimming Area

Thousand Islands Region

Canoe Island State Park
Jefferson
Close Park

Cedar Island State Park
Jefferson
Close Park

Eel Weir State Park
St. Lawrence
Close Park

Keewaydin State Park
Jefferson
Close Park

Macomb Reservation State Park
Clinton
Close Park

Mary Island State Park
Jefferson
Close Park

Point Au Roche State Park
Clinton
Close Park

Sackets Harbor State Historic Site
Jefferson
Close Historic Site

Genesee Region

Hamlin Beach State Park
Monroe
Close Swimming Beach 3 Days per Week

Oak Orchard State Marine Park
Orleans
Close Park

Regionwide
Multiple
Eliminate Camper Recreation Program

Niagara Region

Joseph Davis State Park
Niagara
Close Park

Knox Farm State Park
Erie
Close Park

Niagara Falls State Park
Niagara
Reduce Interpretive Programs

Wilson-Tuscarora State Park
Niagara
Close Park

Woodlawn Beach State Park
Erie
Close Park

Allegany Region

Allegany State Park
Cattaraugus
Close Quaker Area Swim Beach;
Close Quaker Cabins Area on December 1st;
Eliminate Winter Trails Maintenance;
Reduce Recreation Programs

Long Point State Park
Chautauqua
Close Park

A proposed $20 million New York state budget cut will likely result in closure of New York state parks.  A Saratoga Springs Saratogian report says that state parks, already hit hard by previous cuts, are in peril from further cuts.

“Every region will be impacted. It’s not just small, fringe sites. Some of the largest parks might close because they’re the most expensive to operate — Jones Beach, Niagara Falls.”

Unfortunately, possible closings come at a time when people need parks most. Last year, statewide usage increased by2 million visits — from 54 million to 56 million — as residents sought inexpensive, close-to-home vacations. This year, Moreau Lake State Park’s campgrounds are already booked most weekends.

“When times are tough, people use state parks,” said Julie Stokes of Greenfield, former deputy state commissioner for operations. “The impact would be very large. A ton of people from Troy use Grafton Lakes. They bus kids out there. That park is absolutely jammed, seven days a week.”

Read more in the Saratogian: Proposed state budget imperils state parks

This is a day at work  — a week — that’s hard to rearrange and/or reschedule.

It wasn’t supposed to do this until later in the day… but at 4:30 AM we already had a bit of white stuff.

… and road conditions are already deteriorating (blue is snow covered, green is slush).

The Arctic Oscillation has become strongly negative again.

According to major news sources, including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, major budget shortfalls in Arizona will result in the closure of 13 state parks by June.  Eight others have already been closed.

The Los Angeles Times:

The action represents the largest closure of state parks in the nation, although several other states are considering similar moves.

“It’s a dark day for the Arizona state parks system,” said Renee Bahl, the system’s executive director.

“We have 65,000 acres around the state and the majority of them are closing.”

The Arizona parks receive about 2.3 million visitors per year who bring about $266 million into the state, Bahl said.

The New York Times:

The Arizona State Parks Board has voted unanimously to close 13 parks in response to budget cuts.

The Washington Post:

The Arizona State Parks Board is closing some of the state’s iconic Old West landmarks, including the Tombstone Courthouse in one of the West’s most storied towns, and the Yuma Territorial Prison, which housed hundreds of Old West outlaws and was portrayed in the film “3:10 to Yuma.”

The decision also closes parks such as Red Rock State Park near Sedona that draw tens of thousands of tourists a year.

The Legislature has cut 61 percent of the state parks budget since July.

In a Huffington Post editorial, Chad Campbell, the House Democratic Whip in the Arizona State Legislature, describes the reappropriation of a quarter of a million dollars meant for state parks:

GOP legislators recently pilfered a nearly $250,000 gift left by an elderly woman – now deceased – for the Arizona State Parks system.

The severity of budget cuts in Arizona is quite disturbing, but the cuts to State Parks have touched an especially raw nerve. In 2003, 82-year-old Asta Forrest left nearly $250,000 to the Arizona State Parks Board. This Danish immigrant’s gift to Arizona was inspired by her love of its beautiful natural surroundings.

It’s ironic that, in today’s rough economic times, state parks are being closed.  During the Great Depression, construction of state parks provided need work for thousands of young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Update – January 16, 2010: Arizona State Parks to Close 13 more parks by June

According to the Arizona State Parks Foundation, a special session of the State Legislature has cut funding for the state parks system to the point all parks will close. The cuts are part of a $205 million budget reduction to mitigate an estimated $1.5 billion budget deficit.

In an Urgent Call to Action, the foundation is asking for help.

URGENT CALL TO ACTION!
The Arizona State Legislature has acted on House Bill 2001. It eliminates the ability of our Arizona State Parks system to operate. All parks will ultimately close as a result of this action. If you or your children wish to ever visit such extraordinary places like Kartchner Caverns State Park, Tonto Natural Bridge State Park or Tubac Presidio State Historic Park, you must act today. It is our last hope.

Call, email or write (sample letter at right) Governor Jan Brewer and urge her to veto the parks cuts listed in the article below.

Phone: 602-542-4331 or 800-253-0883
Email via Governor’s Contact page at:
www.governor.state.az.us/Contact.asp
Mail: The Honorable Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona,
1700 West Washington, Phoenix, Arizona 85007

Read more at the Arizona State Parks Foundation website.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About

Climate politics continue to be interesting.  Australia’s opposition Liberal Party has ousted its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, after the resignation last week of several senators from their “front-seat” positions.  The Aussie government’s climate change bill is now in jeopardy, raising the potential of an early general election in 2010.

The Climategate emails and documents are being investigated by a number of organizations, including an inquiry by Penn State University, where Michael Mann, creator of the discredited hockey stick graph – used by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth – is a professor. Inquiries are also under way at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked material.  Government investigations are either ongoing or pending and there has been at least one civil lawsuit filed.

At a minimum, the emails document the violation of UK Freedom of Information laws.

Many believe that the leaker was not a hacker, but, rather, was an insider acting as a anonymous whistleblower by leaking the emails and documents, including information that had been unsuccessfully been sought under the UK FOI statutes.

The emails are not the only incriminating material.  Computer codes and their documentation show fudged numbers and “blatant data-cooking” that tell a story of twisting reality to a desired view.

Many of the fantastic claims in the media about climate change are likely predicated on the same sort of skewed science.

An article in the Wall Street Journal titled The Climate Science Isn’t Settled, by Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT gives a more balanced view of the state of climate science.

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

While I have been skeptical of global warming claims for quite some time, this Climategate fiasco appears to show  a conspiracy to doctor the evidence.

In my interest in climate change, I wasn’t looking for a conspiracy, just the truth.

Mesa Verde National Park, September 13, 2009

I figure she was just thinking about seeing the cliff dwellings up close and personal.

It was obvious, though, to us, that she’s not a regular on trails.

The shoulder bag is a dead giveaway.

Generally, the only places we ever see women with purses on trails are relatively short trails that go to gotta-see sights.

Cliff Palace is certainly a gotta-see, but really….

And the footwear.

Granted, we did see a lot of people wearing sandals and flip-flops, but, again, I doubt that many of them are out on trails of any kind on a regular basis — I think her flip-flops were to show off her pretty red toe-nails.

But the real question was the skirt.

I doubt that she was thinking about the climb up out of the canyon — or maybe didn’t know, until it was too late.

The way out was very steep — and included near-vertical ladders.

___________

The image on the right was taken from across the canyon.  I processed it on my computer to lighten it so that the dark crack in the rocks where the exit climb was could be seen.

I certainly did NOT miss clearing the paper out of the paper path in copying machines.

However, it’ still one of the necessary qualifications in today’s “paperless” nuclear power teaching environment.

On Friday, I went to the copy center to copy material I planned to hand out in my first classroom instruction since I started on this contract.

The students all have laptops and wireless access to most of the material that they need for class.  However, I’m going to be going over material associated with a certification that they need to complete and I wanted them to have a copy of the forms that that will be used by the evaluator during the test.

The machine jammed on the first copy.

I had not cleared a paper jam from a copier in at least a year.

Needless to say, it wasn’t a particularly  easy task.

Even after I finally found all of the paper, it took a while to get all the levers, knobs, and other copier widgets back in their proper positions.  The door wouldn’t close until everything was aligned for operation.

Finally, everything was somehow aligned correctly and the front door of the copier would close.

I decided to give it one more try before going to find a friendlier machine. All twelve copies sailed through with no problem — single side to double side, stapled, punched and stacked.

All in a day’s work at the power plant training center.

day 53

We don’t watch much TV and we’ve already seen way too much of the current Michael Jackson media circus and the morbid fascination of the public and  some of the Michael Jackson fans.

Most people realized that Jackson had problems, but there seems to be some sort of sick fascination of the man and those problems. The media seems to think that the public wants or needs every detail of his life and the aftermath.

While I like much of his music, he was just another wealthy celebrity with problems that were exacerbated and enabled by his wealth and influence as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t need or want excruciating details about his funeral, his will, his mom, his dad, his kids, his ex-wife, etc., etc.

Just report whatever is actually newsworthy in this story and move on, please.  If there’s anything new, update us tomorrow.

I just find it annoying when there are so many more important things going on in the world that are being under reported because of this sensationalism.

Comments?

day 27

A musical take on cap and tax… er, trade.

day 25

I discovered just a little while ago that access to individual posts on this blog was unavailable and commenting was not available. This was because of something I did with some files on the server earlier today — not a web host issue. I knew that I should have checked after I was done, but didn’t.

It’s all back to normal now. It was only a 30 second fix, because it’s something that happened before and I knew where to look.

——

A couple of days ago, a park visitor from Spain was injured by a Yellowstone National Park bison (aka American buffalo).

“At approximately 11:25 a.m., the woman and her husband were using a pay phone in the Canyon lodging area with their backs to the road. According to witnesses, two bull bison walked down the road, passing within 20 feet of the couple. One of the bison left the road, walked up behind the woman and butted her into the air. The couple, who were facing away from the road, did not see the bison.”

The woman was taken to the Lake Clinic where she was treated for minor injuries and released.

This quite an unusual event. Bison are not usually aggressive unless someone has encroached upon their space. We have seen numerous instances where people have gotten way too close to these critters and nothing happened. Park regulations require that a minimum distance of 25 yard must be maintained from bison.

Bison are very, very common in the Canyon area.

We still hope to make it to Yellowstone this year. However, we may not have as much time available as we had originally thought.

——

Climate change legislation — The Waxman/Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act pass by a very slim margin today in the US House of Representatives. I actually watched some of the debate on CSPAN. I’ve got just a few comments.

• They didn’t even have a properly collated official copy of the bill in the room during the debate. Three hundred pages were revised overnight and one of the House staff was in the process of inserting pages into the correct place in the “official copy” during the closing minutes of the floor debate.
• The debate on the floor was limited to 3 hours for a bill that may be one of the largest tax bills in the history of the country.
• While virtually every American would end up with higher energy costs as a result of the bill, as I understand it, it’s requirements would have negligible impact on global warming, if anthropogenic (human caused) global warming (AGW) were a proven fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
• The premise of the bill is predicated on the assumption that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a proven scientific fact. The earth has been warming up until the last ten years. Global carbon dioxide levels have been rising, at least in part due to human activities, even during the last ten years as global temperature anomalies have been stable or dropping. While it would seem obvious to blame rising temperatures on carbon dioxide produced by man, there is no proof that continued rising CO2 will result in a continued rise in global temperatures. The predictions of rising temperatures are the product of computer climate models that assume that anthropogenic global warming is a proven scientific fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
• Our Representative, voted against it. I think I voted against him in 2008. He’s got my vote in 2010.

——

Climate change — I read material on climate change almost every day.

I am absolutely appalled at the gloom and doom, the-sky-is-falling alarmism that is in the media on a daily basis.

I’m not sure at what point I stopped simply accepting anthropogenic (human caused) global warming. I can say that for well over a year I’ve been reading a lot of climate change related material and have a much better understanding of the topic than I once had. My first blog post on climate was It’s not a hypothesis… It’s not a theory… it’s a CONSENSUS! last year.

Below is some of what I’ve come to believe and understand related to the Earth’s climate.

• Anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis.
• Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some warming has resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans.
• There is no proof that continued rise in CO2 will result in continued rise in global temperatures.


Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks

• Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.
• The science of climate change is not settled.  Science is never settled. There is always more to learn, more to add.
• Consensus on climate change is not science.  It’s politics.  Science isn’t done by consensus, as I understand it.
• For a scientist to be a skeptic on climate change is not a bad thing.  Scepticism and questioning are important aspects of science.
• The Earth appears to have been cooling overall for most of this young century — 2000 to 2009.
• The reports of the danger to polar bears are premature.  They are also recycled over and over again.
• The prediction of an Arctic free of  ice is  premature.  AMSRE-A Sea Ice Extent has 6 1/2 years of history. The sea arctic sea ice extent currently is higher than any of the other years at this point in the annual cycle. AMSRE-A (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – Earth Observing System).
• Antarctic sea ice extent is getting larger.
• A recent survey found Arctic ice to be thicker than expected.  (radiobremen)
• The heat content of the world’s ocean is dropping – Q = mc∆T. (The Global Warming Hypothesis and Ocean Heat)

day 22

My sites are all back, in case anyone noticed the following message:

This is the second time that the account has been suspended.

Apparently, something in the database gets corrupted and then there is a bit of extra traffic and my account uses up more than it’s share of the server availability.

This is the only problem that I’ve had with Bluehost in recent months. Both times the technical service folks were very helpful. This time, one of the techs suggested a couple of WordPress plugins that would 1) help reduce the loading if, by some odd chance I got a surge of traffic, and 2) keep some of the spambots from even getting to the page.

I’m not going to implement them tonight and I do have more than just this blog to install them on. I’ll post more about the plugins on Exit78 after I’ve looked at them and installed them.

day 18

While we were traveling, though unintended, I only watched television a few hours.

If I subtract the time that the TV was on a food channel at my sister-in-law’s and watching Mama Mia at my brother-in-law’s, it’s down to less than an hour of TV for 27 days away from home — and that was primarily checking for weather forecasts.

It was a good break from television and some of the things that bug me about it.

Today, watching the evening news, it struck me just how much of what is presented as news really isn’t news, at least as far as I’m concerned.

I was watching a story about the shooting of two young soldiers  — one killed — in Little Rock at a joint Army – Navy recruiting office. The story is still new so there are a lot of unanswered questions and it’s understandable that the story is still rough and not fully fleshed out.

However, a couple of things about the story struck me the wrong way.

The alleged shooter was apprehended 30 minutes later and the story had to mention that their station was the only one that had a camera at the police station when the suspect was brought in.  That’s not news.  It’s gratuitous self-promotion.

As is fairly common, I guess, they found it necessary to get some local reaction from people at the scene.  They interviewed one young fellow who had driven down to shopping center that the recruiting office was in because his girlfriend works there, she gets upset easily and, besides checking on her,  he wanted to find out  what was going on.  I’m sorry, but local reaction is generally not news.

While the specifics may vary, local reaction to a shooting is going to be predictable, but it’s not news unless the reaction is something unexpected.

For instance, if the local reaction had been for citizens to have apprehended the suspect instead of the police, that would have been news.

Comments, anyone?

Even though I was down 2 lbs last Wednesday, I was back up above the lost 2 lbs by the weekend.

I’ve been struggling a bit, finding it difficult to stay motivated about going to the gym.  My weight was still above last week’s on Monday and I left the gym a half hour earlier than I normally do.

Yesterday and today I pushed myself.  My weight yesterday was back down to just below last week’s weight and, today, I had lost a little more.

Started November 1, 2008 at 285.6 lbs
Last week = 266.4 lbs.
This week = 265.4 lbs.
Difference = -1 lbs.; -20.2 lbs since starting
Initial goal: 210 lbs.; 56.4 lbs. to go!

Made it to the gym every day except Sunday.

See other participants’ results at Blog to Fit – Wednesday Weigh-In.