Guesses At Nothing

This is what it is all about.  So good I had to watch it twice.

Smell my mule..........

It is enough to wear patent leather shoes and walk at a brisk pace with a bottle of wine tucked under your armpit and supermarket  baked bread in your hand.  We are not the French.  We don't know a lot about stinky cheese, but we do know that the best wine comes from California, not the Bordeaux.  We might not know about love either, not like the French who invented our favorite kiss and have a language dedicated to the subject.  We Americans are even as bold to drop the Saint from the holiday and wish each other the perfunctory "Happy Valentine's Day."  Some of us, or perhaps most of us buy a Hallmark Greeting for someone which politely compares love to alcohol, or bumpy flights to bedroom escapades. 

Cartoon characters even spout poetry. 

Our children take part in the ritual too, exchanging candy and cards in school like love's currency, but it is required that you bring enough for every one in the class, even the kid who tied your shoes together and pushed you over repeatedly every time you stood up. No, we don't know love like the French.  We don't even know love like the English, who invented the art of courtly love.   But we do know that another person's company and a bottle of wine will get you through the evening on a cold night in February.  It is enough to have a family and say "I love you."

The snowfall in the Oswego area has gained some national attention.   It could be as much as twelve feet.  Seeing all the pictures of Oswego makes me reminisce about my old college days.  While I was there we had very mild winters so I didn't know what all the hype was about.  It was windy though, damn windy.  Anyway, I was talking to a buddy from New York and he said that he saw an ad in a local paper that advertised "Roof Shoveling -- Fully Insured," so he decided to put out his own ad but with a twist, "Roof Shoveling -- You must be insured.  Church steeples are my specialty"  Surprisingly he got some responses.  The other guy must be too pricey. 

Raleigh has fitted a parking garage with LED lights that are brighter and 40 % more energy efficient.   More municipal areas are on the way.  It's good for the local economy as well, as the LED company is based in Durham.  Hopefully this experiment will become a model that is adopted by other cities. 

Art

I may be a little late to the party on this one, but I want to comment on the recent bomb scare in Boston.  If you haven't heard about it there was a guerrilla marketing campaign that involved hanging illuminated devices throughout the city that showcased a character from a cartoon making a lewd gesture.  Well, someone thought that the device looked suspicious and reported it to the police.  Now I understand that they have to take these things seriously, but after they found the first device it should have been apparent that these things were not bombs.  But the police, and more aptly the media overreacted and sent the city into a panic.  I can't blame the populous either; these are troubled times.  Everybody is on edge when the word explosive is mentioned in the context of a major metropolitan area.   The fact of the matter is however, that the PD over reacted and the media seized on this and whipped up a panic.  So what does the city do in response?  They arrest these two guys:

That was their press conference, and the guys talked about nothing but hair. I can't blame them. They couldn't talk about the situation at the advice of their lawyer, and instead they drew attention to the absurdity of it all. Bravo. Oh, and Turner Broadcasting, the company that owned the company that hired the company that hired these two guys has agreed to pay 2 million dollars to cover the city's expenses in the response. So no harm, no foul, says I. And in the end, maybe the silver lining is that this was a good test of the city's preparedness. If you are wondering what the device looked like, it was something like this:

So much has happened since my last post.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a report that states human beings are likely the cause of climate change.  I've said before, and I'll say again, no shit.  There has been some arguments over this statement, and yet again Exxon Mobil has been linked to buying out scientists' to contradict the obvious to the tune of $10,000.  My buddies over at DeSmogBlog have quoted an article from the Globe and Mail, comparing those who dispute man's involvement with the climate to "creationists, flat-Earthers and those who dispute the scientific consensus that HIV is the cause of AIDS."  I like this.   Although, creationists have some clout in this country even if they are vocal minority. 

Also, Gore (whose documentary is up for a best documentary Oscar, and is being required to be shown in British schools) is also slamming the skeptics and the Astro-turfers.  From CNN:

"They've lost the argument and they don't want to stop dumping all this pollution into the Earth's atmosphere," Gore said in a short interview. "The only thing they have left is cash and now they're offering cash for so-called skeptics who will try to confuse people about what the science really say. But it's unethical because now the time has come when we have to act. And it's always easier to pretend that a big problem does not exist, because then you have no moral obligation to solve it. But our responsibility to our children and those who come after is sacred and we must discharge our responsibility. And the good news is the changes we need to make are ones that will improve the quality of life. They're things that we should be doing anyway."

Hear, hear!