One cold snap and...

The mini ice-age begins... although I think an ice-age is much more likely than global warming, and although an ice-age would be much, much worse news for Mankind than global warming, why can't somebody just report the current weather and leave the weather 50 or 100 years from now alone for awhile.

I think I predicted awhile back that after a few more cold years Al Gore would end up leaving the country because people would make fun of him wherever he goes... looks like it's already started:

As the Gore party started walking out of the room, my colleague called out, "Hey, Al, how's all that global warming working out for you?" Gore turned around and stared at us with a completely dumbfounded look on his face. He was speechless. With a smile, my colleague repeated the question, again to a hapless look of dismay.

Mr. Gore has linked himself to, and profited from, the idea that the Earth is warming.  Cold is hard.  Cold is difficult.  Cold is expensive and Gore has set himself up to be an object of derision when winter seeps under the door instead of summer breezes. 

Gumby creator Art Clokey dies at 88

Art Clokey has passed away.  Gumby and Pokey -- what great characters.

Norwell 61, Carroll 60 (Whew!)

Every great season has at least one of these games... The Lady Knights took this one down to the wire

Carroll, playing in front of a large supportive home crowd, had just taken a 60-58 lead on a lay-up by junior Megan Reader. After a Norwell timeout [and with only seconds remaining on the clock], senior guard Jenelle Wilson brought the ball up the right sideline, cut back to the middle of the floor, and found junior Caitlyn McGrew on the left wing. McGrew fired up a three that hit nothing but bottom to give Norwell (13-0) an improbable 61-60 win and leaving Carroll (5-8) stunned.

Never say never.

The Fastest Gun in the West

The Unbelievable Bob Munden

Norwell 61, Leo 41

The girls stay perfect at 12-0, defeating Leo 61-41.

35 years of Earthquakes

Earthquake epicenters for 1963-1998. A Nice view of the Earth's plates.

Norway's Stand against MRSA

A fascinating article about the benefits of not using antibiotics.  Since Norway's a country of under five million people it's perhaps easier to take such a hard line stance against prescribing antibiotics... but if America would choose to, we could fight the use of antibiotics with as much strength as we do cigarettes. 

Forty years ago, a new spectrum of antibiotics enchanted public health officials, quickly quelling one infection after another. In wealthier countries that could afford them, patients and providers came to depend on antibiotics. Trouble was, the more antibiotics are consumed, the more resistant bacteria develop.

Norway responded swiftly to initial MRSA outbreaks in the 1980s by cutting antibiotic use. Thus while they got ahead of the infection, the rest of the world fell behind.

In Norway, MRSA has accounted for less than 1 percent of staph infections for years. That compares to 80 percent in Japan, the world leader in MRSA; 44 percent in Israel; and 38 percent in Greece.

In the U.S., cases have soared and MRSA cost $6 billion last year. Rates have gone up from 2 percent in 1974 to 63 percent in 2004.

 Read the whole thing and do your part by not forcing your doctor to prescribe antibiotics immediately.

Girls roll to 11-0

The Norwell Girls Basketball Team won the Plymouth Shootout over the weekend, defeating Wawasee 49-30 and Plymouth 48-26.  The #1 girls move to 11-0 on the season.

An article from Plymouth's point of view

The Colts Incentive

The NFL is considering incentives to get teams to play their starters even when the season is a lock.  One idea in the article is additional draft picks based on the team's win-loss record... but isn't the draft set up to empower weaker teams to keep balance in the league?

As far as incentives go, perhaps losing draft picks for sitting out your starters would be better for the league than gaining picks for playing your starters. But who will determine when a play is hurt enough to sit out without penalty?

Bluffton Boys edge Norwell in OT

What a sad state of affairs, Bluffton 57, Norwell 56 in overtime. Bluffton remains undefeated, Norwell falls to 5-3.

Change is coming to a telephone near you

Did the whole government takes away your analog television sit well with you? Prepare yourself for a rerun as AT&T is pushing the US Government to stop making them support analog phone lines (land lines).

I don't know about you, but I still think we-the-people lost out on the television deal... I still can't receive a digital television signal that doesn't continually break apart and I live right in Fort Wayne. We lost all those VCR tuners and all those tiny TVs we used to have. We still can't do things with TV tuners like we used to.

Do you see how it is once government gets involved in anything: everyone is pushed into the same cubby hole and change becomes a big hassle. Many people have already dropped their land lines in favor of cell phones or internet voice. I still think there's a certain security in a land line that's missing in cell phone and internet voice. I don't care if AT&T wants to drop land lines, but wonder what will happen should a solar flare, or something worse, knock out more modern communications systems. I suppose we'll find out, eventually.

Thorium: Our Optimistic Future

Start your new year out on an optimistic note: read "Uranium is So Last Century -- Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke."

It seems that back when nuclear energy was young, the United States experimented with many substances that could generate nuclear energy. We chose Uranium over Thorium because we were locked in a nuclear arms race with Russia and we could use the by-product of Uranium power for bomb-making. With Thorium, there is very little waste and the waste can't be used for bombs and the waste in only dangerous for a few hundred years. In addition, Thorium is plentiful and has no risk of China Syndrome meltdowns when used. We even built working Thorium reactors but the whole idea of using Thorium was forced out in favor of savings on bomb-making through Uranium use.

We read so many depressing articles in energy technology these days. The one linked above reads like a wonderful story... our country's answer to clean, cheap energy has been sitting in a book on a shelf at Oak Ridge, TN for decades, waiting for someone to pursue it.

Come on, let's do it! Let's not end up in 2050 looking back to 2010 wishing we had moved to Thorium. Can you imagine the global changes we'd be living with today if we had pursued this 40 years ago?

Update: Read Kirk Sorensen's Energy from Thorium blog.