YHGTBFKM! Volume 2

Yet again, it’s time for another episode of YHGTNFKM! (You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me!)

I am a regular reader of social news sites, mainly Fark.com and Digg.com. While this may not keep me as up to date on top news stories as reading CNN.com or Fox.com, it does give me a much greater knowledge of the news of the weird. And it also gives me adequate fodder for the YHGTBFKM header. A while back, there was a story regarding Peta and its newest campaign to indoctrinate the nations children into its wacky, over the top, generally insane antics. While I can understand, and to an extent agree with, a very select few of their causes, some just seem to be spooling off the ticker tape from the Twilight Zone and into their press releases.

The things I can agree with are:

• Raising animals solely for the purpose of fashion. Synthetics are just as lovely. Until they get red paint or blood thrown on them.
• Hunting whales to extinction. See Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home for justification.
• Peta has been able to get more high profile stars naked on film than Hugh Hefner

What I have a problem with is Peta’s apparent need to elevate animal rights above human rights. One gets the impression that if a hard-core Peta activist was in a situation where they could save either a rat or a baby, it would be Bye-Bye Baby. Because somehow, the rat is more noble than a human, because it isn’t a human. Peta’s latest foray into madness comes from their Sea Kitten Campaign. For extra fun, read the bedtime stories. One that really shines is “Sally and the Land Kittens.” What a wonderful story! I wish this had been around when my kids were young so I could teach them all about vengeance and revenge by inflicting death! What I think is funny is that all the sudden, Peta puts a picture of a real kitten being baked into a pie at the hands of a fish. That is sure ethical.

Now, the reason this was brought to my attention again and actually caused me to do some writing about it was this story, regarding a prank pulled on Peta. Someone copied their entire Sea Kitten website, then put an ad for Omaha Steak House at the top. This made me laugh. Then I read more of the story describing the prank, and saw this:

All jokes aside, giving up meat is one of the best ways you can help stop the advancement of global warming and air and water pollution.

So, now we get a cause that is not as popular tagging along with one that has popular support. I have never understood the Vegetarian movement. I have never been able to fully understand if this is a animal rights choice or a health choice. From my limited understanding of healthy eating, the medical downfalls of a carnivorous diet are more related to how it is prepared more than what is prepared. This causes me to think the issue is more of an animal rights issue, vegetarians don’t want to eat the cute and fuzzy animals. This doesn’t even get into the anthropomorphizing of the animals raised for consumption. While I am sure that we don’t really have any way of knowing the “thoughts and feelings” of animals, I really don’t think that we can attribute the complexity of Human thoughts and feelings to most animals. I know with absolute certainty that I have never seen a “sea kitten” playing with a ball of yarn, as shown in “Sea Kitten Stories.”

I do know that Humans are designed to be omnivorous. This is easily seen by going to the closest mirror and opening your mouth wide. The front teeth are sharp, like a pure carnivore, suitable for the tearing of meat. Back teeth, flat for the grinding of grains and plant matter. We are animals designed to eat whatever it takes to survive. In the olden days before we became all enlightened and shit, we ate meat off the bone for the protein needed to keep muscles alive to go out and catch more meat. And also to gather grains, berries, whatever it took to survive. Nowadays, eating has become more of a pleasure based activity than a survival one. This relates to both vegetarians and non. If you doubt it, try getting a kid to eat something he doesn’t like, or talk to the Hershey people, or McDonalds. The food industry is based on providing food that tastes good. We can be more selective. The health issues come from the fact that although our tastes have evolved, out bodies haven’t. Back in the hunter gatherer days, we could have eaten a couple of Hershey bars a day, because later we were going to be trying to chase down an antelope on foot. We burned off the calories. Indeed, the calories were needed to provide the energy for the chase. We don’t chase any more. We Drive-Thru. So we don’t burn the excess calories. A person would be fit as a fiddle if we attached their Big Mac to a remote controlled car and made people chase it down before they got it. Same food, different lifestyle.

But what about the Organic movement? Not vegetarian, per se, but allegedly healthier and better for the environment. Not so fast there, Moonbeam. I recently listened to an episode on Skeptoid which discussed the Organic Movement. The article is disappointingly devoid of citations, but it does at least make you think. The biggest complaint I hear about organic foods is the higher cost. I see the cost being the result of two factors. One, it is a prime, niche market. “It is healthier, I want to be healthy, it is worth paying for.” I see the same attitude towards Star Trek DVD’s. Fanatical people who will pay a premium price for a product, based on the popularity. Simply put, it costs more because people pay more.  The second reason is simple supply and demand. An organic field will produce less product than a non organic one. Organic food has had no “Bio tampering.” The reality of cross breeding and bio engineering is that we are looking to increase yield. More product per acre to sell. Also, more product per acre to feed people.I thought that one of the big causes of the world was to end starvation. We have agricultural scientists looking for ways to make more food on the same land, but this is somehow bad since that means that “Big Agro Business” will make more money. We cant separate these things. There are very few farms in our country that are solely for the provision of the farmer and his family. Farmers, large and small, are in it to make a living. And to make a living in this day and age, you need money.

Based solely on bumper stickers, I believe that most activists are active in more than one cause. They want to feed the world. They want to protect the animals. They want to save the planet from Man. In my mind, here is how the scenario would play out if we were to do all  the things activists want us to do. First, we get rid of the industries that are polluting the earth. This causes more people to fall out of the commercial infrastructure, and be forced into the agricultural to feed themselves. But they cannot raise meat to eat, so we can protect the animals, so they are all vegetarians. We no longer use anything but natural fertilizers and crops, decreasing yield per acre. It now takes more land to provide food per person. We cannot create more farmland, since that would require eliminating forests. At current levels, it requires 1.2 acres of land to feed a single person. We are about 400 million acres short of arable land on the planet to provide that for the world population. (I have citations, and may put them in a future post, but this is already long enough) But don’t forget, are saving the animals too, so they have to have food as well. So, now we have to let the herbivores eat some of the people food, because they outnumber the carnivores. And they reproduce like mad. After a couple of generations, the world population starts to decline. Daily life is no longer centered around advancement of the species, but survival of the species. By limiting ourselves, we actively destroy our own race just as surely as global thermo-nuclear war, it just takes longer.

But, hey. The sea kittens are safe to play with their balls of yarn. Oh, wait. There aren’t any balls of yarn because that comes from either chemicals or abuse of animals. Poor sea kittens. If only someone had thought of them.

The HTPC Project: Implementation

I posted before regarding my plans to build a Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) and use it as a media server. I had done considerable reading on the subject, and knew in my head what it was I wanted the system to be capable of. The requirements were fairly simple: It had to fit in my entertainment center, it had to look nice, it had to have a lot of storage space for movies, music and pictures, and it had to connect to my HDTV using a HDMI cable. I wanted a clean look, and the single HDMI cable connecting to my TV for both video and audio was a big plus. My build would have only three cables connecting the HTPC, power, video/audio, and network.

I ordered the following from Newegg.com, a place I highly recommend.

• Zotac 8300 AMD motherboard
• AMD Athlon X2 5200 CPU
• 4GB of Kingston DDR2 800 memory
• Lite-On DVD drive/burner
• hec Micro ATX HTPC case w/power supply
• Seagate 1.5TB hard drive
• nMedia Wireless keyboard/remote combo

After it all arrived, I assembled the PC in the very tight case and fired it up. The next two days (thank god for long weekends) were spent experimenting with various operating systems trying to find the proper balance between operation of the PC for watching movies, plus the fastest method to convert my DVD’s into files for the media center to use.

I started by loading the 64-bit version of Windows XP. I did this mainly because I would be able to load Ubuntu later and have it as a dual boot. I wanted the 64 bit under the theory that it would handle the conversion process quicker than a 32 bit OS. After loading windows and all the drivers, I had a full 1920×1080 resolution desktop on my TV, and audio being carried over the single HDMI cable. So far, so good. I had previously ripped a two hour movie to my main PC’s hard drive to use as the benchmark, and that PC was able to convert the movie in about 4 1/2 hours. I loaded up Handbrake and changed the video profile to match what I had been doing on the main PC, and kicked off the conversion. The method I was using was a two stage process, and the first stage was running about 70% faster on the new system. Strangely, the second stage ran about 20% slower than my older system. Overall, there was no advantage to the 64 bit OS. I attribute this to the fact that there is no native 64 bit version of Handbrake for windows, so that process was running in an emulator. Ultimately, the conversion process failed after about two and half hours, so it was a no go.

Next came the 64 Bit version of Ubuntu. I installed that and downloaded the 64 bit version of Handbrake for Linux. The conversion rate for that was a little better than it was for the 64 bit windows, and did not fail. I ran into a bigger problem with Ubuntu, however. While the manufacturer of the video card does offer video drivers for the Linux platform, they don’t support the audio over HDMI. I found a lot of tips and tricks to make it work, but each of them I tried would crash the system hard. I didn’t want to build a tinkering system, I just wanted one that would be easy to set up and maintain. I gave up on Ubuntu since I needed the audio over HDMI.

I loaded a copy of 32-bit Windows XP and got all the updates and drivers loaded, and ran the conversion process again. It was the same speed as the 64 bit Windows, so I decided to stick with it. At this point, I started doing some more experimentation with the Handbrake settings, and found that I could get comparable picture quality out of a different preset,and it reduced the conversion time considerably. Rather than a 2.5 to one ratio between conversion time to “watch time,” meaning a two hour movie took about 5 hours to encode, this was closer to real time, one minute of conversion time to one minute of view time. I also decided to try a different Media Center software package, as the one I was using on the Mac in the bedroom was still in closed alpha, and I didn’t have an invite. I went with XBMC, which is the basis for the Boxee I was using on the Mac.

XBMC is the best Media Center software I have found, bar none. After playing with it on the HTPC for a while, I went into the bedroom and downloaded the Mac version and deleted Boxee. I started doing DVD rips on the HTPC, but with a different method. XBMC will play ISO files. An ISO is a image of a DVD. These files take up a LOT more space on the drive, but the conversion factor is about 5 times faster. With 1.3TB of space available, I wanted to have my movies on line more than I wanted to save space. The old method was literally going to take a year of conversion time. The way XBMC handles TV episodes in ISO files was not to my liking, so I am still going to convert them the old way, but I was able to get three times as many movies viewable on the HTPC in two days as what took two weeks before.

My method now is to rip the DVD into an ISO, let XBMC put it into its library so I can watch it. I rip a shelf worth of DVD’s at a time, this usually takes one evening after work. Then, I queue up about 8 movies worth in Handbrake to do the conversion to the smaller files when I go to bed, and they are done when I get home from work the next day. Then I can use the HTPC to actually watch movies in the evening, and queue up 8 more for the next night.

This is the most fun I have had with a computer since I got the new version of Delicious Library for my Mac. That is, until I was searching for a right angle USB adapter so I could sit the computer in my Entertainment Center the right way and stumbled across another HTPC case that I like better. The worst part, one of the cutomer reviews made the comment that it fits perfectly in his entertainment center, the same one I have. I guess I will order one of those eventually. I really like the way it looks.

New Year Nostalgia

People who know me in the flesh know that I like to tell stories. Most of them are from personal experience, and they are the ones that make me laugh every time I think of them. This is one of those stories.

It was New Year’s Eve, somewhere between 10 and 15 years ago. I was visiting the family for Christmas, and by New Years, boredom had set in pretty hard. I decided I wanted to go out for New Years, and knew my uncle would be up for it. I gave him a call, and we decided to start the festivities. A friend of his was going to be joining us. We hit the first bar and got our drinks. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. I knew we were in for an interesting night, because the friend had recently been “86′ed” from the first bar. Every time we went to get a new drink, the girl behind the bar whispered to my uncle that he needed to get his friend out of there before her boss showed up. My uncle and I had been catching up on things, and reminiscing about my grandfather. I had seen a small bar stuck in the corner, not being used, and it looked familiar. I asked my uncle, and he verified that it was the one that my grandfather had built for his basement. I “tended bar” behind it when I was about 8 for a party or two my grandparents had held. The friend spent his time talking to the other customers, and the conversation always went the same way. “I thought you were kicked outta here?” “Yeah, but…” The conclusion changed with every telling. My uncle finally decided that it was time to get us all out of there about 7:30, since the owner could show up and any time and he didn’t want to get 86′ed for bringing his buddy in. This was the only bar in town, after all. Oh, there was also the issue that my uncles boss had come in with his wife, and she kept asking me to dance, since her husband kept refusing to.

The friend had proceeded to get very drunk, very fast, since he couldn’t go into that bar he wanted to get while the getting was good, and my uncle drove him home. We sat in his driveway, and he wouldn’t get out, and kept babbling about how unfair it was that he was 86′ed. My uncle finally had to fake a temper tantrum about how pissed he was about his friends misfortune, and that he was going to go back and “straighten this shit out once and for all!” This finally got the friend out of the truck and we left. We decided to go the the “happening place” instead of going back. Now, the town I grew up in doesn’t allow bars inside the city limits, so we had to go to an even smaller town that did. This was only about 15 miles away, but the bar was much nicer. It had been around forever. I remember going to the restaurant there as a kid, and how neat it was that the interior walls were decorated with shingles that local cattle ranchers had burned their brand on. The front was a restaurant, the back was a bar, and they usually had a live band playing on the weekends. Before we went there, we had to stop at the local convenience store, since we were both out of cigarettes. While we stood in line, my uncle noticed a small bowl near the register full of packs of gum. These were the old Beemans brand. They also had Clove Gum. My uncle went nuts over them both, and bought several packs of each. This is important later. We picked up another friend of his and proceeded to the next bar.

The joint was hoppin’ when we got there, and we proceeded to get drinks and wander around meeting and greeting. I met a staggering number of relatives, which caused me to have concerns regarding my familial traits. I was drinking my normal beer, but the uncle was showing a tendency to regard the bar as a sampler tray. I don’t think he ordered the same thing twice. Beer, followed by a shot of whiskey, followed by a martini, followed by “Whatever you think I should have” directed at the bartender. His friend sat at the bar, chatting up a rather attractive lady in her early forties, who kept asking him the same question; “Aren’t you married?” “Yeah, but…”

I had found the evenings theme.

Midnight rolled around and the uncle was swaying. Neither of us got kissed, but we toasted each other and cheered with everyone else. The band played, people danced, and everyone had a good time. Except the friend. He didn’t get kissed at midnight either, despite his best efforts and buying many drinks for the lady. Around 12:30, I told the swaying uncle that we needed to go, since I had to leave early the next day to drive back home. He had taken a bar stool and placed it directly in front of one of the large  speakers the band was blasting. He told me to go get his buddy. I wandered over to the bar and told the buddy we were leaving. He looked at his lady friend hopefully, and said that he thought he had a ride. I turned to her and tried to verify this, and she introduced herself to me with a smile and wink. A Cougar before Desperate Housewives made it cool. She asked if I was really leaving, and wanted to know why. I told her that I was leaving to go back to Arizona the next day, and may have mentioned that I was bored and hadn’t even been kissed at midnight. That was all she needed to hear, and planted a big wet one on me. The friend did the whole “shoulder your way into the conversation”‘ bit by literally shouldering his way in between us. He then asked her if he had a ride home. She said that she would provide his transportation, and I found out later that she had deliberately dropped him off at the wrong house.

By that time, the uncle had come to see what was taking me so long. I told him we could go, and as we left to go out the back door, I heard his friend begin telling the lady all about me, and my disreputable qualities. He had known me for about two hours. We got into the bar, and rather than walk around the crowded dance floor, my uncle weaved a precarious path through the middle of it. There was a lovely young thing dancing with her date, and my uncle was so taken by her that he didn’t watch were he was going, and her dance partner bumped into him. The young man apologized immediately, and I pushed my uncle through the remaining crowd and out the back door. We were in the alley behind the place, and he started telling me about the girl he had just seen on the dance floor. I informed him that I was there, and had seen her. I was getting rather frustrated, because now that I had stopped drinking and wanted to go to bed, he was delaying me. Plus, I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to get his keys from him and I didn’t want to be his passenger. So, I was a little stressed. The remainder of the events from the dance floor caught up to my uncles drunken consciousness and he stopped in his tracks, no mean feat, and said, loudly, “That little fucker pushed me!”

I grabbed his arm and tried to get him moving again. “No, he didn’t. You ran into him.” I explained. “No, that little fucker pushed me!” he said again as he broke free of my grasp and turned to go back inside. “I’m gonna kick that little fuckers ass!” I had had enough. I grabbed him again, took hold of his coat with both hands and pulled him close as I screamed in his face. “No, you’re not! You ran into him, then he apologized to you for it! I am the one that pushed you, to get you out the fucking door! You aren’t going to do anything but give me the keys and get your drunk ass in the truck before I kick your ass!” I gave him a little shove backwards as I released him. He starred at me angrily. Then he stared at me with confusion. Then he just stared.

“I ran into him?”

“Yes. Give me the keys.”

“He didn’t shove me?”

“No. Give me the keys.”

He started feeling around in his pockets, and finally extracted… the Clove Gum.

“Would you like some Clove Gum?” he asked.

“No, give me the keys.”

“I think you would feel a lot better if you had some Clove Gum.”

“I don’t want any goddamn Clove Gum, I want the fucking keys so I can take you home then I can go to bed.”

“I know that when I get upset, Clove Gum always helps calm me down. You should have some Clove Gum.”

I took a piece of gum, then demanded the keys again.

“I can’t find ‘em.”

We went to the truck, and the keys were in the ignition. Sometimes I miss that small town trust. My  uncle snored the whole way to his house, and I woke him up and sent him inside. I told him goodbye, and had to explain to him, again, that I was leaving the next day, and got in my truck to head to my grandmothers. As I pulled away, I looked back at him to make sure that he had gotten inside the house OK. He was waving his arms at me. I backed up and rolled down the passenger window. “What?” I yelled.

“You want some Clove Gum?”

To this day, he claims that someone slipped him a Mickey.

YHGTBFKM!

That’s my new Internet Acronym, I just coined it, and you saw it here first. It means; “You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me!” I decided to use it here because of this article.

I grew up in south-east Idaho. Close enough to Yellowstone National Park that I could sleep in on Saturday, feel cabin-feverish and be having lunch at Old Faithful. I have seen Yellowstone so many times that I get bored unless I am taking someone who has never been there and get caught up in their infectious excitement. But it is still close enough to home, where my entire family lives, that headlines regarding Yellowstone catch my eye, whether its about wolves, bans on snowmobiles, or the super-volcano that could erupt any day now killing everyone and causing a massive disruption to the food source for every single thing on the planet, possibly even other planets!!!”

So, when I was reading that article, regarding the recent swarm of earthquakes, my first thought was; “I didn’t feel any earthquakes while I was within a hundred miles of Yellowstone.” Then I thought about the super-volcano eruption, and it’s likelihood, which I think is slim. Of course, this is still part of my immature “it cant happen to me or anyone I care about” syndrome. Then I got to the last paragraph.

Casualties of global warming? Who knows. There’s not much anyone can really do about these, except wait them out.

This is where I uttered the phrase that I am making into a meme. It seems that no matter what is happening, Global Warming or Climate Change is at fault, therefore, it is the humans fault. I have had a number of in-depth conversations with a friend regarding the whole Global Warming / Climate Change debate, and I think it is fair to say that we are on opposite sides of the fence on the issue. Keeping with the analogy, we are close enough to the fence that we can have a conversation about it without shouting. I cede points to him, he cedes points to me, but neither of us has really changed our position. The closest I have come to stepping over the fence is acknowledging that human actions have had an impact on the Climate Change, but I refuse to believe that human actions are the cause of climate change. For his part, the closest he has come is that the cycle is natural, but human actions have caused a “perfect storm” of circumstances where the natural cycle can’t be dealt with by the earth’s ecosystems, because of the added difficulty of dealing with the human activities. I think both of our opinions have merit, but neither of us are scientists devoted to this science.

I tend to look at the whole climate change issue very skeptically, as it has more of the earmarks of an agenda than a science. To explain that belief, perhaps an explanation is in order. To my recollection, this whole movement started with the “Hole in the Ozone” issue long ago. At the time, this was attributed to the CFC’s being released into the atmosphere by the countless cans of consumer products that used a propellant to get liquid out of a can. It was pointed out at the time that a single volcanic eruption emitted more ozone depleting compounds than CFC’s. It was proven in studies that the chemicals from volcanoes did, in fact, destroy ozone in a laboratory environment, but that those chemicals did not reach far enough into the atmosphere to destroy the ozone layer. But then in 1991, two volcanic eruptions happened that showed a significant reduction in the ozone layer, up to 50% in the Antarctic. Then came the further studies that showed that the emissions of volcanoes weren’t the culprit, it was that the volcanic emissions interacted with the CFC’s that humans were dumping in the atmosphere. Volcanoes spewing crap that spread for hundreds of miles didn’t reach the upper atmosphere, but the cans of Aqua-Net required for the big-hair 80’s did. This is the theme that I see reported. Anything that happens naturally, is good. Anything man does is bad. The volcano didn’t do it, it was the volcano interacting with the human made CFC’s.

After the hole in the Ozone Layer, came the greenhouse effect. Again, Man was the guilty party. After the UN passed restrictions regarding ozone depleting chemicals, scientists expected the hole to close up. But wait, there’s more! Now its vehicle emissions that create smog that are causing the greenhouse effect! Now that solar radiation can get through the ozone without causing molecular damage to DNA, its getting trapped by the clouds of pollution, causing temperatures to rise. The Greenhouse Effect was rolled into the Global Warming issue. For a decade, pollutants were to blame for a trend of increasing global temperatures. The scare this time was that temperatures would continue to increase, causing drought and famine worldwide, and this was the cause of the filthy humans driving their filthy cars.

After a decade or so, there were record low temperatures reported across the globe. Skeptics with a political message rather than a scientific one were quick to say that there cant be global warming when temperatures keep dropping. A good portion of the population was being swayed by these arguments, because on the surface, they make sense. I imagine the thought process going something like this: “Here I am in an area historically known to be a region of moderate temperatures, and yet, I am so cold that I am afraid to sit down lest my ass freeze to the surface I plant it on. I have never been so cold in all my life, Global Warming can kiss my ass!”

At this point, proponents of Global Warming changed the name of the “crisis” to Climate Change. I think it was at this point that my skepticism began in earnest. I had never really looked into the science before, but changing the name sounded, to me, like less of a physical science and more of a science of marketing. I think even the most fervent believer in climate change would have to admit that there has been a lot of money spent on this issue, by governments, scientists and corporations. I don’t believe that “pure” science is the motivation behind any of these groups. The governments spend the money because there is a very vocal community that needs to be addressed, some people in that community are actually in the government. Since these people get on the news, and their statements are given merit by a percentage of the public, the Government has to be seen to be “doing something about the Climate Change issue.” To ignore the issue would bring about even louder cries about how the government is in the pockets of big business, who, in the eyes of the activists, are the biggest culprits responsible for climate change.

The scientists, who by their very nature are not stupid, realize that their education in global climatology can get them far more interesting work than telling the people in Squeedunk, Iowa what the weekend forecast is, apply for grants to study Climate Change. These grants pay for the research. But who is doing the research? The scientists who apply for the grants. I am not trying to say that this is just a bunch of greedy eggheads out to get a cushy job, or that they are willing to falsify research in order to give the results that are wanted by the check writers. But I am pretty sure that you have a much larger pool of money being granted to study how Climate Change is happening than there is for disproving it, and those grants pay scientists salaries while they do the study. I am pretty sure that no matter what the results are, pro or con, further study is definitely needed by the scientists.

To me, the interesting part of the debate is how the science seems to be divided along political lines. If you were to ask the average person on the street whether Climate Change was a scientific or political debate, I think the scales would tip in favor of politics. This is the other area where I feel that the actual science is being debased. The pro Climate Change people tend to be Liberals, while the anti’s are Conservative. Or, to use the epithets thrown at each group, the filthy hippies and the money grubbing capitalists. The liberals want a pristine earth, with every tree, flower and animal preserved, even at the expense of human development. Conservatives, usually, tend to see the earth as resources granted to the human race in a modified, quasi religious Manifest Destiny, God made the earth and everything on it for man, so we can use it. The strange thing is that both groups see the race of Man the same way, outside of nature. The conservatives say that man has the right because we are so damn smart, and the liberals say that since we are so damn smart, we should save everything, unspoiled, forever. If we were at our current level of technological sophistication 65 million years ago, the liberals would be demanding that we “do something” to prevent the extinction of the noble dinosaur, while the conservatives would see it as part of the circle of life. Unless dinosaurs were really, really tasty. I cant help but wonder what a Brontosaurus Burger with Tyrannosaurus Bacon would taste like. Which brings up another funny thought… how come all the environmental health nuts that were so up in arms about hunting Buffalo… sorry, North American Bison, outside of Yellowstone in the 80’s are now selling bison meat in health food stores at a premium price?

My opinion is that anytime you have to evaluate science by following the money, it isn’t real science. Anytime you have science being used to further a political agenda or career, (I’m looking right at you, Mr. Gore) it isn’t science. To me science is provable, repeatable fact. The fact is that the earth has been around for four and a half billion years and we have only been on it for a million or so of them. Accurate, global weather records have only exited for maybe a hundred and fifty years. We do not have enough data regarding the life cycle of the planet to make predictions for or against the climate change issue. All data we have is interpreted from other sources, be it geological strata, or ice core samples from Antarctica. And we definitely have not been around long enough to prove any theories by reproduction of circumstances. And the bottom line is, no matter how you look at it, global climate change will have a greater impact on the human race than the earth itself. So lets be honest… we don’t want to save the planet, we want to save ourselves. If another comet hit and wiped out all human life on earth, there would still be surviving life. That life will continue, and according to the Theory of Evolution, with grow, mutate and survive, supplanting the soft, squishy bags of mostly water we call Man as the dominant species on earth. And the earth itself? It will still be here. I will probably be a great vacation spot for the aliens who keep telling friends that its a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Passive Weather God

If there is a chance of snow when I drive to Idaho, it will happen. I am honestly afraid of going back in the summer since my presence could cause massive snowfall that destroys crops, the local economy. There does seem to be a relationship between my driving a car or a four wheel drive vehicle, since I never really needed four wheel drive the entire time I owned one. Once I traded in the X-Terra on a fuel efficient car, snow, every time. Of course, this could just be my subconscious executing a very complicated long term plan to get me to by the X-Terra I see every day on the way to and from work.

After beating the road closures by an hour and a half, I had to deal with daily reports of incoming storm systems guaranteed to drop massive amounts of snow every night. About mid-day after I got there, the roads were once again open and two of my three kids came to see me. The day after that, the youngest stayed. Christmas morning, it had snowed a lot, and the wind was blowing. Typically, this means that all roads running east-west will have drifts across them, since the farmland in the winter is a place to keep the snow until the wind can pick it up and conveniently drop in the road. The road to Grandma’s house is east-west. My Dad drove his pickup, which is four wheel drive, and I told him to lead the way to break trail for me. We made it about a mile and a half before I got high centered and stuck in the middle of the road. We had to dig it out, rock it, and finally tow it to get in unstuck. Just to laugh in the face of danger, we proceeded on for the additional 50 miles. I left a lot more room between me and my Dad on the road, since he tended to slow down quite a bit. I needed to keep the momentum up through the drifts to slide the car across the high spots to where I could get some traction again. I got to my sisters house and had a pretty good time. I saw my youngest niece again, and had a good time teaching her to do the YMCA dance. She was sitting on a chair and damn near fell off every time she did the “C”, which was hilarious and horrifying at the same time.

The drive home was even more interesting, since it had continued to snow thoughout the day, and the wind had picked up consiberably. For the first half of the drive, visibility was horrible, there was just so much snow in the air. After getting even with the western mountains surrounding the valley, it cleared up quite a bit and the drive was less terrifying. I learned that my youngest was impacted by the wreck eight years ago more significantly than I had thought. At every bridge, and every corner, especially the one where the wreck happened, he was gripping the “Oh Shit” handle.

My youngest spent the rest of the week with me, which was kind of surprising since he found out that his mother had bought the family a Wii for Christmas. This shocked everyone, since she has historically been very anti video game. He opted to hang with me rather than spend some time at home to play with it. Of course, he did play my Playstation Portable almost constantly while he was with me, much to my mothers chagrin. I finally had to explain to her that this was probably the best Christmas present he got, time doing something he enjoys without being interrupted. He only gets to play his brothers PSP, and he could demand it back at any time, and he usually gets hounded by his younger siblings wanting a turn, or hovering over his shoulder to watch.

I spent the week watching weather forecasts, trying to get an idea of what the weather would be doing for the trip back. It looked like there would be a break in the storms for one day, and that I might be able to follow the break across the country. Doing that meant that I would have to leave a day earlier than planned. I left for my sisters place the day before, since where my folks live was under another winter storm warning for that night and I was afraid I would get trapped in the valley again. On the way, I found that my car was starting to do the “Out of alignment shimmy” at about 55 MPH. At 65, it was like the car was going to shake itself apart. I knew that it was one of two things: Either we had yanked it out of alignment towing it out of the snow drift; or there was so much snow and ice built up underneath it that it was causing problems. I called my uncle, who has access to several heated shops big enough to park my car in. I parked it in the shop for about seven hours so it could thaw. There was a very large lake underneath my car at the end of it. I spent the night at my sisters, and took of the next morning for home. I told her that if my car was still acting up, I would be back so I could get it aligned, if not, I would continue on. Luckily, it was just the snow buildup causing problems. The trip home was uneventful, I stayed in the gap between storms the whole way. The day after I got home, wind and freezing rain showed up, it had followed me all the way across the country.

I am going to put ads in bridal magazines to NOT show up on the big day so they dont get bad weather.