Our Most Precious Wards

Today Nancy told me of a news article about a woman who, worried about the pet food scare, cooks all her dog’s food from scratch. It is a lot of work since she has to insure her dog has a balanced diet including meats, fish, fruits and vegetables. In addition to the extra shopping time there is the preparation, serving, cleaning and storing. Nancy theorized that the woman does not do as much for her own children. I told Nancy that I thought the woman was justified. After all, the dog never talks back, is always happy to see you when you come home, never disappoints you (after being house broken) and appreciates everything you do for it. Nancy replied: “ Yeah but the dog can never give you grand kids.”

A Convenient Exaggeration

It appears our former Democrat VP, Mr Gore, may have exaggerated some of his "facts". Maybe the debate isn't over after all. The following is extracted from an article in todays New York Times. “Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming. Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms. “Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.” In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change. Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.” Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.” Biologists, too, have gotten into the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as spreading malaria. “For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts.”

A Thief In The Night

We can no longer ignore the thief that enters our house occasionally. He (or she) comes in the night and steals things. We think he must have his own key because he leaves no evidence of his break-in. Sometimes he returns a few days later and replaces the things he stole. He’s not very smart, however, because sometimes he puts them back in a different location. As an example, today we were looking for an attachment to an appliance we bought 3 or 4 years ago. We know exactly where we put it but it was no longer there. We looked for hours and finally found it where neither of us ever put it. While looking we found other things we were looking for a while ago that the thief had obviously moved. Sometimes he opens a window or door and leaves it open all night. Occasionally he goes in our bathroom and leaves the toilet seat up. I’ve never heard him enter our house but Nancy thinks she heard him a few times. She used to hear him most often when I was traveling on business. We noticed lately he is coming with increasing frequency and I intend to do something about it some day.