This Weather Blows!

Right now it's snowing and blowing, just like they said it would. Actually it's been blowing all day, but it's worse now. It's supposed to start winding down in the morning so, if we make it through the night, we've got it made. We are supposed to get a foot of snow out of this, which isn't bad by local standards, but we could do without all this wind. You guys are supposed to get freezing rain, which is worse as far as I'm concerned.

There are still a few people down by Traverse City who have been without power since Thursday morning, they have been putting them up in shelters and everything. Most heating systems need electricity to operate, regardless of their heat source so, when you lose power in the winter, it's more than just an inconvenience. I suppose that your building has an emergency generator, as do hospitals and places like that. Funny thing about electricity, you tend to take it for granted till you lose it, then you wonder how people got along without it for thousands of years.

National Geographic usually tries to write from a neutral point of view like Wiki. They have come out as a believer in global warming some time ago, and they favor evolution theory over creation theory, but they usually report the other side, even if they don't give it equal time. When they write about religion, they say things like "many Christians believe...." or "most Muslims believe....". This particular article was about the Arctic, so they didn't say anything about Miami in it. I think their point was that the Arctic ice cap is rapidly melting, and that it is part of a chain reaction of climatic events, but there is no unanimous agreement about which event is the cause and which event is the effect.

I would think that farms ought to be considered part of nature, but not everybody would agree with that. I used to argue with my old biology teacher about it. She insisted that anything altered by the hand of man is not natural, but I maintained that man himself is part of nature. We breathe, we eat, we reproduce and, if you cut us, we bleed. If that's not natural, I don't know what is. The National Geographic article was part of a series they are doing on national parks, so I suppose they meant wilderness when they said "nature". I think you're right, though. There is nothing magic about looking at nature, it's the change of scenery that is beneficial. Too much of anything can make a person funny in the head over time.

We tend to forget that Europe was a lot like the Mideast is today, until World War II knocked some sense into them. They both have a long history of violence and conflict, religious and otherwise. The difference is that Europe has mostly put that history behind them, while the Mideast is still wallowing in it. Actually, the Mideast used to be ahead of Europe in the civilization department. They haven't really gone backward, they just haven't progressed forward as much as Europe has. Why do you think that is?