Musings and Meanderings

So Winter Finally Comes to the Capital District We survived the Valentines Day Nor'Easter. School was closed on Wed and Thu, and the Mall even thought to close on Wed. L didn't go out in the storm so we all had a nice day at home, barring the 2.5 hrs that I shoveled out the cars. As you can see below that really didn't matter. Enjoy the pics and think of us digging the car out again so L can do a reset today. I took these Thu Feb 15 around 745am. Here is the Dog in the back, Yes she is SMALL but there is LOTS of snow. Here she is again. Yea thats a bit of snow. When we throw her in the snow bank its taller than she is. Looking out the front porch to the street. We DID shovel yesterday, but not yet this am. Looking back the other way from the Street. And what I have to shovel this morning with L so she can go do a reset.

We are quite fine thank you For anyone worrying that the "Upstate NY" snow problems have caused any problems in the Capital District have no fear. We are too far away to be experiencing any "Lake Effect" snow like Oswego.

Some shots of the MLK Day Ice Storm.

The Three Brothers Together for Christmas Albany, San Francisco and France together in NH

The lesson learned from Vietnam NOT applied to Iraq. When I was younger I read an amazing book called "The Fire in the Lake". The premise of the book was that we were doomed to failure in Vietnam. Before you get all hot under the collar this book had NOTHING to do with Military reasons. The book was a sociological and economic analysis of the Asian and Vietnamese cultures. It's main premise was that bringing democracy to a people which whom the whole concept of Democracy was foreign was doomed to failure. This is a failure of American policy in general. The exportation, sometimes at gunpoint, of our version of Democracy belies a hubris on the part of Americans that pays no attention to the culture or society we are trying to import into. The abysmal failure in Iraq can be attributed to this inability to perceive or even imagine a peoples who are not ready for, or have any background in, democracy. For some reason administration after administration, Democrats and Re...

When Black Friday Comes.... Worked the 930 to 930 shift yesterday, so thats what... half day? We did over 30,000 on Black Friday, I had a decent day with just under 4k myself. My feet were throbbing by the end of the day though, but that's no surprise. Still have 8 hrs today and 7 tomorrow to get through before I take the day off on Monday, no teaching and no RS. Send the phone sales my way ok?

59th annual Turkey Trot Alex did ok. Two pics from the digital, though why the first is out of focus is beyond me. One from the start of the race and one at the end. He is in yellow. Said his stomach was bothering him by the end of the race. It was raining and just above freezing, but he ran it.

Sunset on two coasts in one Day I sent the first pic to a friend in Santa Cruz CA, and she sent me the second one back three hours later. Both were taken with camera phones. Technology is so amazing

They Declared the War, I just fight on the side that is right. I have gotten a lot of comments from friends here and IRL about "all the parties are alike" and why I don't see that they are. Well friends they are not alike. The Right via the Republicans have declared a cultural war from the grassroots. This is a moral, political and economic crusade to change the face of America. They wish to tell us what movies are good for our children. They wish to tell us what science we can research. They wish to tell women how to take care of their bodies. They wish to mix their religious nonsense into our school's curriculum. They wish to make the rich richer, corporate profit margins fatter at the expense of the American worker, and the middle class suffer. They want to tell me that my marriage is somehow cheapened because two people who are the same sex want to make the same vows to God that I did. They say they are fighting a culture war declared upon them by Hollywood and ...

The Scandal Sheet. Read it, learn it. Vote the bums out on Tuesday Science: An Inconvenient Truth The scandal: The clear and present dangers of global warming haven't just met with a cold shoulder at the White House -- Bush officials have ordered a freeze on the facts. The White House kept a grip on scientists at federal agencies, limiting their contact with the media and issuing reminders to "stay on message" in interviews, according to government e-mails obtained by Salon this year through a Freedom of Information Act request. Employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have said that administration officials "chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether." The White House also blocked publication of research by NOAA scientists linking global...

They Cannot Loose Who am I referring to? The Republicans of course. This is because on top of the lies and deciet the Republicant's have mastered the art of stealing elections in a 1st world country. As shown by 2000 in Florida, where Katherine Harris locked up the state and in 2004 where Kenneth Blackwell did the same in Ohio, the Repbublican't have found every means legal and illegal to negate the will of the voters. Exit polls don't lie, just Republican thugs. And now paperless polling machines are even more ubiquituous than ever. No in every close race in the US Senate and House you should expect the Repbulicant's to win in a narrow margin. Bet the house on it. We don't live in a Democracy anymore.

Last week on his nationally syndicated radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity encouraged Democratic voters to "stay home on Election Day," adding that, "your vote doesn't matter anyway." He asserted that Democrats should not turn out to vote "for the sake of the nation" because Democrats' votes "won't change who occupies the White House" and Democratic "candidates have absolutely no idea how to win the war on terrorism." On the same program, Hannity misrepresented the Democratic Party platform, stating: "I don't think abandoning our troops on the battlefield, or closing your eyes to enemy communications or listening to enemy communications in our country, or killing the economy, or supporting illegal immigration, I don't think that's something to run on." Comments like this demonstrate how Hannity and other right-wing media figures hope to impact the upcoming election -- regardless of thei...

Some of Alex running Cross Country this year

A lovely Visit MW came out this weekend and took us to dinner at Garcia's Saturday night. Here is a picture of Liza and Mom from my dinky camera phone at the Restaurant.

Well it's a darn good thing there is no Global Warming. or Another thing to trust W on.... Global temperature highest in millennia The planet's temperature has climbed to levels not seen in thousands of years, warming that has begun to affect plants and animals, researchers report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Earth has been warming at a rate of 0.36 degree Fahrenheit per decade for the last 30 years, according to the research team led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. That brings the overall temperature to the warmest in the current interglacial period, which began about 12,000 years ago. The researchers noted that a report in the journal Nature found that 1,700 plant, animal and insect species moved poleward at an average rate of about 4 miles per decade in the last half of the 20th century. The warming has been stronger in the far north, where melting ice and snow expose darker land...

It was 45 yrs ago today That I was ejected into this world in Santa Monica California. 1961, a different era and different world. A good half way point today, many of my Grandparents generation lived into their late 90's. We will see what 20+ yrs of semi-abuse will do to my longetivity. As for today the Godz were kind to me and I don't have to work till 430, and I have the house alone, a rare commodity in my world during the school year.

We are sooooooo screwed!! By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentFri Sep 15, 11:26 AM ET Polar bears are drowning and receding Arctic glaciers have uncovered previously unknown islands in a drastic 2006 summer thaw widely blamed on global warming. Signs of wrenching changes are apparent around the Arctic region due to unusual warmth -- the summer minimum for ice is usually reached between mid-September and early October before the Arctic freeze extends its grip. "We know about three new islands this year that have been uncovered because the glaciers have retreated," said Rune Bergstrom, environmental adviser to the governor of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago about 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole. The largest is about 300 by 100 meters, he told Reuters. On a trip this summer "We saw a couple of polar bears in the sea east of Svalbard -- one of them looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted," said Julian Dowdeswell, head of the Scott Po...

18th Wedding Anniversary This picture was taken by the lovely couple from the other end of the Cooking Table. Isn't she beautiful!

Boycot ABC this Sunday and Monday Night By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer A "terribly wrong" miniseries about events leading to the Sept. 11 attacks blame President Clinton's policies, former Clinton administration officials said in letters demanding that ABC correct it or not air it. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Clinton Foundation head Bruce Lindsey and Clinton adviser Douglas Band wrote in the past week to Robert Iger, CEO of ABC's parent The Walt Disney Co., to express concern over "The Path to 9/11." The two-part miniseries, scheduled to be broadcast on Sunday and Monday, is drawn from interviews and documents including the report of the Sept. 11 commission. ABC has described it as a "dramatization" as opposed to a documentary. "ABC/Disney acknowledges this show is fiction and in direct contradiction of the 9-11 commission report and the facts, and it is despicable th...

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