Are We Having Fun Yet?

by Bryan

7 comments

1 Jack K., the Grumpy Forester { 09.04.08 at 11:13 am }

I think I’ll put a hold on those plans to retire to the Bahamas. What the heck, in light of the impending climate change, I probably won’t have to shovel so much snow here in the winter, anyway…

Now if I could just convince my first born to seek higher education at a nice state-supported Orygun university instead of Savannah friggin’ Georgia…

2 Steve Bates { 09.04.08 at 11:25 am }

“Ike continues to display a well-defined eye with very cold cloud
temperatures in the eyewall.” – NHC discussion

Eye like Ike?

3 Bryan { 09.04.08 at 12:32 pm }

The good news, Jack, it that Hanna is having some problems and may not be able to develop as much as anticipated. In addition, it has stirred the waters in the area causing upwelling and bringing cooler water to surface which should adversely affect Ike, much like the rains from Fay cooled off the water in the Northern Gulf and prevented Gustav from spinning back up after it recovered from the passage over Cuba.

Of course, Ike wasn’t supposed to be able to do what it did yesterday because the waters weren’t warm enough to support that kind of move. Something has changed and it isn’t being factored in to the forecasting yet. I’m wondering if the three storms aren’t having more of an effect on conditions than is assumed.

I’m a big fan of supporting public universities in your own state to get something back for your taxes. I’ve attended four different colleges and universities from the very expensive and private Colgate to a local community college and you get back what you put into it until you reach the graduate level. At grad school the institution is vital to having the resources in your field, but below that personal motivation is more important – you have to want to learn, and if you do, you will.

I don’t think you have a beach umbrella’s chance in the Bahamas of changing your child’s mind, but she isn’t going to have the experience in Georgia she thinks she will. If you buy her a helmet and a life jacket, she might get the idea.

Steve, we aren’t going to get any Normandy landing references for landfall, are we?

I didn’t “like Ike” as he screwed around with the Pledge of Allegiance after I memorized it. Miss Dolores Smith taught us the Pledge in first grade, and Ike had a lot of damn gall messing with what Miss Smith taught us. [True story – they had to go get Miss Smith out of her class to verify that, yes, the government had changed it because I was refusing to accept the change and wasn’t being quiet about it. I was a mouthy PITA even in grade school.]

4 Steve Bates { 09.04.08 at 9:04 pm }

“Steve, we aren’t going to get any Normandy landing references for landfall, are we?”

Nope, no danger of that. I don’t want to take the chance that my late father, who delivered troops from his ship in that landing, might rise up from his urn and haunt me for such a quip. For him, Normandy was one of the most horrifying, and therefore memorable, experiences of the war.

Dad came to regret having voted for Ike for president, not for any grievance against him, but because he (Dad) thought in retrospect that Stevenson might well have been one of our brightest presidents ever.

Not being a religious kid, I found that if you spoke quietly enough, you could get away with saying “underdog” in that place in the Pledge. But Gov. Palin would be chagrined to know that not only did the Founders not write it, but the original was written by a card-carrying Socialist.

5 Bryan { 09.04.08 at 10:34 pm }

He was a Baptist preacher from Rome, New York, as well as a socialist, so if he felt a religious reference was necessary, he would have added it.

The Pledge was written for a “child’s magazine” to promote the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in 1892. Patriotism was not exactly rampant, and it really took the Spanish American War to bring it back into fashion.

My Mother remembers the original “salute” when reciting the Pledge. It was changed in World War II when it became more associated with “Sieg Heil” than the US flag.

6 hipparchia { 09.04.08 at 11:34 pm }

geez, i feel like such a traitor. i always refused to say any of it. pledging allegiance to a flag?! creeped me out from day one [although i have always liked the ‘liberty and justice for all part’ even if i never said it out loud].

wish i’d known then what i know now.

7 Bryan { 09.05.08 at 12:37 am }

This flag worship is weird. It doesn’t happen anywhere else.