The Naughty Aughties?

Well, the Aughties are over.  And we're back to having 10 year decades, 100 year centuries, etc. (as opposed to the 9-year nineties and 99-year 20th century).

But were the Aughties naughty like their predecessor (1901-1910)?  Not really.  That decade was naughty in the social sense of emerging from the Victorian era and letting it all hang ("Relatively") out.  There were no great wars, at least as far as Western Europe and the U.S. were concerned (unlike a century earlier when all of Europe was in turmoil), and by all accounts it was a golden age, assuming you had money to enjoy it.  The horrors of WWI and WWII were unimaginable at that point in time and they knew nothing about global warming or the finiteness of oil, which they had just begun to pump out of the ground in places like Azerbaijan.

Our Aughties were naughty in other ways.  First, we had those extremely naughty people flying planes into our great buildings.  Then we had those naughty Republicans using that attack as a smokescreen to further enrich themselves by invading Iraq.  And throughout, we've all been very naughty by continuing to waste our dwindling supplies of fossil fuels and doing absolutely nothing about it.

As a result, we may have witnessed the very last Aughties, at least in the sense of a reasonably civilized world where our coastal cities are dry and intact.  I'm skeptical that the World is going to end at the winter solstice of 2012 as suggested (through omission) by the Mayans et al, and more recently by Hollywood.  But I'm afraid it's going to become an increasingly scary place as people compete for (dry) land and resources.  I sincerely hope that by the year 2100, we are all* living comfortably in our solar-energy-based economy with the polar ice and sea levels re-established.  But I'm doubtful.  See the works of people like Daniel Quinn and Jared Diamond, etc. etc.

* anywhere between 6 and 14 billion of us.

Forty words for snow

It's "well known" that Eskimos have many words for snow.  I seem to recall the number forty but, apparently, the New York Times quoted "one hundred" in a 1984 editorial.  Note that I'm not using the word Inuit because the original context used the word Eskimo and of course that helps generalize the whole notion of snow-words.  In reality, of course, they don't have an unreasonable number of words.  See the Wikipedia entry Eskimo Words for Snow.

I needed a word for the kind of snow that fell overnight.  To describe it, it's like one of Santa's elves just opened a huge packing box and all of the little white styrofoam bits fell out over Carlisle.  You know the type: they're tiny and impossible to pick up because static electricity is so strong compared with our feeble fingers.  The thickness of the layer that fell is essentially one "nugget", that's to say about a millimeter or so.

Pictured with a background of little white snow nuggets, is our latest foster dog, Miley.  She's a sweet little Chihuahua mix (excuse the quality: I had to use my cellphone).  We don't know how old she is but she behaves somewhat like a puppy.  She weighs about 12 pounds.  She was adopted but then returned because she was "too much of a lap dog".  Duh!

While we're on the subject of atmospheric phenomena, what are we to make of Copenhagen?  The world leaders have arrived and of course we, the United States, are as always the bad guys.  We are never going to take responsibility for our overuse of the world's resources and our unequal contribution to global warming.  We are entrenching our position as the world's climate pariah and it is not going to help with our national security one little bit.  Unless we can actually help fix the climate crisis by technology, the rest of the world is going to hate us even more than they do now.  That won't be fun.

Yet, the global warming detractors (I won't dignify them with the term skeptics) are as determined as ever to obfuscate the real situation.  Just look at the email hoopla that they kept up their collective sleeves for ten months before springing it on the world just before the climate talks.

News isn't all bad

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the news is generally bad news.  No news is good news, as they say.  But recently two recent items of good news have actually come to fruition this last week or so.

First, the long-awaited beer and wine department of Fern's has tastefully and appropriately transformed Carlisle from a "dry" town into a wet one.  I had a chance to check out their offerings today on my way back from the transfer station.  Excellent.

And second, WCRB, the formerly great commercial classical radio station, but which went in to a long decline with their servings of the musical equivalent of pap, has been bought by WCRB.  There are now no commercials, other than the usual public radio station type, and it appears that they have moved up at least to muesli or granola in their programming.

Meanwhile, the weather is still crazy.  It's 69F (20.5C) currently and probably will get quite a bit warmer before it's done.  The birds are still hopelessly confused.  It is rather pleasant though.

And while I'm on the subject of global warming, this year's crop of pine cones has got to be seen to be believed!  I thought the acorns were crazy.  But the pine cones are much more impressive in terms of overall volume.

The return of the phoebes

Normally, I would be delighted to witness the return of the phoebes to our back yard.  There's one sitting on our deck as I write this.

But this is November, dammit!  Next week will be Thanksgiving.  What chance of survival does our little phoebe have now?  It seems reasonably clear that she (I think it's a she) has been lured back by this ridiculously warm weather.  When it does turn cold, our little phoebe will be thousands of miles from a nice cozy place.

And it's not just the phoebes.  The wrens, woodpeckers, all kinds of birds are hopelessly confused.

We really have screwed this planet up, haven't we?