Still Workin' Plus Other Stuff
Yeah, I'm still working under deadline pressure. Trying to fix someone else's work is never fun.
This is going to be a two part post. The first is personal, the second blogganal(?)
First of all, we had something on the order of 38cm(15in.) of snow locally. That was yesterday. After spending a couple of hours digging out from this early season storm, I dug out some more.
An update on my mom's health. She's okay. As you may or may not know, she has hepatic lymphoma. After being poked, prodded, otherwise violated by the medical community, she is going in next week(this week to my European readers) to have the tumor excised, and radio-therapy is likely after that.
Needless to say, my blogging activities are going to be interrupted. I'll still make entries, but hey, she's my mother, and she comes first.
I expect to back at regular daily 'bs'ing around the turn of the new year.
Okay, enough gloom. Now for something a bit odd.
*********************************
If you're a news junkie - and living in the US - you couldn't help but hear the Right-Wing echo chamber railing against this so-called 'war on Christmas' being waged by the usual suspects on the left. The ACLU, homos, atheists, homo-atheists, et al.
As far as I know, it was started by Jerry Falwell(wish he'd fall down a well of stairs, the hateful bastid) and picked up by that all-spun shithead Bill O'Reilly.
As a strong agnostic I would welcome such a war. This is a war that I could personally get behind. Funny thing is, it doesn't exist.
It may be that Falwell hasn't fleeced his flock enough, and needs another chin for X-mas. You know, the guy's on another baseless fund raising drive. For the sake of the balance of this post, please accept this simple premise.
If that is true, how do Bill O, and the balance of the unbalanced justify joining the assault?
I don't think it's about money for O'Reilly and Co. I think it could be about something far more insidious. O'Reilly changed the subject at precisely the time the UNCCC(United Nations Conference for Climate Change) meetings were taking place in Montreal. Granted, this could be merely coincidental. I'm not even going to suggest any more than that.
But the timing is uncanny. You have a non-issue(the war on Christmas) being bandied about while the most vexing problem facing humankind is being debated in Montreal. It's no secret that the Bush administration and their foot soldiers consider global climate change a 'back-burner' issue at the most optimistic. Why not take it right out of the news cycle by appealing to American's emotions instead?
It's a helluva lot easier to get most Americans riled up about symbolic bullshit than it is to get the masses to seriously consider an issue where the data is still streaming in, and the modeling imperfect. It's becoming clear that if anything the models were too optimistic, and things are far more advanced than predicted.
Please do not leave comments suggesting that I'm declaring this as anything more than a thought experiment. I am not.
I would say that the thing which separates my notion here, and that of Falwell's and O'Reilly's is that mine is at least plausible. There's is pure fancy.
If this is being spun as war against X-tianity, or family values, or some other such nonsense, I'm not buying into that mound of steaming dung. That's likely the bait you're supposed to take. Admittedly, I should know this, but alas I do not. My television viewing time is nearing zero, and I do not read Right-Wing propaganda. That being said, I feel a sense that this how the Right is treating this ghost of an issue. Pay attention to the elephant in the room!
I'd love to end this on a humorous note, but that seems to be beyond me at the moment.
By the way, the Global Climate Change extravaganza that I promised earlier is still in the works.
Happy Solstice,
todd
This is going to be a two part post. The first is personal, the second blogganal(?)
First of all, we had something on the order of 38cm(15in.) of snow locally. That was yesterday. After spending a couple of hours digging out from this early season storm, I dug out some more.
An update on my mom's health. She's okay. As you may or may not know, she has hepatic lymphoma. After being poked, prodded, otherwise violated by the medical community, she is going in next week(this week to my European readers) to have the tumor excised, and radio-therapy is likely after that.
Needless to say, my blogging activities are going to be interrupted. I'll still make entries, but hey, she's my mother, and she comes first.
I expect to back at regular daily 'bs'ing around the turn of the new year.
Okay, enough gloom. Now for something a bit odd.
*********************************
If you're a news junkie - and living in the US - you couldn't help but hear the Right-Wing echo chamber railing against this so-called 'war on Christmas' being waged by the usual suspects on the left. The ACLU, homos, atheists, homo-atheists, et al.
As far as I know, it was started by Jerry Falwell(wish he'd fall down a well of stairs, the hateful bastid) and picked up by that all-spun shithead Bill O'Reilly.
As a strong agnostic I would welcome such a war. This is a war that I could personally get behind. Funny thing is, it doesn't exist.
It may be that Falwell hasn't fleeced his flock enough, and needs another chin for X-mas. You know, the guy's on another baseless fund raising drive. For the sake of the balance of this post, please accept this simple premise.
If that is true, how do Bill O, and the balance of the unbalanced justify joining the assault?
I don't think it's about money for O'Reilly and Co. I think it could be about something far more insidious. O'Reilly changed the subject at precisely the time the UNCCC(United Nations Conference for Climate Change) meetings were taking place in Montreal. Granted, this could be merely coincidental. I'm not even going to suggest any more than that.
But the timing is uncanny. You have a non-issue(the war on Christmas) being bandied about while the most vexing problem facing humankind is being debated in Montreal. It's no secret that the Bush administration and their foot soldiers consider global climate change a 'back-burner' issue at the most optimistic. Why not take it right out of the news cycle by appealing to American's emotions instead?
It's a helluva lot easier to get most Americans riled up about symbolic bullshit than it is to get the masses to seriously consider an issue where the data is still streaming in, and the modeling imperfect. It's becoming clear that if anything the models were too optimistic, and things are far more advanced than predicted.
Please do not leave comments suggesting that I'm declaring this as anything more than a thought experiment. I am not.
I would say that the thing which separates my notion here, and that of Falwell's and O'Reilly's is that mine is at least plausible. There's is pure fancy.
If this is being spun as war against X-tianity, or family values, or some other such nonsense, I'm not buying into that mound of steaming dung. That's likely the bait you're supposed to take. Admittedly, I should know this, but alas I do not. My television viewing time is nearing zero, and I do not read Right-Wing propaganda. That being said, I feel a sense that this how the Right is treating this ghost of an issue. Pay attention to the elephant in the room!
I'd love to end this on a humorous note, but that seems to be beyond me at the moment.
By the way, the Global Climate Change extravaganza that I promised earlier is still in the works.
Happy Solstice,
todd
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