Monday, December 14, 2015

It’s NOT beginning to look a lot like Christmas, plus a 7-year-old’s advice to President Obama

This is a bifurcated post. For those of you in Alabama, that means it has two parts.

Let’s begin.

It’s NOT beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Oh, there’s this:


and this:


and this:


and even this:


but so far there’s not any of this:


The temperature around here has been in the 70s this week. That’s Fahrenheit, kiddies, not Celsius. Let’s not be ridiculous. Global warming hasn’t gone quite that far yet. Although I did read that it was 93 in Brisbane, Australia.

Which brings us to Part 2 of this post.

I also heard on the radio that a father explained to his 7-year-old son, after they both had listened to President Obama speak last Sunday night, what terrorism is and what global warming is. The father happened to mention that Earth’s temperature is expected to rise by two degrees in the next 100 years. The son sat down and wrote two letters to President Obama.

The first letter said, “Don’t be afraid of the bad guys. Just go and fight them.”

The second letter said, “Buy some sunblock.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

Thus ends this bifurcated post. As it is my 87th post of the year, I probably will not make it to 100 posts in 2015. Still, seven or so times a month for a 74-year-old man is pretty darned good, n'est-ce pas?

19 comments:

  1. You have a poodle? Peggy is going to flip over that photo because she is major lover of poodles.

    Where does that kid live that he doesn't know what black people look like?

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  2. I wish I could sit with you to explain how to avoid pictures overlapping into the sidebar but I think you might be a difficult student - resisting my authority. By the way, at the age of 74 I think you are doing very well to string some words together seven times a month. Keep it up!

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    1. Yorkshire Pudding, I happen to LIKE big pictures that overlap into the sidebar. I did it on purpose. Simply select Very Large instead of Large and your pictures can overlap into the sidebar too!

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  3. Snowbrush, we HAD a poodle. Actually, we had three poodles -- first Gigi (a female black miniature), then Cricket (a female gray toy), and then the charmer in this post, P.J. (a male white miniature). P.J.'s full name was Pierre Jean-Jacques Dubois. We had him before Jethro. He lived to be almost 13 and died in 2002. We both have his photo in the Santa hat on our iPhones as wallpaper this month so I included him in the post. No subterfuge intended.

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  4. 87 posts in the year is many more than I will have managed. As for the snow, I feel it is overrated and generally makes for an uncomfortable Christmas, especially if you live in Australia.

    I have to say though that I admire your nativity tableau.

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  5. Shooting Parrots (Ian), I'm happy to be typing your name again after your prolonged absence from Blogworld. Welcome back! I will read however many posts you choose to make.

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  6. This is a trifurcated response.

    It looks a lot like Christmas usually looks here in good old wet Western Washington. We've had torrents of rain and lots of local flooding, though it has now slowed down for a couple of days. Our trees are decorated and the shopping is done, presents wrapped. If I didn't have a rotten cold I'd be making Christmas cookies. If I must prolong the season through January to get everything in, I shall happily do so!

    I didn't understand Snowbrush's answer. Why did they believe the child didn't know what a black person looks like? Can black people not sunburn?

    You're doing an amazing job of posting! I only managed 17 posts, which is 5 more than the previous year, but a lot less than my first year. Hmm. Maybe that'll be a New Year's resolution - more blog posting. Nah.

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  7. Hilltophomesteader, I wonder why it is Western Washinton but West Texas. I wonder why it is North Georgia and South Georgia but Northern California and Southern California. I wonder why we call the western part of Mexico Baja California but we don't call Texas Baja Oklahoma. Oh, wait, some people do. I wonder as I wander out under the sky -- see what I did there? I managed to bring a Christmas reference into this comment answer! "I Wonder As I Wander" is an Appalachian folk tune found by John Jacob Niles, in western North Carolina, I believe. There I go again, as Ronald Reagan sort of said, or not, to Jimmy Carter.

    This could have been my 88th post....

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  8. 87 posts are not to be sniffed at, well done that man, my posting has become far too erratic. Over here Christmas has arrived for sure, the fairy lights and tree do it for me.

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  9. All Consuming, somewhere in my past I must have been pre-programmed or possibly even brainwashed into thinking thatthe word Christmas should be preceded by the word White. Drat that Bing Crosby. Or Irving Berlin. Or whoever it was.

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  10. “here in good old wet Western Washington.”

    Hello, neighbor. I’m in Eugene, Oregon, where it is also flooding, and where (in the same county anyway) the hillsides are collapsing, in some cases threatening to take houses with them, a problem for which insurance denies claims.

    “Why did they believe the child didn't know what a black person looks like? Can black people not sunburn?”

    Why would he think Obama was in danger of being sunburned—global warming? Does he say that same thing about every black person he sees? I think the kid either lived in a bubble, or was a wise-acre, or that some racist adult made the whole thing up in the mistaken belief that it would be funny. I don’t even mind racist humor if it’s funny (think Sarah Silverman), but to say that a black person needs sunblock doesn’t leave me rolling in the aisles?

    “87 posts are not to be sniffed at”

    You can be charitable because you’re young, beautiful, and wrote far more posts than that, but for those of us who are both far, far younger the poor old scudder AND wrote fewer post, it but serves as a reminder of the utter futility of our lives. This post caused me to spend fifteen minutes (I clocked them) bashing my head against a wall, and I will never forgive the online cruelty that inspired me to do that.

    “I must have been pre-programmed or possibly even brainwashed into thinking that the word Christmas should be preceded by the word White.”

    Not me. I grew up 100 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, which was just as well because I hated snow anyway. Rhymes can no doubt tell you about who wrote the song, something about them being in L.A. and MISSING snow rather than being in Massachusetts and being IN snow.

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  11. Snowbrush, I think the little boy was thinking about what HE would need if he were out in the hot sun himself, not what color President Obama's skin happens to be. I think the little boy in question judges presidents not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

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  12. Everybody, FYI it was definitely Irving Berlin who wrote "White Christmas"....in 1940 while he was sitting poolside at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Arizona.

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  13. goodun.
    Everyone needs sunblock.I think the boy meant that 2 degrees is not that much.Why does it always have to be about color?
    I am just speechless where Obama is concerned.talking global warming and then selling smart bombs to saudi and then all the oil being bombed to stop ISIS
    but then our new liberal government is full of hot air too.

    I believe there is an underwater volcano ( not sure if its antarctic or arctic).
    It is melting the ice from down below. nothing much short of exploding it under there to stop it. Then so much methane comes out as well from under the ocean floor.
    Nothing we can do about nature. I don't believe governments can do much.People need cars to go to work.

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  14. A Lady's Life, I think you put your finger on it -- 2 degrees really isn't all that much. I think the lack of snow in Georgia at the moment is not due to global warming so much as to the fact that in the cyclical nature of things this is a "strong El Niño" year. El Niño, that is also sort of a Christmas reference, isn't it? If you don't know what I mean you probably don't habla espanol (it is odd that the iPhone automatically supplies the tilde in El Niño but doesn't put one in espanol). Of course, if there's no snow up there in the Rockies of British Columbia where you are we might have something to be concerned about.

    I remain in a constant state of speechlessness where Mr. Obama is concerned. Yesterday he said he was unaware of how concerned we were about the recent events in Paris and San Bernardino because he doesn't watch enough cable television news. I repeat, speechless.

    But if bombing an underwater volcano will do away with global warming, he will find a way to do it. Or, more likely, to get someone else to do it for him with our money.

    Hey, this was a trifurcated response too!



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  15. “Why does it always have to be about color?”

    Because of the level of hatred. We have more incompetent presidents than not, and Obama is certainly incompetent, but the hatred that is directed at him is too great to be explained by incompetence alone. When I think of all the ridicule of him based upon his name, claims that he’s a foreigner, claims that he’s a Moslem, and so forth, I think the hatred is clearly xenophobic in nature, and his race is one part of that. The bottomline is that people hate Obama because “he’s not like us” in all manner of ways other than his politics and one of those ways is that he’s “an uppity nigger.”

    “Nothing we can do about nature. I don't believe governments can do much.”

    I understand that you believe these things, AND that the problem is caused by an underwater volcano, AND that 2-degrees isn’t enough to matter, AND so on and so on, but what is your reason for believing them? What I don’t understand about your thinking is that it’s at complete variance with the best thinking of climatologists. It often seems to me that, when it comes to science, many people are more impressed by preachers, politicians, and radio talk show hosts than they are by scientists, and I can’t begin to imagine why, especially in situations in which scientists are overwhelmingly in agreement. Having a legal right to one’s opinion is a far different matter than having a rational right.

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  16. Snowbrush, from what I've heard and read, scientists are actually NOT overwhelmingly in agreement concerning global warming/climate change/phrase du jour, but woe to those who would dare to disagree with the left's narrative. Also, I'm chagrined to see you use the phrase "an uppity n****r" as I think the only thing it indicates is that you were brought up in the U.S. South of yesteryear. I haven't seen or heard that phrase in decades and hope never to again.

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  17. The expression might be antiquated, but the attitude is not. Just listen to Donald Trump whose popularity is tied to his contempt. I hear in Obama self-righteousness and arrogance, characteristics that work for a white man like Trump, but fail in the case of a woman like Clinton or a black man like Obama. Like it or not, we probably all demand that people be as we expect them to be based upon such things as race and gender, and when they don’t live up to our expectations, we hate them for it. It’s not a case of whether we’re prejudiced but rather of what we do with it.

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  18. “Snowbrush, from what I've heard and read, scientists are actually NOT overwhelmingly in agreement concerning global warming/climate change/phrase du jour, but woe to those who would dare to disagree with the left's narrative.”

    The “left’s narrative”? Now, THAT’S what I’m talking about when I criticize the negative influence of conservative talk show hosts. They do everything they can to silence or misrepresent those who disagree with them, and then turn around and say they’re “fighting the culture wars against leftist oppression.” We’re not talking politics here, we’re talking almost universal scientific acceptance that global warming as being real and being caused by us.

    I think it’s like with evolution in that if some evangelical chemist at Liberty University opposes it while 100% of peer-respected botanists (that is those who publish in peer-reviewed journals) support it, it’s called a “controversial theory,” and the demand is made that “both sides” be taught in public schools, although the kids will later find creationism laughed at in college. In this case, doesn’t it seem odd to ignore the best thinking and observable data of nearly all climatologists when the risks of doing so are so disastrous? For example, El Ninos are getting more frequent as are horrific weather extremes in general (floods and tornadoes where you are), things which have been long-predicted as an ever-worsening outcome of global warming. Do you seriously propose that we do nothing because the scientific agreement is only 99.5% instead of 100%? Is that really a risk that you want to expose your grandchildren to? As for a list of scientists who either deny global warming or think it’s a natural process, here’s the list, and you tell me how many climatologists are on it:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

    On personal note, I’ve seen Oregon’s glaciers all but disappear just during my thirty years here, and the pictures of their retreat during that time are dramatic. Much of my opposition to religion comes from the fact that so many religious people regard science as an evil leftist conspiracy to take over the world unless it says what they want it to say, and then they’re quick to use it as evidence to support the Bible. In this case, the Bible doesn’t even talk about global warming, so why such strong opposition to it? I believe its paranoia, pure and simple, and that this paranoia is advanced by evangelical preachers and conservative talk shows who are either woefully ignorant or just trying to make a buck. You’re older than I am, and surely you realize that the national news didn’t contain one weather disaster after another year round with every year being worse than the last year, yet you’re content to do nothing, to bet the farm on what you hear on the radio?

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

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