Suppose the entire land mass of the planet -- every square inch -- were to be covered in dynamite to 3 feet thick and the entire thing were to explode all at once.  Question: would anyone survive?  How?

NBC New York is reporting that someone mugged a little Terrier dog and stole his coat, leaving him to freeze in the blowing wind and snow while his owner was in a supermarket buying some milk.  The owner says she left the dog tied up outside the market for no more than two minutes.  When she returned, the dog was shivering in the freezing cold weather and the coat was no where to be found.

That's pretty sick.  It's not like the mugger could actually wear the coat himself to keep warm.  What do you suppose is an appropriate punishment for this perp.

One of the things that president obama is doing that I like is encouraging development of nuclear power generation, something the United States has fallen way behind the rest of the world on.  One reason we have fallen behind is that spent nuclear fuel rods are dangerous, because of their radioactive nature, and they remain so for many hundreds of years after they have lost their usefullness.

Because they are dangerous, spent nuclear fuel rods have to be handled carefully, and their storage has become a political football.  No one wants them stored in their neighborhood, no matter how deep they are buried under the ground; and putting them in steel containers and sinking them in the depths of the ocean has raised serious concerns about the effect on marine life when the containers finally break down.

Obviously we can't just put them in orbit around the earth, because we can not be certain that they won't eventually plummet back to the earth.  I once thought that we might be able to put them into an orbit in the asteroid belt, but I gave that idea up when I realized that collisions with other debris in the belt could push them out of those orbits and send them back into the inner part of the solar system where they would eventually present a hazard to near earth space navigation if the didn't fall back to earth before that.

As a result of these concerns, we have delayed deployment of nuclear power plants, with the result that we are still dependent on fossil fuels and coal to provide our heat and electricity.  Now instead of worrying about how to dispose of spent nuclear fuel rods, we are concerned about greenhouse gasses.

So now I present a new idea for disposal of nuclear fuel rods.  Shoot them into the sun, the biggest nuclear reactor in the system.  There they would be harmlessly reduced back to their individual components.  That's not a new idea.  Actually I first had it many years ago, as have others, I'm sure. 

Back then I can imagine that cost would have been one objection.  Well, cost would still be high, but not compared to the cost of storage here on earth, and not when we consider that a spacecraft would not have to be built to support life, would not have to function for a very long time, and would not have to be able to survive a reentry into the atmosphere.  In fact, the vehicle could leak like a sieve and it wouldn't bother anyone.  It would only have to be able to survive a launch and the acceleration necessary to break out of orbit.  The entire payload would then be put on a trajectory toward the sun.  Gravity would bring it to its destination. 

That only leaves the possibility of a failed launch which would scatter the fuel rods over a very large area if the vehicle exploded in the atmosphere.  Can that problem be solved?  Anyone have any ideas?

Well we've had shoe bombers and underwear bombers, so I suppose it is only natural that people will continue to search for and experiment with even newer and more creative ways to destroy themselves and others. 

And what have our friends come up with now?  Exploding Boobs.  Yep.  That's right.  Worldnet Daily is reporting that "agents for Britain's MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives [into women suicide bombers]."

The women "recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up."

Oh wonder, oh joy.  I wonder if full body scans will detect this.  How are exploding boobs to be dealt with if they are detected?  And what is still yet to come. 

On the more morbid side of the issue, I wonder how those bombs are actually detonated. How much PETN is needed for an effective blast radius?  And what is an effective blast radius when PETN is detonated within the closed confines of a human body?

A friend of mine recently proposed a unique solution which may have some merit.  His idea is to have all passengers pass through a booth that will automatically cause any explosives someone is carrying to detonate.  He figures that would be a win-win for everyone but the bomber.  There would be no racial profiling, people would not be exposed to full body scans or other forms of radiation, the expense of lengthy trials would be eliminated, and justice would be swift and sure.  It would probably also speed up the security lines at the airports.  What do you think?

So now the weather service is saying that right on the heels of the biggest storm Northern Virginia has seen in decades, a new nor' easter is scheduled to drop an additional 10" to 20" of snow on me come Wednesday.  It's a good thing I have plenty of supplies on hand.

The Globe and Mail published an opinion piece by Margaret Wente on February 5th titled "The Great Global Warming Collapse."  Somehow it seems fitting that the article was published on the very heels of The Great Snow Storm of '10.   Ms. Wente's article follows:

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

The impetus for the Copenhagen conference was that the science makes it imperative for us to act. But even if that were true – and even if we knew what to do – a global deal was never in the cards. As Mr. Mead writes, “The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.” Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.

And now, the science scandals just keep on coming. First there was the vast cache of e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia, home of a crucial research unit responsible for collecting temperature data. Although not fatal to the science, they revealed a snakepit of scheming to keep contradictory research from being published, make imperfect data look better, and withhold information from unfriendly third parties. If science is supposed to be open and transparent, these guys acted as if they had a lot to hide.

Despite widespread efforts to play down the Climategate e-mails, they were very damaging. An investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian – among the most aggressive advocates for action on climate change – has found that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed, and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Meantime, the IPCC – the body widely regarded, until now, as the ultimate authority on climate science – is looking worse and worse. After it was forced to retract its claim about melting glaciers, Mr. Pachauri dismissed the error as a one-off. But other IPCC claims have turned out to be just as groundless.

For example, it warned that large tracts of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming because they are extremely susceptible to even modest decreases in rainfall. The sole source for that claim, reports The Sunday Times of London, was a magazine article written by a pair of climate activists, one of whom worked for the WWF. One scientist contacted by the Times, a specialist in tropical forest ecology, called the article “a mess.”

Worse still, the Times has discovered that Mr. Pachauri's own Energy and Resources Unit, based in New Delhi, has collected millions in grants to study the effects of glacial melting – all on the strength of that bogus glacier claim, which happens to have been endorsed by the same scientist who now runs the unit that got the money. Even so, the IPCC chief is hanging tough. He insists the attacks on him are being orchestrated by companies facing lower profits.

Until now, anyone who questioned the credibility of the IPCC was labelled as a climate skeptic, or worse. But many climate scientists now sense a sinking ship, and they're bailing out. Among them is Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria who acknowledges that the climate body has crossed the line into advocacy. Even Britain's Greenpeace has called for Mr. Pachauri's resignation. India says it will establish its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the IPCC.

None of this is to say that global warming isn't real, or that human activity doesn't play a role, or that the IPCC is entirely wrong, or that measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions aren't valid. But the strategy pursued by activists (including scientists who have crossed the line into advocacy) has turned out to be fatally flawed.

By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they've discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe. As Mr. Mead succinctly puts it: “Skeptics up, Obama down, cap-and-trade dead.” That also goes for Canada, whose climate policies are inevitably tied to those of the United States.

So, who's up for hanging an effigy of Al Gore, president obama, and all those in congress who would have us destroy our economy for the sake of this nonsense?

Here it is the day after The Great Storm of '10 and we are starting to dig out.  While measurements vary from on spot to another throughout the area, my immediate location seems to have gotten 26" of snow, while three miles to my west, the official high is 34.5", and just five miles to the east of me they recorded a snow fall of 24".  Road crews have been working around the clock to keep up with the mess, and they seem to have been doing a rather good job of it from what I have seen. 

Folks should be able to get back to work tomorrow morning, assuming they have been able to dig themselves out by then.  I figure it will take most people about about six hours to get their cars cleaned off.  That's because of the work needed to clear the heavy snow from between their cars.  Then there's the icy under layer that has to come off the windows; and of course you all know how plow trucks leave piles of packed snow infront of and behind cars as they clear the driving surface of the roads.

Well -- it wasn't really a joke played by somebody, but it was a cruel bit of fate. 

I live in a modern highrise building in Northern Virginia, and we are right in the heart of the path being taken by The Great Storm of '10.  It started snowing where I am around 10:30 am EST yesterday morning and was still snowing when I went to bed around midnight, with forecasters calling for a possible 30" of snow before it was finally over.

So here it is:  at 7 am this morning, I awoke to a building fire alarm.  Not acceptable I told myself.  There were 10" of snow on the ground when I put my head down, and that was more than 7 hours earlier.  Surely there was more snow now.  Not a good time for a building fire!  Not a good time at all!!

Obviously I couldn't leave the building in my PJs in that kind of weather.  The truth is that I didn't much feel like leaving the building at all if it could be helped.  Anyway, I leisurely rolled out of bed and put some clothes on.  Then I checked the hallway outside my condo unit and found that the alarm was actually coming from the other half of the building.   (The elevators divide the building into two equal sized wings.) 

That being the case, I figured I'd feed the dog while I could and monitor the situation to see if I really needed to evacuate.  I didn't plan on going out into that snow just to stand around if I didn't have to.  And a good choice it was too, for at 7:30 the building engineer got on the Public Address system to say it was all a false alarm.  Power outages in the area were causing intermittent problems, and a number or surges finally overloaded the alarm system, causing it to go off.  The building was inspected and found to be safe.

But while Billy (the dog) had his morning meal and I enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate in my nice warm apartment, some other residents stood in the cold wind and blowing snow.  I think most of the residents, however, elected to do it my way, despite the obvious potential for diaster.

Now then ...

Concerning That Snow Storm

When I finally did get out with the dog, I estimate that what I saw was about 18-20" of snow fall.  It's really hard to tell exactly because of the plowing and snow blowing that crews have been doing through the night and into the early morning hours.  My guess is based on the height of snow on car roof tops and handrailings around some walkways.  The corners of the buildings appeared to have some drift snow as high as six or seven feet.

Snow is still falling here at a pretty good clip, but while last night's snow was the heavy, wet kind, the current snow fall is more of a dry powder.  You may have heard some newscasters calling it a blizzard.  Don't you believe it.  Blizzard conditions require a sustained 50 mile an hour wind to blow the snow.  That isn't the case anywhere in my area.  All we have is a lot of snow.

They also said we could get upto 30" of the white stuff.  That might happen, but if it does, it will most likely be in isolated areas around the region.  Given the dry nature of what is falling outside my window now, I don't really think we will get more than another 3 or 4 inches of the stuff -- unless it changes back to the wet stuff.  Then it will be anybody's guess.

That's right.  You read it correctly.  The City Council of Phoenix, Arizona is so desperate to save "police, fire and other city jobs," that on Tuesday it approved a sales tax on grocery items.  It's only 2 percent, and they say it will expire after five years, but that's not the point.  Besides, who ever saw a tax expire?!

The point is that it is a tax on basic staples that people need to live.  It's a tax on milk, meat, vegetables, and other food purchased by shoppers.  There seems to be something inherently wrong in taxing food.  It's kind of like selling air.  Things that people depend on for their very survival should not be handled this way.

They say it's to save essential services, but I have to ask what other services they spend money on, and why those presumably non essential services can't simply be cut back.  Or why they can't just increase the tax on eating out or buying luxury items.  I could ask, but I'm afraid I already know the answer.  They've already taxed those kinds of things as much as the current market will bear.

So folks, if Phoenix can get away with this, you too can look forward to a food tax in your future.  There is a limit to how much city dwellers can grow on their own, so I don't see any way out of this short of mass protests and threats of revolt by the public.

Smile.  You know you wanted me to make your day.

On Another Note

Today is the 10th anniversary of the death of my husband.  His name was Jim.  Pneumonia took him from me on February 5th 2000.  Rest In Peace sweetheart.

Well this has been some winter.  First we got 24" of heavy, wet snow.  That's about 18" more than the annual average for my area.  A few days later, we got a 2" dusting, followed by 5" of dry powder.  Then last night we got another 6" of the heavy wet snow again; and this morning the weather service tells me, "We ain't seen nothing yet.  The big one is on it's way."  That is a reference to some system coming up from Mexico.  It's due here Friday afternoon, and it's expected to snow heavily through the night and all day Saturday.  They haven't yet given an estimate of the expected number of inches of snow fall, but I expect it will probable be between 12" and 20".  No doubt this winder will go in the record books for Northern Virginia as the year we were buried in Snow.  Guess I better take the time to make sure all my supplies are laid in.