For most folks living in the Ottawa area for their entire lives (like me) the idea of a really big tornado is certainly scary, but comfortably vague. I saw Twister, neat movie. But there’s no way a movie could prepare you for something like this. The town of Greensburg Kansas is gone.
That’s just incredible. Maybe the most amazing part is that so far only 9 people are reported dead out of a town of 1500. The tornado that hit it was a mile-wide and awfully angry.
Amazing, and sad.
You’ve got to hand it to this crocodile… He looks rather smug. You can almost see him with his buddies, high fives all around. The story of it all is a vet had tried to sedate this spectacular beast, and apparently was unsuccessful. He reached through the bars to remove the darts and the crocodile showed him what 440 pounds of disgruntled prehistoric dinosaur can do.
And, as you can see the vet will still be able to play patty cake with the grizzly bears, thanks to the wonder of modern science, and the fact that the croc got tired of his new digit-al playtoy.
If you don’t want to ruin the good mood of an excellent sunny warm Spring Friday, then move along and don’t click on this link. I tend to stay away from posting about controversial stuff here, but the terrible shootings at Virginia Tech have flushed out the crazies and I can’t ignore this.
It’s part of a point-counterpoint piece on CNN about gun ownership in the US.  This is the pro-gun part, written by the dangerous moron Ted Nugent. This piece does nothing to prove that his points are valid, but it does give me a little shiver thinking about what kind of world he wants to live in. It seems that he is happiest imagining a hail of gunfire in almost every circumstance in life. I particularly think the pictures they used are appropriate: the left anti-gun writer is a former editor of the New York Times who looks like an intellectual (albeit a fairly eccentric one), while Ted is pictured in camo wearing a shit eating grin and shades. You can just imagine him wiping the Budweiser suds from his lip with one hand with his smoking AK-47 balanced in his other. It makes me feel somewhat better that he is the best the pro-gun lobby has and they have no moderate, educated voice. The only part that makes me worry is maybe the pro-gun lobby picked him on purpose because he might be more appealing to their core members than a moderate intellectual.
Man, it’s really hard to not just shake you head and be darn glad that you live in Canada. Does anybody really really need to carry a gun with them everywhere they go in the hopes of trading some hot lead with the next guy trying to cut you off on the Queensway? I think that most Canadians (and hopefully most Americans) would answer No.
I try to do my part for the environment, certainly not as much as some, but I would say I’m conscious of my presence here on earth and it’s impact.
Anyway, I was just scanning this article on green transportation ideas when I saw the following:
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, today’s passenger cars average just 24 miles per gallon, the lowest level since 1980. In the early 20th century, by comparison, Ford’s Model T got 28.5 miles per gallon.
Holy Crap Batman! What the hell is going on here? One hundred years of automotive research, and that’s what the average consumption is at? Forget environmental conspiracy theories, that’s just terrible science. It’s embarassing even. What the hell is going on here? It’s inconceivable that this hasn’t improved across the board since then, let alone get worse.
Well that’s your depressing thought for the day.
Faithful reader Wilson (ok I made the faithful part up) points out that apparently mobile phone radiation (among other kinds of radiation) could be the cause of a massive bee die-off recently in the US. That will definitely suck for us humans, since we apparently rely on these guys to do little things like make our food grow, not just make honey.
Canada is affected, as well as lots of other places.
The estimate is that bees pollinate one third of the food we eat every day. That’s a problem, folks.
Here’s some news:
My smart, attractive, single and now famous cousin Angie was on CBC last night. They had her on The National as part of a bit on adapting to climate change. It’s a good angle on the climate change stuff, talking about how people resist even the most obvious changes for no good reason. Anyway, Angie was on talking about her time in Bangladesh. She comes across as really smart and in my biased opinion better than the two chuckleheads on before her.
You can watch it for yourself on the CBC website today at least. I’m not sure if the link will work past today or not. Here’s the link to The National stream. While the whole show is of course very good, her segment starts at 43:20 or so, with Ange herself showing up at around 46:20.
Way to go Angie.