Thoughts On A Sunday

We experienced a brief preview of winter yesterday by way of some snow squalls that covered the ground with white and made the roads slippery. Fortunately for me I had already completed what outside work I wanted to get done so I was able to watch it from the warm confines of The Manse while sitting near the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove. Unfortunately BeezleBub was working outside in the midst of the squall, splitting firewood for next year's heating season.

**********

Glenn Reynolds links to and comments upon the question of allowing states to declare bankruptcy and the consequences of such a move. A number of suggestions by readers and from other blogs include breaking up larger defaulting states into two or smaller states. And then there's this:

“Any law that lets states be bailed out should require them to renounce their state status and revert to being territories, to be reorganised by the federal government as new states. That has the advantage of getting rid of the old, dysfunctional, state government, removing the state and its inhabitants from national influence until they’ve had a chance to learn some wisdom, and being enough of a penalty to make bailouts unattractive to other states.” I see many problems with this approach, but I admire its spirit.

Indeed.

**********

At least we don't have to worry about how the New England Patriots will do today as they're off until next week following their Thanksgiving Day pasting of the Detroit Lions.

From the score at the end of the first half I thought the Lions were going to make a game of it, but the second half belonged to the Patriots alone.

**********

It appears that Iran's nuclear program has suffered a number of setbacks due to a rather vicious computer virus known as Stuxnet. While I've heard the buzz about Stuxnet over the past couple of weeks, I didn't make the connection between it and Iran's nuclear program until reading this piece describing the havoc created by the virus. As the article states, it wasn't created some hacker sitting in his parent's basement.

Welcome to the world of cyber warfare.

**********

Isn't it interesting to see yet another doomsday prediction about global warming fall by the wayside? In this case claims about California's giant redwoods being negatively affected by increased CO₂ and the reduction of fog the redwoods need in order to thrive, all due to global warming have been found wanting. Scientists have found just the opposite is occurring, with redwood growth increasing due to increased CO₂ and more frequent fog.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

**********

And that's the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter weather has made its presence known, there's still some fall yard work to do, and where Christmas is coming all too soon.