Thoughts On A Sunday

We are in full wood-heating mode here at The Manse.

With night time temps below freezing and day time temps in the mid-30's to lower 40's, the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove is running 24/7.

After talking with my immediate supervisor at work about his latest heating oil delivery (at $3.199 per gallon!) it makes me feel warm just knowing that we will be spending very little for petroleum-based heating fuel this winter. With a little extra work sealing some of the windows and finishing insulating the basement, we expect that we'll use even less firewood than we did last year. (We didn't seal all the windows because we do need to make sure we get enough fresh air coming in.)

There may still be those occasional below-zero nights when we'll need to bump up the thermostat on the second floor because the woodstove won't be able to keep up, but we figure there won't be too many of those. With propane now going for over $3.50 a gallon in this area, we'll be working hard to keep our usage to a minimum.

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Thanksgiving is coming up and we'll have a full house here at The Manse.

The WP Parents will be here, as will the WP sisters and their families. My dear brother's family will be staying home, hosting his in-laws for Thanksgiving, so he's excused. The WP In-Laws will be partaking of Thanksgiving in New York state at the WP Sister-In-Law's home. Even so, we'll be seeing at least 13 here on Thanksgiving Day.

(I may have not mentioned this before, but Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, even above Christmas. We're far more likely to get together for Thanksgiving than for any other holiday. I have many fond memories of Thanksgivings past and they have always stood out far more than any other holiday.)

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On a more somber note, it appears that at least one part of ABC's news/entertainment operations is firmly in the It's-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans™ camp of global warming. Bill Weir, one of the Good Morning America hosts, lambasted a Kentucky legislator for his stand that the IPCC report is wrong, flawed, and deceptive.

Weir made it sound as if we failed to take immediate action to stem global warming that we were all doomed. The gentleman from Kentucky responded that may that's so, but which actions should we take? He said that the wrong ones could be far more harmful than any affects of global warming.

You could see that Bill Weir thought this guy was an idiot for questioning any part of the IPCC report.

But that 'idiot' is right.

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Forget the high energy particle accelerators. Forget the miles and miles of equations on the blackboard. Forget heavy duty calculations and simulations on a massively parallel processing super computer.

Instead, all one needs to do to figure out how everything in the universe works is to go surfing.

E=mc², dude!

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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The New England Patriots are playing the Buffalo Bills tonight. It's a late start for the game, 8:15PM ET, if I recall correctly.

It will be interesting to see if the Patriots can go 10-0 tonight. While some of the sports pundits have been saying that the Bills are hot and will beat the Pats, they seem to forget the Pats are even hotter, having beaten the Colts. They were considered the only team capable of beating the Patriots, but they failed to pull it off, even with home field advantage.

What makes Buffalo hotter than New England at this point? The only thing that may work against the Patriots is they're coming off a bye week, meaning they haven't played in two weeks. On the other hand, it isn't like the Pats haven't been practicing and training hard for this week's game. The extra week off has allowed their players to heal up, including those recently returning from the injured list.

I guess we'll know who's right after the game tonight.

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Jeff Soyer tells us how some people believe it's racist to defend yourself in your own home.

How screwed up is that?

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Another note on global warming:

If what Al Gore says is true, then why is it so friggin' cold in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil? Even the ice on Antarctica is getting thicker. And you must remember this – summer in the southern hemisphere is only a month away.

(H/T Instapundit)

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter approaches, Thanksgiving is only 5 days away, and where I need to go out to the firewood stacks to get more wood.