Over the previous two days we had nice warm temperatures in the upper 60's. Today we'll be lucky to break 40 degrees. There were even some snow flurries in some parts of New Hampshire this morning. Ironically we'll be back into the upper 60's later this week. In other words, it'll be normal for early November in this part of the country.
*************
Now that the farm stand is closed for the season BeezleBub has a somewhat more normal work schedule, meaning he has weekends off between now and January when he starts the spring semester at college. This schedule gives him more time with Horse Girl as well as for working on his projects, including restoring a 1948 Ford F5 stake body truck he and his grandfather bought from Farmer Andy.*************
When it comes to working in a union shop, I can empathize entirely with Brent's experience with union labor practices in the workplace.I don't know how many times I heard the same question over and over again, “Hey, what are you trying to do, kill the job?”, meaning they believed I was 'working too hard'. I never truly understood that, even when more than a few of my fellow employees asked whether I was trying to make them look bad. My usual retort - “Only you can make you look bad” - was usually derided as some form of union busting. My follow on reply was usually something along the lines of “They pay me to work, so I work. What do you do?”
The day I left that employer was one of the better days of my working life.
*************
Could be headed for another Grand Solar Minimum? If what Mike Lockwood a space physicist at Reading University (UK) has concluded is accurate, we could see the lowest solar activity in 400 years.If history is any indicator this could lead to much cooler temperatures worldwide.
Want to tell me about Global Warming again?
*************
Will Providence, Rhode Island become the next Detroit?With over-the-top pension costs, high taxes, employee layoffs, skipped pension payments, loss of state aid, and the need to ask for donations from non-profit organizations in order to keep running, Providence has become yet another example illustrating that “at a certain point the extensive social programs and public services...simply become unaffordable.”
*************
Chevy Volt sales dropped 32% in October, with GM blaming falling sales on lower gas prices. However, sales of GM's competitor's hybrid, the Toyota Prius, rose 7% at the same time.Somehow I don't think gas prices are the reason Volt sales are in the crapper.
*************
This bodes well for the survival of our society.It's bad enough when the Left works hard to eliminate the idea of deviancy in regards to our social constructs, just as they have a number of behaviors that in the past would have gotten someone arrested or committed to a mental health institution.
Now these geniuses are working hard to eliminate pedophilia as a damaging deviant behavior, with the latest version of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM V) trying to lessen the 'stigma' attached to this perversion.
As one of the commenters reminded us, “A nation that is unwilling/incapable of protecting it’s young does not deserve to survive.”
This goes back to the radical 1960's mantra of “Anything Goes!”
*************
I don't know about you, but I admit that I don't like this change back over to Standard Time. It leaves too little daylight at the end of already shortening days and the adjustment can be a pain in the butt. There has been some argument made for eliminating Daylight Savings Time altogether, but I think I'd rather stay with it rather than switching back to Standard Time. As it is we stay on Standard Time for a little over four months and are on DST for almost eight months. Isn't DST really more of a standard time for us than 'Standard' Time under those circumstances?*************
Bogie shares her story (and pictures) of the new home she just purchased only a couple of miles away from her present domicile.*************
Skip over at Granite Grok has the right of it: We aren't suffering from shoddy health insurance so much as from shoddy government.Writes Skip:
What DO we call a government that cannot be honest with its Citizens, that denies the truth of its publicly stated “truth” to cover up its “intended” truth – the latter so poisonous to itself, it could not speak of it while passing the legislation that implemented it?Hmm. I'm thinking “dishonest”, “criminal”, “flam-flam operation”, and above all “arrogant”. We already know it's incompetent.
*************
The New York Times is returning to form, making excuses for Obama's repeated promises that we could keep our insurance plans and our doctors by stating that he merely “misspoke” when he made those promises.Someone misspeaks when they make those kind of promises once, or maybe twice. But “The One” repeatedly made those promises over weeks and months. That's not misspeaking. That's lying.
*************
Sultan Knish slams the government and the changes in our culture that no longer allows us to do the things we used to do competently and quickly even four decades ago.For all our nice toys, we look like primitive savages compared to men who could build skyscrapers and fleets within a year… and build them well.I've seen that, too, where appearances rather than results matter.
Those aren’t things we can do anymore. Not because the knowledge and skills don’t exist, but because the culture no longer allows it. We can’t do them for the same reason that Third World countries can’t do what we do. It’s not that the knowledge is inaccessible, but that the culture gets in the way.
We used to be able to combine the two by competently implementing grandiose visions, but our “modern” culture is the roadblock that prevents us from working together to make the great things that we can still envision individually.
Our modernity is style rather than substance. It’s Obama grinning. It’s the right font. It’s the right joke. It’s that sense that X knows what he’s doing because he presents it the right way. There’s nothing particularly modern about that. In most cultures, the illusion of competence trumps the real thing. It’s why so many countries are so badly broken because they go by appearances, rather than by results.
One of the former directors of the company where I am employed had a big thing for college degrees, as if that was all that mattered. It didn't seem to matter to him what people knew rather than what diplomas they had hanging on their walls. More than once he stated he wanted me to get another degree, that my lack was holding me back. In response I asked him how many patents the two PhD's we had in our R&D lab held, particularly patents related to our business. His answer: “One.” I then told him that I had many more than that, with more going through the mill at the USPTO. Every one has made money for our company. The one from one of our PhD's hasn't made a dime. So how was yet another degree going to increase my worth to the company?
I am still with the company. That director was “asked” to leave. What good did all his paper do for the company or his employment status? He had the appearance of success but it didn't translate into actual success.
(H/T Instapundit)
*************
The New England Patriots played the Pittsburgh Steelers in Foxborough today, beating them 55-31. From what the game commentators said, this was the most points scored against the Steelers in the team's history.The Patriots are off next week.