Global Warming?

Maybe my "Chicken Little" side is coming out in me today. With the weather the northeast US has been having this winter, maybe there is something to this whole global warming thing. I mean, how else are you going to explain a winter with more mid 40 degree days than mid 20s? Or the fact that so far we have had one snow storm which left more than half an inch, and the half-inchers can still be counted on one finger?

I suppose if you want a giggle, you can imagine me in a chicken suit running in circles screaming "The Earth is warming! The Earth is warming!" at the top of my lungs in rush hour traffic!

Ok, back to sanity for me. First, yes the weather up here has been strange to say the least. Last summer and autumn it rained enough I began questioning if somehow Massachusetts and Seattle had swapped meteorological positions in some Orwellian weather fourth dimension. Even so, and taking into account our rather balmy winter, I do not believe it is the work of some global warming scheme created or caused by humans. I just do not believe that a creature who can be killed by a mosquito has the power to permanently harm something as mighty as the planet. After all, the planet has already survived three ages of dinosaurs capable of defoliating 10% of it per day! Dinosaurs died, the planet obviously didn't.

I guess the real hang up for me is the narrow mindedness of the Global Warming camp. Yes, I can look at the recorded temperatures, running them through a computer and statistically prove that over the past hundred or so years the temperature has indeed gone up. This is something most sixth graders can do in school now as a science fair project and not even get a ribbon! My question is, "So What?" What does that mean to the overall life of the planet? Someone please tell me how a hundred years of data somehow becomes indicative of a planet hundreds of millions (if not billions) years old? At least when I was in school, science still had to be backed by data, and the data needed to be conclusive, not merely supportive.

Who is to say that the rise in temperature is anything more than the Earth's normal cycle? Who is to say that the Earth, in order to keep itself balanced, does not naturally warm itself every one to five million years to allow for new plant growth? Who is to say that we are not indeed heading into the next Ice Age? Who has the temperature logs from the last one? Did it warm up a million years before it?

The point is that sometimes we humans begin to think we are more intelligent than we are. We begin to think that with limited data and a hypothesis which can be supported but not proved we have the answer. To me, the whole Global Warming thing is akin to watching three seconds of the middle of the third Matrix movie and deducing the ending without ever watching the rest of the movies! Yes, we can assume because it's Hollywood that Neo wins, but that's just it, it's Hollywood, and after all did he really win, Trinity does die!

I'm not saying not to take care of the planet. I do not believe we have the right to damage this planet in any way since as far as we know we are only the current iteration of the dinosaur. We should make every effort to leave the planet in as good of shape as we found it. But to think we know all the answers because we have been paying attention to the last hundred years in a billion year old ecosystem is human absurdity at its finest!

A Novel Idea

I am an avid reader. No, that does not mean that I read a book a day and belong to Oprah's Book Club, but I always have a book partially read somewhere around me. My interest in subject matter is basically simple: English please! As long as the book is in English, without major typesetting and grammatical errors, and is at some level interesting, I will read it. Sure, I have read a lot of "junk", but I have also read many great stories in my life.

So why is it that teachers insist on ruining a good story by trying to "teach" it? I absolutely hated sitting in a literature class and "having" to read For Whom The Bell Tolls so I could try to explain why Robert Jordan died rather than run off into the Spanish hillside with Maria. Worse yet was knowing if I didn't somehow deduce (or flat out repeat) what my teacher thought the reason was I was likely to fail regardless of how cleverly I developed my arguments.

This is not to say I do not like the idea of teaching how to write. I love that idea. Teach the grammar, the structure, how to develop suspension of disbelief, how to change the rhythm of your words so you build momentum for your readers while leading up to a climactic scene. These are things that can be, and should be taught.

But on the other hand, if you want adults reading, and parents reading (which will get the kids reading) then for all that is good in the world stop making the idea of picking up a book evil by attaching a grade to it! Stories like For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Canterbury Tales, David Copperfield, 1984, The Great Gatsby and others that make up the standard reading fare of literature courses are great stories in and of themselves. They are entertainment, they are excitement! They are not a homework assignment to be reviled! These are some of the finest works in English literature, and should be enjoyed by the reader. They do exactly what they were written to do: they move the reader and make the person think. All putting a grade on something afterward does is prove that what the student "thought" wasn't good enough.

Welcome to My Brain!

There are some things in this world that just seem odd, or way over-thought! Some of them are small, some not so small, but they all lend themselves to a good chuckle in the course of a day.

This is where I take a break from my normal day, and let my sarcasm loose!