Twin Wonders

Me, Giselle and our friend Monica went on the steel mill tour in Bethlehem, PA this weekend. It was both sad and wondrous to be shown around deserted husks of buildings that once housed one of the largest steel and iron mills in the world. Steel that went into the battleships of WWII, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the skyscrapers of New York.

Oh, concerning that story:

http://www.news24.com/News24/Backpage/Offbeat/0,5583,2-1343-1347_1985482,00.html

Given that this developmental abnormality occurs in 1 in 5.5 million men and that there are 1.2 billion people in India, this was bound to happen.

ABBA and Lance Armstrong

Giselle and I just got back from a 5 day road trip to Indianapolis over the weekend. We drove out there to attend the Lance Armstrong Race 2 Replace event. We donated to his foundation and got to join a 2 lap ride around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway lead by lance. Unfortunately we were about half way back in the line and never actually got to see Lance himself. And when we waited at the finish for him (after doing only 1 lap), he turned off just before reaching us and was escorted by security to another exit.:-P

Still it was worth it just to be able to say that I rode around the actual Brickyard track, the same as F1, Nascar, and the Indianapolis 500! Woooo! Long ass drive to get there though.

http://www.photoworks.com/share/shareLanding.jsp?shareCode=AE8FBD2C210&cb=PW

The Heat of August

It's like Texas hot here in NY! And you think it's hot here, in Dallas, some woman on TV was frying eggs on her dashboard!

The cruel irony is that we're making things hot ourselves. I'm not talking about *Global Warming, but A/C. Everybody's A/C is running and dumping heat into the outside air (just stand in front on the outside of your aircon and you'll feel it). In fact for every degree an A/C unit cools your room, it's dumping 4 degrees of heat into the outside air. That's part of the reason why the temperature in cities is 10-15 degrees warmer (that and the lack of vegitation).

*By the way, "global warming" is a scientific fact: it's been getting warmer since the last Ice Age!

In fact a Harvard study shows average global temperatures were warmer in during the Middle Ages and I don't remember a lot of people driving around in SUV's back then. How's that for an Incovenient Truth?

Global temperatures have only risen on average, 1.2 degrees in the last 150 years.
That's it.
This recent 10 year spate in record breaking heat is no more dramatic than one that occurred 75 years ago; remember the Dust Bowl of the 30's? Life is about cycles but the average American only lives 75 years, so every generation thinks "This is the worst it's ever been."

So when you hear the media panic about the menace of Global Warming, pardon the pun: just chill.