don’t panic

Okay, call me paranoid, but it just occurred to me that that the aging of Earth observatory satellites and the shifting of NASA budgets so that they are not replaced (see http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/07/25/earth.satellites/index.html) works alarmingly well to hide any real data on the effects of global warming. If we can no longer see the effects from space, the Bush administration can bring in whatever paid lackey they want to say everything is just part of a “natural cycle”, and no one will be able to scientifically show otherwise. And these things are dropping like flies! 40% predicted offline by 2010?! Holy heat-wave, Batman! How convenient that the critical NASA budget is going toward two dead-in-the-water projects (Man on Mars and the ISS) that serve more to fluff political feathers than to further science.

I’d stack it up to general incompetence on the part of the current administration, except for the fact that these are the same satellites we use to track and predict hurricanes. You’d have thought, with such a huge mass of egg on their faces over Katrina, they would be all over ways to improve our hurricane prediction… at least for appearances! Instead, they seem to be doing everything possible to kill what little science we have.

Very scary.

One of the joys of living in an apartment complex is the fact that you are basically living in a commune with about a hundred other people… people who neither know you, nor could give a rodent’s behind about you feel about anything. You hope and pray that the “people” who move in around you are, quiet, nice non-smokers, but unfortunately, the odds are against you on all three.

When we first moved in, one of the reasons we chose the apartment we did was because of the fact that they accepted pets. This is a two-edged sword. At the time, the rule was cats or small dogs less than 20 lbs. They have gone a little soft on the 20 lb. rule as I have seen several dogs in the complex that probably weigh more than my daughter does… and she’s a hefty girl. But the problem with allow dogs is that unlike cats, which keep their poop in a nice neat (albeit smelly) cat-box, dogs need to be taken out to a patch of grass and alowed to do it on the ground. And in theory, this isn’t a problem. As long as the owner of the dog cleans up the poop, nobody really cares where the doggie does his duty. The catch with this system is of course that we are relying on the good nature of the owner. Huge mistake.

It really isn’t that hard to carry around a few platic bags so that you can clean up after your dog, but for a few key neighbors, this simple task just seems completely beyond them. When the doo-doo started to become a problem, the office even went so far as to post signs that clearly spell out the penalties for dog waste offenders. All I can say is…

It ain’t working.