Yes, It’s Cold but Don’t be Fooled

Yes, It’s Cold but Don’t be Fooled

I live it Florida and it is now quite cold. We have had freezing temperatures at night a some dusting of snow in places which don’t usually see a single snowflake.

Everybody is talking about how cold it is. I hear remarks such as:

“I got up and it was 27 degrees outside. There was ice on my car. That does it – I’m moving to Florida. Oh, wait a minute – this is Florida!”

Yep, everyone is talking about the cold, and with good reason. Record lows in amounts of snow in many parts of the country. They are used to the snow, but this is an extreme!

Nobody is talking about global warming Those of us who have been trying to spread the word for the past few years about the dangers of climate change – even we have been hesitant to bring it up. It just seems rather inappropriate to walk up to someone shivering at a bus stop and start talking about the about the importance of decreasing the size of that carbon footprint.

But, the global warming discussion is still vary much relevant.

Human-induced climate change is altering the entire global weather pattern. Not all parts of the country are experiencing record lows. Parts of the west coast are currently enjoying record highs and near-record highs. That is why Thomas Friedman, author of the wonderful book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, likes the term global weirding.

That’s right, the fact that your teeth may be chattering while you look around to make sure you are actually still in the Sunshine State may in fact be partially due to global warming. And, even if this cold-snap has nothing to do with man-made greenhouse gasses, just keep in mind that human-induced climate change is a reality and this cold weather is in no means any proof or indication that the danger that our release of our rampant energy use is nonexistent.

Now, I need to go to the supermarket. I am going to wear a sweater under my coat. \

I remind myself that I must not complain about the cold. I spend much to much of the year complaining about the heat and humidity of this area, and hoping they don’t get too much worse too quickly.

But still – Brrrrrr!

Goodbye to the "ots"

We now enter a new year and a new decade – and welcome to a new blog. If you should find this bit of content on the Web, I hope you will write to me and let me know. I would like to know somebody besides myself will read these posts.

There was some controversy about how to refer to the past decade – the period from 2000 until the end of 2009. I like the “ots.”

Now, a new – and strangely heated discussion – has sprung up about what to call the years in this decade. I don’t mean the collective – they will probably be called the “teens’ or something like that – I mean the years individually. For instance, how does one say “2010?” Is it “twenty-ten” or “two-thousand-ten?”

For the ots, I always thought “two-thousand-X” was best, as in “two-thousand-nine.” In the beginning years of the decade, I heard people refer to, say, 2002 at “twenty-oh-two.” I know we said “nineteen-oh-two” and “nineteen-ten,” etc., but “twenty-oh-two” just did not sound right to me. I was happy when people just seemed to settle on “two-thousand-two,” two thousand three,” etc. After all, didn’t we call the great Stanley Kubrick / Arthur C. Clarke film 2001: A Space Odyssey “Two-Thousand-One: A Space Odyssey?” It just made sense to me.

For this decade, though, I think “twenty-ten,” “twenty-eleven,” and so on is just obvious. I wouldn’t penalize people who want to say “two-thousand-ten” and so on, on, but I would not make that the default.

In the last century, we said “nineteen-ten,” “nineteen-sixty-nine,” “nineteen-ninety-nine,” and so forth. “Twenty-ten,” “Twenty-sixty-nine,” “twenty-ninety-nine,” right just right to my ears. You don’t find yourself using some these in your regular, daily conversation? Consider the following statements as converstion starters: "Medical science is advancing so rapidly tha I hope to still be alive and healthy in twenty-sixty-nine." Or, this one: “I wonder if the US will be out of Iraq and Afghanistan by twenty-ninety-nine!”