Good morning on this cloudy Thursday.  We had some nice sun yesterday and the temperature may have hit 50F.  We won't see that for a while.  The news and weather people were mourning the passing of the unseasonal warmth and the 'cold' weather coming.  The temperatures they were dreading are actually normal for this time of the year.  Just in case, I got into the shed and pulled out our sidewalk salt and the snow shovel.  I use 'salt' as a generic term--we get the environmentally friendly kind that won't harm plants, etc.  We may get 3 to 5 inches of snow from the coming storm but just east of us they have predicted a major lake effect snowfall.  We are close enough to  get involved in that.  Hope not.

I reviewed some of the preloaded web sites after Nicola suggested I explore BBC and find out whether I could receive the BBC radio.  Well, I found that I can and I also found that the site had been preloaded along with a number of others.  As happens too often, I simply got into a rut and clicked on my usual sites without thinking.  I will have to explore the BBC and other sites more thoroughly.

Almost every news outlet has been carrying stories trying to dissect the assassination of that Iranian nuclear scientist.  The BBC radio discussion I tapped into earlier had it as did the CNN interview of a Washington politician (sorry, I didn't get the guy's name), and this article on the CNN site.  We were annoyed with the CNN reporter when she asked her target if the U.S. had any culpability in the murder.  If the man had any real authority in the State Department he wouldn't answer the question and if he answered the question we can be sure he didn't have any real information.  And the question of whether the U.S. had anything to do with the crime (and it was a crime) is all that important.  The BBC piece noted that whatever the actual facts of the situation the episode has further complicated U.S.-Iranian relations which were already mightily complicated and tense.  What matters is perception.  Right now the Iranian government is spinning the story as one of U.S.-Israeli attempts to undermine Iran's nuclear program.  If you think perception doesn't matter just remember the Bush Administration's weapons of mass destruction that provided the justification for our 'adventure' in Iraq.  They didn't exist but that only matters after the fact--to the historians.

Sorry you had trouble with blogger through your server, Lois.  I will be sure to post on the vinegar experiment.  Hope you get the server problems straightened out--again.

Charles Hugh Smith has a good article posted at oftwominds this morning.  We don't often think about medical care and the consequences of our modern techniques.  Our society is fixated on 'more life at all costs' not on quality of life while receiving treatment.  It is amazing to me that effective treatments for various conditions while providing a good quality of life are to expensive for most people without insurance at the same time that we push treatments for other conditions that only extend life weeks or months (at best) but destroying any adequate quality of that life.  Karoli at Crooks & Liars describes exactly the problem I am talking about.  How many of us can afford to pay $6-700 per month on medications, even effective medications?  I agree with Smith--we don't have 'sick care' not health care.