Hello, again. Autumn is still here but it is the blah of late autumn not the bright colorful early autumn. Winter is just around the corner but it is the yuck of just cold enough and just wet enough to make things slippery but not pretty and white. Good thing I can stay in and ignore it.

Infidel753 had a good post and one I agree with heartily. I have wholeheartedly detested politics as it has become (maybe always been) where the candidates/parties/interested groups and individuals engage in scurrilous character assassination and then expect everyone to make nice after. I also detest the notion that "bipartisanship" means one side surrenders its values and goals to the other which makes no compromise whatsoever. And when they don't accuse them of "partisanship." The Repthuglicans are masters of that game.

It has become evident that Christianists aren't the only religious thugs out there. I have seen several reports of disruptive ultra-Orthodox behavior over the last few years. I get really sick of a$$holes who think their religious "purity" trumps decent behavior.

I don't know how many stories I have seen about cutting the use of disposables. This one focuses on coffee cups and our modern penchant for walking (or driving, or...) with a paper or single use cup in hand (the "adult sippy cups"). While the author's advice (just stop, sit, enjoy) is good, as long as we are addicted to "multi-tasking" it won't happen. As he writes we have to change ourselves as well as what we use.

We had a bit more of an adventure than expected. We had all of the fixings for Thanksgiving dinner except for the pumpkin pie and the whipped cream. Mom could fix it but we decided to buy store bought and went to a little bakery that had been refurbished. We found the pie, some dinner rolls and a nice frosted raison bread. So all we had to get was the whipped cream. We went to the closest grocery but it was closed because their computers were down. We drove over to the next closest grocery but it was also closed because their computers were down. That isn't really surprise us because the stores are both owned by the same company though operating under different names. We finally got the whipped cream and (unintended) some French vanilla ice cream at the local Target which has a grocery section and whose computers are working. The episode illustrates my frequent observation that the technology is nice but when it fails you are as screwed to the extent you depend on it and have no backups. These stores are totally dependent on their computers. None of their product has price tags on the individual items. They need their computers for the price. Their inventory is on computer and often orders for them. The computers are programmed to tally the items and figure the tax on the taxable items and then figure what change is due if cash is used or complete the purchase with whatever credit the customer uses. Without the computers they are dead in the water.

Bill McKibben has a good article in the New Yorker. It doesn't have much that is new on the climate front but confirms that the deleterious effects of climate change are happening faster than originally. He makes another point that has been in my mind over the last few years: large numbers of people are going to have to move and we aren't prepared for that migration.