Monday.  Last day of March.

Not sad to see March go.  I wish April would start out warmer but at least the temperature will be in the mid-30s to mid-40s (instead of ten degrees lower) after the mid-60s today.  I don't think enough of the patio will thaw out enough for me to do much outside.  I just scooped off a large part of the snow remaining on the one container still covered and spread it on the patio.  It should melt nicely.  Several containers have lost the ice layer that remained on them.  I also transplanted the borage plant that needed a larger pot and planted more borage and epazote seeds.  The epazote didn't come up at all.

My first rose has arrived.  I brought in one of my large pots and will plant it when the soil thaws out in a couple of days.  I don't think my containers will be ready to work for another couple of weeks.

Now for a minor contrary rant.  The TV (local) news this morning finally took notice of the U.N. report on climate change that (as far as I know) is only available in a leaked version--that is, not officially released yet.  I have been reading about parts of the leaked report for the last two or three weeks and the news media has been mum about the whole thing.  The reporter today noted that the report used the word "risk" five times per page on average.  And that the report insists that unless "something" is done we are in for a very rough time.  Problems:  what is the "something" that is to be done and who is the "we" who will do it?  And I have noted my skepticism (often) that we can actually roll back the part of climate change that is human caused.  By the time people (as a group) come to a consensus about a major problem, it is usually well beyond any attempts to roll it back to any reasonable starting point.  Another major problem is that most of the situations that become major problems are not really under human control however much we wish they were.  But then humans seem to be consistently afflicted with hubris.  Update: according to the MSN story the report has just been released earlier today.

One of the things I most resent about our (not)news media is how the focus on important stories moves away before the issues are resolved leaving the impression that everything is fine.  This Crooks & Liars coverage shows how wrong that impression might be.  How long will it be before people along the Elk River feel comfortable using their tap water or have much faith in their governmental agencies/officials?

Now this is an interesting notion!!  My major problem with our current legal treatment of corporate crime is that we have no way to exact an appropriate punishment for corporate crimes.  The owners or managers are insulated from personal responsibility for what the corporation does unless some direct evidence is found that links them to the action.  Financial punishments rarely provide any great deterrent since most corporations consider those "costs of doing business."  And if the financial pain seriously threatens them they simply file for bankruptcy and reorganize as a different entity with no responsibility for the damages the predecessor corporation caused.  If Hobby Lobby wins its case against the ACA the separation of owners and the corporations they own may disappear and the owners (or managers) can be held to account.

Sunday.

I finally got all of my reading list transferred onto both the Safari reading list and Bloglovin.  The one good thing about the process is that I culled a number of blogs I no longer read or whose writers are no longer blogging.  I had felt the growing need to do that but always put it off.

We decided to put off our weekly shopping so we can be here for when ever the rose will be delivered.  I don't want it to remain on my door step for very long.  I plan to take advantage of the warmer temps to get some cleaning done out on the patio.  It has indeed been a hard winter and a lot of debris has blown in.  I also need to clean out the fallen leaves I put on several of the containers to provide a mulch for the plants.

I am sure you remember the toxic spill in West Virginia a couple of months ago that shut down the water supply for towns along the Elk River and, eventually, along parts of the Ohio into which the Elk River flows.  Here is a nice retrospective of the not-so-nice event and I don't think the title is at all alarmist.  Or, rather, I think we all should be alarmed about what industrial companies are storing, shipping, or otherwise exposing the public to.

Earlier this last week we saw a news special on counterfeit health and beauty supplies.  I shouldn't have been surprised but I was at the range of the brand name products crooks were counterfeiting.  And some of the counterfeits were often ineffective, of insufficient strength, or even toxic.  Then I found this item and wondered if some of this was not tampering by itself but also counterfeiting.  The two frauds may have very different motives and perpetrators.  In any case, our commercialized world is becoming very dangerous.  Reuters has better coverage here.

I thoroughly agree with this court decision.

So, cyber criminals have moved from stealing the customer info to demanding payment from companies to go away.  Not much of a leap from theft outright to theft by extortion.  I read about similar hackers locking up people's computers and demanding payment to unlock them.  Once upon a time protection rackets depended on thugs with baseball bats to confront their targets.  Now all they need is a computer.

Saturday.

Oh, the joy!!  I can really believe spring is here.  Early spring, yes--but spring.  Most of the snow has finally melted though some of the pots still have ice on the surface where the melted snow has refrozen.  But I saw green--real, growing GREEN in four pots.  The tansy, strawberries, pyrethrum and oregano.  We expect three days in the fifties starting tomorrow followed by forties.

Conversation at the local Barnes & Nobel:  I made the trip only because I had received the rebate resulting from the settlement of the lawsuit over fixing e-book prices.  Barnes & Noble, Amazon and others were hit with it.  I had been thinking of getting hard copies of several books to replace copies I have on my nook so this seemed a good time to do that.  I found two easily enough (in the gardening section) but the third was somewhere else or not in stock.  I asked one of the clerks who looked it up and walked me over to the nature section to find it.  As we walked I told her "I have two of these on my nook and I hate them on the nook.  The side bars don't translate well to the e-book page."  "I probably shouldn't tell you this," she said, "but I have a nook also but I use it to play my games.  I don't like to read on it.  I can't flip back and forth between sections easily."  Hearing that I confessed, "I find that clumsy and frustrating, also, and it is too hard on my eyes."  I have given my nook a good try and I won't totally stop using it.  I do have a couple of games I like to play as a break from other activity but most of my books will be old fashioned paper copies.

Just checked my e-mail and one of my roses have just been shipped!!  When it comes I will pick up some garden soil and plant it in one of my large pots.  I will keep it inside until the gardens thaw out enough to plant it outside.

This just boggles the mind.  Seven years in and no one knows for sure what caused kidney failure in more than 600 dogs and a few cats.  They haven't identified a specific causative agent or company.

Al Jazeera's The Stream had a program concerning the legalization of marijuana and its possible consequences.  Part of the argument concerned whether legalization (where it has occurred) has or has not lead to increases in crime.  This article says recent study results say "no."  What struck me about the discussion on the Stream was the almost religious fervor with which the partisans claiming that legalization of marijuana held their position without ever producing any support for their conviction.  They were asked directly at one point what study or other evidence they had and they gave none.  One bemoaned the fact that they had no statistics about how many auto crashes, or robberies or other crimes may have had involved stoned participants.  But my thought on that point was "we don't insist that alcohol be banned or sold only through government dispensaries though a lot of drunks are involved with auto crashes (many of which are fatal) and may well be involved in other crimes."  Why is there such a difference in perception between the two "drugs"?  And have we learned nothing from Prohibition?

Friday.

Things are back to normal.  Bloglines is back up and functioning.  I spend a good bit of time trying to rebuild my reading list on Bloglovin and in my bookmarks.  Now that everything is functioning I can complete the process a little at a time.  I do get cranky when my technology doesn't function.  I hate to think of what a prolonged outage would do to my moods.

I just saw a headline which irritates me.  I won't link to the story itself which deals with the search for the Malaysian jet.  The headline read: "Eight Days Squandered?  Search Zone Shifts Hundreds of Miles."  I heard the gist of the argument on the TV morning news.  Evidently the jet was traveling at a higher speed than originally thought so it would not have flown as far as searchers originally thought.  Since the beginning the authorities have been refining their search as new information becomes available.  Think about what the original search areas were like--an arc from the central asian countries to almost the Antarctic Indian Ocean.  And the results of those "squandered" days helped refine the search and limit it.  What do the news writers not understand about that process?  I sometimes think being half brain-dead is a job requirement for news writers.

I hadn't intended to "squander" my time reading the article itself but I thought I should to be fair.  After all, the writer might have intended to debunk the headline.  Unfortunately, if that was the intent, s/he failed.  All they did was reinforce the notion that those heading the search are bumbling idiots and played up the drama.

While the premises of this article may be true--Russia may, indeed, be some form of capitalist economy--the conclusion does not follow from the premises.  It reminds me of arguments very well respected experts made prior to WWI that no prolonged period of war could occur because industrialized countries wouldn't want to suffer the damage to their prosperous economies.  The author compares Putin to a gang leader protecting his turf.  Does the fact that two gang leaders share a social/economic/political philosophy prevent gang wars?  Not likely.  For another take on this issue check out Sovereign Man.

The first segment on this Automatic Earth post makes an interesting point.  The semantics of the climate change argument do matter and those may mark a shift.  Instead of talking about reversing the anticipated effects it looks like they are shifting to how we can adapt to keep the merry party going forever.  I have always had a suspicion that the whole argument was futile to begin with.  First, all of the proposals for reversing the process required far more collective will among a far broader swath of our global population than is in evidence.  There really is no "we" do do anything.  Second, I think we are far enough along in our F*#king up this planet that things will happen that we won't like much and there isn't a damned thing we can do about it.  So the only alternative is to adapt.  And I think the adaptation will be at the individual and local level.

Finally, someone who is asking the same questions I am about our politicians and other pundits pushing "education" on us as though it were a drug.  There are pushers and there are pushers.  Not all that much difference between them.  Both are promising paradise if you only follow their advice and expend a large chunk of your time and borrowed money in pursuit of that mythical beast--an education.

Wednesday.

We had several brief but often heavy waves of snow yesterday.  Left maybe two inches.  It won't last long.  Most of the mountains of snow we had for the last couple of months are much reduced and will probably be gone by early next week.  The sooner winter goes away the better--it has been hanging around way too long.

Two "price shock" stories from the morning news:  price of limes have increased from about $14/case to $100/case and theater companies are bemoaning their economic plight and thinking about cutting prices for their tickets one day a week.  The California drought is blamed for the increased cost of limes.  No one tried to trace the source of the second.  I could tell them.  Prices are too high for too little and people have too many more pleasant and cost effective choices.
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Thursday.

Well, I guess spring really is here in spite of the very cool temps.  Snow yesterday and rain today.  The weather people say the rain should hang around most of the morning.  If the temps stay where they are much of the remaining snow on our patio should disappear.

My last pepper (corno di toro rosso) variety has popped its head up.  I think I can give up on the hibiscus seeds.  No sign of any activity.  And no sign of growth in the wonderberry.  Didn't get anything from those seeds last year either.  Oh, well.  I will find something else to try.

I remember the pressure put on residents of several small towns that were flooded during the big Mississippi River flood in the early 1990s to move.  One made news by putting all of the homes on stilts while another moved to higher ground nearby.  The Feds threatened to cancel flood insurance for some and made it much too costly for others--and the Feds are the only source of flood insurance. That is why my cynic-o-meter pegged out when I first read articles on this a few weeks ago.  I am glad to see that the FBI is investigating but considering how much of the government has been bought by the wealthy interests I don't expect much.

Well, I am not a happy camper.  I can't get onto bloglines.  Blast and damn.  So I am trying to rebuild my reading list on bloglovin and in my bookmarks.  I found this piece on Grist and I am linking here to see if it works.  If it doesn't I will have to find another work around.  Again--damn and blast.

Sunday.

One of the two pots of albino bullnose peppers have popped.  Now only the corno di toro rosso remains to sprout.  I see several plants I should put into larger pots.  If only the weather would catch up to my plants and turn warmer.  I still have snow on some of my containers and areas of the patio.  I do so want it gone.
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Monday.

There must be something in the air.  Crimea isn't the only secession-bent area.  Check out this one.  Robert Reich calls the phenomenon a "reversion to tribalism."  Interesting thought.

Some very many years ago I read an autobiography by Martha Summerhayes, Vanished Arizona, in which she described traveling up the Colorado River by steamboat to an army fort.  The fort where she disembarked to continue her journey to the outpost her husband had been assigned was about two hundred miles from the mouth of the river.  I thought of that book as I read this piece.  For most of the past century the Colorado never got near the sea.
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Tuesday.

As I said yesterday--secession seems to be in the air.  As the old saying goes: be careful what you wish for.  There is a lot about our country today I don't like but I am pretty sure I wouldn't like living in Russia.

Ah!! Someone else is asking a question I have been asking for a long time now:  who are the "People?"  One of the blogs I read a couple of weeks ago showed a map of the election results of the last Ukrainian election.  The western third of the country went 70-30 for Yulia Tymoshenko.  The eastern third 70-30 for Viktor Yanukovych.  The middle third of the country was split about evenly between the two.  Because the eastern (more Russian) section is the more populous, Yanukovych won a slender majority.  The events since the election shows what might happen when politicians play solely to their base supporters.  Yanukovych played to his when he sharply pivoted away from an economic agreement with the EU and courted Russia.  He totally alienated the EU oriented west of Ukraine which led to the civil/political disorder that led to his exile in Russia.  But his successors immediately scrapped a longstanding political arrangement allowed considerable autonomy in the Crimea and recognized Russian as a co-equal language for Ukraine.  That heavy-handedness resulted in the referendum in which an overwhelming majority of the Crimean "people" voted to secede and join Russia.  In each case, politicians (legitimately) claimed that the "People" had spoken.  And please don't think such can't happen here.  Consider how polarized our social/political culture is now.

It's a small world after all.

Saturday.

Another pot of lipstick peppers is sprouting.  I am thinking of reversing my decision of last fall not to plant pole beans again.  We haven't had a package of commercially produced green beans without biting into stems or that tasted good.  Mary is getting more than a bit contrary on the issue of the lack of quality we are getting in the goods we buy.

Sing it, Brother!!!  The inane and vacuous coverage of the Malaysian jet mystery is another thing that is pegging my contrary meter to the extreme.  The tragedy has been converted into a meaningless soap opera and that infuriates me.  And the assessment of two "old fossils" in the Senate is right on the money.

Found this by way of Undernews and the theme has been a rising one on the financial news channels. It doesn't really surprise me.  We don't often visit the big enclosed malls in the area.  They don't have much of interest.  The strip malls are another story.  Many of the small stores that carry what we normally buy are located in those malls.  But we have noticed that the retail spaces in those malls have been slower to rent than a decade or so ago.

I didn't read all of this item but what I did read made me wonder why some of our regulators were so upset with BofA and others for hiring the children of high ranking Chinese officials.  It seems to me that the practice is as American as apple pie.

Marian van Eyk McCain has an interesting post concerning the recent push (which has received plenty of free advertisement on news programs) to have physicians prescribe more cholesterol controlling medications to more people--even those without family history or symptoms.  I am not really surprised that the studies providing the ammunition for the efforts to increase the population who will be taking those medication are funded by Big Pharma.  That alone makes them suspect.  But I have a further quibble:  I don't see the need to give people a drug on the mere possibility that one in ten of them might develop heart disease--which may or may not be linked to cholesterol levels.