First snow.

Our first snow came in late yesterday through last night.  We still have snow falling lightly thanks to the lake effect.  We did our grocery shopping on Sunday when it was dry, mild and sunny.  So far the accumulation is less than an inch--just enough to make driving a bit miserable.

This amuses me and not in a "ha-ha" way.  After years during which educators focused attention and resources on the so-called STEM subjects to the detriment of the reading and writing, employers now complain that job seekers can't communicate.  I don't think the blame should be laid on the colleges and universities.  By the time I was out of sixth grade I knew the difference between its and it's, and could name the parts of speech as well as use them properly, and was reading at a 12+ grade level.  Remember that scene during the George Zimmerman trial (for killing Trevon Martin) where Martin's girlfriend was shown a letter she said she couldn't read because it was in cursive?  I heard some comments on the girl's mental abilities which the pundits assumed were lacking somehow.  I thought "Well, duh!!! Are they even teaching cursive writing any more?"  I ask because just about that time the Indiana legislature was considering requiring schools to teach cursive after many years of not.  It has been, admittedly, a long time since I was in grade school.  Both the technology we depend on and the jobs most of us do have changed.  Those changes do require us to change our education system to adapt.  But what will happen if we have to "write" something someone else will need to read and we haven't a keyboard, a computer, and tablet, etc.?  Will we be able to use a pen or pencil to write the message legibly and can the person who has to read it actually read it however legibly we might write it?  What happens if you have a power outage and your computerized cash register doesn't work any more?  Can your employee (or you) write down the items a customer wants to purchase, add them up and correctly calculate the tax, and then make change accurately?  I remember when that happened at a little store where I worked at the time.  The owner and I were able to do all of that for the customers in the store at the time and then we closed until the power was restored.

It was only a matter of time before this happened.  Why those very smart idiots who developed the malware that it wouldn't go beyond its original target is beyond my understanding.

I saw this story first on Sunday on either Reuters or the Daily Mail--not on any U.S. national media.  I guess it wasn't dramatic enough since the the fire and explosion after the derailment of a train of oil tankers didn't take out a large section of a town.

Remember what I said yesterday about water?  Well, here is Nestle at its old tricks.  I love the semantics of the ploy: water is a "need" not a necessity."  Therefore, it is ripe for commercial exploitation and, if you or your children don't have the money to buy it, tough on you.  Between Nestle (and its fellow pirates) and the fracking industry--we are well and totally screwed.

Happy Veterans' Day.

I didn't find much I wanted to comment on yesterday and there was nothing to talk about in the garden so, to state the obvious, I didn't post anything.  Today, so far, is much the same.  I am constantly amazed by what crap is on the "news" and how little is truly informative.  Mom grumbled this morning that the story about Charlie Trotter's death wasn't as new as the readers said.  I pointed out that the "new" part was the little snippet of the story concerning the scheduled memorial which they promised to cover live later today.  Oh, well.  Let's see what I can find that is far more interesting.

I love this post by Xanthe by way of Firedoglake.  I feel the same way when I hear one of those oh-so-reasonable (NOT) politicos talk about "shared sacrifice."

Of course, for most of the politicos on both sides of the party divide the notion of "sacrifice" is covered by the "for thee, not me" credo.  Greg Abbott probably feels the same way the CEO of Nestle does: water isn't a right; its a commodity that goes to those who can pay and screw anyone else.

Mild Saturday. Another blast from the past--rickets. Some honesty at last.

Well, it will be somewhat warmer today but the weather people say the temperatures will tank and we may see some snow Monday.  But--'tis the season for it.  It is also getting to the season when we check the forecast before deciding when we will do our weekly errands.  Since we have the flexibility we would rather not go out when the weather is bad.

So, another disease that had nearly disappeared is making a comeback.  That story concerns the U.K. but evidently the U.S. is also seeing an uptick in cases.

I like this guy.  I have seen very few times when someone somewhere discourages people from pursuing expensive advanced education for over-crowded fields in which the jobs they expect may no longer exist.

Frosty, Frosty Friday.

Yes, indeed--it is frosty.  Heavy frost on the roofs and cars.  It looks like today will be sunny.  That will be nice.  I still have a few clean up chores in the gardens so I hope the sun sticks around through the weekend.

So the FDA has decided to "eliminate" trans-fats from foods.  Well, kinds--sorta.  The article was more accurate in saying they will "severely limit" the amount allowed.  The broadcast news was much less accurate.  We have been looking at the labels for a good while now and trans-fats are only one category of additives we watch for when shopping.

I am not at all surprised by this item.  We are becoming an intensely surveilled society.  From red light cameras, to security cameras, to GPS locators etc., what we do when is generally known to someone somewhere.

Nice sunny Thursday. Another Supreme Court hearing on prayer.

Good day, again.  Sunny but very cool this morning with frost on the roofs.  The weather people say we may get snow in the middle of next week.  Some time this weekend I hope the patio will be dry enough for me to sweep up the leaves.

I see the issue of prayer in conjunction with public/political meetings has come before the Supreme Court--again.  This is only one of the stories I have seen on the matter.  I have a couple of thoughts on the matter.  First, only one (and I can't remember where it was) made the point that the city at the heart of the matter opened their council meetings with a "moment of silence" until a very fervent Catholic was elected who decided that prayer opening the meeting of another government's meetings "worked" and should be emulated.  So this city had a history of opening meetings with a non-sectarian, non-coercive ritual.  The move from the "moment of silence" to what the "in your face" Christian prayers was coercive from the beginning.  Second, I think religion should be a private matter and we should not be subjected to what amounts to proselytizing in what should be a public space which should accommodate people of diverse belief.  I note the picture shows a meeting being opened with a Baha'i prayer but the date was earlier this year--well after the current law suit was filed.

I caught a brief comment on one of the news shows--probably on Al Jazeera or BBC, certainly not one of our main stream media outlets--that intrigued me.  The commentator mentioned the fact that people generally live in their own bubbles.  The rich rarely interact with those poorer than they are.  The financial and political elites rarely have to deal with real people who are not also part of those elites.  Sometimes it gets interesting when they have to--as in the so-called town meetings that turn raucous unexpectedly.  Usually, the political pundits speak critically of the bubble surrounding the President and how that bubble puts him out of touch with the ordinary citizens.  But I would guess that that is an endemic condition for anyone in that stratospheric altitude.  Why should the original comment intrigue me?  Well, how often have you heard anyone acknowledge that we live in a country where the divide between the privileged and not-so-privileged is deep and growing, and that there is very little real interaction between the two America?  That someone would in our infotainment media would actually utter such heresy is amazing and intriguing.

Firedoglake has an interesting piece.  Wireless communications have been pushed for some time.  We shifted to cell phones about 6 years or so ago because we didn't see the sense of paying for both a land line and cell phones, and the only calls we got on the land line were from telemarketers.  We had to change out our computer router and replaced the old wireless router with a new wireless.  But every now and then we get a twinge of concern about the reliability of such systems especially in an emergency.  We recently saw a documentary on Superstorm Sandy and one of the people profiled got help by way of her computer and twitter after the cell phones failed.  Technology may be nice but there are always downsides to it.

Obamacare problems. "Pink slime" rises from the dead.

I didn't see much to comment on yesterday--just the next two items.  And the second really doesn't need any comment from me.  Let's see what I find today.

Undernews has this interesting bit on the Obamacare disaster.  There is a saying I am rather fond of: to err is human; to really f*#k up use a computer.  The Canadian system was set up in a law consisting of 13 pages.  The Affordable Care Act is set out in a 900 page tome.  When Medicare started they signed up 20 million people in six months using index cards.  In this case I think the government did what bureaucracy normally does--took something simple and complicated it.  The difference, I believe, is that medicare was implemented to help people who needed it while the ACA was really a corporate welfare program.

Truer words were never written.

Well, at least Cargill is going to label the crap.  "Pink slime," or "lean finely textured beef" as the industry would rather call it (sounds so innocuous, doesn't it?) is something I wish would simply go away.  I deeply resent the notion that we should be willing to pay beef prices for processed crap.

This is absolutely mind boggling.  When that mess finally hits the west coast we will need a major clean up.  But, interesting thought--has this amazing amount of garbage in any way related to the disappearance of the sardines off the coast?  I noted some time ago reports (the accuracy of which I can't guarantee) that the fishing fleet went back to port with no catch at all.

Maybe the Chinese (and by extension, the world at large and the U.S. especially) need a new definition of success.  The current one is certainly not working.

The constant whine from world leaders that "friends don't spy on friends" amuses me.  What makes them think any country is really a friend of another country?  "Ally" is not synonymous with "friend."

As I read this piece from Jesse's Cafe Americain I felt my cynicism vindicated.  As a society we have no ethics or morals.  All we have is the all-mighty dollar and, if you have enough of them, anything goes.  As for "law," those boys have written the law so everybody else is screwed.

Ah, Monday--again. Cyber-security??? Garden thoughts.

Good day to you all.  We are trying to get our internal clocks adjusted to the change in clock time.  We hate it.  The earlier daylight isn't any compensation for the earlier darkness.  Oh, well, since we don't seem to have any choice in the matter I guess we will simply have to adjust.

I found this Daily Mail article.  It was only a test but, if creating a fake identity (posing as a pretty, young woman on social media) is all it takes to crack a government agency, who needs an Edward Snowdon?

I didn't see much else to comment on.  So I think I will muse a bit on the garden that was this year and the one I am thinking about next year.

I have felt a low grade dissatisfaction this year.  Everything seemed so slow.  I didn't get ripe tomatoes until August.  The beans were luxuriant but produced very few pods.  I have already documented my failure with the blueberry.

I am not so sure that things were really as slow as they seemed.  Rather it may have been normal and I just haven't seen a normal year (whatever that means) in so long I can't remember what it is like.  I actually got as much in tomatoes this year as last year--about 22 pounds of stewed tomatoes in the freezer plus what we ate fresh with our dinners.  That may be about the limit I can get without turning all of my space to tomatoes and I don't want to do that.  We have a couple of hot house growers that sell early tomatoes in the local farm market.  We plan to buy more from them next year so I will cut back to only a couple of sauce tomato plants.

I tried a couple of plants (one tomato and one sweet pepper) designed for patio growing.  Both performed as advertised.  Both small, compact plants that were prolific.  But I didn't really didn't like either one much.  The flavor was only so-so.

My other peppers, both heirloom varieties, did very well  and we have a nice supply in the freezer--those we didn't eat right away.  I still have seeds from one of the varieties and will try to harvest seeds next year.  I may get more seeds of the other or try a new one.  I also want to get a Mexibelle transplant.  That variety is a bit spicier but it is a hybrid so seed saving is not practical.

The cucumber did well but the lemon squash did not.  But I don't intend to plant them again.  They require too much space and don't train well.

Next month (or later this month) I should start getting the garden catalogs and the planning will begin in earnest.