We had an October snow storm here in New Jersey last week, and for much of the weekend following I was without power, and my boys thought it was just great to not have electricity, water or heat.
My oldest, who at his high school Democratic Club just watched "Gasland" and now understands something about my energy ravings - although the truth is that I missed having access to the gas and was more concerned about it than he was since it's important at my job that I at least seem to have had a shower - is now running around insisting that we all wear sweaters around the house and keep the thermostat down.
I address him as "Mr. Carter," as in Jimmy Carter.
As I found myself in an argument with him on this topic, I was reminded of my own father - who died before his grandson was born - and how I learned about rhetoric from my old man, who often took a position that was opposed to my position because it was my position.
I miss my dad still, and wish like hell he could see me with my son. God he'd laugh like hell at me, and I'd just have to hug him, to let him know that I did, in my own way, turn out to be him.
We never had the New York Times in my house, which my father referred to as the "Uptown Daily Worker" with "Uptown" being anything in Manhattan that was north of the Brooklyn Bridge. Until I was in my late teens, and bought the paper myself (which I often caught my father secretly and then openly reading) we lived on low brow papers like the Daily News.
My dad, before he died, finally confided that for a communist newspaper (his words), The New York Times had some interesting stuff in it. Sigh...
Interestingly I have changed my mind about the New York Times post Judith Miller and regard it as a right wing rag, with a decidedly anti-science bent. It's coverage of nuclear issues (including those articles of coverage which were published under Miller's byline) is just stupid.
But some people, not me necessarily, think of the New York Times as high brow.
Whatever.
The article to which I will refer to today comes from a British low brow paper, The Daily Mail, and might be thus taken with a grain of salt, except that what is contained in the article is very real:
In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale.
Um, um, um...
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