Recently I have had nothing but grave news. Two weeks ago I was describing to friends how it was our hour of need as the Norskies defended the peak of the gold medal mountain in the new Cold War, in Vancouver. Then it was just last week that my clarion call was sounded regarding the now 7-year-war against wild animals (10/03/2003 — Never Forget). These two very serious issues were weighing on me heavily. And then I heard that the Earth’s day is now shorter.

The earthquake in Chile changed the axis and sped up the Earth?! What? I’m sorry, come again? Why hasn’t there been much gnashing of teeth and such? The fifth most feasible way to destroy the Earth is to overspin it until it tears itself apart! [Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch, environment & nature
8 Comments »

Three months ago, I wrote about some of the problems with the global warming debate, not the least of which is that we were only being exposed to one side of the debate, namely, the doom-and-gloom types of arguments. I questioned a couple of assertions being made by the anthropogenic global warming crowd, and concluded the piece with the observation that we never hear about any of the possible benefits of the Earth heating up.

Thanks to the implosion of the Green-as-the-new-Red movement, due to the Climategate scandal, my point is finally being considered by the mainstream!

[Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government
2 Comments »

Tilikum the killer whale, I think, has put his employers in an awkward position.  I mean, a killer whale is not an employee that you can fire, or take away his quarterly bonus.  And there is, of course, the awkward press conference where you explain, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, that “in July 1999, security guards found a naked dead man draped across the orca’s back one morning.”  Sure, the guy sneaked past SeaWorld security and apparently died of hypothermia, but it’s awkward when one of your employees was found wearing a naked dead man as a hat.

[Read more →]

Tags: animals, environment & nature
No Comments »

Tomorrow is a moderately biggish day for me.  We’re installing a forest management demonstration project on a 40 acre block here on the research station where I live and work.  We’ve got a forested stand that has a mix of oaks (Quercus spp.), hickories (Carya spp.), pines (Pinus spp.), and red maple (Acer rubrum), and our goal is to 1) divide the forest into management blocks, 2) identify and implement appropriate silvicultural practices, and 3) monitor and maintain these blocks for use as a guide during our various field days, 4-H programs, school tours, and other forms of community education.

We’re currently in the middle of step 2, and tomorrow looks like it may be the day when we implement the most entertaining silvicultural practice of them all: prescribed fire!

[Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature
No Comments »

Weren’t snow days wonderful when you were a kid? I can’t remember a sound from my childhood more beautiful than a phone ringing at 5:00am and the subsequent disappointment in my mother’s voice as she grumbled to my dad those seven magical words: “The kids are home today. This blows.” I hate to say it but now that I’m 30, snow days kinda suck. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature
3 Comments »

Is it me, or were snow days way more fun when we were kids? Now? Not so much.

I remember being a kid, growing up in Rockland County, NY — ya know, the place that gets all the snow the city hears about. We averaged 6 inches every time it snowed, at least — and that was nothing. I remember waking up at 6 in the morning on snow days — earlier than I ever  woke up, including these days — just to turn on RKO radio — the AM station every kid gathered around the radio to listen to, fingers crossed, praying to hear their school’s name called out during the list of cancellations. Man, those were the days. Nothing beat a snow day… as a kid. As a parent? Fuck. That. Shit. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, family & parenting, going parental
4 Comments »

Dramatis Personae
Barack Obama, President of the United States
Al Gore, Former Vice-President of the United States

GORE: Mr. President, we must send a manned mission to Pluto at once. And I graciously volunteer to head it.

OBAMA: Pluto? Why Pluto?

GORE: Have you not read? There’s global warming on Pluto! [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature
1 Comment »

Got hold of a new tidbit that I found interesting.  The Ozone Layer’s hole, which is closing, is now being reported as “causing global warming”.

<Insert Homer Simpson’s “D’oh!” here.>

[Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government
2 Comments »

If you live in the Northeast part of the United States, you’re probably up to your eyeballs in snow. Certain areas, including mine, have been socked with the second snowmageddon within a week. It’s creating a lot of stress for mothers everywhere — schools are closed and toddler classes are canceled. The roads are impassable, and even if they weren’t, it’s impossible to dig the minivan out from the mountain of snow anyway. What’s a mother to do with an endless stretch of days indoors with a bunch of kids? Here are some ideas to keep your children entertained and you stress-free while stuck in the house. [Read more →]

Tags: advice, environment & nature
No Comments »

February 3, 2015

A Culvert County second-grader is in critical condition tonight after a SWAT team shot him four times in the process of serving a warrant to check his home for illegal light bulbs.

[Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government
4 Comments »

10. It’s so cold, people are hugging Ted Williams’s head just to keep warm

9. It’s so cold, aquariums no longer really need the glass

8. It’s so cold, flashers are running up to women in Central Park and just describing themselves

7. It’s so cold, it would be colder than Glenn Beck’s heart — if he had one

6. It’s so cold, the Statue of Liberty decided to hold her torch under her robe

5. It’s so cold, Rod Blagojevich was spotted with his hands in his own pockets

4. It’s so cold, all Sarah Palin could see from Alaska was more snow

3. It’s so cold, people are hanging around the set of The View just for the artificial warmth

2. It’s so cold, a temperature was actually recorded that was colder than the shoulder Tiger Woods’s wife is giving him

1. It’s so cold, Al Gore came out in favor of global warming
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd, environment & nature
1 Comment »

If you asked me what to do with Detroit, my suggestion would probably be to hide funny and/or surprising objects in the rubble, so that future archeologists will get a chuckle while they excavate. I would definitely not have thought of turning it into an enormous urban farm for the same reason I would not like to discover that my girlfriend is washing our dishes in the toilet.
[Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government
No Comments »

Because When Falls the Coliseum is incorporated, I am on various mailing lists that you seem to be on automatically when you are a business. Actual mail, not e-mail. One of these mailing lists belongs to a publication called Waste and Recycling News, produced by Crain Publications. I never asked to be on their mailing list, but every month they send me a thick glossy magazine-like thing that uses lots of ink and lots of paper and tells me all about the latest in waste and recycling news. As the owner of a small online publication, I don’t need to know about the latest in industrial waste and recycling news, so each month I promptly recycle it. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature
2 Comments »

I don’t mean to offend anyone with this post, but it just has to be said: earthquakes are the worst.

Sure, hurricanes are no fun and can kill lots of people, but we can see those coming from miles away. They might shift direction last minute and cause all kinds of destruction, and if given the choice, you’d choose not to be in a hurricane — I was in Hurricane Andrew, and although it left me with a story to tell years later, it isn’t the sort of thing I’d advise people to seek out. But people can often evacuate before a hurricane hits, even if they don’t always do so. I guess on some islands there isn’t anywhere to evacuate to. Hurricanes are no fun. And whatever they call hurricanes on the other side of the world, monsoons, or cyclones, or whatever, those also suck.

And tornadoes are bad. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature
9 Comments »

Hey you. Want to watch a spec ad about killing yourself?

Sure you do.

[Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, trusted media & news
No Comments »

With the year and season turning; perhaps also the decade and undoubtably the aging of the millenium that seemed so young moments ago, Americans high and low, both bailed and swamped are reflecting on their lives, their faith, the state of the world and the state of their relationships. Many find themselves feeling trapped in arrangements they made joyously and optimistically; wedded in haste and in public, they now regret at length and in the dark privacy of their hearts. Not exempted from this is the enthusiastic practitioner of plural, whimsical marriages, our fine and debonair President, Barack Obama. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government, terror & war
No Comments »

It’s the end of the holiday season, but the memories are fresh in our minds.  Since Christmas is supposed to be a season of giving, let’s use those memories to respond to a request that I defend the assertion that “Nature selects against purely altruistic behavior”.  Jump in the car of your imagination, crank ‘er up, and drive with me to the local Wal-Mart parking lot of two weeks ago…

[Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, religion & philosophy
9 Comments »

I’ve realized the other day that the reason I may be feeling so blasé about the whole “Nothing Less Than The Survival Of The World Is At Stake!!!” hysteria is that I’ve been desensitized by watching too many “Nothing Less Than The Survival Of The World Is At Stake!!!” movies. In every one, it all works out somehow. [Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, environment & nature
No Comments »

I don’t know how many of you have been following Ronald Bailey’s wonderful posts about the Copenhagen Climate Conference ( Pt1, Pt2, and Pt3) over at reason.com, but he’s been doing an awesome job.  I’ve really enjoyed reading his coverage, and I just finished reading his latest installment (Pt3.) last night.

  [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government
No Comments »

I know you’ve all heard about the calamity which is about to descend upon the human race.  The visions of death and destruction are downright Biblical. The seas will rise, the plants will die, the four horsemen of the apocalypse will reap a mighty harvest of flesh and bones. It’s the coming of man-made global warming!

[Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, environment & nature, science
6 Comments »

Right this moment a group of carbon criminals are getting away with murder. Where?

In Copenhagen, of course.

The U.N. estimates that 40,500 tones of carbon dioxide will be pumped into the atmosphere during the climate conference. And this doesn’t include the amount emitted personally by the participants.

Let’s hope when they finally enact carbon limitations that they include a ban on such events in the future. It’s a provision that even the global warming deniers might support.

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government
5 Comments »

Capitalism.  Saying the word is like laying down in a bed with freshly washed sheets and snuggling your nose into the sweetly scented pillows.  <sniff>  Ahhh…  Capitalism.  If political institutions are merely a reflection of the economic system which forms their foundation, then any free man must be a capitalist.  Capitalism is the only economic mode which expects liberty and ownership of property to be the order of the day.  It is the cornerstone of a republican governing structure, and the first thing brought to heel by totalitarian despots.

[Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, money, politics & government
Comments Off

Al Gore and others declared long ago that the debate over global warming was over — that it was accepted science, and that all those ignorant enough to defy them were “deniers,” akin to those who doubt the existence of the Holocaust. Unfortunately — despite the nifty ad hominems — the flatearthers refuse to adhere to dogma, especially in light of the so-called “Climategate” scandal. Society must deal with these people in the same manner society in the past dealt with those who challenged science: through an inquisition. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, science
28 Comments »

Am I the only one getting tired of listening to the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) crowd as they attempt to downplay the significance of Climategate’s leaked e-mails?  They tell us over and over that these e-mails have an alternative interpretation, that this is a move on the part of special interests to impede change, that the researchers involved in passing these e-mails around are merely the victims of a heinous crime.  Enough with the nonsense, people!  %*)#.  Wake up, man!

[Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, science
1 Comment »

 If you decide you’d like to upgrade your Kindle, Sony Reader, or other eReader to a nifty new model, I’ll purchase your old one from you for the full retail price you paid, including the sales tax. How cool is that? There are only a couple of paltry little provisos. Read on, and I’ll explain. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, environment & nature
2 Comments »

Ken Burns’ “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” premiered yesterday on PBS, delivering with his typically deliberate pacing, a moving portrait of how and why some of the most beautiful places in America, and on the planet, came under the protection of the U.S. government. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, television
No Comments »

Inventing ways to advertise products is the hardest job in the world. And products are things people want. Imagine, then, how hard it must be to think of how to advertise things people don’t care about at all, like environmental awareness and mass death.

[Read more →]

Tags: Kelly Conaboy saves the world, environment & nature
4 Comments »

I wanted to riff this week on a more light-hearted quote than those I have lately considered, so I googled P.G. Wodehouse quotes, thinking that if anyone had uttered something memorably light-hearted, it would have to be the creator of Jeeves.

Oddly, the one that caught my fancy was this: “Flowers are happy things.” [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson
2 Comments »

The following idea developed in an old barn used as an Appalachian Trail shelter in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee as, miles from civilization, I lay awake, listening to the obnoxious chatter of a girl on a cell phone:

Much of the world is tamer than it used to be; tamer than it is naturally. Buildings are zoned and coded with automatic doors, enough fire exits for every occupant, and sturdy railings over stairs with run-to-rise ratios established to accommodate even the most clumsy and out-of-shape. People climb stairs like these, into buildings like these, to watch big screens on which actors pretend to dare and risk. They become the hero. They rise and fall on plot waves designed to thrill then [Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, environment & nature
2 Comments »

A rattlesnake recently crashed my cousin Greg’s wedding in Sacramento.

Just before friends and family arrived, the uninvited, poisonous guest made her appearance. Greg told me that the snake, a baby, had been tossed over the edge of the property. He promised that she would return. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, environment & nature
2 Comments »