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Here you go! Nice and short for a Friday. 14:05 EST Forced Organ Harvesting: Overseas Patients Flocking to China for Transplants You might just end up donating earlier than planned, and recipients might just end up receiving someone else's involuntary donation. I couldn't live with that. This whole organ transplantation business is beginning to appear to be built on the same slippery slope as the abortion industry: The envelope begins to get stretched to proportions far beyond what those who were only willing to acquiesce to it, out of compassion, in the first place, ever intended, and can no longer tolerate. And, of course, as usual, the cry will come from advocates for opponents to 'not throw the baby out with the bathwater'. 12:43 EST This student was a bully, and had been a problem to me and many others, and now, he was being a problem to the teacher. Mr. Tuff Guy was on his 3rd trip through the 7th grade, and clearly had a very bad attitude toward everyone, and decided it was a good day to challenge the teacher about not having even attempted his homework. Turns out, it wasn't as good a day as he'd assumed. He took one swing at the teacher, whose name I can't recall now, and the teacher reacted immediately. Mr. Bad Attitude's knees went out, and he hit the floor in a straight line, much as the World Trade Center buildings would 18 years later. That means, the teacher knocked him out where he stood. As with our military drill-instructor Boy Scout Troop Leader a couple of years earlier, I never had to worry about the thugs in that class because the adults were firmly in charge. But the teacher, like Mr. Fletcher, and unlike some of the other teachers, only ever showed that side to those who needed to see it. Now, as it turned out, that teacher was a Golden Gloves boxer. And Mr. Fletcher turned out to be an Air Force meteorologist. AND he taught a class in meteorology. AND it was one of the advanced classes. AND he seemed so impressed with me that he personally invited me to enroll in his class. I didn't know enough to be flattered back then. I'd never had a teacher impressed with me before. Well, except for that English teacher in Randolph. So I took the class. I took two semesters of it. He took us to the Air Force base to show us where he used to work. I was impressed with the respect he was shown. I was impressed with the technology. I just knew that I would end up in the Air Force, maybe even in an airways tower. More importantly, just as in his physics classes, Mr. Fletcher took us behind the curtain, so to speak, to tell us the rest of the story, giving us the information missing from the official explanations. For example, already in 1973, I knew all about the jet streams and their effect on airline traffic. I knew all about the (ant)arctic air mass(es), and how they 'sit like hands over the poles of the earth', and even how 'they shift position ever 7-11 years, in time with the solar cycles'. In 1973! I knew then all about shifting global weather patterns. I knew about temperature inversions, cloud reflectivity (albedo), diurnal ionospheric radio-wave propogation interference, and even ... ready for this? ... that lightning started in outer space. He taught me all about how many pilots had reported seeing sprites, elves, and 'jets'. All this was already well-known, and thoroughly documented in 1973. He was, after all, a RETIRED meteorologist. His knowledge was already old in 1973, further reinforcing my refrain that the government, and certainly the national labs, have a completely different science text book from the rest of the world. So, when I first started hearing about El Niño and La Niña in the news, I was not the least surprised. Whenever I read in Scientific American about the end of our warm period, descending again into an ice age, I was not surprised. But then, I started hearing about global warming, and I was not only surprised, I was dismayed. What surprised and dismayed me the most was the supporting 'evidence'. I'd seen things like that before in the history books in Germany. |