Here's why I cannot believe the histrionics about man-made global warming. On Friday, July 3rd, I checked the weather forecast for the 4th of July fireworks. The 8 day outlook was as follows:
Saturday the 4th: rain the AM, clearing by noon, cloudy for the remainder of the day
Sunday the 5th: overcast to partly sunny
Mon-Fri the 6th - 10th: sunny with gradually warming temps climbing to the 90s by Friday.
The actual weather? It rained until 5pm Saturday the 4th, and stayed overcast all night. Sunday and Monday were as predicted, but Tuesday afternoon widely scattered showers moved in, and the rain is predicted to stay all week. Oh and the temperatures are in the 70s, about 15 degrees lower than the original forecast.
If you cannot predict with any degree of accuracy the weather 4 days into the future, why should I believe you know what the weather is going to be 10, 20 or 50 years from now? And even if you could predict it, what evidence is there that you could control it? Puh-lease!
Man-made global warming is a hoax.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
A nibble
So after four months without so much as a how-do-you-do, I decide to try and buy a business and be my own boss. I may not like myself all the time, but I'd never fire me or lay me off, no matter how bad things got. I searched online for business for sale, and think I may have a prospect.
Of course, life here in the real world, unlike Betend-land, is rarely simple. As I'm just about ready to make an offer and trot down to the bank for some stimulus money, I get an email from an outfit up in Chicago with a job description for a change/communications job. The attached note says my profile matches the job description, and would I be interested? I read it over, and why yes, I'd have to agree that my profile fits the job description to a T. I could do that job, and in fact have been doing it for pretty much the last eight and a half years. That's pretty simple. What's not so simple is the job is in Lake Forest. Ah well, talk is cheap, right? So I send back an email and say I would be interested and lo and behold, my phone rings, and a delightful Indian-accented voice tells me I could be working in a couple of weeks.
After clearing the obligatory hurdles, of course. A screening of my resume, a phone interview, a face-to-face interview and a drug test. (Thanks to Dr. Gilbert, I have many drugs available, but I don't think those are the ones their screening for...) And could I please update my resume with a list of the projects I worked on and what I did? OK, I can do that, after I finish the projects I'm working on here at home. Four hours later I get another call from the delightful Indian-accented voice asking if I sent the resume yet? I remember this from working in a real job. I'm still working on it - my resume is the worst one in three counties - and I'll get it off first thing in the morning. I only have to pretty much rewrite it to incorporate a bunch of stuff from my last couple performance reviews.
I was amused during the initial call by some of the questions. Where is Metamora - is it a southern suburb of Chicago? Uh, no, it's two-and-a-half hours south. Oh, so you wouldn't want to commute? No thanks, I have some family in the area I might stay with during the week.
Even though it's a temporary assignment, from two(!) to eighteen months, they're offering a salary and a per diem that grosses out in a week what I'm 'making' every month right now. So even if it's only for two months, that's eight more months of relative security.
If it doesn't pan out, I'll be bummed, but at least someone is showing some interest. As my old boss Sparky Anderson always said: it beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Of course, life here in the real world, unlike Betend-land, is rarely simple. As I'm just about ready to make an offer and trot down to the bank for some stimulus money, I get an email from an outfit up in Chicago with a job description for a change/communications job. The attached note says my profile matches the job description, and would I be interested? I read it over, and why yes, I'd have to agree that my profile fits the job description to a T. I could do that job, and in fact have been doing it for pretty much the last eight and a half years. That's pretty simple. What's not so simple is the job is in Lake Forest. Ah well, talk is cheap, right? So I send back an email and say I would be interested and lo and behold, my phone rings, and a delightful Indian-accented voice tells me I could be working in a couple of weeks.
After clearing the obligatory hurdles, of course. A screening of my resume, a phone interview, a face-to-face interview and a drug test. (Thanks to Dr. Gilbert, I have many drugs available, but I don't think those are the ones their screening for...) And could I please update my resume with a list of the projects I worked on and what I did? OK, I can do that, after I finish the projects I'm working on here at home. Four hours later I get another call from the delightful Indian-accented voice asking if I sent the resume yet? I remember this from working in a real job. I'm still working on it - my resume is the worst one in three counties - and I'll get it off first thing in the morning. I only have to pretty much rewrite it to incorporate a bunch of stuff from my last couple performance reviews.
I was amused during the initial call by some of the questions. Where is Metamora - is it a southern suburb of Chicago? Uh, no, it's two-and-a-half hours south. Oh, so you wouldn't want to commute? No thanks, I have some family in the area I might stay with during the week.
Even though it's a temporary assignment, from two(!) to eighteen months, they're offering a salary and a per diem that grosses out in a week what I'm 'making' every month right now. So even if it's only for two months, that's eight more months of relative security.
If it doesn't pan out, I'll be bummed, but at least someone is showing some interest. As my old boss Sparky Anderson always said: it beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
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