Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Wreath? check!



32 comments:

  1. That Howard fella--well, y'all know.

    Cat--It's been a little too long since the previous Harry Potter movie for me to be able to compare and contrast the various movies. Of course there is the problem of what to leave out of the movie and what to include; and there are the various advantages and limitations of the different media to consider. I really liked Luna Lovegood's house!

    Busy day at the lab today, but everything went smoothly. Telephones behaved themselves, enough staff, no need to run off to court, and no instrument problems. The minions of the law have been busy catching the allegedly drunk and or drugged, both walking and driving. Not much from the coroners today.

    The sky was mostly clear when we got up this morning, then turned to partly cloudy (pretty white clouds) by the time I left for work. One could see the mountains well; I think it looks like the most snow up there in several years. It's supposed to keep snowing up there tonight and tomorrow.

    California snow depths report:

    http://www.wunderground.com/StateSnowDepth.asp?state=CA

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  2. Alan, I liked Luna's house too. And I thought they handled the scenes in the Ministry of Magic very well. One bit in the movie but not in the book that I liked was when Harry and Hermione found a song on the radio and started dancing together. I hope Part 2 is as good as Part 1. But, as you say, the gap between films is so long that no doubt I'll have forgotten by the time Part 2 comes out.

    Surely it's good to get not much business from the coroners? Last I heard, those mountains of yours were due to get something like ten to fifteen feet of snow this week.

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  3. listener, Massachusetts will also be losing a House seat. Sure hope my Congresscritter doesn't get redistricted out. He's a good, solid, reliable fellow.

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  4. Here's a more in-depth analysis of the apportionment issue. Seems to be neither doom nor gloom for the white hats.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/reapportionment-not-neces_1_b_799898.html

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  5. Oh yes, the dancing was good! As is snow in the mountains of California; the whole water supply system as it now stands is predicated on a big snow pack. Just a few degrees higher and there could be no snowpack, requiring a huge increase in liquid water storage facilities, be they reservoirs or recharge fields. Planning for that has been going on for years.

    And yes, we should rejoice if people live long and healthy lives and pass away under circumstances that are in no way questionable. But "mortui vivos docent"--the dead instruct the living. And the coroners' toxicology is a very important part of our work. It is a speciality, or niche market, in which a small laboratory like ours can compete very effectively against the biggest labs. And frankly, it's both more challenging and more interesting by far than the police work, because of the far greater number of drugs (and poisons) we must work with and also the difficulties of interpretation. One can no more say "the concentration of drug A was X, and therefore the person obviously died of an overdose of A" than one can say "The level of drug B was Y, and therefore the person was driving while intoxicated." TV programs might be that simple, but reality isn't., and one is constantly learning.

    Well, me for bed. Take care, all. And thanks for the eclipse photo, listener!

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  6. Your welcome, Alan! :-)

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  7. BTW, a friend of mine got to watch the eclipse through the skylight in her cozy livingroom!
    Cool, eh?

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  8. MA was on the list I posted, Cat...last state listed in the losses list.
    So sad. It kind of feels like it's Ted's seat, y'know?

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  9. That is good news, Alan! Many thanks for the link!

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  10. Well, it's snowing...again. Wunderground says it's "overcast" here and we're expecting "Light Snow" that may accumulate 2 inches.

    Family in SW Maine are snow starved. Their Wunderground forecast says "Snow" and they are expecting up to an inch.

    So I guess the forecast is written in a way that's all relative!

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  11. I was just reading the wire service news about the rain in southern California. Well, whenever southern California gets significant rain they have some flooding and mudslides. The area normally gets little rain, and many houses are built in foolish places. But this is good news indeed:

    "Water content in the snow pack in California's mountains was at 197 percent of normal and 169 percent of the average measurement for April 1 — traditionally the date when the snow's water content is at its peak, said Ted Thomas, spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources."

    Rainy here, but not torrential by a long shot. And now to work. TTFN

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  12. Another take on redictricting, looked at from an Illinois perspective: Illinois actually grew in population between 2000 and 2010. By 3%. But that was below the national average of 10%, so we lost a seat. Most of that national population growth was immigration, and much of it was Hispanic. That is probably a major factor in the population growth of the southwestern states. But, as Cramer points out, that isn't necessarily good news for Republicans.

    In Illinois, because Democrats control state government, that lost seat will probably be a Republican seat. It also looks like we may get a second Hispanic-majority district. Which is good news in a way. The current Hispanic-majority district tries to connect two widely separated Hispanic neighborhoods and consequently makes Gerry's salamander look compact. And it's not clear the two neighborhoods have much in common besides language, since one is predominantly Mexican and the other predominantly Puerto Rican. Making each the center of its own Congressional district creates a much more rational situation.

    And while they talk about Illinois being a Democratic state, that's not entirely true. If the Illinois Republican party can get its act together -- which was emphatically not the case during the Bush years -- Illinois is basically purple with a faint blue tinge.

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  13. My heart goes out to all firefighters today, and their loved ones.

    CNN has confirmed that 2 of the 16 Chicago firefighters who were trapped have now died. So sad. My heart goes out to their loved ones and to all firefighters.
    http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/22/report-four-firefighters-trapped-after-building-collapses/?hpt=T2

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  14. Sounds like it's good news for the water table, but darn scary for the short term.

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  15. As someone who spent 9 years in Southern California, I understand about building houses in foolish places. A location on a hillside overlooking the ocean looks great. But that means you have to clear the chapparal that originally covered the ground. And clear it extensively -- chapparal is a fire-maintained ecosystem, and the more you suppress fires the worse they will evenually be. But with the ground cover gone, what's going to hold the earth when it rains?

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  16. All toasty here today: it's actually above freezing. Kinda grim and gray, though. Alan, checked *our* snow pack. . . State's averaging three inches, 'cept for the ski areas which have about ten and eleven, lol! They're also moving the snow storm predictions back. If they move it as far back as Monday, I may go down to DC for Christmas. I for sure don't want to have to try to travel in a storm on Shenandoah Mountain.

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  17. My new cheesecake pan came from Amazon. Going to be trying it out today: glass bottom silicon sides. In red: very festive. . . . And NOW, I can have both a cheesecake AND a quiche going at the same time instead of having to trade off because I only have one "pan" ~~ which is actually a giant crockery pie plate. And which I *love.*

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  18. Ally update at baby ~~

    http://eatapyzch.blogspot.com/

    http://www.gratefulness.org/candles/candles.cfm?l=eng&gi=allys

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  19. YAHOO!!! The Senate has ratified the START treaty! The second of my two long-time policy priorities is now on the books.

    When I first heard that the votes to pass START were in hand, I asked myself what there was left to wish for. Well, we don't have a climate bill and won't for the next two years. The millenium hasn't arrived. even ignoring the damage that the Republicans will try to inflict. But still, there's real reason for cheerfulness this holiday season.

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  20. On the other hand, there's Windows. I've been trying to get Stuffit set to back up all my important and semi-important files automatically, and it wanted to choke on the folder in which I had most of my e-books. So I made sure that all those specifically in Mobipocket format were in a different folder -- the one that Mobipocket automatically goes to -- then went to delete the subfolder they had formerly been in. Permanently delete because some of the file names were too long for the recycle bin. That subfolder was what was highlighted when I hit delete, but Windows actually deleted the entire folder, including other subfolders with books I wanted to keep.

    Very few books are actually lost. Most were purchased from Fictionwise and I can just go back and download them again. But it's a lot of totally unnecessary work. Boo on windows.

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  21. Oh, my goodness, listener. That's the life.

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  22. Ah, Bill, whatta pain. Flip side: usual Gates stuff, eh?

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  23. Ooh, quiche *and* cheesecake! Can I come live with you, Puddle?

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  24. They also passed the September Eleventh first responders' health bill.

    I am also greatly relieved that they passed the START treaty.

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  25. There's always Windows. Bill, I'm sorry for all the unnecessary hassle, and for the books you did lose.

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  26. Spot on, Bill. My wildlife biologist son shakes his head at the foolishness of people who do exactly that.

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  27. BAD WIndows! Go Mac.

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  28. BAD Windows! No donut!

    So sorry you have to recreate your e-library, Bill~!!!
    I hope you won't have to purchase them again, too.

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  29. I hadn't heard about the first responders bill. That's great! Thanks for letting me know.

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  30. No need to repurchase. So long as Fictionwise remains in business, I can always re-download. And I soon expect to have backups. (Maybe should have done a little juggling to get the backups done before the deletion.)

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