State of Fear

I recently picked up State of Fear by Michael Crichton, that one guy who wrote Jurassic Park. I’m not very far into it yet, but it’s a pretty informative book. A small introduction reminds us that characters and organizations are used fictitiously, but anything marked with a footnote is real, and the book contains an appendix citing sources for all of the footnotes. I wish all authors would do this.

As a sidenote, I was browsing around on MichaelCrichton.com and noticed an interesting speech he gave establishing that extraterrestrial aliens are responsible for global warming.

Also, in light of today’s articles about “a new study comparing 7 million real world datapoints with several computer models of global warming,” I agree with Crichton’s take on this. I’ll take a computer climate model seriously when it accurately predicts future trends for the next ten years. Twenty would be preferable.

California

This is what happens when it rains too much in California. Sheesh.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it… oh shut up.

Snow doesn’t bother me.

Really. I actually kind of like the stuff.

What does bother me is the total lack of intelligence that the city of Provo exhibits when it comes to snow removal. I leave my apartment at a little before 8am this morning. 8 inches of snow are piled up on my Nissan pickup. I know this is going to be a crappy morning. I look to the nearby street and see that traffic is moving at a snail’s pace. Why? Because people have been driving a MAIN DRAG in Provo for over 2 hours and the 8 inches of snow that had fallen is now compressed into 1/2 inch thick ice.

Salt? What’s that? Apparently Provo City has never heard of the stuff. Melts ice, you know.

I pull out of my apartment complex and begin to slowly make my way to work. Eventually I get to a street where they went ahead and put salt down. No plowing. Just salt. 8 inches of Snow + Salt + No Plowing = Slush. NEWS FLASH! Slush is only slightly less dangerous to drive on than ice.

The end result of this is a 40 minute drive to work when it normally takes me 10 minutes. Thanks, Provo. You guys rock.

When I lived in South Dakota, and there was an overnight accumulation of 8 inches, ALL of the main roads in town would be plowed and salted by 6am, and they would’ve also made a serious dent in the side streets. That was little ol’ South Dakota. Therefore, South Dakota > Utah.