The word from Punxsutawney Phil (the only groundhog that matters.) Even ol’ Phil is chiming in on global warming.
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
It’s official!
Friday, February 2nd, 2007Idiots ruin sponges and microwaves
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Reports about a study that found microwave ovens can be used to sterilize kitchen sponges sent people hurrying to test the idea this week — with sometimes disastrous results.
A team at the University of Florida found that two minutes in the microwave at full power could kill a range of bacteria, viruses and parasites on kitchen sponges.
They described how they soaked the sponges in wastewater and then zapped them. (Microwave zaps germs on sponges.)
But several experimenters evidently left out the crucial step of wetting the sponge.
“Just wanted you to know that your article on microwaving sponges and scrubbers aroused my interest. However, when I put my sponge/scrubber into the microwave, it caught fire, smoked up the house, ruined my microwave, and pissed me off,” one correspondent wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.
“First, the sponge is worthless afterwards so you have to throw it out instead of using it. And second your entire house stinks like a burning tire for several hours, even with windows/doors open,” complained another.
Aaron Hoover, a press officer at the University of Florida, said several other news organizations received similar complaints, although no one had complained directly to the university.
“We figured, ‘Wow, we better let people know right away that the sponge should be wet,”‘ Hoover said in a telephone interview.
The university issued the following advisory: “To guard against the risk of fire, people who wish to sterilize their sponges at home must ensure the sponge is completely wet. Two minutes of microwaving is sufficient for most sterilization. Sponges should also have no metallic content. Last, people should be careful when removing the sponge from the microwave as it will be hot.”
duh.
Perfect skiing weather?
Thursday, January 4th, 2007This is my National Weather Service report for the next few days.
Notice Saturday. See the temps? High of 66º, low of 39º. And a “wintry mix” expected.
Not sure what this says about global warming but something ain’t right.
World Aids Day
Friday, December 1st, 2006
Ugly news
Wednesday, November 15th, 2006Well, this would be funny if it wasn’t so horrible.
O.J. Simpson created an uproar Wednesday with plans for a TV interview and book titled “If I Did It” - an account the publisher pronounced “his confession” and media executives condemned as revolting and exploitive.
Fox, which plans to air an interview with Simpson Nov. 27 and 29, said Simpson describes how he would have committed the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, “if he were the one responsible.”
If. Alrighty then.
Nearly seven years after a dormitory fire killed three students at Seton Hall University, two former roommates pleaded guilty Wednesday to arson, admitting for the first time that they set a banner ablaze in a prank that tragically got out of hand.
A prank. Purposely setting fire to a banner draped over a couch, alerting no one to the blaze, running from the law for years, living life as if nothing had happened, while 3 kids are dead, a bunch more are burned and still suffering, and others live with the memory of that night and the horror of it daily. (I take this one a bit personally- one of the kids that died is from our town.)
I won’t be going to the book club tonight. Something really sucky has come up.
It’s making me giggle…
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006… imagining the reaction I’d get from certain people if I walked around in this shirt:
It’s in Arabic, and translates to “I am not a Terrorist.” I’d actually prefer it if it had something innocuous on it, like “Have a Great Day!” in Arabic. Same effect, nicer thought.
Read the story of the shirt here.
Praying for a day off from school…
Friday, July 21st, 2006This is interesting. School boards around the country are trying to figure out how to accomodate religious holidays.
Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, and Christian — each faith has its holy days. Schools across the country are asking how to respect them all.
Consider the University at Albany, which canceled classes on major Muslim holidays. Faculty wanted the move out of concern for Muslim students after the Sept. 11 attacks. But then came the questions: What about Hindus? Buddhists?
President Kermit Hall last fall decided to return to the original calendar.
“Can you operate a university and give each religious group an accommodation? I think the answer is, ‘No,’” he said.
Make that “maybe.” School administrators across the country are rethinking their calendars as their student bodies become more diverse. [...]
Some schools close for the beginning of hunting season. San Francisco schools have Cesar Chavez Day on March 30 to celebrate farmworkers, and Chicago schools have March 5 to honor Casimir Pulaski, a Polish count who helped the American side in the Revolutionary War.
Religion is more sensitive. Some districts mark “special observance days” when no test or exam can be scheduled. Other districts find inspiration in the business world — each student gets a number of “floating” days to celebrate his or her own holidays with an excused absence.
“‘Choose your own holiday’ has become more popular,” said Kathryn Lohre, assistant director of Harvard University’s Pluralism Project, which studies diversity in religion. “It takes pressure off the school boards.”
New Jersey’s board of education now lists 76 excused religious holidays, from Russian Orthodox to Sikh. New York City schools are even more flexible. Students with a letter from parents get an excused absence for a holiday in any religion.
Hmm, interesting. That list of NJ excused holydays can be found here. In this state, heck, in this town, there’s such diversity, an incredibly fast-growing immigrant population, primarily from India and other Asian nations. Our school calendar recognizes traditional Christian and Jewish holy days. I have to wonder if the time will come that school will be scheduled on those dates, and families will be asked to use their “floating holydays” for Good Friday or Yom Kippur?
I’m not sure how I feel about all this. Looking at the Roman Catholic holydays listed (because those are the ones that would affect my kids) would I take my kids out of school for All Saints Day? How about the next day, All Souls Day? Both would be excused. According to this list, my kids are entitled to 9 excused absences (assuming, of course, all the Catholic holydays fell on a school day.) Would I allow that to happen? Of couse not. But if a family is religious- well, they might. How does the administration of that work, what are the teachers’ responsibilities? How are standardized tests, finals, projects, scheduled? I
Nothing’s ever as simple as we’d like it to be, is it?