Maggie's Farm

Well, rat farts.

Pardon my strong language.

After getting poked and prodded for six hours at the hospital a few weeks ago, they came up with squat.  For you new readers, I had an intestinal operation last summer to remove a growth before it became cancerous, then was healing quite nicely until around last November when I just kind of stalled out at around 80% better.  I was still in debt to the hospital, though, so it took a few months to get that cleared up enough that I could start a new 'tab' with them.  I had (what felt like) about a gallon of blood drained from me (I made a comment about 'bloodletting' and how "I feel better already!'), an EKG, some skin samples for the lab, and a "nonintrusive ultrasound test" where they tested the blood flow throughout my body.

Then it turned out my blood pressure is through the roof.  I've never paid much attention to it, and the previous time I was at the hospital for an operation follow-up, about three months ago, nobody said anything so I guess it was fine.

It was 165 over something when I was there the other day.  I think the nurse actually gasped when she read the meter.  Normal is 120 or below.  Since nothing else has changed in my life (diet, living quarters, lack of exercise, etc), I gather most of it is just stress, worrying about rent and food, and exacerbated by the fact that I never know how much work I'm going to get from the one main company I webmaster for. So, the wonderful discovery that I could stroke out any minute added another two hours to my visit.

I've had better days.

And, as noted, they came up with zip in the blood test.  Now I have to decide when or even IF I'll be able to afford to take the next round of tests and whether or not I should dump my (cough!) $120/mo Internet service.  After rent, that's my biggest expense.  If you didn't catch the story, I moved behind the local cellphone tower about a year ago which, as it turns out, are very directional and neither my Verizon Wireless nor a Sprint unit would work.  I finally found a company that specializes in rural hook-ups and sitting on top of my tower is a 4" x 6" box with a 3' antenna sitting on top of it.  It works fine, but it's nasty expensive.

Anyway, that's where things currently stand.  Or sit, in my case.  If you'd like to help with my get-well fund, it would be sorely appreciated.

Also, I mentioned this a few months ago, but if anyone has any viable (note key word) ideas on how to make money online, I'm all ears.  I've read a number of "5 Ways To Make Money On The Internet" articles and haven't seen anything viable yet.  I'd grab a regular 9-to-5 job in a minute if I could find one, but these are all tourist-geared villages down here and if you don't have any experience in the restaurant, motel or scuba diving biz, you needn't bother to apply.

One thing a couple of people mentioned last time was putting Amazon links in the posts, like Glenn does over at Istapundit.  The hitch here — besides being tacky — is that these things only work with big reader numbers.  You're basically waiting for that 1-in-3,000 person who's currently in the market for a new set of steak knives or band saw or the boxed set of all three 'Men In Black' movies.  And Maggie's just doesn't have those kinds of numbers.

My thought was to only link to Rolls Royce dealerships, realtors for large estates and high-quality diamond necklace merchants.  If it only makes one sale a year, I'll be set!

Anyways, just thought I'd toss out a quick update.  Got some interesting posts coming up this week, starting with...

And you were there.

I imagine you've seen some pretty splashy 'doodles' in place of the 'Google' name when there's an important event to honor, like the birthday of some Italian painter from the 17th century.  Lesser events, like the Junior League's Summer Cotillion or the Annual Cornhuskers County Fair, don't get any doodle at all.

Or Memorial Day.

After all, to the sensitive leftists who run Google, that would be glorifying war.

And we can't have any of that.

Now, I could be wrong and maybe they did this last year and I just didn't notice, but I went to Google just now and my jaw nearly hit the floor.

It practically leaps off the page!

As you've no doubt heard, the threat of Natural Global Colding is already showing signs of occurring, like it snowing in May in the midwest — in the middle of a drought, no less — and now the Oklahoma tornadoes being extra-violent because of the extra-cold wind sheer.  The following Newsweek article was written before the current rage of twisters, so the author was, indeed, prescient in what he says about them and how, unlike global warming, global colding actually will cause tornadoes and hurricanes to increase in both number and intensity, as his numbers verify.

Pic: This week's issue of Time also covers the subject in depth

There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns may have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth.  The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now.

The evidence is support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.

Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in thirteen U.S. states.

...

Trend: To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather.  The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down.  Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions.  But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.  If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.

Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about 7 degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.  The scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies.  The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

So that's about as sobering as it gets, folks.  Ten years really isn't a very long time.

I originally spotted this alarming article on a very cool AGW site called Real Science.

The original article is here.

Newsweek.

April 28.

1975.

Dear Maggie's Valued Female Reader™:

I have tremendously good news.

It must be awful constantly being treated as a second-class citizen in a male-dominated society.  We all know about the inequalities in the job market, corporate structure and politics, but it's exceptionally cruel when even something as simple as sports needs an official Act of Congress (Title IX) just so a college can have a girls softball team.

But perhaps the biggest reminder of your lowly status is that even your clothes are regulated.  Wear this, don't wear that.  Do you see men going through any such restrictions?  Of course not.  Your being told what to wear based on your gender is the moral equivalent of being told which bathroom you can use based on the color of your skin.

And the great progressive city of New York has decided to address this hideous injustice, once and for all.

No longer will you be castigated and restricted and confined merely because of your gender.  No longer will you be forced to wear the shackles that the male-dominated society has placed upon you.

Because of the grand farsightedness of the great city of New York, you no longer have to wear the shackles at all.

Topless Women in Public Not Breaking the Law, Says NYPD

See, guys?

Progressivism isn't always bad.