I'm going to make an interesting hypothesis here
 

But before I do, I need at least half a dozen people to chime in with their answers to this simple question:

How's your local weather been this summer?

Strange, we got lots of rain in April, May & June, but July has been drier than a flour miller's fart. The only good thing is the temps are below normal, easier on the A/C bill. Delayed putting in the garden by the rains but now that it is in I need to run the soaker hose every second day.

I'll play- but I'm affraid I know where you're going with this...

Denver, which is in a semi-arid climate has had unusually cool and wet weather. But not outside what would be considered statistically normal.

Coldest July on record here.

Darn near Central Florida's for the most part. Sunny and humid, bordering on hot until the afternoon, then usually a rain shower followed up by either more rain or sweltering humidity.

Garden loves it, grass loves it, I don't so much.

Cooler than usual, wetter than the past 2 or 3 years.

(watching/lurking)

The last time I can remember a summer as cold and damp as this one's been was in 1986, and I remember it well. It was the summer after the Chernobyl accident.

I think something's happened that nobody's telling us, most likely within the borders of North Korea.

4th coldest in NY last I heard

It's been trending cooler, and wetter, for the last several years here in Missouri. And that includes the winters.

And I, for one, like it.

Chas

We finally got some rain this afternoon.

Cooler-but still pretty steamy-But we've had all the rain we SHOULDA had for about the last 10 years or so...When I say "cooler", I mean it's been 80-85 generally, instead of 85-95, so it's a matter of "degrees"-no pun intended.

If it hits 90 tomorrow as forecast, it will only be 3 days above the 90 mark this July.

Best I remember, back around '71, when I spent a couple of weeks around Smith Center driving a Massy 410 on the wheat harvest, it was plenty damn hot.

One other thing I noticed, you Redlegs had some mighty fine lookin' wimmen!!! Damn near converted me to the Union Cause!!!!

Chas

They ain't too bad at all. I definitely married way out of my league.:D Ever been to Atlanta? I went there for a weekend audio meet once and damn, you absolutely could not spin a dead cat around your head without hitting a gal that was hotter than donut grease. It was unbelievable and I've never seen anything like it before or since. Damn near made me go Reb.

Well, it's good to see that at least ONE thing supersedes regional politics. Besides, the war's been over for damn near 150 yrs.

Chas

The fire at Chernobyl was extreme enough to be picked up by satellite as a heat signature. At that time, as far as I know only the USA and the Russians had the equipment to do this, so the Russian government could deny everything and their people would believe it; at least for a while.

Could something on that scale, some kind of nuclear accident or whatever have happened in North Korea without enough people being aware of it to make a cover-up impossible?

Just a quick follow up; in the U.K. the coldest winter within the last 100 years was in 1947, following that was in 1963. I'm not talking about cold snaps; I'm talking about weeks, months even where the temperature stayed well below average. Not sure about A bomb tests in '47, but didn't you guys carry out a very powerful high level test in 1963?

I dunno, fellers...There was a "Twice-Told Tale" back in 1990-91 making the rounds in the "scanner" world-Guys who listen to scanners, hoping to catch a scrap from a gov't agency-about a "Faded Giant' or "Broken Arrow"...The story came out that a bunch of Islamic terrorists broke into a Soviet nuclear facility in one of the "Stan" countries on Russia's southern borders, killed all the Russians, & made off w/their nukes to parts unknown. We were lookin' for 'em, the Russians were lookin' for 'em, & I think the Brits were, too. The concensus was that they prolly could NOT have gotten 'em to go off, but who knows ? Then about 5-6 months later came the 1st Gulf War, & not long after that, the Soviet Union went out of business. It prolly was bullshit, I think that whoever got 'em would have showed their hand by now, but you never know...I have a friend who was EOD officer in Viet Nam, & he told me that the public-and most of the military-have NO IDEA what all we have "Out There" that would "Curl yr fingernails backwards" if we knew...

They maybe wouldn't have needed to. A conventional explosion powerful enough to split the casing could make the center of any city useless for a good few years.

I would lay odds that there's going to be a mushroom cloud somewhere in the not too distant future. And as bad as that would be, there are so many low tech ways to disrupt society, blow a couple of bridges, a few transmission lines, and a sizeable portion of society will be living in the stone age inside of their McMansions.

And no doubt there are people lying awake at nights dreaming up ways to do this.

Chas

Why then is the USA doing everything in it's power (diplomatically) to keep Israel from destroying Iran's nuclear facilities. The window for them to take decisive action is slowly closing. I would think that we would at least be supplying arms, and jets if needed. I don't get it at all, as we supposedly don't want a nuclear armed Iran either. Could someone splain this to me?:confused:

Oh, yeah. Ever read the book, "Warday" by Whitley Strieber & James Kunetka ? It will CHILL YOUR SHITE...It's about a "limited" nuke exchange, the most damage came really from something called EMP damage, which basically "Shazbats" virtually all electronic circuits...Plus the stuff that's used to fix all of 'em, & the stuff that's used to fix THAT, & so on. The book was set in 1993, overnite we went from '93 to about 1950. Most planes & cars wouldn't work, because of electronic ignitions, & all the embedded computers, & of course, all the computers & electronic controls in modern jets.

Well, it wasn't that long ago that Israel left a big hole in the ground over in Syria. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if a B2 left a big hole in the ground over in Syria, and Israel took credit for it.

I still think that the Iraq War was all about containing Iran and putting pressure on the Saudis, and had nothing to do with removing Saddam.

Chas

Haven't read the book, but I know what you're talking about.

Better hang on to them vacuum tubes, fellers, might just need 'em.

Chas

Well, you have to admit, it was a nice bonus seeing him get his neck stretched.:D

Sometimes, good things happen to bad people.

Chas

Was it? For all it's faults Iraq was a secular country that as long as politics and protest didn't go beyond a certain point, allowed the population to pretty much do is it liked; women wearing fashionable clothes and driving cars etc.

Compare that to now; far from being a barrier between Iran and the rest of the world it looks like it's becoming part of it, at least as far as religion goes. We went in there all guns blazing, destroyed the infrastructure, disbanded the police and the entire military, then expected some kind of cloned Western democracy to grow from the ruins. What the hell were we playing at?

Rather interesting how people forget their own history. The democratic republic that is (or was) the USA was not imposed from without, it was seized from within. You cannot "give" people democracy, they must take it for themselves.

QFT, good post.

My weather has been rain, followed by showers, with scattered thunderstorms, followed by flash flooding, followed by brief periods of sun.

Well, the Middle East is the ultimate tar baby. I can see a certain amount of logic applied to what the Bush Administration has attempted to do over there, war is simply diplomacy by other means. Perhaps too ambitious, perhaps not ambitious enough. Germany and Japan didn't show up at the table with their hats in their hands until they got their asses kicked up between their shoulder blades. Been our buddies every since.

Hell, the Muslims and the Christians have only been slugging it out for about a thousand years. Then the powers that be gave Palestine to the Jews. Talk about adding a wild card to a hot game!!!

Shoulda give the Jews Mexico. They would've cleaned the place up and made it prosperous, and in short order. I like 'em, they're tough nuts.

Back to the Middle East. We need 'em, they got the oil. Now we can talk to them, shoot 'em up, don't too much matter what is done, we're still gonna be a loggerheads with 'em for another thousand years. Until we all convert to Islam, or they come into the 21st century. And even if the West were to eliminate the need for their oil, they're still going to be players. Just a lot poorer players.

I have no idea as to what will work in the Middle East. Everything that can, and has been tried is no more than adding another turd to your shit stew. Besides, if there were only two humans left on the planet, they'd find a way to be at one another's throats about something. It's our nature.

BTW, it's cool for this time of year, and fixin't to get colder and start raining. Least in Missouri.

Chas

It's clouding up purty good here right now. Man, we sure do need it.

look up h.a.r.p. high alt. reasearch project they are monkeying around with the jet stream

Another Redleg, huh? Well, welcome aboard from the resident Bushwhacker. Figger if we get too crossways with each other...we can always meet in Lawrence.

Just kidding, pleasure to meet you, Sir,

Chas

Sometimes I think they mess around w/stuff that they really ought not to be foolin' with...And some day, it's gonna come back & bite 'em in the Arse but good...HAARP is one thing, that CERN thingamabob is another...

Hey, when did you all get here?

Last night:D

erin

I'm jaymanaa over there.;)

I'm contemplating getting a points distributor for the van, just in case. Of course, in the event of such a catastrophe, the government would "commandeer" the damn thing anyways.

Actually Lord Balfour created Palestine, they are really arabs. When the League of Nations wanted to create a homeland for the Jewish people they specified a larger area, what is now Israel, the Golan Heights and Jordan. Balfour gave everything east of the Jordan river to the Hashemite kings, gave the Golan Heights to Syria yet even at that the arabs refused settlement for the Jewish people. They desecrated their burial grounds and generally behaved like bandits so I am not sure what they are bitching about now.