You Must Be Joking.

So...that whole thing about the Russian government controlling the weather? Umm...it's true.

No. Really.

In Russia, nobody rains on the parade -- because the Russian government doesn't allow it.

"Victory Day is the most sacred holiday for us," says Bagrat Danilian, deputy chief of cloud seeding at the observatory. "When veterans go out to celebrate in Moscow, we create good weather for them."

All it takes, he says, is sacks of cement -- 500-grade, to be precise. Drop the powder down into the clouds, and they vanish.

So apparently now the Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, has decided that clearing snow costs too much money. Instead of shelling out the big bucks to city employees, he'd rather it just didn't snow at all. So he's proposing "a plan to seed the clouds with liquid nitrogen or dry ice to keep heavy snow from falling inside the city limits."

Am I the last person to find out about this? Somehow this seems like it should be a much bigger deal than an article on the L.A. Times website. Haven't we already destroyed our global climate?

Tad creepy, people. Just a tad.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-moscow-snow8-2009dec08,0,2120312.story

Just Calm Down

In September, 2001, I was 17. That's the year Osama bin Laden and the Afghan terrorist group, the Taliban, attacked the United States.

In March, 2003, I was 19 years old. That's the year President Bush took us to war in Afghanistan Iraq.

The day we went to war, I sat on my couch glued to MSNBC. I watched infrared videos of never-ending explosions. I tried to understand why we were blowing the shit out of Iraq, when I had been under the impression that those who had hurt us were from a totally different country. I tried to figure out why we were going to war with an entire country for the selfish acts of a few. I couldn't understand why we fought terrorism with terrorism. I was incredibly sad. Then I was incredibly outraged.

At some point, Bush decided we'd "accomplished" whatever our "mission" was. There was a whole banner-on-an-aircraft-carrier-moment. We all remember it.

Then he kept fighting. He kept killing. He kept invading. He found more and more reasons to prolong this "mission." We found Saddam, killed him, and still we stayed.

In November, 2008, I was 24 years old. That's the year we elected Barack Obama. We had listened to his campaign promises. We believed in his ability to lead. We trusted him wholly, and we held each other and cried and celebrated the night he took office as Commander in Chief.

It's December, 2009. I'm 25 years old. After inheriting an unjust, misdirected, near decade-long, greed-based war, and after spending nine months gathering advice from all sides of the strategic spectrum, President Obama just announced his decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

When he was on the campaign trail, and since his election, Obama has promised to find a resolution to the fight in Afghanistan. He has kept his word. With Afghanistan in it's current state, we can not pick up and leave. Our President did not take us into Afghanistan, but he is decent enough, and smart enough, to pick up the pieces of the mess we helped make.

And for once, and for the very first time, I trust that our President knows exactly what he's doing.

"As Obama removes our combat brigades from Iraq, he will send at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan, where the Taliban is resurgent. He will also provide our armed forces with the reset capability that they need. He will replace essential equipment, and he will ensure that our men and women in uniform get the care and support they have earned."
-Barack Obama's Campaign Defense Fact Sheet (2007)

H1N1 's Got Nothin on Accidentally Shooting Yourself

I will not be getting the H1N1 vaccine.

I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I get the feeling some pharmaceutical company is making a killing off of the 250 million doses the U.S. Government just snapped up (if you're interested, the manufacturers of the H1N1 vaccine are Sanofi Pasteur, Novartis, MedImmune and CSL Limited).

Despite a giant lapse in vaccination upkeep in my lifetime, I've never contracted SARS, Mad Cow, or the Avian Flu. I have never been poisoned by Anthrax or accidentally eaten a stray chicken tumor at Jack-in-the-Box. In fact, I've never had food poisoning (but I also refuse to eat at restaurants sporting "B" grades in the windows).

I did have the Chicken Pox once. I've had Strep a couple times. I somehow developed Scarlitinia and mild Scarlet Fever at the same time. I even had Pityriasis once, which was totally strange. So it's not as if my immune system is superhuman. I just never bought into the Scary Disease of the Year hype.

Government health officials say the Swine Flu has killed some 4,000 people in the United States since April, including 540 kids.

Yes, that's a lot of people, and please don't think I'm making light of the matter. But for comparison's sake, here are some other fun facts to consider before going postal on your local CVS for running out of The Shot:

In the same 7 months...

16,916 people in the United States were killed in accidents involving firearms.
19,843 people in the United States were killed in car accidents.
21,000 people in the United States were killed by the Influenza virus (the regular one).
42,261 people in the United States were killed by Diabetes.
253,750 people in the United States were killed by tobbacco.
326,601 people in the United States were killed by Cancer.
368,454 people in the United States were killed by Heart Disease.

Sources: http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/deaths.htm