Monday, June 25, 2007

ENVIWRONGMENTALISM

As I discussed on March 19th, the best job in the world is being a weatherman, weathergirl, or weather person.
Unlike a surgeon, cashier, pilot, or explosives expert, a weatherperson can be wrong 50% of the time and still keep their job.
My problemo is that our precious Humanitoban Summers have historically only been 2 months long so it is nice to know what is happening outside.
We actually had F4 Tornadoes
less than one hour away from Whateverpeg (pop 750,000) this past weekend!
Thankfully nobody was killed.
http://TORNADOES

It is the last week of school and the days have started to shorten already because June 24th is longest day of the year.
Summer holidays will be gone in a flash.
Summer Holidays?!
Apparently the French Normans imposed the idea of summer holidays after they conquered England in 1066.
I presume that during this point in history that the English still had no idea that it was not cloudy and raining in continental Europe.
I am also guessing that the Brits summered where they wintered because the weather is crappy all 365 days of the year and therefore did not vacance their winter homes ala les La-Di-Da Normans.

Mind you I did see the film about the Queen and apparently Mum and the rest of the “Germans’ head north to Scotland for the summer holidays in search of greyer, rainier, drearier, weather.
This act of masochistic duty is required in order to maintain the stiff upper lip, an air of unflappable non chalance, and to maintain the ghostly pale complexion that her predecessor Elizabeth 1st made so popular.

Here in the Colonies we of course inherited these summer holidays because they permitted schools to close so that the children could work on the farm.

My maternal Great Grandfathers were both farmers so my pessimism and morbid fascination with weather conditions is decidedly genetic.

Farmers live and die by the weather so it is a tempestuous 'love/hate' relationship as volatile and unpredictable as the weather itself.

Pictured above to the right is my Mother's Mother's Parents:
Jacob B. Fast & Caroline (Poersch)
who came to Canada from Russia in 1874
and below is my Mother's Father's Parents;
Johannes Thor Simonson & Anna Marie (Franzene)
who left Sweden in 1893 to farm in Minnesota before moving up here.

Now I realise that today forecasters have a hard time guessing what the weather is going to be like tomorrow so perhaps it is unfair to judge our governmental agency in charge of guessing what the weather will be like tomorrow http://ENVIWRONGMENTCANADA.
Obviously the planet is trying to get rid of our species by altering the climate.
What this means is that unfortunately, unprefrickindictable weather, will be here to stay for the rest of our lives.

ENVIWRONGMENT CANADA has 6,000 employees and a budget of $500 Million. According to their website 80% of their budget is wasted, I mean spent, on ‘scientificky’ stuff about the atomosphere.

My question is why?
How about spending a few hundred bucks from http://SEARSHOMEIMPROVEMENTS and installing windows at the 100 Enviwrongment Canada offices.
This would definitely help embattled prognosticators know if it is actually sunny or raining outside.
The scientificky computer wizards could actually stick their heads outside and experience Mother Nature in all of her glory.

If the weather is completely fercoct,
then why bother trying to pretend that ENVIWRONGMENT CANADA has any idea what it will be like outside ?

If 6,000 people and half a billion dollars can’t tell me whether it will be raining or sunny outside then forget it.
Let it go.
Waste the money on something more productive…
like developing that fancy schmancy NEW SCHOOL CALENDAR that has five terms;
4 equal two week holidays &
4 weeks of summer holidays.
This makes perfectly good sense now that Mother Earth has trimmed our Summers down to one lonely month, JULY.

22 comments:

  1. Bonjour Don!
    I am glad to hear that you survived a bear encounter on the road! How scary! John and I drove back from Grand Beach friday night (thankfully without bear sights) because of the thunderstorm that ruined our camping weekend at the Provincial Park. I had checked the forecast at environment Canada online all week including friday to plan this weekend vacation in time for Saint-Jean Baptiste and I am very angry (en tabarnak).

    But are'nt storms spectacular! This one had multiple red lightning on pale grey clouds near the lake...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous12:04 pm

    I couldn't read beyond summer vacations. Those are ending soon for me and I feel so sad..:(

    I will get back to read the rest!

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  3. 4 months of summer holiday?! Canada is obviously the place for me - can I move in?

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  4. allo emilie!
    The storms were fantastic! Saturday night there was contiguous lightning from one end of the horizon to the other..of course we wouldn't be as cavalier if the Tornadic destruction had reached Whateverpeg!

    I always loved electrical storms at the Lake. The hair on your arms is standing straight up and the view is amazing...unless you are stuck in the middle of the Lake.

    I remember being out in an aluminum canoe when a thuderstorm came outta nowhere..I paddled so fast that I probably could have pulled a waterskier behind me.

    gautami,
    Oh I read that on your post how dreadful...you should split your teaching schedule between Here & India to take advantage of the Hemispheric holiday schedules.

    ziggi,
    Oh for f#%^@$#*sake thankgawd somebody actually reads these bloody things. OK I'm an idiot I should have checked it but I had to run out and get Ridley from school so... Ziggi listen, could you be a dear and change that 4 months of summer holidays to 4 weeks...if I go on to edit posts the entire posting will go back about 9 drafts and I will forget all of my other corrections.

    Thanks I owe you one!

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  5. June 21st was the longest day. Daylight's slipping away already...

    What's with the picture of Steve Colbert at the top right? Did you really make it onto the Colbert Report, or did you photoshop that?

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  6. chaucer's bitch,
    You're right as always but I believe that somewhere around the 24th of June is our longest day.

    Not to be a complete nerd but as I understand it June 20-21 is not the day when the sun rises earliest in the morning nor when it sets latest at night because that varies from place to place in the Northern Hemisphere.

    You are technically correct because on June 20/21 the equator receives 12 hours of daylight,
    the North Pole gets 24 hours of daylight and the gawdforsaken South Pole gets a mindnumbing 24 hours of darkness.

    The Colbert Report (silent T)spoof was designed by Shelley @ Tidalgrrl who has the recipe...
    isn't that awesome?!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous2:51 pm

    Oi, achei teu blog pelo google tá bem interessante gostei desse post. Quando der dá uma passada pelo meu blog, é sobre camisetas personalizadas, mostra passo a passo como criar uma camiseta personalizada bem maneira. Até mais.

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  8. Well I'm glad we don't get tornadoes.

    You're right about the weather's being freaky. Summer's been over for a month now but you wouldn't know it. I don't usually like it when it rains but I wish it would just to get some relief from the heat.

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  9. I think my brain just exploded. You wow me. Are you all brain or is it the brawn that's confusing me?

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  10. Bouncing off bears one day and tangling with tornados the next...makes my lil ol' power surge last week seem pretty tame.

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  11. OMG HE thats so true...cos the Winter over here is bone-freezing COLD this time! And the Summers r skin-cooking HOT! :) Somethings up with the weather.

    But Im glad we dun have twisters/tornadoes...that wud be freaky!

    Keshi.

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  12. I'm with you on the holidays, I just wish I was still in school! Our weather people tell me it's going to rain every day, but this is Melbourne so you can't be wrong about rain. Melbourne = rain. Actually, The Whitlams wrote a song called "Melbourne" and used the line "Walkin' round the rainy city..." That's us!

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  13. hola rodrigo,
    Tu es possuem um sistema que lhe permite montar sua camiseta de forma que quiser!? Get out of town?
    Passou em um blog ou flog e gostou de uma foto? No way?
    Let me find out how many of commentors want one...gracias.
    Ironic how impersonal it is to have a robo-program zigzag through the blogosphero promoting your camisetas personalizadas...ha ha Aye Carumba!

    menchie,
    Our entire month of June was tropical...hot, humid and it rained every second day very strange. We really are down to one month of summer now JULY.

    I cannot believe that the days are getting shorter WAAAA!

    andrea,
    Wow I wow you? I obviously need to resolve some of these issues that I keep yammering about and get on with my life.

    I was on a walkabout following links from links and I am always amazed at how many fascinating people there are out here..but it feels so wonderful(You have no idea)to have regular contact with solid cyber citizens like yourself drop by.

    dinahmow,
    ((beating chest)) I eat power surges for breakfast AAARRGGHHH!

    keshiroo,
    I wonder how much extreme weather we will have to tolerate. What if a couple major cities on all of the continents had to be abandoned...wouldn't that be weird?

    stace,
    I can't handle rain...OK I have to talk about this American TV show called the Age of Love. There is this impossibly tall handsome 30 something bloke from Melbourne who is on a matchmaking show that sets these 2o year old gals against 4o something ladies. Is this guy in the news in Melbs?

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  14. Anonymous5:10 pm

    What is it about our generation that is so different, we are inundated with stories of famalies who sold up everything and travelled a perilious journey to a new world, your granparents, coming from russia back then would not have been a simple trip. Our generation whinges when the power has been off for more than an hour...

    We down under our days are getting longer, as we sold our solstice to satan...

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  15. I'll be honest, I have the Environment Canada webpage bookmarked, and I go there for my local weather needs. So some of that money is actually benefiting me, which I cannot say for most gov't spending.

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  16. eeeeeeeeee!

    Keshi.

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  17. I watched a vid on youtube with your massive tornado a few days ago, It was beautiful! Glad no-one was hurt.

    We check the weather all the time because Dave works outside. Instead of looking at the forecast we read the radar map and can usually tell if we'll be hit within a few hours.

    ReplyDelete
  18. aidan,
    I suppose that if things went horribly wrong that people would still find a way to survive...but they would make a huge deal out of it.


    enviwrongmentblogger,
    Ok Ok. You know what I am trying to spoof. You are right when compared to most departments these guys are gold.


    kesh,
    EEEEEEEE!

    christine,
    I can get barometric readings from my 'thritis. I don't think that I would be able to live in a damp coastal village my hands would just fall right off of my arms..or I would have to gnaw them off.

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  19. Which is more deadly - a 500 pound bear or a Manitoba mosquito?

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  20. our winter is pretty much may through july, so we're freezing our backsides off at the moment with an unusually cold winter!
    our schools run january to december, with a 3 week holiday in march/april and june/july, a week long break in september and then a 6-7 week holiday in december.

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  21. buffalo,
    Hola! Well we have the Culex Tarsalis little bastards that carry West Nile..hmm I still prefer to do a little swatting rather than being consumed by a large multicellular omnivore!

    Angel,
    Cool. You already have the school year divided up..that is a ton o' holidays for the kids and teachers.
    It sounds as if the school year is only 4 months long?

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  22. heh heh... actually its about 9 months in total (the three week stints start mid march & mid to end june) about the same as the usa, but with our holidays spread out...

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