New Photo Gallery for 2010 Okie Snow and Ice
The ice did its best to obey the law and STOPped sliding off that sign; but you can proceed without caution! Click over to our new set of imagery from the ice and snow event here in central Oklahoma that took place at the end of January. Elke and I enjoyed a few days off after the winter storm to explore and find interesting subjects to shoot, whether at home or on the road.
We observed and photographed songbirds from the comfort of warm shelter, looking through our back windows, and about half the shots either were in our yard or neighborhood.
After roaming about our immediate proximity and Norman proper, a trip down to Purcell, where the ice had been much thicker, revealed a streetscape littered with downed limbs and trees, and classical ice-storm damage at every turn. We also shot several more photos at the National Weather Center; and those shots appear both in the winter storm gallery and in the ever-growing NWC photo set.
If you haven’t seen the NWC gallery, either in the last few months or at all, check that out also. Just when I think I have photographed that facility and its surroundings in every way, shape and form possible, new opportunities sprout like weeds above the grubs hunted by the resident skunks.
Nuclear Iran and the Resulting Firestorm
Iran brazenly announced they’re enriching uranium to 20% — far more than needed for power generation, essentially flipping the civilized world the middle finger and saying, in effect: “Hell with you. We’re doing what we want, and there’s nothing you can or will do about it. You’re all too weak and disorganized.” And they’re right — at least about the weak and disorganized part.
The Obama administration will continue to dither meekly and carry on with assorted “sanctions”, as well as inconsequential and substantially facile words of inference and indirectness. Same with Europe. China and Russia sit amused on the sidelines, feigning neutrality while covertly supporting Iran. Only Israel has any real courage in all this, and they’re running out of patience with the sheer ineffectiveness of mere talk by the U.S. and Europe.
Israel knows, as does anyone with a dangerous and unstable neighbor who isn’t taking his Zoloft anymore, and who points increasingly powerful weapons down the street at others’ houses, that you can’t just talk the irrational into rationality. They just make more and more demands, and do more and more of the same crap they have been doing. At some point the SWAT team is going to have to bust in their door and take them out, and it could get ugly. Israel is the house at which their neighbor’s nuclear guns will be pointed. They know it, I know it, and you know it.
Unless Obama and Europe step up and hang a very obvious Sword of Damocles over Iran, the latter will ratchet up the nuke program piece by piece and with impunity. Talk is cheap and ultimately fruitless in this situation. At some point, action is needed. Unless either you or I have been in Israel’s shoes, neither of us can comprehend fully how dire this situation is for them; but I do understand that their very existence as a nation and as a people is at stake. Without major changes in foreign policy by the U.S. and Europe, and soon, Israel will finally turn Popeye: “I’ve had alls and I can stands, and I can’t stands no more.” Then, what is destined (some say prophesied) to happen in the Middle East will, a firestorm of epic and perhaps civilization-altering proportions, the likes of which that part of the world hasn’t seen in modern times — and that’s saying something.
Prepare. Compared to literal and figurative fallout from an increasingly probable Israel-Iran war, Iraq and Afghanistan will be tiptoes through tulips. Granted, nothing may happen; but the following scenario isn’t necessarily the product of paranoid doomsayers-for-hire on late-night radio anymore, either. If Israel and Iran cut loose and give it all they’ve got, gasoline will shoot to ten bucks a gallon or more, commerce as we know it cripples as a result, and all sorts of economic upheaval (with resultant social instabilities in the cities) easily could commence.
Carried too far for too long, such a situation would jeopardize society as we know it. Then, after considerable internal fighting and famine, particularly in the cities, the radical left then could achieve their ultimate-green agenda of returning us to the pre-industrial age of zero emissions, tepees and igloos as state-of-the-art residences, and cholera and bubonic plague as effective population control, whereupon most of the topics I ever have discussed in this BLOG would become trivial and irrelevant. After all, who needs a PC or the Internet once we have reverted to the New Bronze Age?
What is there, or perhaps more correctly, who is there among world leadership, to step forward and prevent this dreadful outcome?
The irony is that the backwoods rednecks, upon whom the ivory-tower elites of coastal liberalism heap their greatest derision, are best suited to endure such a scenario logistically and in terms of defensive firepower. That’s probably a good thing. Meanwhile, those pencil-necked purveyors of pomposity who sit in the coffee shops of Brookline, Boulder and Berkeley, deliberating the modern merits of Nietzsche, genuflecting at the toes of their über-green environmental Buddhas, and sneering down their noses at the rural Red Staters, would be among the first extirpated in such a scenario of mass unrest. [Let's see...defend yourself against the roving packs of urban marauders by threatening to toss a hot latte at 'em? Go for it.]
Meanwhile, as Hank Jr. once sung, country folks can survive.
The good life might not last much longer. In case it doesn’t, enjoy and appreciate what you’ve got, while you’ve got it, and whomever you’ve got it with.
Turn Signals: What They Are and How to Use Them
Most drivers don’t seem to know where a turn signal is, what it is for, or that it even exists. Since I do know, and have over a quarter century of experience using them on a daily basis, I shall serve as willing tutor.
A turn signal knob is found on the left side of the steering column, behind the steering wheel. The following is an example of a turn signal knob.
Your turn signal knob was not installed as a decorative ornament. It has a function.
The method is simple: Move it upward before turning right or changing lanes to the right, downward to turn left or change lanes to the left.
Here is an example of how to use one before a left turn or leftward lane change. Remember: Pull the knob down before going leftward.
Move the knob upward before turning right. Isn’t that easy?
A turn signal knob activates special, distinctive, flashing lights on the front and back of a car that lets other people (yes, other people do exist!) know what you are about to do. This is for their safety and yours. The following example also is for a left turn, as seen from in front of a car.
The law in every state is the same: A turn signal must be used with every turn and lane change. Not “should”, not” could”, but must.
Turn signal usage also is basic common sense, for safety’s sake. After all, you are not the only driver on the road, and this world is not only about you. Other people live in it too. Other people also drive on the roads of this world. If you didn’t know before about turn signals, congratulations; now you do. Use them every time, for any turn or lane change; and please turn them off after the turn or lane change if they don’t deactivate on their own.