A Fun Link and Two Serious Ones

Sorry for the continued hiatuses in the blog. With my time at NRT winding down I have less to write about. Coupled with that I've got a couple of Historical Commission projects that are taking up some time as well-more on that in a few days. Today I want to point you towards three links while tomorrow I'd like to explain why Selectmen's candidate Pat Goodman hates you so much. You being the voters he is trying to fool into voting for him.

So the fun link is to an article on the Dictionary of American Regional English. The folks that recently announced that New England's usage of the word "tonic" is declining sharply. Not a bad thing since modern soft drinks are anything but tonics to improve your health. Unless, of course, you are drinking Moxie. That we have a dictionary of regional slang is a surprising, and you can find out how it happened here.

For the serious links I've found a blog from a Republican weatherman in Minnesota that points out to the wholly owned subsidiary of Big Oil, aka the Republicans in Congress, that no matter how much money they spend on lies and disinformation climate change is real. The weatherman, Paul Douglas, was a guest blogger on the Shawn Lawrence Otto site. His point is that believing in the data on climate change is rational rather than liberal or conservative. Mr. Douglas' argument is that if we stopped arguing about whether climate change is real (it is) we could start arguing about the solutions. He also points out that once upon a time, before the money from big oil and coal rained down on them, the Republicans had a perfectly good solution to climate change-a cap and trade program for carbon emissions. This free market alternative worked for air pollution, but as Mr. Douglas points out there are trillions of dollars of oil, coal, and natural gas profits left in the ground that Big Energy wants in its pockets. If you want a video version of this rant from James Hansen-another cap and trade advocate- you can visit the TED here. A third of a million people have already seen this TED lecture which was posted just a few days ago. If a third of a million people marched on Washington and threatened to demonstrate global warming by burning the city, perhaps the politicians would listen.