Fall(ing)

So last night my damned big dog smelt a racoon who had crossed the somewhat busy street in front of our house. A leap, a bound and I crashed down halfway into the oncoming lane of traffic. No cars, no trucks – just a beaten up knee and a left hip which, at my age, could easily have broken. It didn’t. All that milk has kept me up calcium and the bones are not yet brittle.

Just sore.

We continued the walk. Had a pint at my local and came marching, with a slight limp, back up the hill.

But it was a reminder of just how fast age catches up. Twenty years ago the net recovery time would have been over night, now it is a week and a half.

At 56 I like to think of myself as in the early to mid stages of middle age. I easily keep up with the younger dads, run internet based businesses, tweet on occasion. But I also know that the idea of early to mid middle age is a bit of a joke from our parents perspective and insane from our grandparent’s point of view.

A doctor once told me that any injury over 40 was permanent. He was right. With luck my fall will simply make me walk a bit funny for a couple of weeks; but the fact is that this will be sheer, dumb, luck.

It will take months for the bruises to go down.

I hate getting older. I don’t think I am the least bit wiser. And I certainly am no more knowledgable – I was kidding my 11 year old at dinner that he knows pretty much as much as I do.

If there is a consolation – and why should there be – it is that I have somehow retained the excitement in what is going to happen next. When that goes my next fall will be my last and I will not get up again. And at 96 that will be the order of battle. I suspect I will own progressively smaller dogs. 80 pounds, 40, 20 and a 10 pounder to see me out.

Surprise!

Great story:

It was just too much to take in. As I remember it all, I find myself imagining how that woman soldier must be feeling now. My mind was all over the place. I was in complete shock when, round about midday, my husband came upstairs to look for me. He knocked on the bathroom door to make sure I was all right. And there I was sitting with a six-pound, three-ounce baby boy on my lap, with the umbilical cord still around his neck. I blurted out: “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” Martin was just horrified but he told me it was OK, unwrapped the umbilical cord and then went for help. telegraph

 

What is the French for “Idiot”?

Quebec’s new natural-resources minister, Martine Ouellet, says she doesn’t believe the controversial method of extracting natural gas from shale, known as “fracking,” can ever be done safely.

She made the remarks Thursday on her way into her first cabinet meeting, less than 24 hours after she was named to cabinet.

“I don’t foresee a day when there will be technology that will allow safe exploitation (of shale gas),” Ouellet said in Quebec City.

“Our position is very clear: we want a complete moratorium, not only on exploitation but also on exploration of shale gas. We haven’t changed our minds.” vancouver sun

The quicker these people get on with separating the better.

Just what you would expect…

From Andrew Bolt:

Record ice melt in the Arctic – 5040 mentions in Google News overnight.

Record ice in the Antarctic: 962 mentions.

How Insensitive…

“We have the impression that it’s officially allowed for Charlie Hebdo to attack the Catholic far-right but we cannot poke fun at fundamental Islamists,” Charlie Hebdoeditor Stephane Charbonnier, who drew the front-page cartoon, said.

“It shows the climate — everyone is driven by fear, and that is exactly what this small handful of extremists who do not represent anyone want — to make everyone afraid, to shut us all in a cave,” he told Reuters. national post

At some point even the craziest Islamists are going to suffer “outrage fatigue”; but it will be a while yet.

The Real World

Spengler pulls no punches,

Cairo well might become a radical Islamic state, a North Korea on the Nile, as I wrote in this space last month (see North Korea on the Nile Asia Times Online, August 29, 2012.) But the consequences of such a devolution would be limited. With Iran neutralized , Egypt would be less of a threat to Saudi Arabia. It might become a threat to Libya and Sudan. That is unfortunate, but what have Libya and Sudan done for us lately? spengler

A full scale Middle Eastern war would also have the happy effect of ushering the Big Zero from office. A twofer as it were.

 

Model Railway Gone Wild

Sam is interested in building an HO railway…He got to work researching. He found this.

Reality in the UK

What makes all this even more significant, however, is that it is taking place against the background of a truly astonishing worldwide energy revolution. As can be seen from the website of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, country after country is now rushing to exploit the shale gas that, in the past four years, has more than halved gas prices in the US. China, Germany, France, Russia, South Africa and others all have immense reserves that promise to provide the world with cheap energy for centuries to come. And, here in Britain, determined moves are at last being made to reverse the Government’s grudging negativity towards our own vast shale gas reserves, led by our new Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, who seems to be winning surprising support for his enthusiasm for shale gas from key officials in his own department and the Environment Agency, which has regulatory responsibility for this new industry. christopher booker, the telegraph

The amusing part of the natural gas revolution is that, where it is furthest advanced, ie the US, CO2 emissions are down substantially. Now, whether you believe as I do, that CO2 is a relatively minimal issue, or are an all in CAGW fan, the promise of reducing CO2 emissions while having a steady source of energy is a good thing. And an even better thing if, as appears to be the case, the cost of that energy is lower than other conventional sources and way lower than the bird choppers.

Rumours of War

We live on the flight path of big military planes taking off from bases in the Northwestern US. For the last twelve hours the house has shaken every twenty minutes.

Could be repositioning.

Could be Obama realizing that Mitt had a point when he suggested that outrage was the proper response to the murder of an American Ambassador.

Could be that Obama has recognized it is now or never on Iran.

Could be training exercises.

9…11

The world changed.

We will never be the same.

While our pals in the MSM and on the left (but I repeat myself) made happy clappy sounds about how the Towers were not about Islam, the rest of us realized that the Towers were all about the dark side of a cult.

The happy clappy continues and to say “cult” is to risk being called Islamophobic – well, frankly, I am. I’m not wild about the Christian fundys or the Medieval Church either. And Leviticus leaves me cold. But the Western, Christian, world has, happily, undertaken the Enlightenment. Islam has not.

In so far as even pockets of the peckerless fools celebrate the end of the Towers they demonstrate their backwardness, their fear, their irrelevance to the modern world.

We remember. We learned.

They lost.