Yesterday, I observed that the forecast had mover the two seriously cold days this week from today and tomorrow to tomorrow and Friday. If they keep pushing them out, it could make my drive Sunday to see Virgil much more pleasant – assuming he’s still where he is now. I do think he is likely to be. At this point in the week I hoe so, because in the past when they have moved him it has been a few days at least before visiting is allowed at the new location.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Minnnesota Reformer – Conservative blocs unleash litigation to curb public health powers
Quote – Through a wave of pandemic-related litigation, a trio of small but mighty conservative legal blocs has rolled back public health authority at the local, state and federal levels, recasting America’s future battles against infectious diseases. Galvanized by what they’ve characterized as an overreach of COVID-19-related health orders issued amid the pandemic, lawyers from the three overlapping spheres — conservative and libertarian think tanks, Republican state attorneys general, and religious liberty groups — are aggressively taking on public health mandates and the government agencies charged with protecting community health.
Click through for details. The EPA can’t regulate. Now the CDC (and similar agencies at state and local levels) can’t regulate. Can anyone doubt any longer that they are trying to kill us all?
NPR – Decades of ‘good fires’ save Yosemite’s iconic grove of ancient sequoia trees
Quote – But it took more than the hard work of wildland firefighters, luck or a shift in the wind to protect the majestic trees in the Mariposa Grove, many of them 2,000 years old with several including the Grizzly Giant well over 3,000 years. Instead, foresters and ecologists say a half-century of intentional burning or ”prescribed fire” practices in and around the area dramatically reduced forest ”fuel” there, allowing the blaze to pass through the grove with the trees unscathed.
Click through for backstory. Nothing, in the end, will prevent forest fires entirely. And vacuum cleaners won’t help. But something else will. I shudder to think what a Republican administration might do to the Forest Service and the Park Service.
Food For Thought – This is from the British version of Vogue. I needed a little uplift and figured others might also.
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