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Showing posts from September, 2015

The Air in China Continues to Kill Millions

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The thickness of smog in many Chinese cities is deadly. Current GOP front-runner Donald Trump declared last week  that climate change is "no big problem at all.  If you look at China they are doing nothing about it."  Well, that isn't exactly true as I will show.  But, even if it were true Mr. Trump seems to be oblivious to the fact that by "doing nothing" China is killing 4,400 of its citizens every day .  That comes to an incredible  1.6 million deaths every year . Hence the wisdom of doing nothing, I suppose.  I have previously written about China's air pollution / climate change problems here and here .  It is an ongoing concern in my reading.  If recent studies are correct, the rate of total Chinese deaths due to air pollution is rising at about 200,000 more deaths per year.  Which means that if China continues to "do nothing" then by 2017 some 2 million people will die each year from some of the worst smog conditions on the planet.

Shelby Miller and All Our Hopes

The two worst teams in major league baseball played a meaningless series in Atlanta this weekend.  By overall record, the Philadelphia Phillies (56-94) are the worst team over the course of this season.  But the 2015 Atlanta Braves (60-90) started the season in the thick of the NL East race, winning consistently in April and May. A 27-24 start was not spectacular but it showed promise for a team that was now a shocking shell of its former self. Jason Heyward is gone. Justin Upton is gone.  Evan Gattis is gone.   Craig Kimbrel , possibly the best closer in all of baseball, is gone.  Everything the Braves were working toward with trades and internal talent has been slashed and burned. Plus, we no longer have Chipper Jones in the lineup either.  Chipper retired three seasons ago and we still haven't found a way to make up for the loss of his bat. Chris Johnson had one great season with the bat but it was not indicative of his average talent so we traded him.  We traded our st

Reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

There are few things in life I hold more dear than maintaining a sense of place.  That is one reason Jennifer and I chose back in 1993 to build our home on what was once part of a large farm in my family.  I had played in the nearby fields and forests as a kid and I felt completely at peace with the view from our front porch, which (at that time) remained unchanged since I was a child. Now things are a bit different.  Old houses and barns have long sense been bulldozed.  New homes and barns are in their place, along with nearby suburbs with hundreds of houses. But, suburbia's massive sprawl has never reached the several hundred acres around our property.  So, comparatively speaking, the land and its surroundings has not significantly changed.   My woods have matured, my fields have been somewhat transformed by Jennifer's gardens and our tree plantings. Many pine and oak trees have volunteered and grown naturally through what was once a mulched open garden of flowers and shr