Weather
Friday, the 14th, we had a sample of Winter. A few inches of snow, and wind to blow and drift it. Fairmont was not entirely missed by the storm this time, but still got off rather lightly. The few inches was pretty much dealt with Saturday morning and it's been nice since. Meanwhile other parts of the country got hit and hit hard. This, with Jay's traveling has resulted in a curious reversal. He's experiencing more Winter type stuff than I am.

How to Get an LJ Entry Ignored
Take an okkay entry, ideally a longish one, and have it center justified. Centering works for some poems, and short items, but otherwise... BLARGH, say I.

( political commentary )

Scaring Coworkers
Sunday I stopped in at Family Dollar and picked up a few odd things. Okkay, I went nuts. See, they had Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Every store has those, you say. Ah, but these were not the regular 2-packs. These were 10-packs. And they were on sale. Very much on sale. Fifty cents per 10-pack on sale. A case holds 36 of those 10-packs. A case for $18 and tax. Like I said, I went nuts. I bought a case, somewhat to the astonishment of the checkout clerk. He started to apologize for not having a bag that'd hold it. No need, they come in a box already. And today I brought them, the Peanut Butter Cups, to work. A third is by the Engineering secretary's desk now. Another third is on the filing cabinets near sales. And the remaining third is on filing cabinets in the Ag. & Force Measurement area. I hit the three main places for goodies on my side of the building. The fellow next to me wonders what I'm up to. I'm being far too nice, he claims. And that scares him. Even more than I usually scare him.

Importance of Birthdays... No, the Unimportance of Age.
A Diplomat is a man who always remembers a lady's birthday but not her age. That's how one saying goes, as I recall it. Birthdays, or the anniversaries thereof, tend to have some importance to a person. It's nice to be remembered and all. (Sharing a birthday with my sister, I don't forget hers, nor she mine, but also we're both used to having one or the other moved celebration-wise... siblings rivalry and such - and two cakes not at once.) But age is different. Age is important only at times. When a little kid "I'm three and a half!" The next time it's of any notice, really tends to be around 16, when one can get a driver's license. Then 18, for voting (if you care enough to) and for men, registration. It used to also be a time when one could purchase alcohol. Now 21 is significant for that. The age of 25 is a marker when auto insurance rates drop. And then, with a few exceptions (like running for some political offices), age doesn't matter until retirement. And after that, it matters not at all except as way to impress the younger that you've survived that many trips around the sun. This is why I have to compute my age if asked. It is not a number that is important to me. "You don't know your age?!" Well, why should I? It's not important. I know the current date, and I know my date of birth. I can compute my age on the vanishingly rare times I need it.

Current Mood: good

From http://www.ceip.org/files/nonprolif/templates/article.asp?NewsID=3871 (emphasis added):

6) When did the plant get started/program begin?

"We discovered this problem. I mean, everybody thought the agreed framework froze North Korea's nuclear aspirations. It turned out that it was misdirection. While everybody was watching Yongbyon and seeing that it was frozen, the North Koreans had started moving in a new direction with respect to the enrichment of uranium. And this didn't happen just in the last year or two. It's a decision they made and a program they started four or so years ago, and we found out about it this summer. And we confronted the North Koreans with it."
(Secretary Colin Powell, Fox News Sunday, December 29, 2002)

"They were motivated some four, five years ago, if not earlier, to make the political decision to move down the road of finding a second way of developing a nuclear weapon."
(Secretary Colin Powell, NBC Meet the Press, December 29, 2002)

A clarification in response to a claim that this is blaming the mess on Clinton:

The "It's Bush's fault for speaking out" line is just as wrong as those who say it say the "Clinton & Carter screwed up" line is wrong.

The party truly at fault is North Korea for not honoring the 1994 agreement and going ahead with uranium enrichment while the world was looking out for plutonium production. People seem to forget that that violated the 1994 agreement. Once that was known, and even admitted to, then the US reacted by ceasing to spend money and effort on what is a broken contract.