Topic category:  Other/General

In response to a piece the Chicago Sun-Times (recently renamed the: Chicago All Obama All The Times) ran about how to teach kids about global warming, I sent them this letter ...

Here are a couple of global warming puzzles for the kids to work out ...

Situation I ...

For the past 100 years or so, the US government's USHCN (U.S. Historical Climatology Network), has maintained about 1200 reporting sites that record temperatures across the contiguous 48 states.

Of the 36 USHCN sites reporting in the state of Illinois, home state of the greatest living American, Barack Hussein ibn Obama:

4 sites show no change

15 sites show warming

17 sites show significant cooling

Of the 15 USHCN sites reporting in the state of Arkansas, home state of the second greatest living American, Billygoat Clinton:

1 site shows no change

2 sites show slight warming

12 sites show significant cooling.

Of the 16 USHCN sites reporting in the state of Tennessee, home state of America's third greatest living person, Al I-Am-NOT-Crazy Gore:

1 site shows no change

2 sites show slight warming

13 sites show significant cooling

Questions ...

1. Based upon USHCN's data cited above, are the states of Illinois, Arkansas, and Tennessee:

   A. Getting warmer

   B. Getting cooler

2. If you answer, "B. Getting cooler", then how did Barack Hussein ibn Obama, Billygoat Clinton, and Al I-Am-NOT-Crazy Gore manage to get their home states exempt from global warming?

Situation II ...

Suppose you get on a bus and sit next to this pleasant-looking, well-dressed, middle-aged gent who strikes up a conversation with you by introducing himself as the fellow who invented the Internet. He then goes on to claim that he and his wife were the models for the heros in a popular romantic novel from the Seventies. He now starts to get a little agitated - sweat forms on his upper lip, he stops blinking - and he starts jabbering about these gasses he has discovered in the atmosphere, and how the machines are creating these gasses, and how these gasses are killing the planet!! He's tugging hard on your sleeve now, and he's ranting that if you don't help him stop the machines and gasses, THE WORLD WILL END! AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!!!

Question ...

If the fellow you met on the bus ran for public office, would you:

A. Vote for him?

B. Not vote for him?

Bernard Switalski

Biography - Bernard Switalski

Graduated high school, 1953. U.S. Army lab technician, Bell Telephone Labs guided missile R&D, White Sands Proving Ground, NM, 1954-1957. Railroad freight conductor, Chicago, 1958-1963. Petroleum products quality/quantity surveyor, mostly in Venezuela, 1964-1965. Blast furnace foreman, Chicago,1966-1968. After that damn blast furnace put me in the ER, got into the heavy industrial construction industry, 1969. First job, laborer. Last job, general construction superintendent, contracted by a Spanish consortium to oversee the construction of a 4 billion dollar grassroots petroleum refinery in Sumatra. Retired, 1986. Somewhere in there, picked up a BA in philosophy. Traveled a lot. As old Cap'n Bill Jensen used to say back there on the Orinoco, "Been round the world two dozen times, first time in a baby buggy, twice in a submarine." Jigged for cod from a dory off Newfoundland; ran like a sissy from an irate cobra in Brunei. Met lots of good people along the way. Switalski died, April 13, 2009 in Riverdale, Illinois.