Well, crap. Man Proposes, Global Warming Disposes. Behold the wreck of my designs: yet *another* Mid-Atlantic storm has canceled my flight tomorrow out of Philly. I'm now tentatively scheduled for Thursday. Assuming the pilot can find the county under that mound of snow that's apparently on its way.

We went up to Gainesville to visit a state park built around a sinkhole, just for something to do for an afternoon. The state park was closed on Mondays.

Grr.

So we went over to the University of Florida and spent fifteen minutes looking for parking, then found that the Museum of Art was *also* closed on Mondays.

Argh!

Luckily, the Museum of Natural History was kind enough to actually be open for a reasonable approximation of normal hours, so we spent an hour or so looking at butterflies and Indian archeological exhibits.

What does Gainesville have against Mondays? What is it, Garfield's adopted home town or something?

Every time I go down to Florida to visit the folks, a nasty storm descends on the Mid-Atlantic and hammers the commonwealth while I'm away. I have to wonder how much of a mound of ice I will find in front of my place *this* time when I get back.

Also, I see that the borough council is giving up control of the local farmer's market to some "farmers' association" which plans to kick non-locals and non-"local producers" (aka "the competition") out of the market. Because nothing promotes competitive pricing, quality produce, and an amiable atmosphere like xenophobic protectionism run amuck. The one councilman who spoke against this power-grab was denounced by foaming Red Guards in the comments section as a damned carpet-bagger who had dared to not be born in town.

While we're at it, SEIU is threatening to unionize the county offices. I suppose I ought to be grateful they haven't done so already, but really, I'm just kind of resigned to the inevitable ballooning of my property tax bill. Damned parasitic thugs, the lot of 'em.

Well, I'm back in Florida, and that means catching up on reading a bit. I read Hoyt's Darkship Thieves during the trip down, since there's been a big booster effort on Instapundit and elsewhere. I can see why - it's solidly in the didactic libertarian Heinleinian style - a swashbuckler with an aggressive James H. Schwartz/Heinlein heroine and a lot of anti-authoritarian posturing. It's not bad, and there are some nice flashes of attitude and style. The heroine is likeable in that unreliable-narrator borderline-sociopathic fashion that's common to post-Heinlein followers of the old man, but the book has a certain early-draft shagginess and shapelessness which suggests that Baen isn't exactly stepping up to the plate in terms of editing and guidance. Also, Hoyt strikes me as flinching a bit from the consequences of her characterization, and repeatedly pulls her punches on the protagonist's alleged hardness. There's a certain amount of "Han [didn't] shoot first" going on there. TV Tropes talks about Faux Action Girls, Hoyt's heroine Athena is a bit of a Faux Heroic Sociopath.

The recent cold snap down here has done a real number on the greenery - it's more of a brownery, right now. Grass, palm trees, bushes, everything's burned brown by the frost. Weather's fine, now, though. I was hearing enough about the big storm coming through up north at home; down here it's sixty-five and overcast. We were just rushing to get as much of the bark mulch into the planters as we could before a rainstorm blew in from the Gulf. Igh, I'm out of shape.

Dude, this call for mass resignations at CRU is by George Monbiot. George Monbiot - the original "Moonbat". Even with that pro-forma tu quoque about unspecified "denier fabrications" at the end, it's still a pretty damning thing from the foremost journalistic drumbeater of the global warming crusade in Old Blighty.

England must have been damn cold this winter for the freeze to penetrate this deep into the AGW hedgerow.

I'm watching the third season of Supernatural, and if the second season was strangely oriented around mildly (or not-so mildly) misogynistic slaughter of young women, the third season's developing what looks like a fascination with violence against evil children. During the attempted drowning scene in "The Kids Are Alright", I commented to myself that this was the single-most screwed up thing I've seen this year, and I've been watching Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, which is the walking embodiment of Nightmare Fetish Fuel Station. Admittedly, it's been more than a year since the last time I watched the second season of Black Lagoon, so YMMV.

Could I get a real person to make a token comment, btw? I'd like to see if the moderation feature is working properly.

Ugh. Apparently the blogger comments system attracts blogspam in a way that Haloscan didn't. I turned on comment moderation, which is insane on such a low-traffic site. Oh, well.

I've been feeling kind of under the weather. I'm ready for that trip south - get both some sun and some warm air.

A couple of comments from Bill and Ben which were lost to my Haloscan screwup had to do with the Supreme Court striking down McCain/Feingold, and what I thought about it. I guess I'm tentatively encouraged by it, if only because the 2008 election cycle showed the current set of election laws as hollow mockeries which largely benefited lawyers and other rule jockeys, and bred contempt for the rule of electoral law in politics.

I saw this just a minute ago - a letter from a specialist offering an opinion on what it'll mean in the current election cycle. He basically predicts the death of the political parties "as we know them". I don't think anyone's really enthused about the current state of the two national parties - they've been captured by a toxic culture of mercenary consultants, who think in terms of tactics, and care not a whit for principles.

Any time a superstructure of excessive legal complexity is hacked away by a big Supreme Court case like this, it offers space for common-sense use of the opened space. Here's hoping that this is the result, and that it isn't immediately followed by some nasty new legalistic Great Game, that this new Commons isn't immediately enclosed by nimble-witted lawyer-specialists.