{"id":15872,"date":"2012-08-14T08:42:17","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T14:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=15872"},"modified":"2016-05-01T09:46:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T15:46:23","slug":"these-funny-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=15872","title":{"rendered":"These Strange Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lugnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Hiroshima Moon<\/p>\n<p>Pope&#8217;s butler accused of theft. \u00a0Wait. \u00a0The pope has a butler? \u00a0Shootings yesterday at Texas A&amp;M. \u00a0The Sikh Temple in Wisconsin last week. \u00a0Aurora the 20th of July. \u00a0Can anyone else hear a tear in the moral fabric of the universe?<\/p>\n<p>Not to mention that yesterday the stock market was down because of news from Asia. \u00a0Asia? \u00a0What happened to the euro? \u00a0It&#8217;s true that bad news always happens and good news is not, usually, news at all. \u00a0Still.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s throw in the news from \u00a0Europe&#8217;s Cryosat that the polar ice has begun to retreat<\/p>\n<p><em>(at) a loss of 900 cubic kilometers of ice in the last year. That&#8217;s 50 percent more than computer models predicted would melt.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>A lack of ice is good news for shipping, and oil and gas exploration, but dark ocean water warms the air above more than reflective ice, a &#8220;positive feedback&#8221; that accelerates warming. Research suggests the Arctic is warming 2-4 times faster than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. So what? This warming is nudging the jet stream north, to the tune of 1 mile a year, 18 feet\/day. \u00a0 (paul douglas<a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/weather\/blogs\/Paul_Douglas_on_Weather.html\"> weatherblog<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-8bHufxbxc8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Predictions of the end times have a 100% failure rating (so far), so I&#8217;m not going there, but bizarre times? \u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p>Of all of these, the news I understand least are the three shootings. \u00a0Like the man here who killed his three daughters, there may be a psychological explanation. \u00a0Certainly there is a psychological explanation. \u00a0Has to be. \u00a0But explanation does not serve. \u00a0Tracing the inner path to these crimes leaves us with the crime in the end.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to know, if anybody does know, the incidence of these or similar crimes in other cultures. \u00a0Are we truly aberrant or is it a statistical phenomenon, a law of large numbers reality?<\/p>\n<p>Of all these, the news that worries me the most comes from the cryosat satellite. \u00a0This summer was miserable for us and horrific for much of the country. \u00a0In this case I understand the cause. \u00a0I drive one. \u00a0So do you. \u00a0I use electricity. \u00a0So do you. \u00a0We have treated global warming as a topic for next year. \u00a0For the next generation. \u00a0Guess what?<\/p>\n<p>It is next year. \u00a0And we&#8217;re the next generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lugnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Hiroshima Moon Pope&#8217;s butler accused of theft. \u00a0Wait. \u00a0The pope has a butler? \u00a0Shootings yesterday at Texas A&amp;M. \u00a0The Sikh Temple in Wisconsin last week. \u00a0Aurora the 20th of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=15872\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">These Strange Times<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290,1450,1980,14,17,1885,266],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-commentary-on-religion","category-commentary-on-the-news","category-faith-and-spirituality","category-great-wheel","category-us-history","category-world-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15872"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36043,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15872\/revisions\/36043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}