Thursday

Things that jumped out at me from the Internet this morning:

-- According to the documentary, Flow, 1.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water, and over 5 million people die annually from water-related illnesses.

-- The amount of grain it takes to fill an average gas tank with ethanol would be enough to feed a person for a year. [1]

-- Apropos Israel's bombardment of Gaza this week, and the four small children found next to their dead mothers in one of the bombed houses[2], I was recalling Gordon Gihuly's take on war and children, in A Measured Response.

-- The Minimalist is telling me I should throw out my packaged bread crumbs, dried parsley and basil (“They’re worthless!”).

-- And across the pond in London, it seems the atheists have been granted permission to put their messages on 800 British buses.

Meanwhile, outside on my street, the sky has dumped another half foot of snow. I counted four snowblowers already chugging away (and 5 shovelers!)in just my neighborhood by 8 AM.
Here's my mate out shoveling at 7 AM. The little twiggy thingies sticking out of the snowbank at the left (you will need a magnifying glass)is our baby tree, Maurice (age 3); he seems to come through okay every year after being buried in the snow for 5 months, and is over 5 feet tall now.

Ah, l'hiver. Ya gotta love it.