-- Item #1 --

I don't know why, but a question I've been asked a lot lately is, "Joe! If you were the President, what would you do about Iran's threat to build a nuclear arsenal?"

Like I could do anything about it. I don't know. There must have been something out there in the zeitgeist, or else this mustache and goatee of mine make me look like I would be an expert in that particular field.

So I don't know why I've been asked this question so much lately. But I know what my answer has consistently been, ever since Ahmadinejad started rattling the plutonium saber: "Nothing. Israel will take care of it."

And sure enough... the balloon hasn't gone up yet, but it's certainly being inflated.

Hmmm. Maybe I should join Predictify after all.


-- Item #2 --

When I wrote about Carbon Recapture and Sequestration, one of the things I hinted at was the fact that the environmental movement found global warming such a scary thing that nuclear power was actually starting to look pretty tame by comparison.

Enviros may not be ready to drink from the uranium cup yet, but the Scare crowd is due to take a long, hard look at the world they're going to create if they get their way.

I'm not talking about the goofy, dystopic world I described in the aforementioned post. I'm talking about a world where the real solutions to the global warming question are not necessarily the ones that environmentalists want. Specifically:

• Nuclear reactors are the most green producers of electricity, putting out a fraction of what the next-cleanest source does.
  
  
• It takes more carbon to produce a hybrid car than it does a regular car. And if you buy an old gas guzzler, it has already paid for its own carbon footprint.
  
  
• It's greener to run your air conditioning than it is to heat your home. Florida, here I come!
  
  
• Old growth forest? Not green! A tree is a massive carbon sucker-upper for about 55 years. Then it sits around waiting to rot or get burned up, at which time all of that carbon goes... where? (Maybe we should bury dead trees, too.)
  
  
• It takes far more carbon to raise up organic beef and dairy products than their mass-produced brothers and sisters. PETA take note - you now have Sophie's Choice when it comes to saving the planet.
  
  
• City living? Green. Think about it. All those people stacked on one another in apartments, walking and bicycling and taking mass trans to work.
  
  
• Carbon Credit Trading = Spit in the Ocean. There's no guarantee the traders will live up to their end of the bargain and grow those trees for 55 years, and if they did... they'd only buy us another 6-1/2 days.

Now here's the kicker. It's not just me, the "Global Warming Is Made of People" skeptic. All of these inconvenient truths - and a few more guaranteed to make greeners squirm - were put forth in the latest issue of Wired Magazine. Read, and prepare to change your thinking.

Meantime, I know what my answer to the Global Warming question is, too. "Wait a while and we'll all be worrying about glaciers again."

But nobody asks me about that.

Let me preface this by saying that I never really had any desire to go to Florida. Muggy heat, retirees, expatriate Cubans, hanging chads. I had some friends who lived down there, but hadn't talked to them in a couple of decades other than some passing emails. If there was a state in the union I wanted to visit less, I couldn't think of one.

Then my nephew fell in love with a Florida girl.

Well, it looked like I was going to Florida. In June. I decided to just bite the bullet and go. I didn't want to be the Bad Uncle, and besides, it'd be a vacation with my wife. We'd just happen to be part of a party of twelve family and church members.

So off to St. Augustine we went. We got my nephew all weddinged off. We even got a couple of days to play tourist after the wedding.

And I, much to my surprise, fell in love with the place.

Some of the highlights:

1. That 8 pound flounder my father-in-law caught on his Father's Day fishing trip on the Intercoastal... and the way my wife cooked it.
   
   
2. Anoles and lizards... everywhere.
   
   
3. Watching egrets and sandpipers feeding on the beach.
   
   
4. Going to the nearby pond to check out the turtles... and having 25 in three different species show up hoping for bread crumbs.
   
   
5. Watching egret chicks hatch at the Alligator Farm.
   
   
6. The Alligator Farm, period.
   
   
7. Standing alone on a beach... and seeing a whale offshore.
   
   
8. Other Florida flora and fauna too numerous to mention.
   
   
9. Finding a box kite at a local kite store.
   
   
10. Tacos in a Bag.
    
    
11. The 2 am beach walk with our son.
    
    
12. The wedding itself, beautiful on a patio above the beach. Best. Wedding. Food. Ever. And the most crying was done by... the groom.
    
    
13. Driving around town at 10 pm looking for a seafood restaurant that was still open and discovering The World Famous Oasis.
    
    
14. Going back to The Oasis with our in-laws the next morning for breakfast.
    
    
15. St. Augustine... the nation's oldest city.
    
    
16. The wit and wisdom of the sightseeing train drivers.
    
    
17. The scandalous picture my wife and I took at one of those "old timey photograph" places.
    
    
18. Chocking up some good face time with my wife.

Not bad. Not bad at all, even when you factor in that incident where I went into the Atlantic with my cell phone in the pocket of my swimsuit.

Yeah, Florida. It's a good place to stop.

By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company is forever gone. There is no precise casualty figure for that moment. There is for the Normandy landing as a whole no accurate figure for the first hour or first day. The circumstances precluded it. Whether more Able Company riflemen died from water than from fire is known only to heaven. All earthly evidence so indicates, but cannot prove it.

When we see them now, we see them sitting in a jeep, riding in a parade on Memorial Day. They are old men with white hair. When I see them, I get tears in my eyes and shout out "Thank you!" and hope that they hear my message through their failing ears.

Sixty years ago they fought a good fight, against tyranny and oppression. Unlike now, the nation was behind them and their president, committed to getting the job done. And when the job was done, they returned home, expecting no entitlement, simply wanting to put war behind them and get on with their lives.

I grieves me that we are losing these men. As we lose them, we lose a bit of history. We lose a bit of ourselves.

Today marks the anniversary of D-Day, the amphibious assault on Normandy each, the biggest invasion in history. If this day seems a cypher to you, I suggest you click over to this article, which describes the terrible price this generation paid in the space of one day.

I hope it inspires you to sit down with a veteran you know and talk to them about their experience. While you're at it, thank them for their service - especially if, like me, you haven't served yourself.

And while you're at it, set aside some time to thank our current generations of troops and their families for what they are doing. The battle they are fighting is no less important. I think we've lost sight of that right now, our view blinkered by Presidential Approval Ratings and Opinion Polls. That grieves me, too.

So take some time. Read. Think. Remember. Honor.