Apparently, the US is getting death by snow right now. The Weather Channel’s front page proclaims that over 2,100 miles of the US are likely to get at least an inch of snow, which frankly, is ridiculous. My friends back in my home town have a high of 22F (-5.5C) to look forward to, while we here in England are enjoying sunshine and 43F (6C). It’s truly a gorgeous day here, though as my husband points out, we’ll likely get the same storm in about 2 weeks.

Joy.

In the meantime, we get to enjoy what looks to be a nice little warming trend, though it’s predicted to come with rain. While miserable, at least it’s a bit less dangerous than what the poor folks in Texas have been putting up with. And really, it seems like winters have gone wacky in general. I went most of my childhood with snow being something seen on TV, and celebrating the ice pellets when they came, since that was the closest. But nooo, now Dallas gets ridiculous snow, which prompts the above quote – global warming, my ass. I get that climate change is occurring, but really, calling it ‘warming’ makes skeptics of us all. And, of course, it doesn’t help that there’s little reference to the fact that we’re coming out of a little ice age, which definitely can take some of the blame for how… erratic… weather seems. Oh sure, we should take care of the planet; it’s the only one we have at current. But it stands to be said that warming and change are going to happen no matter what we do; we can’t magically force the planet to cool… can we? Eeesh, may nobody think up the frankenscience to make that happen… that would be doomsday hilarious. ><

Otherwise, the new government police website is in my sites, and giving me cause for amusement. Did they really think that it wouldn’t be inundated with people? Of course people are ridiculously curious about the crime levels where they live; we took a peeksee last night before it was officially live. And, of course, there are already hilarious and somewhat panicky news reports about how dangerous some areas are – lulz. I can’t get the site to load now (big surprise), but I think it said there were some 120~ crimes in our area. I have no idea how this compares to the rest of our city, or the rest of the country, but I cannot see that being a horrible number. England is such a dense and compact nation that it only makes sense that there would be ‘so much’ crime in such a small area. I’ve seen two in the past two years from my own window, and that’s not even counting all the charming folk who use our street to do their middle of the night drug deals. No, my only qualm is that I do not feel like I have the right to protect my home and property, as is a well-honored right back in the States. I don’t want to kill people for trespassin’ on my property, mind, but I don’t want to feel like I’m going to go to jail if I accidentally brain someone to bits.

I guess it’s nice to know about the crime in ones’ neighborhood, but do we really need to know? I’d be inclined to think that it just serves to fuel those with loud mouths and nervous dispositions about how the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, even if crime rates are lower than those ‘safe’ days we fantasize about (as is the number two point on yet another fabulous Cracked article). I mean, heck, I’m a total net junkie, and I definitely say that we’ve got an information overload; there’s more coming at us than we know what to do with. And while being informed is good, we can generally agree that information in the hands of those who don’t understand it don’t really serve a useful purpose. Oh, it does if it encourages people to learn what they need to know to understand facts, but often as not…

Anyhoose, there’s a toddler who needs chasing, so I’m going to get to that. For those of you in the States – be well and safe. For those of you sunning it up here in the UK? Enjoy our drought, and all of that. 😉