24 March 2013 “ Kid can’t read at 17 the words he knows are all obscene”

Cassi Creek:  Obscene is appropriate.  I trekked into Mountain Home last Monday in order to have lab studies drawn so that they would be available to my Primary Care physician tomorrow, to review with me.  Friday I was told that I needed to be in at 0800 instead of 0830 so that I could have studies that were overlooked drawn.  This entails getting up at 0500 in order to drive into Mountain Home. 

          Naturally, as has been the case for much of the past winter, we are under a winter storm watch with snow, high winds, and blowing snow forecast.  It’s been a brutal winter.  I’ve seen good explanations linking the last several years of altered weather patterns to global warming.  They make sense to me.  The huge decreases in the polar ice caps are easily documented, as are the temperature extremes, the deviations in jet stream patterns, and the CO2 concentrations. 

          I fail to understand how anyone can look at this data and deny the reality and the impact of global warming and associated climactic change.  Yet, we have a large percentage of our population that does not read well, that has little or no scientific education, and that considers education to be an “elitist” value.  We’re fortunate that they don’t vote in larger numbers.  They'd be pushing us back to the 18^th century rather than the 19^th.