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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (96218)	1/19/2007 5:44:24 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361250

MARTY RUSSELL: Flowers in January? Nice, but very, very strange 1/17/2007 6:05:04 AM Daily Journal The Saints are in the playoffs, daffodils were coming up in my yard in December and the Democrats have retaken Congress. Must be the end of the world as we know it. Now I can't explain the Saints actually having a shot at the Super Bowl other than the fact that someone connected with the team has obviously made a deal with the devil. The Democrats back in power is to be expected because such things are cyclical. We get tired of one party and toss them out only to forget how bad the other party was and vote them back in because we don't have a third option. I believe that's referred to as the lesser of two evils. The weird and warm winter we've been having (up until the day I decided to write about it) is also being blamed on a cyclical process known as El Nino, which I believe is Spanish for "we had to have a culprit other than global warming." Actually, El Nino means "little boy" in Spanish and was named for the Christ child when it was first discovered by Latin American anchovy fishermen in the 19th century. The fishermen apparently noticed that the anchovies they were hauling in were warmer than normal and deduced that either the water was getting warmer or that they had discovered a new species of pizza-ready anchovies straight out of the ocean. After years of observation, they named the phenomenon after the Christ child because it usually peaked around Christmas. Now, of course, we know that El Nino is a cyclical warming of the ocean surface in the Pacific and that anchovies, even warm ones, are the nastiest food on the planet. What El Nino does is pump warm, moist air into the atmosphere which disrupts normal winter weather patterns across North America. Normally, it causes drier weather across the northern half of the continent and wetter weather over the lower half. But this year, according to meteorologists, it has done what is known in scientific terms as a flip-flop, sort of like a warm anchovy on a boat deck. The pattern has changed and now the lower half of the country is warm and dry while folks in places like Seattle are putting down down payments on arks. In a report released Tuesday, researchers say it appears the current El Nino is fading fast and normal weather patterns should return by spring. Either that or global warming is causing all of the world's oceans to heat up so much that El Nino is no longer even noticeable assuming there is such a thing as global warming which, of course, the current administration in Washington assures us there's not. Yeah, right. Tell that to the daffodils in my yard. Marty Russell writes a Wednesday column for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at 120 Lester Hall, University MS 38677 or at marusse1@olemiss.edu djournal.com