Mattie training

Mattie gets a collar and a vest to let her know that we're going to play/work. Then she goes into a "Sit-Stay" until I'm ready. I think it builds a little anticipation and it also settles her down to think about what she is going to do. It's probably just anthropomorphism (giving animals human characteristics) on my part.


There are 5 of the PVC pipes, all identical except one has cadaver scent in it. She checks out all five pipes.


When she identifies the correct pipe, she lays down beside it. We're working on her coming back to get me and then take me to the scent source and show me where it is. Right now I'm happy she will actually sit by it when I'm not at her side. She appears to be pretty quiet here but she knows a treat is on the way.

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We are done and the collar & vest are removed. She thought she would be a smart ass and indicate the correct pipe by sitting by it even without her vest. That's a good thing and I made sure I brought a treat when I came to pick up the scent source.

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Here is Mattie at a training class where she is intrigued by the diver's scent bubbling to the surface. The photo was taken on April 27, 2008. When the divers came up to praise her and bring a treat she was so enthralled by it all that she didn't take her treat right away.

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Who could this be about ? ? ? ?

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Germany parade float ?

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Ready for the Ice Age?

One thing I don't quite understand is if plants need carbon dioxide (CO2) why is it bad for the environment?
(should be a question for one of those "ironic questions" list like "Why does sour cream have an expiration date?)

Global warming?

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

Guess Algore cultists don't do facts.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

Oh heck, just go here and read the whole article.

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