Funmurphys: the Blog

Guilty Pleasure

I like Macs. I've bought five over the years, starting with that little darling, the Mac SE. My latest is the latest 20" iMac. I even own Apple stock. So I like the current round of ads with the slightly annoying Mac and the more than slightly nerdy PC -- see them all here.

Saddam Hussein Executed

Saddam Hussein was executed following a trial for just one of his mass murders (AKA crime against humanity). I call that a good start.

Merry Christmas!

I'm wishing you a Merry Christmas!

And if you celebrate something different this time of year, then may you find the joy and satisfaction in that celebration.

And if you don't celebrate anything this time of year, then Merry Christmas!

---- Charles Wesley

Parenting Tip

There comes a time when your children get older and your old standby control methods don't work. Does a time out work on anyone past the age of ten? You might be inclined to panic, but let me tell you the technique I'm about to describe has far more effect on adolescents than any technique used at an earlier age. And it has the added bonus effect that it is even more effective in public, thus restoring the balance of power lost when your little darling figured out that they could push your buttons and you coudn't do anything about it without disapproving stares, leaving the store, or worse, a reference to child welfare. And the best part is, you'll actually enjoy discipline again!

So what is this technique? PDA, or as you'll soon discover, the threat of it. Yes, tell your adolescent if they keep that offensive behavior up, they are going to get a hug from mommy or daddy (don't forget, actually use the words mommy or daddy as the case may be just for the shock effect of the words), and for really bad behavior, a hug and a kiss. When in public, this has spectacular results. You will never have to give more than one hug, and that only in the case of the most hardened adolescent. An alternative is to threaten to loudly and publically call them by that pet name you have for them (if you don't have such a name, it's never to late to start one).

You may be thinking, how does this work in private? That's easy, just threaten to call all their friends and tell them how much you love them. In extreme cases, you may also be forced to threatened to send pictures of your little darling as a baby or small child -- I'm sure you have all kinds of pictures of them dressed up in extremely embarrassing clothes or doing extremely embarrassing things - a simple rule of thumb is the cuter you think the picture is, the more your child is embarrassed by it.

So for those of you parents at your wits end with how to keep control of bored kids during long shopping expeditions, remember that PDA is your friend. And it can even work for you parents (and I don't think you don't know who you are) who love to make empty threats over and over - at last here's a threat you might actually carry out! Good luck, and remember, one day they just might provide you with grandchildren, so don't alienate them now any more than you have to.

A Friendly Reminder

Nine shopping days left.

No, I'm not done. Are you?

My problem is that I always start with the easy gifts, and then as time is running out I'm stuck with people who are impossible to buy for. Yes, that is a pretty easy recipe for stress.

Forest Management

My backyard would appear to have a remnant of the primeval Missouri Forest: Oak, Ash, Hickory, and Dogwood. The previous owner had marked several trees for removal by putting a big red paint blotch on them. I have removed a trio of live trees (oddly enough none had a big red splotch) and a bunch of dead trees - two white pines and the remainder dogwoods. I didn't try to change the variety, however, but had other concerns. But in the larger forest outside my backyard, Oaks and Hickories are on the decline. Researchers at Case Western University surmise that fires caused by lightning help the Oaks compete against more shade tolerant trees:

Paul Drewa, assistant professor in Case's biology department, and graduate student Sheryl Petersen, suspect that these kinds of fires may provide a natural mechanism to deter encroachment of shade tolerant hardwoods, especially red maples that are crowding out oaks and other plants on the ground floors of numerous forests throughout the eastern United States.

...

"Human alterations to the natural fire regime, especially decades of fire suppression, have changed oak-dominated ecosystems in southern Ohio and throughout the eastern US," reported Petersen. "As a result, there is a preponderance of shade tolerant hardwoods that are preventing oaks and other native species from regenerating."

The oak canopies of remaining forest fragments are deceptive, according to the researchers, who found that oaks are not thriving well beyond the seedling stage, with few developing into older life history stages, including juveniles, saplings, and poles.

"Eventually this means the demise of oak trees and other less shade tolerant plant species in future years," said Drewa

This isn't any new idea though -- as a 2004 article in Missouri Conservationist Magazine makes clear:

In the fall, the hills adjacent to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers seem ablaze with brilliant orange sugar maples. Few trees are as attractive as a sugar maple in autumn, but there is something haunting in all that orange.

Not long ago, these same hills contained a lot more of the reds, purples and yellows of oak and hickory. Slowly but surely, the oranges are taking over, indicating that the river hill forests are changing, and not for the better.

We have long had some sugar maple in our woods. In the last 50 years, however, the amount of sugar maple has increased dramatically. This is especially true in counties adjacent to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, where land is especially productive because of loess, or wind blown silt. Loess is blown from the river bottoms and deposited on nearby slopes. In some areas, loess is more than 100 feet deep. In areas like these, sugar maples are overtaking most other forest vegetation.

The primary reason for the maple takeover is that over the last 50 or so years, we have stopped fires from burning our woods. Native Americans commonly used fire as a tool in Missouri. They burned the landscape to aid in hunting and fighting wars. They also used fire to improve wildlife habitat, which helped ensure an abundance of game. The first European settlers also used fire, primarily to create and improve pasture lands.

Fire played a huge role in shaping the composition of our woods. Oaks and hickories are relatively tolerant of fire. Their thick bark helps protect them from intense heat. Smaller seedlings and trees may be "top-killed," but their deep root crown allows them to resprout quickly and vigorously.

Fighting forest fires is done with the best of intentions, but not always smartly (just like the new model, prescribed burns). The problem with the old zero tolerance policy is that it allows fuel to build up and huge conflagrations to occur. And if it weren't for the obvious fact that the longer we fought forest fires, the worse they got, we would still have a zero tolerance policy.

The problem is how to transition back to way forests were prior to zero tolerance without burning the forests down in the process. And another thing to consider is that prior to zero tolerance, the policy was not just let natural fires burn, but set our own. For millenia, the Indians set fires across North America. So to get back to what we consider virgin forest, we have to realize that in fact there has been nothing virgin about North American forests for millenia. What we really want is to go back to actively managed forests with fire as the primary tool.

Prescribed burns seem to be the favored way for the Forest Service to manage forest fires and an immediate return to older practices, but as Mike at SOS forest points out:

So the New Plan is to destroy America’s priceless, heritage forests (whoops, we mean worthless wildlands) in catastrophic fires. The idea is to burn them down sooner so they don’t burn down later.
...
Does this make sense? Burn our forests down so they don’t burn down? It makes sense to the Dale Bosworth, Chief of the FS, because he signed onto all the recommendations in the Audit.

The trouble with prescribed burns is that they are hard to control - they result in both not enough fuel removal, and far too much -- causing the inferno that fire fighting was supposed to stop in the first place. The sad thing is, we already know a better way - mechanical removal of fuel. Of course, that brings up the dreaded L word - logging. But the science is clear:

Our findings indicate that fuel treatments do mitigate fire severity. Treatments provide a window of opportunity for effective fire suppression and protecting high-value areas. Although topography and weather may play a more important role than fuels in governing fire behavior (Bessie and Johnson 1995), topography and weather cannot be realistically manipulated to reduce fire severity. Fuels are the leg of the fire environment triangle (Countryman 1972) that land managers can change to achieve desired post-fire condition. However, in extreme weather conditions, such as drought and high winds, fuel treatments may do little to mitigate fire spread or severity.
...
There are at least three ways to reduce tree densities and accomplish fuel treatments: wildfire, prescribed fire and mechanical thinning. The first, natural fires, are often impractical. Letting natural fires play their historical role may have unwanted effects in forests that have undergone major stand structural changes over the past years of fire exclusion. Any fire started may result in historically uncharacteristic high severity. In many ponderosa pine forests choked with dense, small-diameter trees, or encroached by shade-tolerant trees, natural fires may no longer play a strategic role.

The second strategy for restoring these forests is large-scale prescribed burning. This is likely to be effective in stands that have moderate or low tree densities, little encroachment of ladder fuels, moderate to steep slopes which preclude mechanical treatment, and expertise in personnel to plan and implement such large prescribed burns. Large-scale implementation of this strategy will require funding for the planning and implementation over current expenditures and may require modifications to current air quality legislation. Future results of such expenditures may be seen down the road in lessened wildfire suppression costs, reduced fire severity, and reduced air quality impacts.

Mechanical tree removal, the third strategy, works best on forests that are too densely packed to burn, that have nearby markets for small-diameter trees, and areas where expertise and personnel are not available for prescribed burning programs. Mechanical tree removal may be accomplished by many different types of harvest, including precommercial thinning, selection or shelterwood harvest coupled with small-diameter tree removal, and thinning from below (Fiedler 1996). The goal is to manage forests for much lower tree densities leaving larger residual trees. Harvests to reduce wildfire hazard will remove small-diameter trees in contrast to traditional timber harvests. Mechanical fuel treatments can be very labor intensive, especially on steep slopes and in remote areas, and may not be commercially attractive due to the small diameter trees that need removal. To make fuel treatments more cost-effective for small-diameter trees, consistent markets are necessary (Nakamura 1996). Fiedler et al. (1997) assert that mechanized tree harvest on moderately-steep terrain coupled with removal of large amounts of biomass can generate considerable revenue. Periodic underburns and programs for restoring natural fire are critical to maintain these post-harvest stands.

In other words, go in and remove the undergrowth mechanically (i.e. logging, but not clear cutting), then use fire afterwards for maintanence. This was essentially the goal behind the Healthy Forests Initiative, but the logging (i.e. mechanical removal) aspects were controversial and unpopular with a lot of people. Another problem is that the trees and underbrush to be removed isn't what timber companies are really after. So it looks like will be mainly using fire to fight fire for a while longer.

BTW, if you aren't getting Missouri Conservationist Magazine, you should be if you have any interest in the Midwestern Great Outdoors.

Christmas Carols For The Disturbed

Schizophrenia --- Do You Hear What I Hear?

Multiple Personality Disorder --- We Three Kings Disoriented Are

Dementia --- I Think I'll be Home for Christmas

Narcissistic --- Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

Manic --- Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and.....

Paranoid --- Santa Claus is Coming to Town to Get Me

Borderline Personality Disorder --- Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

Personality Disorder --- You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why

Attention Deficit Disorder --- Silent night, Holy oooh look at the Froggy - can I have a chocolate, why is France so far away?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder --- Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle,Bells, Jingle Bells, ...

A mental health professional sent me this one.

All Reality All The Time

I admit it, I watch What Not To Wear, but in my defense, it is only with my wife and daughter. And of course there's How Do I Look, which is similar yet different -- which I also only watch when the female Murphys are around. If it's just me, I watch shows like Dogfights or Modern Marvels, and if it's just the Murphy Men naturally we watch Mythbusters. Somehow I just stopped watching scripted shows except for Monk or comedy reruns.

But back to How Do I Look -- another man watches the show, and given his style sense you'd shouldn't be surprised by another man who does.

Both shows try to impress the importance of taking some pains with your appearance. The subjects are typically women who don't, or who do but in the wrong way (e.g. dress far "younger" than they should). The hosts are pretty blunt about the clothing, makeup, and hairstyling choices but are very supportive of the person themselves - with the goal of minimizing the person's problem areas and maximizing the persons assets. Each episode the hosts first try to teach the subject what kind of clothes are right for them, and then it's off to hair and makeup. When all is done, we have the reveal (yeah, just like home remodeling shows, which have fallen out of favor at chez Murphy recently) and the transformation from wretched to something better.

What I like abou the shows is that the advice is tailored to the person themselves, they use real people so the audience (i.e. my dauther and other impressionable teenagers) are not given unreasonable expectations about appearence, and the point is about helping average people do a better job at presenting themselves and controlling the message their appearence sends. It's not like Extreme Makeover etc. where a whole bunch of surgery is used to transform ugly ducklings into swans. The goal on these shows is to help ugly ducklings turn into ducks by making different appearance choices available to anyone.

Netanyahu On Bill Maher

I'm not a big fan of either Bill Maher or Benjamin Netanyahu, but I thought this was a very good interview by Mr. Netanyahu. I would like to thank Mr. Maher for bringing up a couple classic leftist tropes for the once and possible future Prime Minister to respond to. I also liked Mr. Maher's line: "The world just doesn't like it when Jews win." Sadly, a large part of the world (including Mr. Maher) doesn't like it when Westerners win either.

Hat tip to An Unsealed Room.

Weblog Awards

Once again Funmurphys the Blog has been inexplicably passed over for the Weblog Awards. Perhaps it's because I've been locked out of the TTLB ecosystem. Perhaps I offended Kevin Aylward. But whatever the case, I hold no animosity towards anyone involved.

I did notice that they are missing a few categories. Rather than go through that whole expensive and time consuming process of setting up a special website, soliciting votes, and counting the votes, I decided I would just award a my own award, the Koveted Kevy, to those websites I deem worthy.

So it brings me great pleasure and distinct pleasure to present the 2006 winners:

Best St. Louis Blog: Musings From Brian J Noggle

Best Missouri Blog: John Combest

Best Illinois Blog: Arch Pundit

Best Blog By A Bunch Of Guys In Indiana: In The Agora

Best Episcopal Blog: Midwest Conservative Journal

Best Family Blog: Busy Mom

Best Blog A Brother Could Have: SKMurphy

Best Blog With A Japanese Word As Its Title: Kaedrin

Best Blog Written On One Of My Ancestral Sods: Rainy Day

Best Blog Written By A Couple In Arkansas: Overtaken By Events

Best Blog On Those Rare Occasions When Charles Is Actually Blogging: Sine Qua Non Pundit

Best Hasn't Lost The Wonder Of Childhood Despite Being A Grown Up Blog: Tom McMahon

Best Blog By IT By Day, Ballroom Dancer By Night: No Watermelons Allowed

Best Recruiting Blog By Someone I've Networked With: STLRecruiting

Best Blog That More People Should Read, And Not Just About Amway: Random Observations

Best Blog That Captures Her Range Of Interests But Should Have More Of Her Great Photos: Planet Shelley

Best Blog That is Updated Even Less Frequently Than Sine Qua Non Pundit: Regions Of Mind

Best Blog That Keeps Changing Focus, Direction, and Appearance: Accidental Nomad

Best Blog In the Holler By A Feller Who's In Love: Think Sink

Best Blog That Marries Outstanding Writing With Superior Analysis While Obsessing On Particular Topics: Just One Minute

Best Blog That Demonstrates Critical Thinking And An Unswerving Dedication To The Facts Except When It Comes To Al Gore: The Daily Howler

Best Blog Across Time and Space, Always and Forever: Wizbang! (How's that for sucking up? C'mon Kevin, next year is MY year!)

Deb Frisch: Wanted Woman

Deb Frisch is back in the news -- now an arrest warrant has been issued for in her in Colorado for contempt of court after Jeff Goldstein accused her of violating a restraining order he obtained against her. As Jeralyn Merritt says:

Moral of the story: Derogatory posting on the internet carries consequences. So does violating a court order directing you to personally appear in court.

Although it was more than derogatory posting, it was threatening posting. Against a 2 year old. That's far more than just pathetic.

Computer Modeling of Cancer

If we can predict the weather, can we predict the course of a tumor? Vito Quaranta, professor of cancer biology at Vanderbilt, thinks so. So he and colleagues from Vanderbilt and the University of Dundee
are computer modeling cancer tumors to understand them better and eventually tailor individual treatments:

The investigators have focused on the events of invasion and metastasis (movement of a tumor to distant sites), Quaranta said, because these events mark "the critical transition of a tumor that in the end will be lethal for the patient." A tumor that does not penetrate the surrounding tissue can often be surgically removed with curative success.

"When a patient comes in with a tumor, we'd like to understand for that particular tumor, what are the chances that metastasis is going to occur," Quaranta said. "Does that patient need to be treated very aggressively, or not so aggressively""

Today, a tumor's size and shape are evaluated, but they can be poor indicators of invasive potential: a very small tumor can be highly invasive. Even "molecular signatures" – profiles of molecules that suggest how tumor cells will behave – are not entirely predictive, he added.

Quaranta and colleagues opted for a new approach – using the tools of mathematics to tackle the complex problem of cancer behavior.

The findings suggest that current chemotherapy approaches which create a harsh microenvironment in the tumor may leave behind the most aggressive and invasive tumor cells.

"In the immediate term we may be diminishing tumor burden, but the long term effect is to have a much nastier tumor than there was to begin with," Quaranta said. There is anecdotal evidence, he added, to support the idea that changes to the microenvironment result in a tumor with more or less invasive potential. Such manipulations of the microenvironment could offer new directions for cancer treatment, he said.

Smarter People Than Me

What were the 6 imams in Minneapolis really up to? McQ investigates and decides it wasn't anything good.

Does a new Swift write a blog? Eammon Fitzgerald thinks so, and his candidate Mahmood Al-Yousef has had his blog banned in his native Bahrain (always a leg up in the Swift competition).

How come I never get any payola? It's not like I'd have to change my position on Global Warming. (Please don't mention my traffic stats, it HAS to be some other reason).

Tim at Random Overservations really liked The Nativity Story. I'm waiting for when I have a couple of moments to rub together to go see it.

Jeff at Think Sink has the newest version of Frosty the Snowman.

Fjordman at Brussels Journal looks at how the West was Lost. It has w modern Hollywood Happy ending - the west loses.

Turns Out My Kid Can Draw Like That

Physists give, and physists take away. The ability to be a master of chaotic motion that is:

In articles that appeared in scientific journals and news magazines including Nature, Physics World and Scientific American, Taylor and coworkers also claim that fractal analysis can be used to distinguish Pollock's drip paintings from imitations.

Intrigued, Jones-Smith began to examine Taylor's articles, but quickly found that the work was seriously flawed She showed that doodles that she could make in minutes using Adobe Photoshop were as fractal as any Pollock drip painting, vividly refuting Taylor's claim that Pollock was able to generate fractals by hand only because he had attained a mastery of chaotic motion.

Jones-Smith presented a pointed critique of Taylor's work to Case astrophysicists and was encouraged to write up her critique for publication. But since Taylor's original work had appeared in Nature five years earlier, she thought interest in the topic had waned.

Iraq Vs. Darfur

I'm told on the one had we need to get out of Iraq because it's a civil war and civilians are dying, but on the other we need to get involved in Darfar to save the civilians who are dying in that civil war. So you tell me, what's the difference?

And if the reality of Iraq truly is a civil war, then our presence isn't causing the violence (because they are fighting against each other, and not us), but it may well help end it. Just as it would in Darfur.

Fastest Wireless Network

The Aussies at CSIRO have developed the fastest wireless link so far:

The CSIRO ICT Centre today announced that it has achieved over six gigabits per second over a point to point wireless connection with the highest efficiency (2.4bits/s/Hz) ever achieved for such a system.

Multi-gigabit links operate at speeds that leave current wireless networks far behind. For example the entire works of Shakespeare could be transmitted over this six gigabit link in under seven thousandths of a second or a full DVD movie in just over three quarters of a second.

I predict teenage girls will be able to make use of that bandwidth and still hunger for more. The older I get, the more amazed I am at how women are driven to communicate (I say that in amazement, not scorn). And yes, one day Glenn Reynolds will be dethroned as king blogger, and it will be by a queen (insert your own Andrew Sullivan joke here).

Jennifer Aniston Available

Jennifer Anniston is back on the market. I suppose I should point out that Hollywood you don't have to be married for a breakup to be considered news.

Data Mining Against Fraud

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have devised algorithms relying on data miniing to catch people who commit fraud on internet auction sites:

Online auction sites are immensely popular. The largest, eBay, reported third quarter revenues of $1.449 billion, up 31 percent from the previous year, and registered 212 million users, up 26 percent. But the popularity of online auction sites also makes them a target for crooks. Internet auction fraud, such as failure to deliver goods after a sale, accounted for almost two-thirds of the 97,000 complaints referred to law enforcement agencies last year by the federal Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Perpetrators of these frauds have distinctive online behaviors that cause them to be readily purged from an online auction site, said Computer Science Professor Christos Faloutsos. The software developed by his research team — Network Detection via Propagation of Beliefs, or NetProbe — could prevent future frauds by identifying their accomplices, who can lurk on a site indefinitely and enable new generations of fraudsters.

In a test analysis of about one million transactions between almost 66,000 eBay users, NetProbe correctly detected 10 previously identified perpetrators, as well as more than a dozen probable fraudsters and several dozen apparent accomplices.

Business As Usual, or The Press Lies

I'm shocked, shocked that someone would accuse the news media of turning a blind eye to the provenence of their sources.

Next people are going to claim that the news media shamelessly plugged the silicone breast implant scare no matter how many times it was debunked, or that they used pre-packaged interviews provided by trial lawyers, or just in general demonstrated a reckless disregard for the truth.

I mean, once the media finds out somebody stages fradulent events, they'd stop using them.

So shame on you, Jeff Medcalf, even writing a song about it.

I mean, it's not like the business model is selling your attention to advertisors, it's selling you the truth. Right?

Three Good Books: Replay, Day Watch, Creatures of Man

I took some time over the Thanksgiving holidays to read three good books

Replay by Ken Grimwood tells the story of Jeff Winston, a man re-living his life several times, meeting a woman who is doing the same thing. He knows the actions and their outcomes from each life and continues to make adjustments. It's a novel about second chances--many second chances--and learning that there really aren't any second chances. It's a novel about middle age, opening as it does with the Jeff's fatal heart attack at 48 (or 30H) and chronicling his coming to terms with regret and the need to make choices and move on. Daniel Shade reviewed Replay in 2001 on his Lost Books site:

First, life is full of endless happenings that we have little control over. We should live our lives with our eyes set upon the horizon and never look back; controlling those things we can and giving no second thought to those events out of our hands.

Second, given that we only have one life to live (Jeff is never sure he will replay again with each heart attack) we should live it to the fullest extent possible and with the least regret for our actions. Everybody makes mistakes; the point is not to dwell on them but to pick ourselves up and keep on going. Keep moving ahead.

Third, choices must be made—we cannot avoid them. The only failure is to live a life without risks.

The Creatures of Man by Howard L. Myers is a collection of short stories by a very prolific and very thought provoking author whose career was cut short by a heart attack at the age of 41 in 1971. I originally got it for one story "All Around the Universe" which was one of the first to detail the "admiration economy" (later popularized by Corrie Doctorow as whuffie) but started the book and was unable to put it down. It's also available in the Baen Free Library (what a great idea) where you can read it here.

Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko had been on my shelf for a while. I had rented the movie and then postponed reading it. The movie was wildly inventive but a little scattershot and hard to follow. The book has a number of very complex interacting plots. It's something like watching a chess game where the White grandmaster has to allow his pieces the free will to do what they want and the Black grandmaster has to convince his pieces that a each move is what's best for them.

It's the first book that's been translated in his four book "world of watches." I am eagerly awating the English lanuage version of Day Watch, Twilght Watch, and Final Watch.

Sleet, Ice, Snow Bury St. Louis

Yesterday we had rain that quickly changed to sleet in the morning. Last night it changed to freezing rain in a lot of areas, and then early this morning it changed back to snow. To the west, a lot of snow fell (16 inches in Columbia), and to the east, a lot more freezing rain fell. About 500,00 people in the St. Louis metro area were without power (including my parents in Kirkwood - thankfully they just called to tell me it was back on). It was, even by St. Louis standards, a freak storm. Beware of storms that track north and south - they pack a wallop. We've had thundersnow here before, but I think this is the first time we had thunderfreezing rain. Actually, we got so much rain at my house it all didn't freeze - part of my driveway was washed clean of snow and ice by all the runoff last night.

Yesterday I was sick at home with food poisoning; today I didn't go in after my wife and I watched our neighbor give up trying to get up the hill out of our subdivision. What a difference a day makes.

Since we didn't lose power here, I could admire the beauty, and took a break from shoveling my driveway to do so:

You can see my house and partly shoveled driveway. All of the tree branches are weighed down with snow and ice - one of them on the dogwood in my front yard snaped.

The view down my street -- I think it's pretty any season, but I don't get to see it this way too often (thankfully). They didn't plow here until mid-afternoon. My son spent the day sledding on a locally famous hill (no, not Art Hill - by locally, I mean locally. I spent the day shoveling, and visiting my parents.

My neighbors across the street lost several large limbs out of their silver maple (word of advice - never plant a soft maple). This one first landed on their roof before winding up in their driveway. They were happy Brian's truck wasn't parked there as it usually is. I think just about everybody had a tree that dropped a limb. On the way to my parents one street was closed, and another had a lane blocked by a huge limb that came down. We even saw a pin oak bent over double with the top in the street. A couple of doors up from my parents a tree limb pinned a power line leading to a neighbor's house.

I have to admit, it sure was a winter wonderland around here today. The bradford pear in this picture is missing a half due to this summer's freak summer storm that left half a million without power.

Shelley has several posts about the storm: Icicles, Again, one of the lucky ones, and Let's talk about the weather.

Gateway Pundit has a post, St. Louis gets slammed with ice.

And Jim Durbin has power but no propane.