Sen. Carper Won't Be Signing Public Option Letter

That is NOT what's being proposed.

Eight months ago, polls showed that 75% of Americans supported the public option but senators still refused to vote for it.

Don't you get it? They don't give a fuck what we want??? So all of this regurgitating of polls about what the voters like is a waste of time!

This push for the public option ain't going nowhere but the left will work itself into a lather for the next six weeks slobbering over it and when it goes down in flames, they'll be ready to slit their wrists at the disappointment.

But keep doing the same thing and hoping for a different result. It's the text book definition of insanity.

Every year hundreds of hopeful people contact me because they believe that an unusual or out-of-place rock they have found is a meteorite. I frequently receive emails which contain an amusing but impossible statement along the lines of: "I think I've found a meteor."

In order to appreciate the humor inherent in this sentence we must first understand the difference between meteors and meteorites. Meteor is the scientific name for a shooting star: the light emitted as fragments—usually rather small—of cosmic material which we sometimes see at night, burning high up in the earth's atmosphere. The bright, and typically very short-lived flame, is caused by atmospheric pressure and friction as pieces of extraterrestrial material become so hot they literally incandesce, as does the air around them. Manned spacecraft such as NASA's space shuttle and the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules experienced similar heating during re-entry into our atmosphere, which is why they employ heat shields to protect the astronauts and cargoes inside.

Today the stirring of an important volcano draws enormous global attention. Weeks or even months before most large eruptions a buzz circulates through an electronically-connected community of volcano scientists as clusters of small earthquakes are detected by a global array of seismographs. Many scientists working at diverse global locations interpret this data and begin to collaborate about an awakening volcano and the eruption that might follow. Reports are posted on the internet and news stories communicate the volcano's activity to millions of people. Often it is a false alarm – the volcano is simply stirring.

If the earthquakes strengthen and begin moving upwards, many of these scientists will travel to the area of potential eruption to make observations and set up a local network of data-gathering instruments.

However, in 1912, Alaska was not a US state, very few scientists were supported to do volcanic studies and a worldwide network of seismic monitoring was not in place. Scientists were just starting to understand the mechanics of volcanic eruptions.

Novarupta Volcano Erupts!

On June 6th, 1912 a tremendous blast sent a large cloud of ash skyward and the eruption of the century was underway. People in Juneau, Alaska, about 750 miles from the volcano, heard the sound of the blast – over one hour after it occurred.

For the next 60 hours the eruption sent tall dark columns of tephra and gas high into the atmosphere. By the time the eruption ended the surrounding land was devastated and about 30 cubic kilometers of ejecta blanketed the entire region. This is more ejecta than all of the other historic Alaska eruptions combined. It was also thirty times more than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and three times more than the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, the second largest in the 20th Century.