If you live in LA, it doesn't matter

Yeah, yeah - I've been a bad blogger this month. I've been working on a project at the office that's been kicking my ass up and down - I mean, I'm dreaming about this stuff. Argh! Anyway, it's almost complete so hopefully I'll be able to post more often soon. To try to get back into the groove, here's a beaut from a name we're all familiar with:

Do you want a seven-day weather forecast for your ZIP code? Or hour-by-hour predictions of the temperature, wind speed, humidity and chance of rain? Or weather data beamed to your cellphone?

That information is available for free from the National Weather Service.

But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear.

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

I used to surf to the Weather Channel to get my forecasts until they started hiding them. They've gotten better lately, but remember when you'd have to search for the input box to enter your zip, then all you got was golfing ads? Now that I use Firefox, I keep track of the weather using the Forecast Fox extension. Much sweetness.

Anyway, back to the story. Here's the reasoning, straight from a completely unbiased source:

"The National Weather Service has not focused on what its core mission should be, which is protecting other people's lives and property," said [AccuWeather's executive vice president Barry] Myers, whose company is based in State College, Pa. Instead, he said, "It spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year, every day, producing forecasts of 'warm and sunny.'"

Santorum made similar arguments April 14 when introducing his bill. He also said expanded federal services threaten the livelihoods of private weather companies. [emph. mine]

"It is not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar products and services for free," Santorum said.

Looks like Senator ManOnDog is taking his talking points from "industry leaders."

I love NWS's response:

"If someone claims that our core mission is just warning the public of hazardous conditions, that's really impossible unless we forecast the weather all the time," [NWS director of strategic planning and policy Ed]Johnson said. "You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."

.251

= the career batting average of one Brian Schneider - the man who hit a 2-run double to give Kolb Atlanta's first blown save of the season. Kolb managed to waste an excellent start by Tim Hudson who limited the Nats to a solo homer over eight innings. I'm glad Smoltz is starting again, but if Kolb doesn't get these 2-run save opportunities (especially against a team like Washington) it's gonna be a long season full of ulcer-inducing ninth innings.

1.216

= Atlanta's Team OPS (On-base Plus Slugging %) tonight vs. Montr- er - Washington. 11 runs, 15 hits (7 for extra bases) and 8 outstanding innings from Mike Hampton = 1 happy Pierce. Of course, Bonds had a OPS of 1.421 last season. But that's Bonds.

50,939

Chipper at the Plate
Originally uploaded by piercingwit.

=the attendance at Friday night's game. A win, woohoo! All in all, a great game - good pitching, good defence and timely hitting. Here's a pic from our seats at the game. Every year, Jake and I go to Opening Day at Turner Field. It's turned into a bit of a tradition now - 5 years running. A couple of years ago we found the hook up for the tickets so now we splurge and get 1st or 2nd row. Click the pic to visit my Flickr account for more pix from the game.

15

= Number of Ks Smoltz had. Still got the loss though. The Braves have two losses so far and both belong to Smoltzie. Still - he looked great Sunday and I have no worries about him over the rest of the season.

That's more like it

An Atlanta Braves-type game: extra-innings, low scoring, winning on a Chipper Jones home run. That's the way it should be.

A word for everything

Friday's word of the day from AWAD:

esprit d'escalier (e-SPREE des-kal-i-YE) noun, also esprit de l'escalier

Thinking of a witty remark too late; hindsight wit or afterwit.
Also such a remark.

[From French esprit de l'escalier, from esprit (wit) + escalier (stairs).]

How many times has this happened to me? No telling, but at least now I have a way to describe it.

Do yourself a favor and go subscribe.

32.4

The average number of pizzas eaten by the average American per year?

How many more months left in the Bush administration?

My age?

Nope. That's John Smotlz's ERA after today's opening game. To put it into perpective for you non-baseball folks, that means that if he pitched an entire game like he did for the 1 2/3 innings he was on the mound today, the opposing team would score 32 runs. The record for most runs scored in nine innings (in the modern era) is 29. Ah well, it was better than work.

And there are still 161 games left.

Friday Hannah

Hannah
Originally uploaded by piercingwit.

The final introduction - the world's most devious dog! Hannah is so smart (how smart is she?) that she'll notice that I've put on my shoes and know that it's time to go outside. She also gets pouty if I don't spend enough time with her.

McSweeney's: Reviews of New Food

Go read the funny.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Reviews of New Food: "Remember when you were 5 and Bambi's mother gets shot offscreen? Right, well, for reasons best known only to themselves, Jamaicans have made a soda out of that, and Mexicans have taken it upon themselves to bottle it. The dominant ingredient in Goya's whimsically named 'Jamaican Ginger Beer' is neither ginger nor beer—it's capsicum. Sound familiar? It does if you read the bit between 'keep away from children' and 'keep away from face' on the side of a canister of pepper spray. No kidding, go check it out if you need to. How it can be legally called 'ginger beer' rather than 'keep-away-from-face beer' in a country that won't let toys shoot soft plastic missiles is beyond me, but you won't drink this stuff twice unless the agent interrogating you doesn't like your first answer."