Only in the USA

© National Geographic

A 3,500-acre wind farm in in northern California may become the first renewable energy project in the US to be issued a permit to kill eagles under a proposal by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The plan would allow the Shiloh IV Wind Project’s 50 wind turbines to kill up to five golden eagles over a five-year period in exchange for taking measures to protect large birds, including retrofitting power poles to avoid electrocutions. "The bottom line is a permit will help preserve eagles," said Scott Flaherty, the deputy assistant regional director of external affairs for the Fish and Wildlife Service. The report will now go through a 45-day public comment period.

Q: Sounds like double talk to me ?

Autumnal Equinox

Sunday 22 September 2013

Today's Weather
Another warm and humid day today with the weather varying across the country from sunny skies to patches of cloud, fog or drizzle.
Highest temperatures ranging from 17 to 24 degrees.

Tonight's Weather 
Mild, close and humid overnight with patches of mist, fog and drizzle.
Temperatures not falling below 12 to 16 degrees.

Tomorrow
Monday:
Mist, fog and drizzle will clear all but some coastal and hilly areas tomorrow morning with warm sunny spells developing generally.
A very warm and humid day with highs of 18 to 25 degrees.

3 Day Outlook
Mild or warm at first, but fresher later and turning more changeable also.
Monday Night: Mild and misty overnight with patches of fog. Lowest temperatures of 11 to 14 C.
Tuesday: Warm and humid on Tuesday, dry in many areas with some hazy sunshine, but some showers will break out over parts of Munster and Connacht in the afternoon and evening and some coastal fog is likely. Warm with afternoon highs of 18 to 21 C., highest over parts of Leinster and south Ulster. Humid and misty overnight with fig and showers becoming widespread and heavy and possibly thundery in places. Lowest temperatures of 12 to 14 C.

English and Irish

We have two official languages in Ireland and the video below

gives great clarity on the matter.

The enthusiasm shown by these young people

to entertain in their own language will surely  keep 

the Irish language alive.

I do worry...

I do worry at times about Ireland's weather forecasters and their educational standards especially when I read this on Met Éireann -The Irish Meteorological Service this morning that :

"Temperatures will recover a little on Monday, reaching the mid to late teens by afternoon"

I can only presume that the writer's mind was caught up with a teenage problems at the time and what they meant was 'mid to high teens'

The same grammatical error was copied by RTÉ Weather's journalist and presumably no checks are ever done....

TWO EMINENT MEN

I was sorry to hear of the deaths of two eminent 74 year olds at the weekend.

Firstly the poet laureate of Ireland and Nobel Prize winner of Literature 
Seamus Heaney.

A short quote from RTE:
A master poet and family man, a Nobel laureate and friend, a guest of royalty and farmer's son: Seamus Heaney had a life which was a smooth blend of the ordinary and extraordinary.
Reaching the headiest heights of literary genius, the ever-modest everyman insisted his poetry was just part of a chain.
"A written chain; we'll call it a human chain," he said when he gifted his manuscripts and notes to the National Library of Ireland.
Heaney's glistening career won him global recognition and a place among Ireland's literary heroes like WB Yeats, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw.
But talked about in the same company, the unassuming teacher from the 50-acre Mossbawn farm in Co Derry would liken himself to "a little foothill at the bottom of a mountain range".
Both a major talent and a decent, down-to-earth individual, the affable Heaney could smoothly move from dining with the political elite to playful weekends at his Dublin home with his grandchildren.
Born into a nation divided, some of his work was heavily influenced by The Troubles. Yet he never allowed his need to write about political violence to colour his patriotism.



Second eminent gentleman being Sir David Frost.

Short quote from The Guardian Newspaper:
At the outset, the very success of this man in a stupendous hurry proved somewhat alarming to some – as the author and translator Kitty Muggeridge said of him in 1967: "He has risen without a trace." Worse than that, he was nicknamed the "bubonic plagiarist", for allegedly appropriating Peter Cook's gags and sketches from Beyond the Fringe for his television show That Was the Week That Was, and so piggybacking on the achievements of others.

No matter. In the decades that followed, Frost became a media personality and comedian, as comfortable cross-examining the most heavyweight political figures of the day as hosting Through the Keyhole, the show typifying the fatuousness of celebrity culture, in which panellists were given a video tour of a mystery famous guest's property and asked to identify the owner from the evidence.

Frost could never be accused of being a stuck-up or patrician broadcaster. He was a bon vivant, smoker of big cigars, dapper dresser, chum of the rich and famous, and so much of a jet-setter that, for a while, he was Concorde's most frequent flier, travelling from London and New York an average of 20 times a year for 20 years. No wonder he told one interviewer that he was "not driven, but flown".

May they both rest in peace