Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

We got a measly inch and a half of new snow last night.  It's cooled down to right around freezing.  That's marginal for snow making.  I'm told the guns will snow at temps up to freezing due to the chilling effect of the compressed air expanding, but you get better snow when its solidly below freezing, in the twenties, which it ain't right now. 

The Hobbit

We saw it last night.  To give some perspective, I am a long time Tolkien fan, I read Tolkien as a child, I read Tolkien aloud to my children when they were young, I saw all three Lord of the Rings movies in theaters, and I have DVD's of them as well.  So I was going to see this movie no matter what.
   Criticism of movies based upon widely read books is tricky.  Many will trash a flick for the smallest departure from the words of the book, no matter how much sense the change makes from the standpoint of a movie.  Movies are different from books.  It's much harder for a movie to show a character's thoughts than it is for a book where the author can go on for pages expounding upon inner most thinking.   Whereas a single movie shot of landscape or interior or street scene can replace pages of descriptive text. 
   This movie has the sets, the costumes, the scenery, and many of the actors  that made the LOTR movies such wonderful viewing, and so true to the original.  It's long, three hours.  It only takes the story up thru chapter 6, out of 19 total, so there is plenty of room  for more movies before Bilbo returns to Bag End.  It moves slowly, scenes are longer than need be, too many scenes are flashbacks or side issues that don't move the plot forward. The movie bungles a couple of beloved scenes from the book.   Gollum mumbles his lines so badly that I couldn't understand the riddles he was posing to Bilbo.   My children have better table manners than the dwarves in the movie. 
   The widely hyped 48 frame per second filming made no perceptible difference to my eye.  We chose to see it in 2D over in Lincoln rather than 3D in Littleton.   Focus was softer than it ought to be for a movie.  I don't know whether this was the fault of the Lincoln projectionist or  the 48 frame per second process, or the 3D filming.
   Anyhow, it's enjoyable.  Take the kids.  

Death Porn Control

The MSM have been in a total feeding frenzy over the Connecticut massacre since Friday and there are no signs of it dying down yet.  Death porn.  The perp, who sounds like one of those total losers, has now achieved national and even world wide notoriety.  Which is probably what motivated him in the first place. 
   One reason we have these horrible massacre is the media hype them so mercilessly and that attracts the unstable losers, who see themselves transformed from faceless non entities to world wide celebrities with a pull of a trigger.  They used to pot shot presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, Kennedy, and Reagan) but the Secret Service has tightened security and it's pretty tough to score these days.  Elementary schools are softer targets.
   We ought to do what we can to curb the flow of death porn.  The offenders should be mocked, and sponsors should make their voices heard too.  Fox TV News has gone pretty far overboard this time, with ceaseless drivel.  I'm not ready to scrap the First Amendment, so we can't make laws against death porn, but we ought to try social pressure.  It would be more effective than another "assault weapons" ban.
  

More Cannon Mountain Ski weather

It warmed up and rained.  It's raining now.  It got so warm that the snowmaking crew knocked off early last night. 

Cannon Mountain weather

We got an inch of snow last night, but it is warming up.  It was 26 early this morning and now it has warmed up to 34, too warm to make snow.  The weather forecasts are flaky, using words like warm and rain. 

Protons to the rescue

Something new in the never ending struggle to raise medical costs.   Someone decided that using a beam of high speed protons instead of  Xrays would improve radiation therapy.  They sold this idea around.  Trouble is, the machine to make the proton beam costs better than $100 million and is big enough to fill a gymnasium.  Whereas you can get all the Xrays  you want from a glass tube about the size of a cantaloupe.  Needless to say proton beam therapy  cost  $50,000 as opposed to half that for conventional radiation therapy.
   Now comes a study indicating that the results of the pricey proton beam therapy are no different from conventional therapy.  I could have told them that.   Radiation therapy works by using a beam of radiation to kill cancer cells.  It doesn't really matter if the cell dies from being hit with a proton or being hit with an Xray, dead is dead. 
   Perhaps we can  save some money and not put in any more proton machines. 

Blood Dancing for Gun Control

That's what David Gregory did for an hour on "Meet the Press" this morning.  He had Diane Feinstein, senator from CA promising to ban "assault weapons".   Lotta welfare for lawyers there since there is no objective difference between a deer rifle and an assault rifle.  He had  Michael Blomberg, NYC mayor, pushing Obama for "more leadership on gun control".  Blomberg didn't actually come out and say just what he wanted to outlaw, which makes me think he fears the political damage he might incur if he made a substantive proposal.  Blomberg spent a lot of words trashing the NRA.  He doesn't seem to understand that the NRA is a democratic organization of gun owners who merely want to prevent people like Blomberg from confiscating their guns.  They have a large membership, which gives them power at the voting booth.