You might not of heard, but back in November, a fella named Harold Diamond (how apropos) from Sullivan County (what people downstate call Upstate and those of us upstate call Downstate) purchased a Mega Millions lottery ticket that turned out to be the largest winning ticket in NY State history – $326 million. Well, good for him. I hate to be ageist, but Harold is 80 years old, and, goddamnit, it doesn’t seem fair that a retired school principal who was probably already doing pretty well pension and SS wise should win while I have to continue to go out into the cold to work every day while watching the Republicans greedily prepare to gut my retirement. I’m not saying Hal should toss me a million or anything (though if you’re feeling generous, Harold, go for it), but maybe he could sign his pension over to me? Just a thought.

Speaking of the cold, man, after a fairly warm (and somewhat snowy) day yesterday, it was awfully cold this morning. Somewhere in the vicinity of -10, though now it’s quite sunny and all the way up to +3. Guess I’ll be able to roll the windows down on the way home. The dogs were pretty unineterested in going outside this morning, so it will be interesting to see if they left any presents in the house. I guess I’d better take my time getting home so my wife gets there first.

Another cold night down into the double digits below zero tonight (garbage night, too – how typical, it’s always the worst weather on garbage night – though I don’t think there’s enough trash piled up to motivate me to drag the cans out to the road), and then supposedly it’s gonna warm up a bit. Maybe all the way to 20 tomorrow.

I don’t know if anybody noticed this story about Rob Konrad, but he was the last SU football player to wear the number 44, which is a big deal around here.

“I shouldn’t be here,” said Konrad, fighting back tears. “Sixteen hours in the water and swimming all that time. I’m very humbled and thankful.”

Konrad, 38, a former fullback for the Miami Dolphins, told assembled media at a press conference how he fell off his 31-foot boat and the harrowing journey from the murky waters to the shores of Palm Beach.

“I got a hit on one of my lines,” Konrad said. “As I moved over, a giant wave hit the boat and knocked me into the water. The boat was on autopilot at the time (the boat was eventually recovered on Deadman’s Reef in the Grand Bahama Islands), so I didn’t have a chance to get back in.”
[…]
“I might have had two or three hours to tread water before hypothermia set in,” Konrad said. “So I knew my only chance was to try and swim to shore. I followed the sun until it set, then I was able to spot lights at a distance.”

Konrad said he was stung by several jellyfish while swimming and also spotted a shark circling in the distance, but it fortunately swam away. Even more frustrating was the fact that there were two chances to be rescued in the waters, but rugged conditions made it difficult to be spotted.

“In the next 16 hours, I really had two opportunities for rescue,” Konrad said. “At one point, as I swam into the night, there was a fishing boat, a recreational fishing boat, about 50 yards away. I tried to flag down the boat, but it didn’t work out.

“A little bit later on, I saw a Coast Guard helicopter. They were out there searching the water. They came right over me, they had the lights on me, but kept on going.

“That’s when I had to get my mind right.”
[…]
After a seemingly endless voyage, Konrad heard the sweet sounds of waves crashing against the shore. While his ordeal in the water was over, Konrad was still not out of the woods.

“I couldn’t even walk when I first hit the shore,” he explained. “I had to find a tunnel to try and get warm because I was shaking so bad. I am so thankful that I was able to find a house (an estate belonging to the late attorney Robert Montgomery) where there was an off-duty police officer, and they were able to get me to Good Samaritan Hospital.”

Konrad spent three days in the hospital where he was diagnosed with hypothermia, severe dehydration and rhabdomyolyis (“I still have trouble pronouncing that word,” Konrad said with a rueful smile), a breakdown of muscle fibers.

As somebody who’s lucky to swim a lap in my pool without having a heart attack, I find that to be a pretty amazing story.

There’s another story out that seems to have surprised a lot of people.

A recent study…shows that college kids do not make up the demographic that binge drinks the most.

That demographic would be middle-aged white males, specifically men aged 45 to 54.

Well golly, I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell ya. Not that us old white men (and, hey, unless you think I’m gonna live to be 108, I’m pretty sure I can’t be considered “middle-aged” anymore) drink a lot of beer. Rather, .

Oh, and just in case you were thinking that maybe the Republicans running both the House and Senate wouldn’t be a horrible thing….

The politician who tried reducing NASA funding (and successfully shut it down for over two weeks) is now in charge of the senate subcommittee that effectively controls NASA. More than that, one of the most vocal climate-change detractors is now in charge of the United States Senate’s Environmental committee. Let’s let that sink in for a minute, shall we? Despite all the progress we’ve made so far with things like unmanned, deep-space space-flight and our efforts toward limiting the negative effects that humans have had on the environment, any future plans are now up in the air. Any major scientific progress is now at the mercy of Republican senators Ted Cruz and James Inhofe. With their actions and words over the recent years, the pair have proved just how little they understand about each area they’re now controlling.
[…]
The pair of lawmakers have proven time and again that they have a shocking misunderstanding of the world around them and now they’re in positions of direct power over topics they don’t grasp. Whether it’s due to willful ignorance or a simple refusal to accept fact is anyone’s guess. To quote Neil deGrasse Tyson, the good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it. Unfortunately, “science” can’t write legislation or filibuster, but Ted Cruz and James Inhofe can.

America! What a country!