Interesting News from around the Net

More on weird weather –

Salon’s How the World Works had some interesting facts on world weather:

Cyclone Gonu, the first documented cyclone in the Arabian Sea, landed in Oman on June 6 with maximum sustained winds of nearly 148km/h, affecting more than 20,000 people.

In east Asia, heavy rains in June ravaged southern China, where flooding affected more than 13.5m people; while in England and Wales the period from May to July was the wettest since records began in 1766.

Germany also saw its wettest May since countrywide observations started in 1901; in sharp contrast with the previous month, which was its driest April since 1901.

Further south, the worst flooding in six years hit Mozambique in February, while abnormally heavy and early rainfall in Sudan since the end of June has caused the Nile River and other seasonal rivers to overflow.

A series of large swell waves (3 meter-4.5 meters) swamped 68 islands in 16 atolls in the Maldives, while to the west, in Latin America, early May saw Uruguay's worst flooding since 1959.

The article also noted that global land temperatures reached their highest level since 1800. Hmm… does this bode well for future generations?

And more from HTWW about living the low-carbon life. For someone like me who is just discovering the discussion about carbon-credits and low-carbon like and such, this article was pretty informative. I did learn that calculating everything in your lifestyle to see how it balances out in the healthy planet balance sheet is becoming a popular parlour game (presumably among liberals as I know no one who does this – but that’s another issue).


Retirement update:

My impending retirement continues to draw a variety of comments most of which still favor the “you’ll be back working at another school within a year” opinion. Just a snippet from a conversation with a friend the other day got me thinking about the continuing to work elsewhere option when he said that he had to keep working for a number of reasons (he’s ten years younger than me for one) which included keeping up his lifestyle. I started thinking about that as soon as I got on my motorbike to drive home. Hmm…making my current income, we can buy pretty much what we want when we want it (and we’ve done so pretty much for the past 17 years) – the kids want ipods, my wife wants a new handphone, I want a new computer, we want to renovate one of the houses, someone needs an expensive medical procedure. It’s nice to be able to buy things when you want them, I have to admit. Not worrying about money is certainly enjoyable, but…is that really where I want to be at this point in my life?

The kids are going to continue to need money to continue their education, but I think that I have enough put away to cover all of them through college, and then they’re on their own. As for Su and me, well she generally doesn’t require much more than a present for her birthday; she takes care of her other needs out of the house money, and I don’t require much other than some tech toys to work with during my retirement and some book money. As for the other stuff, what’s the point? I’m perfectly happy wearing t-shirts and shorts with holes in them, I don’t like eating in restaurants, entertainment is watching tv a few hours a night. Being a consumer is like being a junkie. One more jones to get rid of. Add that to the smoking and drinking, and I have a few personal issues to work on during retirement. Should prove to be interesting, and as an old friend used to say, it will keep me off the streets.