As I write this, we are being hammered with a major snow storm. Temperature is not the issue, but rather the high wind with lots of snow.CBC had the following to say in the main story on their front page for Ontario:

• A major snowstorm swept across the southern part of the province, and was expected to dump between 15 and 30 centimetres of snow by Tuesday night.

Most of the last few years' media coverage on terrorism focused on 'Islamic terrorism'. This is somewhat not surprising after the spectacular media coverage of September 11.

However, this coverage ignores that inside America, there has always been some home grown terroists. By home grown, I mean that they are born in America, mostly whites, of Christian background, and not 'foreign' nor 'alien'in any sense of the word. They are mainstream Americans ethnically and culturally.

Here is a sampling of some home grown terrorism:

Those who are familiar with Frank Herbert's famous novel Dune will notice his analogy for the spice, and the surrounding struggle for it, with the crude oil of the Middle East. The novel is symbolic about the dependence of the West on the oil, and the power struggles to control this valuable resource.

But what is not so obvious to the average Western reader, is the sheer quantity of terms that Herbert borrowed from Arabic and Islamic culture, old and new, and incorporated them into his novels.

Yesterday, it was a complete white out while going home. A slow and dangerous drive. I had to cancel an appointment, because I did not feel like going out again in this weather.By late evening, the driveway was completely covered with snow about 20 cm deep, and more in certain places, because it was very windy, and snow was blowing around.I shovelled for about 40 minutes, knowing that I will have to do it all over again in the morning. I was so tired when I was done, and so over heated. The house felt like an oven when I went in.This morning, I had to shovel all of it again. Then go and take a shower to wash all the sweat!

Girls and Science

• Canada Girls Science
• Actua Girls

Kids and Science (Canada)

• Yes Magazine
• Canadian Geographic Kids
• Canadian Museum of Nature
• Ontario Science Centre

Here are some resources on Canada's efforts in Space Explorations, and information for kids interested in space exploration.

• Canada announces program to Mars
• Canada Space Agency
• Canada Space Society
• Spacenet (Canadian Space Resource Centre)

Here are the resources for the kids:

Background

I visited Paris on business, spending some 5 days or so there.

Although I studied several years of French, languages, like many other things, suffer from atrophy by disuse. Therefore, my conversational skills were not that great.

Another cold spell, or rather more deep freeze. Temperature as I type this (Thursday 15 January) is -23 Celsius. With wind chill factor, it feels like -32, with risk of frost bite.When I was leaving work, there was this frost on the inside of the car's windshield. This is very annoying. Had to scrape it off with an old CD that I keep in the glove box for this purpose. I had this happen to me two years ago. It is on days which are very cold, and very sunny.

Smoking of fish, meat and poultry was originally used merely as a method of preserving food from season to season.Only recently did this take a status of delicacy or gourmet that it is considered now

• Historical overview of food smoking.
• A good description of smoking various foods.
• A good overview of smoking fish.
  

You may have heard about Postmodernist Deconstruction? Have you wanted to know more about it?Well, start with the Postmodernism and the Deconstruction articles on the more than excellent free user-written encycolpedia Wikipedia.