Ever wonder what it must have been like as a medieval heretic struggling against the almighty power of the Church? Harry Mount in the Daily Telegraph says you can find out quite easily: “Try saying you’re a bit sceptical about man-made global warming.” You’ll find out in a hurry what it’s like to be a heretic.
Environmentalism is the new secular faith – school prayer for liberals, as an American philosopher put it. The faith is a strict one. You’re not allowed to join if you think that it’s sensible to keep an eye on the environment but don’t think that man is to blame for changes in world temperature.
You must believe in the full package. If you do, you are blessed, free from sin and allowed the pious smugness you find in the worst sort of religious believers. It’s not enough to believe in these things yourself; you must condemn others for not sharing your belief.
Human nature is universal, whether clothed in clerical robes or eco-friendly jeans. When a group of people coalesce around a shared faith, their zeal for The Cause can exceed the boundaries of common sense, and irrational arrogance is the inevitable result.
The environmental movement is overdue for a Reformation.
With the looming prospect of further erosion in Republican representation in the November election, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) points to the primary cause: the Republicans’ faith in the flawed message of “compassionate conservatism.”
Compassionate conservatism’s next step – its implicit claim that charity or compassion translates into a particular style of activist government involving massive spending increases and entitlement expansion – was its undoing. Common sense and the Scriptures show that true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver. This is why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, not his neighbor’s possessions. Spending other people’s money is not compassionate.
The voters have finally figured out that if they’re going to get huge government spending and controls, no matter who they elect, why not stick with the experts in big government, the Democrats?
Bill Clinton is becoming apoplectic about the manipulation of the Democratic primary race by the party hacks and their willing accomplices in the media. In a campaign stop in South Dakota yesterday, he alleged that his wife is the victim of a “cover-up” designed to lock her out of the race.
The Clintons just can’t accept the fact that they’re yesterday’s news. They’ve been thrown overboard to make way for a newer, younger, fresher face for the Democratic Party. Bill’s right, of course — Hillary would likely make a stronger candidate in the general election. But this is not about electability. It’s about ideology. And those who are in the driver’s seat of the Democratic Party and the media are aggressively promoting a platform far to the left of the mainstream.
We’ll see how far to the left they really are in November.
No, it’s not a diamond ring sticking up out of the sand. It’s a picture of the Phoenix Mars Lander and its parachute, during its descent to the Martian surface on Sunday evening. The shot was taken by a high resolution camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, orbiting high above Mars.
The image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marks the first time ever one spacecraft has photographed another one in the act of landing on Mars.
This technology is so cool — when it works. When it doesn’t, we get some pretty embarrassing failures, like these.
(On a personal note: One of my sons is a system administrator for the web hosting service that hosts the nasa.gov web site, including pictures like the one above.)
On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.
And this man wants to be commander-in-chief??
I’ll have to admit, Bush has committed more than his fair share of malapropisms. But his can’t compare to the spectacular gaffes coming out of Obama’s mouth these days.
The spiraling price of oil is looking more and more like a classic bubble — a run-up driven more by speculation than the usual pressures of supply-and-demand.
Ronald Bailey addressed this subject in an article two months ago. He quotes Tim Evans, an energy futures analyst at Citigroup’s Futures Perspective, who says, “I think that this is the riskiest time to be long in crude oil since 1980.”
Larry Elliott sees a parallel with the dot.com boom of the late nineties. “The oil market, to put it simply, is a massive bubble waiting to be popped.” When? Elliott won’t venture a guess.
“Bubble markets are not remotely rational, which is why it is impossible to say how high the price will go or how long the boom will continue before the bust arrives. But make no mistake, that moment will come.”
Justin Lahart is not convinced that we’re seeing a bubble, but agrees that the eventual outcome is a fall in prices.
The combination of a change in consumer behavior and an economic slowdown that is showing signs of spreading beyond the U.S. may already augur just the kind of sharp drop in prices that occurred back then [1980s]. But if that happens, it won’t be because oil prices were in a bubble; it will just be because that is the way commodity markets work.
What does all this mean? Well, for me, it means I’m in no rush to dump my gas-guzzling car at a fire-sale price, and pay a premium for a more fuel-efficient model. Barring an unforeseeable catastrophe in the market, the price that I’m paying for gasoline at the pump will eventually fall to a more reasonable level.
Victor Davis Hanson looks at the impact that the Iraq war is having on the next generation of leadership in the U. S. military.
The annual spring list of Army colonels promoted to brigadier generals will be shortly released. Already, rumors suggest that this year, unlike in the recent past, a number of maverick officers who have distinguished themselves fighting — and usually defeating — insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq will be chosen.
These “maverick” officers have been the key to success in Iraq, although no one could have predicted it at the outset of hostilities.
The terrorist bands that sprung up during the occupation were at first dealt with through conventional tactics and weapons. Only as American and Iraqi losses mounted did a few gifted officers begin to work with the Iraqis, learn the elements of successful counterinsurgency doctrine and slowly win back the hearts and minds of the civilian population.
However, Hanson sees an historical precedent for this changing of the guard among the military’s leaders.
Most wars are rarely fought as they were planned. During the fighting, those who adjust most quickly to the unexpected tend to be successful. And in almost all of America’s past conflicts, our top commanders on the eve of war were not those who finished it.
Follow the latest updates from NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, which successfully landed yesterday near the Martian north pole, where it will dig for evidence of sub-surface water.
From the site’s picture gallery:
This image shows a polygonal pattern in the ground near NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, similar in appearance to icy ground in the arctic regions of Earth.
Now on the surface, the Phoenix must work quickly. Martian winter begins in three months. The sun will drop below the horizon, and a thick ice of water and carbon dioxide will coat the lander’s solar panels, ending its life.
This does not elevate apes — it denigrates humans.
The European Court of Human Rights has agreed to a preliminary hearing to determine whether chimpanzees are entitled to the legal status and protections granted to human beings.
Wanna hear the really scary part?
A win for the group could have sweeping ramifications for the entire European Union, with legal precedent existing for apes — and possibly other animals — to receive the rights, protections, and even medical, financial, and social benefits of human beings.
And you thought entitlement programs were out of control now. . . .
Meir. Thatcher. Gandhi. Clinton. Quick . . . Pick the name that does not belong on this list.
Peggy Noonan reviews the careers of the first three women on this list (all powerful–and successful–heads of state in their respective countries: Israel, Britain, India), and concludes that Hillary does not deserve to be in the same league with them.
Like Clinton, all three of these women played politics in a man’s world. But rather than whine about sexism and misogyny, these women took on the men at their own game, and won.
As for this week’s Clinton complaints, I imagine Mrs. Thatcher would bop her on the head with her purse. Mrs. Gandhi would say “That is no way to play it.” Mrs. Meir? “They said I was the only woman in the cabinet and the only one with — well, you know. I loved it.”
John Hinderaker at PowerLine records some interesting details from the testimony this week of the oil executives before a Senate committee investigating the high price of oil. If you want to understand why you’re paying almost four bucks a gallon for gas, Hinderaker’s article would be a good place to start.
First, the “big oil” companies are not nearly as big as their competitors, the nationalized oil companies of other countries. American companies represent only a small fraction of the market, and are at a distinct disadvantage trying to compete for scarce supplies against these behemoth operations. According to Exxon’s Stephen Simon:
For an American company to succeed in this competitive landscape and go head to head with huge government-backed national oil companies, it needs financial strength and scale to execute massive complex energy projects requiring enormous long-term investments.
If our government adopts a policy of punishing our own oil companies with a windfall profits tax, further crippling the companies’ ability to compete for supplies, imagine what that will do to the price of gasoline at the pump.
Second, you can hardly blame the oil companies for high prices, when relatively cheap sources of new petroleum right here at home have been placed off limits by politicians. Shell’s John Hofmeister explained,
According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.
Finally, there’s this curious piece of information: On average, 15% percent of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4% represents oil company profits. If 4% profit represents “gouging the consumer,” what does the 15% tax represent?
Seems to me that American consumers should be hauling some representatives of Big Government before a committee to demand answers.
At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It’s a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. “If you look carefully,” author Michael Crichton famously observed, “you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.”
Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past. John Muir, who laid the philosophical foundations of modern environmentalism, described humans as “selfish, conceited creatures.” Salvation comes from shedding our sins, rejecting our addictions (to oil, consumerism, etc.) and demonstrating through deeds an all-encompassing love of Mother Earth. Quoth Al Gore: “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”
Goldberg gives many other examples. Read the whole thing.
The irrational faith of environmentalism stands in contrast to the reasoned approach of conservation, which, ironically, has a biblical basis.
Conservation, which shares roots and meaning with conservatism, stands athwart this mass hysteria. Yes, conservationism can have a religious element to it as well, but that element stems from the biblical injunction to be a good steward of the Earth, rather than a worshiper of it. But stewardship involves economics, not mysticism.
Speaking of media bias . . . Michelle Malkin has compiled a great collection of Obama gaffes. If Dan Quayle or George Bush said this sort of stuff, the media would be all over it. But of course, they quietly let Obama’s verbal stumbles slide right on by. Can’t derail the march to the White House, now, can we?
Bill Clinton has learned a valuable lesson in this presidential primary campaign: The news media is biased. Introducing his wife at a rally in Lexington, Kentucky, he laid a pretty serious charge at the media’s feet:
By their own admission, this has been the most slanted press coverage in American history.
I’ll give him a pass on the “most in history’ part, but the fact that he admits even the possibility that the media can be flagrantly biased in their coverage, and that such bias can directly impact the outcome of an election, is itself newsworthy. How does it feel, Bill, to be on the receiving end for a change? Get used to it — Republicans have been feeling that way for decades.
So, Bill, what do you think we should do about this problem? Do we enact legislation that puts the media under the scrutiny of government bureaucrats? Yeah, let the government call the shots — that will remove all bias for sure, huh? Or maybe we should call for a Congressional investigation into media bias. You know, have several hundred of our elected leaders — almost half of whom are themselves running for President at any given time — conduct fair and impartial hearings on the matter. That would be a zoo.
It’s called “a free press,” Bill. Guaranteed by the Constitution. By its very nature, the press is supposed to be biased. Short of libel or slander, organs of information can say pretty much any outrageous thing they want, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. Somewhere in the cacophony of voices that results, the people will hear what they need to make an informed choice. It’s ugly, inefficient, and frustrating, but what’s the alternative? Tyranny? No thanks. I’ll take my freedom and try to scream just a little louder to be heard.
David Kaplan confesses to having a crush on actress Karen Allen, who, in the latest Indiana Jones movie opening this week, reprises her role as the archaeologist’s love interest from the original movie.
Those beguiling freckles, the radiant blue eyes, the husky voice, the enchanting smile—and the white dress she wears as Marion Ravenwood in the first of the “Indy” movies. If you didn’t have a crush on her from early on in the movie when she drinks men under the table and then decks Indy with a right to the chin, or when she escapes a harrowing pit of snakes, then that dress surely would have been enough.
You can catch a glimpse of her near the end of this trailer for the movie. (Alas, she’s not wearing the white dress.)
UPDATE: Here is an interesting interview with Karen Allen (bonus: includes a pic of her in the white dress).
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.
“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.
So “leadership” apparently means the government telling Americans what cars we can drive, how much food we can eat, and what temperature to set our home thermostats at.
Francis Cianfrocca sees in these remarks the first signal to other nations of how America will play in the global competition for energy.
If nothing else, he’s now made completely clear his view that the answer to the global energy problem is for Americans to net-reduce our usage of energy, even before more efficient technologies become available. To Obama, this is leadership. He may suppose that everyone else will say “if you do that, we’ll do it too.” Their actual response is more likely to be: ”Thanks for the cheaper energy, suckers.
Fred Barnes looks at the asinine energy strategy of the Democrats: Severely restrict domestic drilling (in the name of environmental correctness), and punish the profitability of the oil producers. In a day when Americans are already being severely squeezed at the pump, what else can this produce but even tighter supplies, and higher prices?
Oil from current sites is gradually being depleted. Unless new sources come on line in the next few years, America will produce less oil at home and become even more dependent on oil from abroad, the Middle East in particular.
Reid and Democrats, OPEC’s best friends, aren’t noticeably concerned. Their next step is to remove tax incentives to explore and drill for more oil. And Senator Hillary Clinton is eager to impose a new windfall profits tax on oil revenues. These measures have no purpose other than to punish oil companies. They are counterproductive.
When you remove incentives to produce something and when you slap higher taxes on its producers, one thing happens: You get less of the product.
Joseph Nixon details the impact of recent tort reform legislation in Texas on the quality of health care in that state — not to mention the large number of doctors wanting to move into the state.
The result is an influx of doctors so great that recently the State Board of Medical Examiners couldn’t process all the new medical-license applications quickly enough. The board faced a backlog of 3,000 applications. To handle the extra workload, the legislature rushed through an emergency appropriation last year.
Now many of the newly arriving doctors are heading to rural or underserved parts of the state. Four new anesthesiologists have headed to Beaumont, for example. Meanwhile, San Antonio has experienced a 52% growth in the number of new doctors. . . .
This has allowed doctors and hospitals to cut costs and even increase the resources devoted to charity care. Take Christus Health, a nonprofit Catholic health system across the state. Thanks to tort reform, over the past four years Christus saved $100 million that it otherwise would have spent fending off bogus lawsuits or paying higher insurance premiums. Every dollar saved was reinvested in helping poor patients. . . . .
The full costs of large settlements and runaway malpractice suits may never be known. But it is clear that the costs were paid for by consumers through the increased price of goods, by pensioners through diminished stock prices, and by workers through lost jobs. Another group often overlooked is those who are priced out of health care, or who didn’t receive charity care because doctors were squeezed by tort lawyers. Frivolous lawsuits hit the uninsured the hardest.
This is making everyone happy — except the trial lawyers, of course.
Camille Paglia explains why Democratic hopes that Hillary will gracefully bow out and spare the party a divisive battle are misplaced. This is Hillary’s last chance to grab the big prize.
I’m puzzled by the optimism of so many commentators and Democratic functionaries who are prophesying Hillary’s graceful withdrawal by mid-June. Is there anything in the Clintons’ tawdry history to support such a thesis? Why wouldn’t they play smiley-face rope-a-dope now and smash-mouth alley-and-ambush fisticuffs right to the bitter end — meaning the convention in August? It’s now or never for Ms. Hill. Even if Obama loses this fall, there’s no guarantee whatever that she would win the Democratic nomination in 2012. That hoss will have been around the rodeo way too many times. The infusion of fresh new blood into the party — especially women governors — has already started. Who will want to resurrect all those 1990s mummies?
My late father worked as a field hand for Exxon from the late 1940’s until his retirement in the mid ’80’s. So oil is in my blood. And it makes my blood boil to hear politicians denigrate “big oil” as a bunch of greedy corporate fat cats who are out to gouge the little guy. In my personal experience, that is definitely not the case.
The Houston Chronicle recently ran this article by Tom Potts, an Exxon retiree whose career covered the same time period as my father’s. Potts provides an excellent insight into the corporate culture that motivates Exxon — and serves our nation so well.
Profits are a measure of success — a universal goal of free enterprise — and Big Oil should be congratulated, not condemned for its success. We should be grateful that these U.S.-based corporations are alive and well. Were they not willing to invest substantial portions of their earnings in exploration for new petroleum reserves and the development of new energy sources, someday we might all be riding bicycles to work. And were they not willing to pay substantial dividends to shareholders, including pension funds and other financial resources important to all of us, our economy truly would tank.
Potts details the employee savings plans, philanthropic contributions to schools and universities, commitment to personal and corporate ethical standards, and shareholder dividends as examples of what every corporation should aspire to achieve. Our nation is fortunate to have such corporate citizens.
Personally, I’m proud to be an Exxon kid. I wish our politicians shared that appreciation for what “big oil” has done for our nation. If they follow through on their threats to punish the oil companies with windfall profit taxes, they will be killing the goose the lays the golden egg — and all of us will end up paying even steeper prices for our energy.
Nearly 1,000 people have died in heavy snowstorms and severe cold during the harshest winter to hit Afghanistan in 30 years, the disaster authority said Saturday.
More 130,000 livestock have also died and hundreds of homes destroyed or damaged by the heavy snowfalls, an official at the National Disaster Management Authorities said.
“Now we know that 926 people have been killed. Over 200 other people have been wounded in cold and other related incidents such as avalanches and snowstorms,” said Ahmad Shkeb Hamraz.
If Al Gore can point to a single event like the Myanmar cyclone to support his case that the planet is warming, why can’t I point to an entire winter weather pattern as evidence that the planet is cooling?
No, not Bush — the Clintons. Michael Crowley argues that what we are witnessing in the fierce determination of Hillary to push on in the face of overwhelming criticism is the same mindset that got them through the impeachment crisis in 1998.
The Clintons find themselves victimized and under siege. The presidency is being stolen from them. The press is out to get them. They deride elites and champion the masses. They live in a constant state of emergency. But they will endure any humiliation, ride out any crisis, fight on even when fighting seems hopeless.
That might sound like a fair summary of how Bill and Hillary Clinton have viewed the past five months. But it also happens to describe what, until now, was the greatest ordeal of the Clintons’ almost comically turbulent political careers: impeachment. That baroque saga hardened the Clintonian worldview about politics and helps to explain their approach to this brutal campaign season. The Clintons have been here before, you see. They’re being impeached all over again.
And ironically, just like the impeachment episode, a small handful of superdelegates holds their fate in their hands.
UPDATE: Wall Street Journal: “It took 10 years, but you might say Democrats have finally voted to impeach.”
Victor Davis Hanson notes the many ironies in what the Democratic nomination campaign has managed to accomplish thus far:
What strange paradoxes: the more the Democrats tried to show their egalitarian fides, they more they crafted an undemocratic nominating process; the more Obama talked of transcending race, the more he appealed to racial solidarity; the more Bill Clinton stumped and shook hands, the more he threw away his legacy; and the more Hillary and Barack slurred McCain as a right-wing nut, the more they repaired his relations with the his conservative base. And all this is only half-way through…
Greg Beato suggests a new strategy against Iran’s ruling mullahs: saturation bombing of the country with millions of Barbie dolls.
Iran is terrified of Barbie, the tiny polyvinyl sex bomb who loves shopping, pizza, and brushing her hair, but has few satellite-guided missiles at her disposal. According to Iran’s Prosecutor General, Ghorban Ali Dori Najfabadi, a loosely organized coalition, led by the world’s most impeccably accessorized mercenary . . . is doing “irreparable damage” to Iranian children. “The irregular importation of such toys, which unfortunately arrive through unofficial sources and smuggling, is destructive culturally and a social danger,” Najafabadi cautioned. . . .
In the long run, of course, a Barbie revolution would be more devastating—and humiliating—to Iran’s theocracy than a nuclear strike.
John Hinderaker documents evidence of the New York Times’ shameless partisanship in covering for Obama. He concludes:
I think we are about to witness a level of partisanship in the “mainstream” media that has not been seen since the era of professional news media began a little over a century ago. In the past, when newspapers like the Times have misreported facts, people have generally assumed it was, even if the result of bias, inadvertent. No longer. We have entered an era in which leading news organs will intentionally and persistently misinform their readers in order to achieve a political objective–the election of Barack Obama.
I suspect the media can read the tea leaves like the rest of us, and are scared to death that the Democrats have, once again, nominated a weak candidate, and stand a good chance of blowing another election. So now they are pulling out all the stops to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Last week’s historic election in Britain, which saw the conservative Tories deal the Labour Party their worst defeat in 40 years, is also notable in what did not play a role in the outcome: climate change. Higher fuel prices, the threat of new carbon taxes, and a range of other costly “green” initiatives have sent politicians of both parties scrambling to change their tune on the environment.
We might just look back on May Day 2008 as the moment when the power of green politics peaked and went into reverse. . . .
David Cameron [the new Tory Prime Minister], the wind in his sails after the elections, held a prime ministerial press conference in which he set out his priorities for government. Significantly, the words “environment” and “climate change” did not appear in his 1,200-word statement.
I suspect we’ll see the same retreat here in the States — especially if Al Gore’s inconvenient truth continues to take beatings like this.
I recently stumbled across this song listening to Pandora at work. I just froze.
I’ve never heard of the artists, a Dutch metal band called Within Temptation (the vocalist is Sharon den Adel), but this song definitely caught my attention.
There are some very good guitar players, and then there are those whose minds and fingers are merely an extension of the instrument. Dominic Frasca(“Eddie Van Halen for eggheads”) falls into the second category.
The evidence continues to accumulate that our planet, rather than warming, is undergoing a slight cooling. Of course, those who have a vested interest in promoting the global warming agenda are not going to give it up so easily. Marc Sheppard looks at the efforts of some to twist the global cooling data into another global warming story. Sheppard concludes:
It remains an alarmist imperative to disassociate falling global temperatures and speculation of a possible impending “little ice age” with the yellow dwarf star we orbit in general and the late start of Solar Cycle 24 specifically. For indeed, if we are moving into another solar minimum cycle and global temperatures continue to plummet while atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, attendance at Al Gore’s Scare-Story-Slide-Shows would quickly drop to close friends and family only. And with boat loads of very bad wealth-redistribution “climate change” legislation to pass in coming the years, a sympathetically alarmed press and populace remain essential during that time.
So what better way to buy time than to cloud the obvious solar connection by sacrificing their argument against a less threatening naturally occurring force? And then attributing that force to occasional periods of cooling by collectively admitting to its mitigating impact upon AGW forces? Especially when this little gambit allows them to continue reaping the benefits – for years to come – of the lie that an unchecked anthropogenic greenhouse gas effect threatens to literally destroy us all.
Last week I acted on a long-time urge, and bought a Scotts 20-inch reel mower. These human-powered mowers are making a comeback, due largely to a desire to be “green.” Frankly, the only green I’m interested in is the green in my wallet. With the price of gas pushing four bucks a gallon, one can make a pretty good argument for needing more exercise pushing one of these babies around the yard.
The technology is a major improvement over the older reel mowers from generations past. Assembly was a snap — I was mowing less than thirty minutes after taking it out of the box. The cutting height adjustment is very easy to change. With two sets of wheels, it is stable and rolls easily across the grass.
To be sure, this is a human-powered mower, requiring a steady output of energy to propel. I enjoy walking, so I got plenty of that, but it’s definitely not a casual stroll in the park. Our yard is almost an acre in size, so it took me about six hours to finish the job. That’s not counting the frequent breaks to catch my breath. Still, at the end of the day I was tired, but in a good, that-was-a-great-workout sort of way.
Two negatives, neither of which is a mark against this model. First, reel mowers are notoriously inefficient at cutting weeds, especially tall ones. It was a little irritating to look back over a large area of freshly mowed lawn, and see a wide spread of dandelion stalks still standing proudly. The reel mower simply pushes them over, and they pop back up after the mower moves on. (I guess that’s a good incentive to implement a weed control program.) Second, it’s more difficult to keep a reel mower pointed in a straight line than my riding mower. I eventually developed a knack for it, but it requires much more focus.
But those are minor points. There are several positives: To mow the yard with my riding mower requires fifteen minutes of prep work: air the tires, fill the gas tank, check the oil, etc; with this reel model, I simply start mowing. There is almost nothing to break down (which is more and more frequent with my rider). I get a lot of good exercise. And there is something calming about walking behind a mower that is quietly depositing a gentle cascade of clippings at your feet.
Will I do all my mowing with this new toy? No way. The yard is simply too big, and I have too many other projects to tend to, to spend that much time just mowing. But I will likely continue to use it on areas close by the house.
If you have a small yard, I would definitely recommend this as a viable option.
