Just got back from skiing. It's nice to get away for an entire week.

Okay, let's all repeat after me: oil does not come from dinosaurs. It comes from ancient plankton fields as plankton died and settled to the ocean floor to be covered with mud. Oil does not come from prehistoric expanses of rotting brontosaurus corpses. Everyone got that?

Been a while since I wrote anything. Where I live, we're all digging ourselves out of a (relatively) heavy snow fall. We got around a foot of snow over 2 nights, which is an awful lot for the region. We rarely see snow around here, but when we do it always seems to come down with a vengence. So after a 9 day vacation over Christmas, I came back to the office for a (non-consecutive) 2-day work week before another 4 days at home. Which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I probably won't get paid for those 2 snow days (unless I take vacation days I can't spare, make the days up on Saturdays, or there's a miracle and my contracting company agrees to pay everyone). Snow's always a mixed blessing.

The West Wing has done it again! Am I referring to its Emmy wins? No, I'm talking about its one-sided portrayal of political issues. In a tactic going back to Galileo, the writers of The West Wing present only the barest, poorest arguments to their ideological beliefs in an attempt to convince watchers that their point of view is the only one that makes sense.

In the latest episode, the writers concoct an imaginary situation in which a legally concealed weapon used to stop a mass shooting at a church in Texas is instead directly responsible for the wounding (and later death) of a 9 year-old girl. Which follows, not surprisingly, are the typical left-wing arguments against concealed carry. Though the Vice President claims to support gun rights (being a Texan himself), not a single argument is presented in the show to back up his "belief". "Why do they have to be concealed?" the President asks. "I don't know," the Vice Prez answers. Maybe so that not only will weapon snatches be avoided, but also so that everyone can benefit, since criminals know that some people are armed, they just can't be sure who. Why "shall-issue" instead of "may-issue"? Maybe because giving that kind of arbitrary power in the hands of some anti-gun law enforcement officials ends up meaning that no one, no matter how deserving or needful, will get one. But I wouldn't expect reasoned and intelligent opposition to leftist opinions on this show about a Democratic administration penned by left-wing writers and producers.