Woolly Mammoth Cloning

Imagine a world where giant elephant-like beasts roam the vast plains of North America.

Perhaps someday this will be more than a long-lost memory. Perhaps within our lifetimes we will see this for ourselves.

An effort is currently underway to extract the DNA from a preserved woolly mammoth carcass, inject it into the living egg of a living elephant, and clone the long-extinct beast.

I don't have to point out how good of an idea this is.

Preferably, once the revived trunk enthusiasts have a viable breeding population, they can be re-introduced into the wild, so that they might reclaim their place in the food chain.

The January Thaw

By all accounts, Merle Haggard is an idiot. In his classical country and western masterpiece If We Make It Through December, he refers to December as "the coldest time of winter." This is blatantly false. For one thing, Winter doesn't officially start until the winter solstice, usually occurring sometime between December the 20th and and December the 23rd. If December were the coldest time of Winter, then why is most of it not even in Winter at all?

So his thesis is clearly resting on shaky ground, but let's look at some data to really elucidate the scenario. To give ole' Merle the benefit of the doubt, lets look at the climate of his home state of California:

City	Jan	Dec	Which is coldest?
Bakersfield	57/39 (14/4)	57/38 (14/3)	December
Bodie	40/6 (4/−14)	41/6 (5/−14)	January
Death Valley	67/39 (19/4)	65/38 (18/3)	December
Eureka	56/42 (13/6)	55/41 (13/5)	December
Fresno	55/39 (13/4)	55/38 (13/3)	December
Los Angeles	69/50 (21/10)	68/49 (20/9)	December
Sacramento	54/39 (12/4)	54/39 (12/4)	Tie
San Bernardino	62/34 (17/1)	63/37 (19/3)	January
San Francisco	58/46 (14/8)	58/47 (14/8)	Tie
San Jose	61/42 (16/6)	61/42 (16/6)	Tie
South Lake Tahoe	42/16 (6/−9)	42/17 (6/−8)	January

So in four places in California, December is the coldest month, in three places January is the coldest month, and in three places they tie. This is hardly conclusive evidence that December is the coldest month. If Merle Haggard had written "Either December or January is the coldest month of the year, depending on where you live in the Northern Hemisphere," then there wouldn't be much to argue about. Instead, he chose to write lies.

Fun Fact:
Did you know that people in the Southern hemisphere call summer winter, and vice versa? Crazy, eh?

Anyways, the point of all this is that December gets a bad rap and that January is actually the most brutal, wicked, nasty, and all-around unbearable month of the year. Your average january day involves prying yourself out of bed with an epic feat of willpower, sprinting to a lukewarm shower along icy-cold floors, a constant cycling of ingesting hot liquids and the subsequent urination, and a jail-like life of cold weather captivity. Some fools develop cold weather Stockholm syndrome, and take to activities like skiing and ice skating. Rest assured that these people are suffering from a mental illness, and should seek treatment from a doctor.

January weather does have one redeeming quality: there is usually a January Thaw. This refers to a span of days when the warmth of the heavens opens up to proclaim:

FEAR NOT MORTALS. HOPE IS ALIVE.

The effect of this is a buoying of spirits and jubilation in the streets anywhere cold weather is feared.

Snow Plows

Few vehicles exhibit a delicate synergy like the might snowplow. An intricate waltz takes place between the grunting, massive truck, and the groaning, massive plow. As the truck firmly forces the plow through all sorts of obstacles: snow banks, snow drifts, and various other forms of show, the plow reacts by firmly moving those offending forms of frozen water either to the right, the left, or sometimes both. A billowing chute of assorted debris is flung into the air, sent briefly aloft to whence it came. Where it will come to rest is a decision made by the plow artist.