The Late Great Coconut Retriever “Dixie” in Colorado Last Winter

LEWISTON, Maine – Americans, you might want to check on their sweaters and shovels — the Farmers’ Almanac is predicting a cold winter for many of you.

The venerable almanac’s 2010 edition, which goes on sale Tuesday, says numbing cold will predominate in the country’s midsection, from the Rocky Mountains in the West to the Appalachians in the East.

For most of Minnesota and Wisconsin, the almanac predicts “bitterly cold and dry” weather. In the Dakotas and the Red River Valley region of Minnesota, “very cold and snowy” weather is expected.

Managing Editor Sandi Duncan says it’s going to be an “ice cold sandwich.”

“We feel the middle part of the country’s really going to be cold — very, very cold, very, very frigid, with a lot of snow,” she said. “On the East and West coasts, it’s going to be a little milder. Not to say it’s going to be a mild short winter, but it’ll be milder compared to the middle of the country.”

As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following: What is the President trying to tell me? What is the President asking me to do? What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about? Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

After the Speech: Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes or stick notes on a butcher paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, i.e. citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty.

Students could discuss their responses to the following questions: What do you think the President wants us to do? Does the speech make you want to do anything? Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us? What would you like to tell the President? Teachers could encourage students to participate in the Department of Education’s “I Am What I Learn” video contest. The Department will invite K-12 students to submit a video no longer than 2 min, explaining why education is important and how their education will help them achieve their dreams.

Fascinating!

Today’s Burning Man: Anarchy? Not so much — Burning man, with this article, is done.

But from chaos comes order. Now it’s Burning Man, a limited liability corporation. Tickets can cost more than $300, and reportedly cell and texting bandwidth is available for the first time. Participants must sign a “terms and conditions” contract that seems potentially harsh in this free-form, anarchistic expressionist environment: “NO USE OF IMAGES, FILM, OR VIDEO OBTAINED AT THE EVENT MAY BE MADE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM BURNING MAN, OTHER THAN PERSONAL USE.”

Looks like a cheap trailer park to me

BMW Unveils Triple Threat Plug-In Sports Car – Auto – FOXNews.com — I’ll take one of these.

It’s a diesel, a hybrid, a plug-in, a three-cylinder–and a tour de force, perhaps?BMW’s Vision EfficientDynamics concept has been the subject of rumor and innuendo for weeks, but now the German car company is setting the stage for its 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show display with new details of its concept. As the name implies, this concept car grafts fashionable green technology on the body of a 2 2 sports car. The promise: BMW M-car performance from a vehicle with a three-cylinder diesel plug-in hybrid powertrain.