Can I borrow a water wizard?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Make a wish, and start blowing.

"You'll need," said Pig, "A lot of puff, and I don't think you've got enough."
Wolf huffed and puffed and blew and blew, the house stayed up as good as new.
"If I can't blow it down," Wolf said, "I'll have to blow it up, instead!
"I'll come back in the dead of night and blow it up with dynamite!"

[Kenji]

Your rhymes blow.

[Sienna Maiu - M T]

Your rhymes blow. D:

Kid's got a point. It's true. *makes upward pointing gesture*

[Tapewolf]

Your rhymes blow. D:

I think it may be Roald Dahl.

[Reese Tora]

Your rhymes blow. D:

I think it may be Roald Dahl.

I don't think Kenji was really worried about llearch's ego getting puffed up.  Rather than taking the wind out of the box, I think he was blowing a little hot air of his own.

Now if only someone could take the wind out of the weather for a day or two, we might be able to get those fires under control.  That's one of the reasons we've been having a lot of trouble with some of the fires over here, there's been some strong Santa Ana winds. (for non SoCal residents, all of southern California is technically a desert; Santa Ana winds are hot, dry winds from the north east.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Your rhymes blow. D:

I think it may be Roald Dahl.

Not only is it Roald Dahl, but it's two rhymes to a line. Which is not the way it was originally printed.

"You'll need," said Pig, "a lot of puff,
"and I don't think you've got enough."
Wolf huffed and puffed and blew and blew,
the house stayed up as good as new.

etc.

Of course, it might help if I had a copy of the book handy, as I haven't seen it in, oh, 3-4 years...

[Alondro]

Ok, even though magic is supposed to be evil and stuff, I'll do it anyway! 

I'm not sure about which spell to use, but here we go anyway!



*and the forest fires spread to Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and Idaho*

Uhm... oopsie?     *flees!*

[Tapewolf]

*and the forest fires spread to Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and Idaho*

If it totals Redmond, it may be a price worth paying.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Nevada?  There's nothing there to burn.

[Saist]

... I think this is probably bad that part of me is hoping Utah gets some fires...

(die SCO... DIE)

ehehe... scuse me... I seem to be having nervous fits here.

[Zorro]

Nevada?  There's nothing there to burn.

Unless you use a nuclear match.

[Feroluce]

that fire is even making news here in NZ. And, to add to the irony, we had a local greenie talk scathingly about how their lack of preparedness and foresight (i.e. not performing controlled burns) Has put vast tracts of wildlife at risk.

gofigure.

[Netrogo]

that fire is even making news here in NZ. And, to add to the irony, we had a local greenie talk scathingly about how their lack of preparedness and foresight (i.e. not performing controlled burns) Has put vast tracts of wildlife at risk.

gofigure.

Oh yeah because naturally everyone should prepare for the stuff that rarely happens, like widespread fires and meteor strikes. Seriously preparing is good but if stuff like this is gonna happen it's going to happen, and the guy who lives in new york with the volcano insurance plan is not going to be laughing when it happens, he'll be dead like everyone else.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Actually, this sort of stuff does happen quite a bit.   The fires, that is.

[Reese Tora]

that fire is even making news here in NZ. And, to add to the irony, we had a local greenie talk scathingly about how their lack of preparedness and foresight (i.e. not performing controlled burns) Has put vast tracts of wildlife at risk.

gofigure.

Oh yeah because naturally everyone should prepare for the stuff that rarely happens, like widespread fires and meteor strikes. Seriously preparing is good but if stuff like this is gonna happen it's going to happen, and the guy who lives in new york with the volcano insurance plan is not going to be laughing when it happens, he'll be dead like everyone else.

Yeah, because large scale fires taht occur every five years or so aren't anything to worry about.

1997, 2003, 2007, and those are just major fires.

Wildfires are a natural occurance,a nd they are good for the environment over the long run.  They clear away old, dead material, making room for new growth.  They are required for the seeds of some trees to germinate.

The material burning out there is dry and easily flamable.  It's not a question of if, but of when, and it's simply not feasible to clear it by hand.

Controlled burning is just that, a controlled wildfire, and it consumes the material that would otherwise feed a raging inferno.  It gives the ecological benifits of wildfires, deprives uncontrolled fires of fuel, and it's controlled.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Interestingly, the Ash Wednesday fires in Australia in 1983 (ah... picture a fire that moves faster than a running fire-truck, burns the ground into ash to a depth of a foot or more, throws chunks of burning material 2km ahead of the fire front, vaporises swimming pools, and explodes trees. And that's just a brief overview.) brought this somewhat to the forefront of scientific enquiry.

They figured out that much of the life cycle of the gum tree depends on being burnt off every so often. And, as I understand it, that's pretty much most of the bush in South Australia. Part of the reason that the fires were so bad was that they'd stopped doing controlled burnoffs some years previously, and the undergrowth, some of which could hardly be designed to be more burnable, had a chance to build up.

(rough figures: 82,500 hectares of public land, 120,000 hectares of private land. In ONE DAY. That's a -big- fire.)

[LionHeart]

I remember the 1983 Ash Wednesday fire... the flames got very close to our house. As in RIGHT OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW.

No, I am not exaggerating.