The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

Mother Nature is a man

It appears that Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov beat me to the punch and took away my last chance at having an original costume for Halloween. This holiday season, Luzhkov is going to be Mother Nature.He has declared that this winter will be Moscow’s first winter without snow.How can he be so sure of this? Can he see into the future? No, but he does have super weather-changing chemicals and the Russian Air Force on his side.Luzhkov’s plan is to equip planes with chemical sprayers, which will spray a fine chemical mist into the atmosphere at the onset of a snowstorm that will cause the snow to fall far from the Russian capital and dump onto the Moscow suburbs instead.This is not Luzhkov’s first attempt at playing Mother Nature, either. In 2002, he proposed that Russian scientists work to reverse the flow of the River Ob to help irrigate the country’s driest regions. Also, every year on Victory Day and City Day, the same chemicals are used to prevent cloud formations from descending on the Russian capital so tanks and rocket-equipped trucks can roll down the streets under a beautiful, manmade blue sky. The mist they will be spraying is a mixture of dry ice, cement powder and silver iodide. This process, known as “cloud seeding,” was seen most recently in China during the 2008 Summer Olympics. None of the compounds used in cloud seeding have any proven negative effects. However, many countries have banned the practice of seeding clouds based on the principle that just because we are unaware of any negative effects, doesn’t mean that none exist.Aside from the countries that have chosen not to use the chemical, the voice of the opposition has been only a low murmur.I’m wondering where all the right-wing Christians and eco-friendly nuts are and why they aren’t speaking up. I mean, we can’t clone people, stem cells are blacklisted, abortion is “against nature” and, based on traditional beliefs, weather is a causation of God. One would think that the conservative right would be all over this.On the other end of the spectrum, we can’t idle our cars or throw something away without a guilt-trip, but you mean to tell me a Russian mayor can stop the snow? How is that normal? How is that natural?Is it because it is happening somewhere else and not in our backyards?Not only was I upset that my last hope for a sweet Halloween getup was taken, but I was disappointed to find out that the only people upset about this were the soon-to-be snowed-in residents of Moscow’s suburbs.This is literally a crime against nature and people are turning a blind eye to it.

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Mother Nature is a man