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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136880
Posted: 19 August 2026 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Back in the late Sixties and early Seventies, Universal Studios had a rotating anthology series titled THE NAME OF THE GAME. It starred Gene Barry, Robert Stack and Tony Fransciosa in ninety minute dramas spun off from a similarly yclept TV movie that had aired a few years earlier.

Barry played Glenn Howard, head of a giant publishing empire, and his segments saw him trotting around the world to investigate various stories. One episode, titled “LA 2017”, written by no less than Philip Wylie, saw Howard attending a conference on climate change (not yet called such) and on the drive home seemingly falling through a “time warp” into the bleak and barren Future of the title.

SPOILER: it turned out to be a dream induced by gas fumes leaking into his car, but before that climactic reveal it painted a grim picture of what we had coming. The next day at ACA it was all us hippies were talking about.

The timeline was off by a few decades, obviously, but the episode (directed by Steven Spielberg) was on YouTube. See if you can find it and decide for yourselves how prescient it was otherwise.

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Bill Collins
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Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11666
Posted: 20 August 2026 at 6:40am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

It struck me yesterday driving to work in the early hours
how a little overnight rain had made a lot of leaves drop
in the country lanes, assuming they were already loose. I
did a Google search and the early leaf shedding is a
drought survival mechanism for trees. There was a few
news items last year of people being killed by trees
dropping huge branches due to drought conditions, which
fortunately i haven't seen so far this year.
I have noticed the increase in moth's flying at night has
continued from virtually nothing this last 15 years.
One thing that has struck me is the wildfires, a lot
started by arson or stupidity, exacerbated by poor land
management.
It's a thing in the U.K. this last 5 years or to have "No
Mow May" where people are encouraged not to mow their
lawns and councils to not mow verges and grassy areas,
the aim to encourage insects. But the councils in my
opinion use it as an excuse to save money. I have seen
local people complaining about 5ft high grass on green's
where children play football, full of rodents, and
personally i have seen grass allowed to grow so high on
the approach to traffic islands and junctions that it
obscures the view of approaching cyclists and
motorcycylists. It's almost the end of August and it's
just been cut! I will add all that tall grass is tinder
dry.
If these dry summers are to continue, we really need to
manage fields, forests and verges to help prevent the
spread of fire.
On a related note, i remember at infant school in the
60's there was a Smokey The Bear book, educating us on
how to prevent forest fires, so this is not a new thing.
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