HAVE A NICE DAY

While Chinese athletes practice for the summer Olympics, Chinese meteorologists are practicing their weather modification techniques in order to make sure it doesn’t rain on their Olympic parade. The Chinese government has the world’s largest weather modification program in the world consisting of 30 aircraft, 4,000 rocket launchers, 7,000 anti-aircraft guns and a massive reserve army of 37,000 people. Usually this branch of the government is responsible for seeding clouds in order to bring rain to drought-stricken areas of the country, but for the Olympics they will be challenged to do the reverse -- ensure that the skies over Beijing are clear during the opening ceremonies on August 8. To this end they claim to have perfected a technique in which they fire substances into the clouds which shrink the size of the raindrops, thereby letting the cloud float harmlessly overhead until it dumps its load somewhere else. (LA Times)