Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Got a question? Get an answer. Send an e-mail to Dear Mr. Mullings Dear Mr. Mullings: How can we have both Global warming and a hole in the Ozone? According to science, heat rises, and if this is true...the heat should be rising through the hole in the Ozone and therefore.....Global cooling. Bill Old Town, FL Yes. Well, I'm sure this is a hot topic around the old shuffleboard court but the hole in the ozone layer does not, of course, let heat out; it lets dangerous zapper rays from the sun, in. A serious (and lengthy) discussion can be found on the aptly named theozonehole.com website. According to the author, Jonathan Shanklin: The ultraviolet part of the spectrum is divided into UV-A, UV-B and UV-C. UV-A lies between 315 and 400 nm and gives rise to a suntan and ageing of the skin. UV-B lies between 280 and 315 nm and is the damaging part of the spectrum. UV-C, which is totally absorbed by the atmosphere before it can reach the ground, lies between 200 and 280 nm. Ozone is "very efficient" at absorbing the harmful UV-B rays but as the concentration of ozone decreases in the upper atmosphere, more of them get to the Earth's surface. Dear Mr. Mullings: You have a grand sense of humor. Where did your lovely bride get her title [Mullings Director of Standards & Practices]? Linda Cleveland, Oh At first we rented it from a place called "Nicknames 'R Us" but we got them to sell it to Mullings because ... well, because we had been their only customer and they went out of business. Seriously, she was named by The Lad who, in turn, was named by me. The MD of S&P is one of the most private people on the planet and has some minor issues with me telling all 35,000 of you everything I'm doing every time I'm doing anything. The rules are: I can write about anything I want except our family. Pretty fair deal, if you ask me. Dear Mr. Mullings: [W]hy do you use [these] brackets in [many of] your quotations? It makes it very [how should we say] annoying. Thanks, Ray Savannah, Ga Good question. Annoying, but good. Brackets within a quote are used to indicate where I have added or changed a word or phrase to make the meaning more clear while showing clearly it was not part of the original quote. For instance, very often I will quote a paragraph which starts: "He then went on to say ..." When you read the entire article it would likely be very easy to determine who "He" is; but in pulling out one graf, I might find it useful to identify the speaker thus: "[Congressman Muggle] then went on to say ..." Similarly, I will use ellipses (...) to show that I have left some material out of the original quote, either becuase it is redundant to what I have written or (more likely) the paragraph is too long and has information which is not germain to the point. I am very careful not to use either brackets or ellipses in a manner which changes the meaning of the original quote. Last one Dear Mr. Mullings: We know that Presidents are limited to two terms; but are the limits on how many terms a Vice President can serve? Roger Keep this in mind: My total experience in the area of Constitutional Law is one class from Professor Dr, Robert Hill at Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio 45750. With that in mind: From the 22nd Amendment: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once." And from the 12th Amendment: "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States." So, it would appear that Dick Cheney could serve as Veep for the next Republican President if he were chosen; but it becomes more complicated as to whether Hillary could pick Bill to run as her Vice President because he has been elected to the office of President twice. So, some questions obtain: The 22nd Amendment uses the words "elected to the office of President" not "President or Vice President. But, does having been elected President twice make Bill ineligible to be Vice President under the terms of the 12th Amendment? If not, then Bill Clinton (as we say in Texas) might could be Hillary's running mate. If Hillary stepped down for some reason would Bill then be able to serve a third term as President - he would not have been elected President; he would have ascended to fill the vacancy. But, even so, it is pretty clear he could not run for a fourth term. See you next week. Rich Got a question? Get an answer. Send an e-mail to Dear Mr. Mullings                                     Click here to return to the Secret Decoder Ring page Copyright © 2007 Barrington Worldwide, LLC