08 | August | 2012 | Robot Pirate Ninja

July Was Hottest Month Ever Recorded in U.S. – NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/science/earth/july-was-hottest-month-ever-recorded-in-us.html

A hot July also contributed to the warmest 12-month period ever recorded in the United States, the statistics showed.

Climatologists at the agency noted that by the end of the month, about 63 percent of the nation was experiencing drought conditions, which contributed to the high temperatures.

“July was a pretty interesting month because there were two different things at play,” Jake Crouch, a climatologist at the agency’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., said in an interview. “We saw very warm daytime temperatures over a large part of the country related to the ongoing drought, just as in 1936. When soils are dry, especially during the summer, it drives the daytime temperatures up. But this is a very local effect.”

“On the other side, at the national level, we have also seen very warm nighttime temperatures, and that is part of a long-term trend we’ve seen across the contiguous U.S. over the past several decades,” he said. “The hotter days increase the amount of moisture the lower atmosphere can hold, and this means it doesn’t cool off as much at night anymore.”

“This clearly shows a longer-term warming trend in the U.S., not just one really hot month,” Mr. Crouch said.

Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/romneys-dad-had-free-mcdonalds-for-life-card-2012-8

“You know how boys liked to go through their dad’s top drawer, just to sort of see what he has in there, maybe find an old coin he might not miss or whatever, ” Romney told a group of donors at a Chicago fundraiser this afternoon.

“I found a little paper card, a little pink card, and it said this entitles George W. Romney to a lifetime of a hamburger, a shake and French fries at McDonald’s. It was signed by the hand of Ray Kroc. My dad had done a little training lesson or whatever for McDonald’s when there was just a handful of restaurants and I saw this thing and was like, ‘This is a gold mine, Dad! What are you doing?’ So I had it laminated. My dad, as you know, would go almost every day to a McDonald’s restaurant and get either a hamburger or a fish filet sandwich. And he would present this little card and of course the person behind the counter would look and say, ‘Well, what is that?’ They’d never seen something like that, but he said it was never turned down. They always honored it.”