Tim West: Smart meters, Tea Party mix on Google 

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Updated: May 9, 2012 10:11AM

If you Google “smart meter” and “Tea Party” together you get 334,000 results.

And if you start going through them, it is obvious that Tea Party chapters all over the United States have taken up the hue and cry over smart meters like the ones the city of Naperville is currently installing, to the protests of some, throughout town for its smart grid project.

I suppose how you view this pretty much depends on what sort of credibility you assign the Tea Party, but it certainly makes sense that opposition to smart meters could become a cause celebre to people who maintain that the government is too big and too intrusive, except apparently when its doling out Social Security checks and funding Medicare.

To the tea partiers this is just another instance of the government wanting to know too much about you — in this case, I suppose, whether the fact that all that electrical power being recorded at your home at 2 a.m. means you are growing marijuana plants in your basement or watching Internet porn while the wife and kids are asleep.

For those who want to believe that the government is watching every move they make, smart meters are going to be a gift that keeps on giving.

Benedictine
offering storm watcher session

In the wake of the first, albeit belated, snowstorm of the season, if you’ve ever wanted to learn how to be a National Weather Service (NWS) weather spotter now is your chance.

From 1 to 3 p.m. on Feb. 24, Benedictine University is offering a Basic Weather Spotter Class at Krasa Center Presentation Room on the university’s Lisle campus.

The seminar, which is free and open to the public, trains people to identify severe weather events and report them. The seminar includes a slide and video program which deals with storm structures, cloud features and other evidence that tornadoes or other severe storms are about to occur.

For more information, contact Michi Dubes, Benedictine’s emergency presentation manager, at 630-829-6364 or email to mdubes@ben.edu.