Last night I dreamt that a pair of Canadians demonstrated to me, devastatingly, that there existed such a thing as the "Ohio Greenhouse Lake Effect". This was a phenomenon resulting from US pollution that caused extreme and deadly weather conditions exclusively to the *north* and *south* of the central US; namely Canada and Mexico. Obviously our apparent selfish lack of environmental controls will only adversely affect foreigners.

I tried to debate this, but one of my interlocutors made trenchant use of statistics. I tried to rebut with "But what is the standard deviation?" This was shot down with some statistical jargon that left me deeply ashamed and flailing to retain my dignity. Indeed, in the dream I was more upset at the lasting stain on my reputation that my ignorance of advanced statistical theory represented than by the ugly warping of the air mass over the North American continent caused by my country's rapaciousness.

So if this Ohio thingy does ever arise, realize that I have conceded and stipulated its existence in advance. Now on to the statistics textbook -- I must armor myself!