Posts from — December 2004

Sure, you’re smiling now, kid, but remember: this time next year you’ll look like me.

For those who are lucky enough to have remained unaware of the existence of Daniel Pipes, don’t read this.

Old Daniel, that noted “expert” on the Middle East who loosed Laurie Mylroie on the unsuspecting world, who convinced the Reagan administration to back the only Persian Gulf leader who shared our views, Saddam Hussein, is back in the news.

Juan Cole reports that Daniel is now backing a new NightMare, Michelle Malkin. Ms. Malkin wrote a book justifying the World War II internment camps for the Japanese Americans, with an idea of re-establishing a similar system for Islamic Americans, and Pipes approves.

The only reason Pipes hasn’t disappeared into the oblivion that he so richly deserves is because neocons worship at his altar. This is the type of diseased thought that has infected what passes for leadership in the current administration. It doesn’t matter how many times such prophets are exposed as false, they continue to be listened to and to affect policy with disastrous results.

The Farmer at Corrente talked about waiting for Hurricane Andrew and its storm surge and made the comparison with the tsunami.

I was in Opal in 1995 with a 10-15 foot storm surge and then Ivan this year with a 20-30 foot surge. I have seen what water can do, playing with bridge spans that weigh tens of tons like they were Legos, lifting 60-foot boats and carrying them a half-mile inland, picking up a four-bedroom house and moving it a quarter mile. After months they were still pulling cars and dumpsters out of the Santa Rosa Sound where the water had left them.

While you might drown in the water, the real risk is the debris that the water picks up and carries with it: you can swim to the top of the water, but not if you have been hit with a slab of concrete flowing with the water. Debris is the killer and the destroyer, remember that the Columbia space shuttle was destroyed by a chunk of foam insulation that hit a wing. Many of the buildings destroyed by tornados and hurricanes are lost when debris impacts weaken the structure and the wind can finish the job. There is a lot of video footage of buildings losing a window and then seemingly exploding. Many of those who drowned were trapped as buildings collapsed around them.

The older condos on the barrier island South of me were designed with “break-away” first floors. The concept, which has been proven through several hurricanes, is for the first floor to surrender to the pressure, which saves the rest of the structure. Only the main structural pillars remain to support the upper floors, but it is not shifted on its foundation. This same concept is the reason that many indigenous people build on stilts, to allow water to pass under the house.

Better known as Artie Shaw, he was a maverick who will forever be tied to a single performance that no one ever bettered: Begin the Beguine. He was one of the great musicians of the Jazz’s Swing Era.

He denied he was married eight times, as was often reported, but he was married multiple times, and to many of the icons of feminine beauty of the time.

Friday Cat Blogging^TM [Kevin Drum]

Wow! Who knew? They had the good ‘nip at the party.

At the end of an earlier post on the reaction of Bush I mentioned a missed opportunity.

This theme was echoed by Juan Cole and Natasha at Pacific Views, as well as by some reporters, and other bloggers.

If experts and non-experts alike, as geographically diverse as this group, can figure out that this disaster was an opportunity for the US government, why can’t the US government figure it out?

This is exactly the same “lack of imagination” that was a primary factor on September 11^th. By failing to get rid of the people who should have taken action, Bush has left the US as vulnerable to attack as it was on September 10^th, 2001.

First, the United States has only actually pledged $15 million to the effort. The other $20 million may be forthcoming from the US Agency for International Development, if they can “free it up”. It is also SOP [standard operating procedure] for the bulk of US AID money to come in the form of credit, rather than grants.

Where does the US stand on the list of donors [assuming the entire amount is given]:

UK $96 million
Australia: $46.7 million
EU $44 million
US: $35 million
Canada: $33 million
Japan: $30 million
France: $20.4 million
Denmark: $15.6 million
Saudi Arabia: $10 million

Pfizer, the drug company, has pledged $10 million in cash and $25 million in medical supplies to the region. Many brewers and soft drink bottlers in Asia have switched production to bottling drinking water to send to those affected.

After Hurricane Frances FEMA gave $28 million to Dade County, Florida, which is distressing a lot of people because Dade County experienced only heavy thunderstorms, nothing more severe.

Not only does that put the “stingy” response of the Bush initial offering of $15 million in context, it also highlights a problem with sending his brother, and my governor, John Ellis Bush, to Asia with Colin Powell to coordinate American relief efforts. The official story is that “Jeb” has experience dealing with disasters.

“Jeb” has experience calling his brother to tell him we had another hurricane in Florida, and massive Federal funds were needed to preserve and encourage Republican voters, many of whom live in Dade County. Since there is no election; these people couldn’t vote in it, if there were; there is no massive pot of money of available; I must assume this is a blatant attempt to give “Jeb” some international exposure for a White House run.

Update: [4:39pm] US raises contribution to $350 million. I guess “Jeb” was too embarrassed to be associated with the paltry money his brother had put forth and wanted to make a larger statement for his 2008 run.

Ezra Klein talks about printing books while you wait in your local bookstore.

About five years ago I tried to sell this concept to a company that made high-speed page printers. They didn’t get it. They couldn’t understand the concept. I think the real problem was that someone talked to a publisher about the idea, and the publisher hated it.

Imagine going into a store and asking for any book ever printed, and in minutes leaving with a newly printed copy, in large print if you need it, in a foreign language if you want it.

In my design the system automatically calculated and posted the royalties to authors and a payments to the publishers. No inventory in warehouses, no returns, no removing covers and pitching books into the dumpster, a cover and the first few pages on racks for browsers.

I suggested starting with college bookstores and textbooks as a way to reduce the cost of going to college, and opening up to the broader market after the bugs were out. The files would be encrypted with a hardware key device to prevent theft.

It will happen and I will get the satisfaction of a “I told you so” e-mail to the guy who killed it way back then.

Andante has a post about the island of Simeulue which was feared to be a scene of major loss of life.

There were a minimum of casualties on the island because there had been a tsunami a hundred years ago, and ever since the people knew to run away from the shore after an earthquake.

Learning from history – what a concept!

Susie also has a story on a guy who decided to see how much better he would have done investing his own Social Security taxes, instead of letting the government do it.

Hint: he’s not unhappy to have had his money invested by the Social Security system.

I ran into this at Susan Madrak’s place. As if the US’s paltry relief attempts weren’t bad enough, we are making stranded US citizens pay for photographs for a replacement passport.

These people have lost everything except their lives, and their government is charging them for a replacement government document. Hasn’t anyone told the embassy that there’s an emergency and it is in America’s interest to get as many of its citizens as possible out of the area so they don’t use scarce food and water.

All of Acme, Inc. is staffed by jerks, and it is of little surprise that the rest of the world dislikes the US.

John McKay at archy reports that Sir Arthur C. Clarke has survived the earthquake and tsunami in his home in Sri Lanka.

For some reason CNN, et al. felt it was more important to report on swimsuit models and other glitteroti than an internationally famous author and long time resident of Sri Lanka.

The death toll is sure to exceed 60,000 as more areas are reached. Millions are without homes and the infrastructure in the affected areas has been crushed. Some in the Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra would have been trapped by the earthquake and would have lacked the time or ability to flee from the water that washed over the island.

Geologists are reporting that the island of Sumatra was moved 100 feet to the southwest. Sumatra, at about 181,500 square miles is more than 130 times larger than Long Island, it is the sixth largest island in the world.

While the US still hasn’t committed to more than $35 million, it has at least sent two carrier groups to the area. The modern US aircraft carrier is a floating city as well as an airport: it has the ability to generate electricity and purified water; it has a fully equipped modern medical facility; it has a skilled work force; it has aircraft available for transportation and search and rescue. I would assume that the military suggested this response.

Bush is still cutting brush at Crawford, rather than making a public statement of concern. I suspect that whenever he leaves his ranch an army comes in to replenish the supply of brush, because I never notice much growing in West Texas. Of course, he may have taken another header while riding his bicycle and doesn’t want people to see him.

Of note: China has only offered $3.5 million to the recovery effort, while Canada has already offered an initial $4 million. China is more interested in threatening Taiwan than helping its other neighbors.

Sweden has reported that approximately 1,500 of its citizens are missing in the affected area. Thailand is a popular winter vacation for Swedes.

Aid cannot reach the area as fast as anyone would like. The dismemberment of the roads and rail network impedes progress. The loss of thousands of small boats and the fishing gear that was on them has cut off an available of source food. Any crops in the fields are destroyed and the land has been salted by the ocean water that washed over it.

The destruction is not over and it will be decades before there is anything like a return to normalcy.

Apparently stung by complaints about its Scrooge response to the disaster, the US has upped its package to $35 million dollars, still not as much as the inauguration budget.

The new figure is dwarfed by the billions of dollars given to the airlines for the shutdown after the September 11^th attacks, and the aid given to Florida during the hurricane season this year.

I’m also wondering how much China is going to ante up. It’s their continent and they made a few yuan over the last month on Christmas lights. On the other hand, some countries might be nervous about strings tied to Chinese aid.

Listening to the World Today on the BBC I heard officials from governments talking total piffle. They are claiming that there was no way of providing warning to their populations. That is interesting given that Japan, Hawaii, and the US West coast have a tsunami warning system in place. The equipment would have provided up to four hours of warning of the approaching tsunami.

A Cal Tech professor described the Sumatran fault line as a regular center of massive earthquakes every couple of centuries. The professor noted that the American warning systems weren’t installed until after massive damage from tsunamis in 1946 in Hawaii and then in 1964 in Northern California. He assumed that the governments around the Indian Ocean would now discover the existence of warning systems.

This AP story has a lot of the facts about warning systems. It has been reported on NPR and other outlets that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued warnings to the countries around the Indian Ocean, but they had no plan in place to use the information.

Excuse me, how about getting on every radio and television station and screaming: RUN AWAY FROM THE OCEAN! Oh, I’m sorry, that would cause panic, which would obviously be worse than a forty-foot wall of water slamming into your house.

The UN has called donor nations “stingy” in the amounts they are pledging for relief efforts. The US has announced it will commit $14 million, which is a lot of money. Okay, so maybe Acme, Inc. is spending $44 million on the coronation, and the Mess in Mesopotamia is costing $1.5 billion/day, but that $14 million would probably pay for three or four vacation trips to Crawford. As CNN keeps pointing out in its story, only 3 dozen non-Asians have died, and Oprah’s interior decorator survived, and you have to keep things in perspective.

My perspective would be that the US has a major “hearts and minds” problem at the moment; many of the areas hit are Muslim; a generous demonstration of American goodwill and assistance couldn’t hurt.