Posts from — July 2005

If you’re sitting there bored, hit the link to skippy the bush kangaroo, and help him out and then do it again, because if you are the “megahit” there could be fabulous prizes².

1. Jeralyn of TalkLeft coined that term.

2. Those are like fabulous animals and 0%/no fee credit cards.

When the hurricane takes down the tower of the only radio station worth listening to in the area, and the cable, telephone, power, etc. are off you have time on your hands waiting for the screaming winds to stop.

So I read the label [that’s boredom] for this 16.9 fluid ounce [1.05 pint, 500 milliliter] bottle of “Aquafina – pure water – perfect taste” that was bottled “under the authority of PepsiCo, Inc.”.

The “Nutrition Facts” tell me the bottle contains nothing: no calories, fat, sodium, carbohydrates, or protein.

I’m told to store this in “a cool place”, and the cap has an expiration date of “Jun2507”.

The “perfect taste” for water is nothing: it is a tasteless, odorless, colorless liquid. Water is definitely water from 33° to 211° Fahrenheit [1° to 99° Centigrade] and is not known to spoil.

This could be from anywhere: a spring, lake, pond, well, and it is purified by reverse osmosis, a filtering process. How much “authority” does it take to turn on a valve and check to ensure you have H₂O after the filter.

At least with a SCUBA tank, you know they have to compress the air.

[Edit: If you are wondering why this is my first post, it is after getting access to the media following 24 hours of being cut off, I find it is more relevant to humanity than anything they are reporting. These people just don’t understand; they have no sense of values.]

Dennis will apparently come ashore in Pensacola at about 2PM this afternoon as a minimal Category 4 or maximum Category 3 hurricane with constant winds of approximately 140 MPH. This storm is much tighter than Ivan was, so the winds in Cinco Bayou my actually be lower than Ivan and because Dennis is moving faster than Ivan, they hurricane winds may only last 6 hours, instead of the 13 hours of Ivan.

US 98 which runs on Okaloosa Island [a barrier island] is just about cut again and all of the local bridges are closed.

Just another day in paradise with a major hurricane every ten months. Oh, did I mention the series of tropical waves that are coming into the Caribbean? Doesn’t look like there will be much rest until December 1st.

When all of the National Guard personnel showed up with their M-16s at the airport, I was concerned that there would be an accident.

Just wondering.

The Weather Channel reports –

Four Atlantic weather systems — Arlene, Bret, Cindy and Dennis — reached Tropical Storm status by July 5, the earliest for so many named storms in recorded history. Only three major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher) have hit the U.S. coast in July in the past 100 years. When the maximum sustained winds in Hurricane Dennis peaked at 150 mph this past morning, Dennis officially became the strongest July Atlantic Basin hurricane on record and the strongest Atlantic hurricane this early in hurricane season.

This page contains some of my thoughts, which need some upgrading since Ivan. We are doing a lot of things earlier in the process but have been blind-sided by Tropical Storm Cindy. The gasoline moves from the refineries to the tank farms by barge, and the barges were hauled out of the Gulf for Cindy. Locally we ran out of gasoline last night, so if you didn’t get it you are out of luck.

I’m at 30° 25′ 20″ North / 86° 36′ 37″ West if you’re playing with your tracking chart at home. As things stand now, Dennis looks like it is going to hit just East of Pensacola on Sunday afternoon.

One of the few local media outlets that manage to stay on the air is the NPR station at the campus of the University of West Florida in Pensacola. WUWF has a live audio feed, which unfortunately uses the Windows Media player.

I’ve been there and done that, but after these things leave the exciting part begins: amateurs with chain saws.

I have back-up systems that I will use if the phone lines work, but there is no guarantee. I hang around to help others and keep track of things. There are people who have no choice but to stay and I can help them.

A warning: I have no ethical problems with shooting looters or sightseers and the state of Florida has just made it legal.

[™ Kevin Drum]

Ringo Has A New Toy

Surrender or die white thing!

[Edit: It was a nearly empty roll that was being used to clean glasses before she discovered it.]

Friday Ark

British Red Cross

London is my second favorite city in the world. I loved being able to move around on the Underground, and the top of a double decker bus is a great way to make a quick tour.

It is more of a collection of small towns than a monolithic entity, so you can discover a totally different place without ever leaving behind the convenience of the Tube. While I recognize it might be an annoying place to live and work, it is a wonderful place to be a visitor.

London 07/07/2005

George Galloway: I told you so

Britain has one of, if not the best anti-terrorism effort in the world. They have had years of experience combating the IRA. Spain had years of experience combating ETA. The US still isn’t worth spit, and our government hasn’t done anything effective to improve the situation.

While all of the resources were being used to protect the G8, the terrorists struck London.

John Maywether told a growing crowd that Aruba is not an island of criminals. “We have 96 (prison) cells and 53 percent of them are occupied by non-Arubans,” he said.

The officials went looking for a missing tourist, not a victim of foul play. Her friends were of little help and it took some work to find the last people to see the woman.

They have a legal system and they are not about to violate it because the mother of the missing woman can get on television in the United States. Aruban officials are not going to cede authority to the FBI, and American law enforcement has no power on the island.

As it stands now they have a missing person case. That isn’t a crime, and after all of the exposure of the “runaway bride” people in the rest of the world might think that this is something young American women do frequently.

As I live in a resort area that used to be frequented by college students on “Spring Break”, I know that teenage drunks do a lot of really stupid things. As the stupidity has resulted in deaths, our area actively discourages college students, making it very difficult for them to rent rooms and deploying extra officers to discourage underage drinking.

I feel sorry for the woman’s parents, but without some proof of a crime, the Arubans can’t go much further.

His article points to an op-ed piece by William S. Lind: Doing It Right about a California National Guard unit that is keeping the peace in a small area of Iraq by acting like police officers, not soldiers.

I was in both the military and law enforcement: the rules of engagement are very different. If you don’t act like the military when taking a country, you die. If you don’t act like a police officer when you occupy a country, a lot of civilians will die before you are killed.

The role of the police officer in society is to keep the peace. Whenever possible a police officer will try to calm down a situation and not instantly respond with violence. Soldiers are trained to respond to any perceived threat with violence, not de-escalation.

We have too few soldiers, and they have the wrong skills.

Looks like a busy week for the flight crews of the ten WC-130s of 53^rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron [USAFR], 403^rd Wing, Keesler AFB, Biloxi, Mississippi.

Tropical Storm Cindy will make landfall in the next few hours with a lot of rain, and hopefully the pumps in the “Big Easy” can deal with it. Cindy is on course to go across the Deep South.

At the beginning of next week, the storm that will probably be Hurricane Dennis will be selecting a victim to assault.

If you would like to watch our little chunks of weather, I use the Weather Underground, which provides me with all of the data my taxes pay NOAA to gather and crunch.

FEMA wants Floridians to return $27 million in aid “overpayments” based on a review of the money that they handed out before the 2004 election. This does not include the money that FEMA handed out in Miami-Dade county; that Florida Senator Nelson pointed out was not actually struck by a hurricane.

FEMA has obstructed debris clean up by changing the rules and imposing extremely short time periods, and none of the state’s Republican politicians has mentioned that everything changed after the election.

After the voters in Hamden, Massachusetts refused to raise their property taxes to cover costs, the town has slashed services and closed the local library. The library had remained open during two world wars and the Depression, but it was unable to survive the current tax structure.

As the Federal government has transferred costs to the states, the states have transferred costs down to the local governments. If the local governments are unable to fund the costs of the programs, the programs have to be cut. As many programs are funded by matching funds, these cuts are often much larger than they appear on the local budget.

The basic story line: the tax breaks and give-aways that states and cities keep telling people will attract businesses are not as important as an educated workforce and the cost of healthcare.

Remember: with tens of millions of Americans without coverage the US spends twice as much per person for healthcare with worse results than other industrialized countries.

Sleep researchers are trying to figure this out: No shut-eye for newborn dolphins, orcas.

Baby dolphins and orcas [killer whales] are awake and swimming full time for weeks after their birth, which contrasts with the pattern for all other mammals.

Current guesses are that the behavior protects them from predators, maintains their body temperature until they can put on body fat, and gives them time to develop their internal flotation sac.

In case you were wondering how to create your own: The scientific flash behind the fireworks.

Deep Impact probe hits comet. Just to rub a little salt into the wounds of the missile defense crew: nyah, nyah, nyah – other people can do it.

Vimy arrives safely in Ireland:

Two American adventurers have flown a Vickers Vimy biplane replica across the Atlantic, re-creating the first non-stop transatlantic flight, made in 1919.

Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, 60, and co-pilot Mark Rebholz, 52, landed on the eighth hole on a golf course in Clifden, Ireland, on Sunday about 18 hours and 15 minutes after taking off from St. John’s on Saturday evening.

Fossett does these things, which is nice, but it would be better if he would spend his money on something that mattered more than another stunt. He could have sent a number of kids through college for what this cost and it had already been done 84 years ago.