Even though this is technically a “state visit” the BBC reports it will be carbon neutral:

The tour is the Queen’s first carbon-offset state visit, where a donation is made to an environmental charity to offset the plane journeys made by the royal party.

I wonder if anyone has thought of having the Shrubbery show a little concern for the planet by either parking Air Force One, or buying carbon offsets when he goes traipsing around the country for no understandable reason.

The Trap/Neuter/Release program over in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is a bit overwhelmed, possibly from all of the cats brought into the area after Katrina. If you have some spare change the good folks at Cat Haven would appreciate any help they can get.

If you are lucky enough that it makes a difference, any donation is tax deductible.

Via CNet, Reuters is reporting that Dell joins Microsoft, Novell in Linux pact.

Microsoft said on Monday Dell had joined a business collaboration it had with Novell to allow open-source Linux software to work with Windows.

[snip]

Under the latest agreement, Dell will purchase Suse Linux Enterprise Server certificates, Microsoft said. Suse Linux is Novell’s operating system.

Dell will also establish a services and marketing program to migrate existing Linux users who are not Dell Linux customers to Suse Linux, Microsoft said.

“Linux users who are not Dell Linux customers” is an interesting limitation given that Dell announced on May 1^st that it would be supplying Ubuntu Linux on its systems. This must be something that Microsoft is doing and using Windows licensing to encourage Dell to go along, because supporting and promoting a version of Linux different than your corporate choice doesn’t make much sense otherwise.

I complain about it every hurricane season and now it is showing up in “tornado alley” as 60% of the Kansas National Guard ‘s equipment is in Iraq, which is slowing the response to the Greenburg disaster.

Whenever there is a major weather incident I check Dr. Jeff Masters who blogs over at Weather Underground. Dr. Masters reports 68 people have died in tornadoes this year, two more than all of last year.

He also links to The Wichita Eagle aerial photographs of the Greenburg damage. This what an EF5 tornado, with winds > 200mph, does to an area. There isn’t a leaf left on any of the trees, and the Wicked Witch getting a house dropped on her is less fantasy than you thought.

If you are a real weather fanatic, Dr. Masters also has some of the imaging of the storm from instruments. This is what you don’t want to see on your local Doppler radar images.