Posts from — August 2009

The CBC reports on evacuations in Fintry and Lillooet.

The Terrace Mountain fire near Okanagan Lake has burned 7520 hectares [29 square miles] and the winds are making it a threat to Fintry. Although the fire was 90% contained, the winds have pushed it in a new direction.

To the southwest the Mount McLean fire is encroaching on Lillooet and required evacuations there. The fire has consumed about 2650 hectares [10 square miles]. It is still uncontained because of the terrain.

The BC forest service dealing with 88 active wildfires at at the moment, with priority given to those near the settled areas of the province.

The CBC says “There have been almost 2,100 fires so far this season, scorching about 550 square kilometres [212 square miles] of forest. The vast majority were caused by lightning.”

The CBC Fire Map. Despite what the text at the top says about when it was updated, it doesn’t ever seem to be more than a day late, and new fires are usually posted within hours. I think they ignore the date at the top and concentrate on putting the fires on the map.

Time magazine has picked up on Bill Gates’s solution for hurricanes: cooling the sea surface.

The problems with this solution, as are patiently explained by Dr. Jeff Masters, an individual who actually knows something about tropical weather, are manifold, but can be condensed to the same major problem with everything Gates has ever done: it doesn’t scale.

What may look like a good idea in the lab, can be totally worthless in the real world. What Gates thinks is a great new idea already occurs naturally. Powerful hurricanes are immensely effective pumps, and they naturally create upwelling, bringing cooler water to the surface. If two hurricanes follow the same path within a week of each other, the second will be much weaker because of the cooler sea surface temperatures. Hurricanes have the energy of nuclear weapons, which is why they can do this. The puny fleet Gates envisions won’t impress the Gulf of Mexico, much less the Atlantic, and where are you going to find the people to man a ship that will be intentionally steaming into hurricanes? Sailors tend to be more reality based than the corporate managers who buy Microsoft products.

The BBC reports on a hate crime in Israel: Gay Israelis rally after shooting

Hundreds of Israelis have joined a rally organised by the gay community after shootings at a gay youth centre.

Two people died and at least 11 were hurt when the gunman opened fire at the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Association before fleeing.

The city’s Mayor, Ron Huldai, said the motive was unclear and police declined to comment except to say a Palestinian link was not suspected.

But the protesters condemned the attack as Israel’s worst hate crime.

Actually, other sources are reporting that the police are saying it was a criminal act and not terrorism, but given that the Israelis label anything the Palestinians do as terrorism and anything that civilian Israelis do as crime, saying that there is no link to Palestinians is the equivalent of saying it wasn’t terrorism to the Israeli government. Exactly how some individual in a ninja outfit coming in to a club and indiscriminately shooting people isn’t an act of terrorism, is unclear to me. It looked to me like the point of the attack was to terrorize people.

Of course, if the suspect is identified as a member of one of the ultra-othrodox groups, the charge will be reduced to disturbing the peace. They certainly don’t charge them with assault when they gather in mobs and stone people they feel are violating some rule or another that only they believe in.

Fundamentalists are dangerous, no matter what book they quote from, and they all endorse their own brand of terrorism to impose their views on others.

Even tropical islands are feeling the effects of climate change, as the BBC reports: Fires rage across Canary island

A huge forest fire is out of control on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, forcing the evacuation of up to 4,000 people, including tourists.

Military aircraft are fighting the flames but firefighters have been pulled back from the worst-hit areas.

Officials said they were “cautiously optimistic” that cooler weather conditions could enable firefighters to control the fire by nightfall.

The government has promised to help those affected by the fires.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on a visit to La Palma that an “appropriate decree regarding aid” would be approved at the next cabinet meeting on 13 August.

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The BBC reports on the Gitmo military tribunals Iranian show trials: Torture claim against Iran trial

Defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi says opposition detainees put on trial have been subjected to “medieval torture”.

He denounced the trials, which started on Saturday, as fraudulent and said the prisoners had been forced to confess.

Earlier, ex-President Mohammad Khatami said the hearings were “show trials” that would harm the establishment.

There is no significance difference between what the Iranians are doing in Tehran, and what the US is continuing to do in Guantanamo. Coerced testimony is no better in English than it is in Farsi.

Some of the advocacy groups for the visually impaired community have noted that when running on the battery alone, the hybrids, like the Prius, don’t make any sound, and are a danger for their members. This problem would also be a feature of the all electric vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf, that are in the pipeline.

Someone with the time needs to sample a 426 hemi and burn those samples onto a PROM and build a player that is controlled by the accelerator. A couple of water-proof speakers, front and rear, and the problem is resolved. It will also make the vehicles easier to sell to the NASCAR crowd.

You could sample other cars, like the Ferrari, or an actual current NASCAR engine, and market them as accessories [with appropriate decals].

Of course, you could do some variation on the playing card flipping against the spokes that was done on bicycles, but that would be pretty lame.

The CBC outlook isn’t promising for British Columbia: Lillooet wildfire less than 1 kilometre from town

A wildfire burning near Lillooet, B.C., continued to grow in size Friday night, and officials said Saturday morning the blaze was less than one kilometre from the town.

Crews braced themselves for an intense battle as the fire on Mount McLean, southwest of Lillooet, nearly tripled in size from an estimated 1,000 hectares last Monday to about 2,600 hectares [10 square miles] on Saturday.

Officials said the blaze near the southwest Interior town, about 180 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, was in danger of growing even larger given the tinder-dry conditions and thunderstorms in the forecast for Saturday afternoon.

“The fire is burning on steep slopes above Lillooet and west of Lillooet in very, very dry conditions,” said fire information officer Gary Horley.

“The area is under an extreme drought and fuels are critically dry and easily combustible,” he said.
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As Elayne says White Rabbit.

First off, I would like to remind people that on January 30^th, 2008, before he was the nominee, I stated, flat out, that Barack Obama was a moderate to conservative Republican based on his limited voting record as a US Senator, and his personal choice of Joe LIEberman as his mentor in the Senate. The nominal D after his name was irrelevant.

The votes he later made in the Senate on FISA and other issues simply confirmed it, but few “liberals” wanted to hear criticisms of Obama. I’m a little tired of listening to people trying to explain away the actions of the Obama administration as some “ineffable plan”, it isn’t even involved enough to be a cunning plan

“We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.” — Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Ockham’s razor is useful beyond the scientific world. Everything he has done is readily explained by the fact that his administration is pretty much what would have happened if Mitt Romney had won. In case you missed it, Obama is pushing Romney’s health insurance proposal. Stop looking for a liberal or progressive President, you didn’t vote for one. His votes in the Senate were more conservative than Hillary Clinton’s. If you wanted a liberal, Kucinich was running.

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From your source of all things croc [no, not the stupid plastic shoes], the ABC, we have: Rogue croc sparks panic aboard Egypt flight.

Yes, a real live crocodile moving about the cabin causing mayhem, which is pretty good a foot long baby reptile. Nice security check on that airline.