Posts from — May 2011

The CBC reports on flooding in Quebec: Richelieu flood victims promised federal help

Federal Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis has promised federal support for flood victims while touring the Richelieu River valley, hours after the province handed out $770,000 to 234 families.

He arrived late morning for a personal helicopter tour of the area, where 3,000 homes — including 500 farms — have been flooded.

Dr. Jeff Masters notes this is part of the flooding around Lake Champlain that borders on New York, Vermont, and Quebec. The cause is record snowfall, followed by record rainfall while the snow is melting.

On Guard

Don’t move.

[Editor: Tonto is on watch outside my Mother’s kitchen door. She has one or more kittens somewhere in the vicinity, as she has reappeared at the evening feeding after an absence. She is watching me and then watching an azalea, so I assume the litter is in the bushes.]

Friday Ark

Once again the usual suspects are back on the talk shows proclaiming that torture works and the Shrubbery was responsible for finding bin Laden.

The standard hypothetical for justifying torture is the ticking time bomb. The claimed piece of information was the nom de guerre of a courier that bin Laden trusted, al Kuwaiti. Bin Laden was located 8 years later. Bombs use clocks, not calendars.

When information takes years to be useful, time is not a major concern in the process. In this case, al Kuwaiti would lead people to look for someone with ties to Kuwait, not a Pakistani Pashtun who happened to have been born in Kuwait, probably because his father was working there at the time.

From the beginning, torture has been used to coerce confessions, not to provide useful information.

Another problem with torture is the reality that it reduces the chance of the enemy surrendering. If the enemy believe they will be tortured or killed, they will continue to fight even after the point when it is obvious they will lose.

On April 30^th I wrote about Vladimir Putin giving the Japanese hell for their handling of the Fukushima nuclear problems.

In that piece I asked: “How’s that plan to deal with the deteriorating nuclear-powered naval vessels going, or are you just going to let them continue to rust out and pollute the Arctic waters?”

Guess what, I got an answer: from Reuters via the ABC Russian icebreaker springs nuclear leak

Russia has launched an urgent rescue mission after one its its atom-powered icebreakers developed a nuclear leak in the frozen seas of the Arctic and was forced to abandon its mission.

The Rosatomflot nuclear fleet said in a statement that “insignificant increase in activity” had been reported on board its Taimyr icebreaker.

But the incident was serious enough to force the mammoth vessel to abandon its mission and try to track its way back to port in the north-west city of Murmansk.

“What we are most concerned about right now is movement along the waterways,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted top Rosatomflot official Andrei Smirnov as saying.

The fleet official said another icebreaker was being dispatched to the region to help the vessel’s journey back to port.
…
[Read more →]

Via Dr. Jeff Masters, The National Weather Service in Jackson, Mississippi has up a site, Historic Mississippi River Flooding that provides pretty grim reading if you live anywhere near the Mississippi.

With all of the improvements since 1927, this year is on track to produce flood crests that are higher in some areas. The frontal system that produced the record number number of tornadoes, also produced record rainfall that is flowing into rivers with the melt from the record snowfall this winter.

This is, hopefully, a 500-year flood, and not an every-other-year-because-of-climate-change event.

The Miami Herald reports that Wasserman Schultz wins DNC job.

There was a time when I would have been a very happy man to have read that. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is from Broward County in South Florida, and I have exchanged messages with her since 2000, starting when she was in the Florida legislature. I was very happy when she ran for Congress and won, because she is an unbelievably hard-working individual who strives to do the right thing.

Then she drank Obamaid, and things have changed. She is a true-blue and totally committed supporter of Zero, and cannot be dissuaded. She is already talking about helping Obama get reelected, when it is up the Democratic Party to select their candidate for the 2012 election. It probably will be Obama, because the Democratic Party is suicidal at the moment, but the chair of the DNC is not supposed to back candidates for any position until after they are officially selected.

As he has shown since he refused to permit the last US veteran of World War I, Frank Buckles, to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda before his burial at Arlington, John Boehner has consistently shown a total lack of respect for the “norms” of polite society in Washington.

That was followed by his refusal to host a Cinco de Mayo celebration at the Capitol, despite the bi-partisan tradition of doing so.

And now, the House is refusing to issue the normal and traditional resolution praising the SEAL mission.

It is interesting how readily “conservatives” cast aside the small pieces of tradition.

Wikipedia usually has to “lock” its Cinco de Mayo page. I suspect it may be related to the sudden appearance of sites opposing the celebration of this semi-holiday and others who have a hissy fit about any Mexican holiday being celebrated in the US.

In Mexico Cinco de Mayo or Batalla de Puebla, is only a really big celebration in the state of Puebla, where the battle took place.

The Mexican army won the Batalla de Puebla on May the 5^th, 1862, but the French went on to Mexico City in 1863 after receiving reinforcements and installed Emperor Maximilian.

It has the status of St. Patrick’s Day in the US, an excuse to eat different food, and drink different booze, and be obnoxious show an interest in other cultures.

Margaritas, tacos, and the destruction of piñatas, that’s what it is really about, although some people have other interpretations.

The ABC reports on the end of era Last male WWI veteran dies

The man believed to have been the last living male veteran of World War I has died in Perth aged 110.

British-born Claude Choules served in the Royal Navy during World War I and witnessed the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow.

Mr Choules was born in 1901 and signed up for the Great War at just 14 years of age.

After the war, he moved to Perth and joined the Australian Navy, working as a demolition officer at the Fremantle Harbour during World War II.

Mr Choules died in his sleep in a Perth nursing home overnight.

The only other surviving WWI veteran is believed to be Britain’s Florence Green, who served with the Royal Air Force in a non-combat role and is now 110 years old.

Both World Wars, but in two different Navies. The amazing things that Mr. Choules saw in his lifetime – airplanes, radio, television, computers, space flight … Most of what people would consider essential today, either did not exist when he was born, or was available only to the extremely wealthy.

In a few hours the polls will open for Referendum on the voting system for the UK Parliament.

The polls trend towards the rejection of the referendum, which is too bad. I think it would be nice if everyone could use the ‘alternative vote’ system in the general election, and not just the major parties when they select their leaders. If it is good enough to select the Prime Minister, it should work for the other members of Parliament.

Then again, I believe in a lot of weird things like: democracy, capitalism, and the US Constitution, so what do I know.

The CBC reports on prominent losers: Lawrence Cannon [Conservative minister of foreign affairs], Gilles Duceppe [Bloc Québécois leader], and Michael Ignatieff [Liberal leader]. In better news, Elizabeth May, Green Party leader, can now add MP [Member of Parliament] after her OC [Officer of the Order of Canada] and can’t be refused entrance to any election debates. [Assuming the Conservatives don’t eliminate elections.]

Jack Layton and the New Democratic Party are now the official opposition.

Confirmed wins: Number of seats and [Percentage of total vote]

Conservatives :
167 [39.62%]

New Democratic Party :
102 [30.62%]

Liberals :
34 [18.91%]

Bloc Québécois :
4 [6.05%]

Greens :
1 [3.91%]

[Read more →]

Dr. Jeff Masters posted on the Mississippi – Ohio flood situation. He showed the results of the actions by the Corps of Engineers last night, which is a major decrease in the height of the crests on the rivers.

In passing almost, he explained that what the Corps did, wasn’t really blowing up the levee, but removing the plug across the Birds Point-New Madrid Spillway. The segment of the system that was removed, was built with removal in mind, the holes for the explosives were part of the construction. The Corps simply removed the caps over the holes and packed the explosives in for a pre-designed removal of the segment. The other side was a concrete spillway to forestall erosion if the “plug” was removed.

When the segment was built, it was obvious what could happen, and the people on the other side had to be aware of it. They were safe from flooding most of the time, but they were in a designated flood plain that was part of the overall plan for the river. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Missouri, as it was done in 1937 for the same reason.

There is more rain today.

The BBC reports that Air France cockpit voice recorder recovered

The cockpit voice recorder from an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic two years ago has been found, French investigators have said.

The discovery comes two days after the airliner’s flight data recorder was also retrieved from the ocean.

Both recorders are said to be in good physical condition.

The Airbus A330 was flying from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Paris when it went down on 1 June 2009, killing all 228 people on board.

“We can now hope to find out what truly happened within the next three weeks,” French Transport Minister Thierry Mariani told French radio.

Earlier the Flight Data Recorder was located, so, if they still function, the two devices should indicate what the aircraft was reporting to the instruments in the cockpit, and what the aircrew were saying about those readings.

We know that the aircraft encountered severe weather over the Atlantic, but we don’t know why it went down.

The results at 10:30PM CDT lead me to believe that Canada is about to be a two-party country, and the Liberals and Bloc Québécois have lost their relevance. It also looks like the Conservatives will get a majority for the first time under Harper.

Confirmed wins: [Update at Midnight CDT seats and percentage of total vote]

Conservatives :
162 [39.59%]

New Democratic Party :
98 [30.71%]

Liberals :
31 [18.85%]

Bloc Québécois :
3 [6.14%]

Greens :
1 [3.84%]

It takes 155 seats for a majority.