Posts from — June 2011

The firefighters’ efforts are showing definite effects, as the rate of spread of the fire is slowing. Containment is now at 33%, but with Red Flag conditions yesterday, the growth in the fire was a modest 8,000 acres, showing the efforts are paying off in reducing the spread.

Only rain over the area is going to put this fire out, even after it is 100% contained, and it may well take the winter snows.

Information from the current Wallow Fire InciWeb Page

• Date Started: 5/29/2011
• Location: Apache, Navajo, Graham, and Greenlee Counties, San Carlos and White Mountain Apache Reservations, Arizona; Catron County, New Mexico
• Cause: Human – under investigation
• Size: 495,016 acres [773 miles² 2003 km²] based on infrared data
• Percent Contained: 33%
• Injuries to Date: 10
• Residences: 2,714 threatened; 32 destroyed; 5 damaged
• Commercial Property: 473 threatened; 4 destroyed
• Outbuildings: 1,216 threatened; 36 destroyed; 1 damaged
• Other: 1 truck destroyed
• Number of Personnel: Approximately 4,418 including 21 hotshot crews and 69 hand crews
• Equipment: 31 dozers, 284 engines, 75 watertenders
• Aircraft: 15 helicopters, 5 air tankers, DC-10
• Incident Commander: Jim Loach, Area Command Team 3

[Read more →]

What Are The Odds?

Can I scare him?

[Editor: Lucrezia is about to show her mean streak. Having finished her meal she prepares to spook Specialist Underhouse from his. And she wonders why the other cats don’t like her.]

Friday Ark

Via CBS Alain Sherter shares some ‘conventional wisdom’ – Domino Theory: Greece’s Default Could Topple Global Economy

Look out, below: Greece is on the brink of defaulting on its debt. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is making what looks like a last-ditch effort to convince the country to accept another round of deep spending cuts in exchange for a bailout by the other eurozone nations. If he fails — a real possibility given the level of public anger over the latest austerity measures — all bets are off.

When panic is in the air, it’s important not to overstate the risks. Many investors remain sanguine that Greece will avoid a full-blown sovereign debt crisis, or at least contain the damage if the nation is forced into restructuring. For instance, U.S. money-market funds have been preparing for catastrophe in Europe in recent weeks by moving their money out of eurozone banks into Scandinavian institutions.

Greece owes about $485 billion [$65 billion immediately], so what’s the panic? Well, when the geniuses in the West bailed out the banks a couple of years ago, they left the same group of criminal incompetents in charge of the financial system, instead of throwing them in prison for fraud. Since nothing bad happened to them personally, they resumed their old over-leveraged patterns which will blow up over even small events, like the Greek default.

If they had thrown bankers in jail and told bondholders to stuff it, like Iceland did, they would be able to borrow money at 2%, like Iceland can. When they bail out the banks and implement austerity, like Ireland did, they have to pay over 6%.

The austerity in Greece is about bailing out French and German banks that are over-leveraged. The Greeks are being ordered to impoverish themselves to pay for the bad decisions of those banks. The biggest problem for the eurozone is that the Greeks have figured that out.

The CBC reports on Alberta’s largest wildfire on record, the Richardson Fire

The biggest wildfire Alberta firefighters have ever faced continues to rage out of control in the province’s northeast.

The Richardson backcountry fire, located about 60 kilometres [38 miles] north of Fort McMurray, started on May 15 — the same day as the Slave Lake wildfire that destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses.

The Richardson fire is now similar in size to Prince Edward Island, having scorched 570,000 hectares [1,409,000 acres 2201 miles²] of muskeg and bush.

Almost 700 firefighters battling the massive blaze were joined by 40 more, who arrived from Mexico Sunday night.

The Wallow Fire is 197,100 hectares.

Muskeg is a form of peat bog, so this will be a smoldering, slow growing fire that is hard to extinguish and extremely smokey.

A big jump in containment to 29% yesterday, which will hopefully reduce the effect of the Red Flag conditions of today and tomorrow. They are speaking to two individuals whose campfire may have been the initial source of fire. While this fire is larger than the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, it has not destroyed the hundreds of houses that were lost in 2002.

Those whose homes were spared in the area need to buy flood insurance as soon as possible, because when the rains do come, flooding and landslides are almost guaranteed with the denuded hills. There is a waiting period before the insurance takes effect, and there is no way of knowing when the rains will arrive.

Information from the current Wallow Fire InciWeb Page

• Date Started: 5/29/2011
• Location: Apache, Navajo, Graham, and Greenlee Counties, San Carlos and White Mountain Apache Reservations, Arizona; Catron County, New Mexico
• Cause: Human – under investigation
• Size: 487,016 acres [761 miles² 1971 km²] based on infrared data
• Percent Contained: 29%
• Injuries to Date: 8
• Residences: 2,714 threatened; 32 destroyed; 5 damaged
• Commercial Property: 473 threatened; 4 destroyed
• Outbuildings: 1,216 threatened; 36 destroyed; 1 damaged
• Other: 1 truck destroyed
• Number of Personnel: Approximately 4,571 including 20 hotshot crews and 72 hand crews
• Equipment: 22 dozers, 312 engines, 75 watertenders
• Aircraft: 15 helicopters, 5 air tankers, DC-10
• Incident Commander: Jim Loach, Area Command Team 3

[Read more →]

This object, labeled RCW 120, is one of the latest images from the Spitzer Space Telescope which operates in the infrared range, below the visible light range. All you would see through an optical telescope is black. This effect is caused by O-type stars, the most massive known type of star.

[Or, it might be the home of the Guardians of the Universe, and source of the Green Lantern’s power ring, if you are into that sort of thing.]

With a minimal amount of assistance from the weather to make backburning possible, firefighters can see the shape of the tunnel, if not quite the light at the end. As long as there is no serious wind event to blow the smoldering embers back to life, the fire is being slowly surrounded and contained.

Update – no help from the weather:

The National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning for Thursday and Friday. Fire crews on the Wallow Fire are preparing for strong winds that will challenge containment lines.

The National Weather Service has upgraded the Fire Weather Watch to a RED FLAG WARNING in effect from 11 AM to 8 PM MST Thursday and Friday for strong winds and low relative humidities.

According to the Service critical fire weather conditions can be expected from late morning through early evening on both Thursday and Friday. Winds will be from the southwest 15 to 25 mph with gusts of 35 to 45 mph. Afternoon minimum relative humidities will range from 5 to 12 percent.

Information from the current Wallow Fire InciWeb Page

• Date Started: 5/29/2011
• Location: Apache, Navajo, Graham, and Greenlee Counties, San Carlos and White Mountain Apache Reservations, Arizona; Catron County, New Mexico
• Cause: Human – under investigation
• Size: 478,452 acres [748 miles² 1936 km²] based on infrared data
• Percent Contained: 20%
• Injuries to Date: 7
• Residences: 2,714 threatened; 32 destroyed; 5 damaged
• Commercial Property: 473 threatened; 4 destroyed
• Outbuildings: 1,216 threatened; 36 destroyed; 1 damaged
• Other: 1 truck destroyed
• Number of Personnel: Approximately 4,656 including 22 hotshot crews and 72 hand crews
• Equipment: 19 dozers, 315 engines, 78 watertenders
• Aircraft: 25 helicopters, 5 air tankers, DC-10
• Incident Commander: Jim Loach, Area Command Team 3

[Read more →]

John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou in the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June, 1215, signed the Great Charter in the presence of assorted heavily armed peers of the realm, who assured him it was the right thing to do.

The British Library has pictures of the Magna Carta available, and Wikipedia has a nice discussion of the document.

The Magna Carta of 1297 is permanently residing in the US National Archives.

The Avalon Project’s translation of the 1215 version with an index and definitions.

John abided by the charter for several months, before he returned to business as normal, but the principle was established – no one is above the law.

Via Adrastos at First Draft –

Roger Ebert on Twitter: “Seven GOP Presidential hopefuls debate tonight; party still searching for Snow White.”

CNN must be really hurting for content to carry this now.

A heads up on visiting Balloon Juice – my ESET virus software just had a hissy fit over something in a .jpg file on the site, and told me to leave immediately. I went there from Atrios on a link about Brooks.

It is the first time that ESET has reacted to a site like that so I didn’t take the time to get the entire name, I left. I would note that Firefox told me that there was something on the site that required an additional plug-in, which may or may not be related. ESET recognized the specific type of threat, so it is something in the virus data base, not just a “bad feeling” caution that it sometimes issues when encountering something new.

Also, Java popped up in my tray, so something was attempting to run more than a script.

A number of people have been posting about the absurdity of the White House attempting to save money by eliminating web sites, like FiddlinForesters.gov [already gone] and DesertTortoise.gov.

I would like to point out that most people are wildly overestimating the potential savings of these actions by assuming those sites are paying commercial rates for domain registration. The registrar for the .gov Top Level Domain is the General Services Administration, not GoDaddy or Network Solutions. You have to be in the Federal government to register a site as .gov, .fed.us, and some others. The cost is the time to fill out the paperwork, and the storage and bandwidth charge on the .gov root server. The hosting costs for a .gov website are the costs of storage and bandwidth use, which in the case of the now gone FiddlinForesters.gov probably didn’t make it to a dollar in the 5+ years of its existence.

Bottom line – Zero and his faithful companion, Slow Joe, are literally nickel and dime-ing in this misdirected effort.

Oh, yes, given that the Department of Defense has been a major cause of the near extinction of the Mojave Desert Tortoise, the web site might be part of a court settlement with environmental groups over the matter, so I wouldn’t be too quick to pull the plug. It is a joint site of the DoD and the Fish and Wildlife Service with links to various groups concerned with the well-being of the tortoise.

Wasn’t Zero supposed to be technology aware?

Via Mustang Bobby.

While the firefighters have managed to achieve 18% containment, the fire has grown into the largest wildfire on record for the state of Arizona, taking the top spot from the Rodeo-Chediski Fire of 2002.

Information from the current Wallow Fire InciWeb Page

• Date Started: 5/29/2011
• Location: Apache, Navajo, Graham, and Greenlee Counties, San Carlos and White Mountain Apache Reservations, Arizona; Catron County, New Mexico
• Cause: Human – under investigation
• Size: 469,407 acres [733 miles² 1900 km²] based on infrared data
• Percent Contained: 18%
• Injuries to Date: 7
• Residences: 2,714 threatened; 32 destroyed; 5 damaged
• Commercial Property: 473 threatened; 4 destroyed
• Outbuildings: 1,216 threatened; 36 destroyed; 1 damaged
• Other: 1 truck destroyed
• Number of Personnel: Approximately 4,734 including 24 hotshot crews and 77 hand crews
• Equipment: 20 dozers, 333 engines, 73 watertenders
• Aircraft: 20 helicopters, 5 air tankers, DC-10
• Incident Commander: Jim Loach, Area Command Team 3

[Read more →]