Posts from — June 2011

Position: 13.8N 102.4W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [305°] near 8 mph [13 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 80 mph [130 kph].
Wind Gusts: 100 mph [160 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 85 miles [140 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 25 miles [ 40 km].
Minimum central pressure: 987 mb ↓.

Currently about 275 miles [440 km] South of Zihuatanejo, Mexico.

Mexico has cancelled the Tropical Storm Warning.

Adrian became a hurricane at 7PM CDT. The major models show a turn towards the North later on their tracks but there is little agreement on the timing.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Lilian Jackson Braun, the author of the The Cat Who … mystery novels died on Saturday at age 97.

While the later books were not as involved as her earlier work, and tended to be formulaic, they were a comfortable light read. After a while you wondered by anyone would hang around the main characters, as murder always struck, a bit like the Jessica Fletcher character in the old television series, Murder She Wrote.

I freely admit to owning the entire series, as they became a habit.

The BBC reports that the More residents flee as Arizona Wallow fire grows. They have a map [they are a real news site, so of course they include a map] to locate the area – the eastern border with New Mexico about halfway up.

For more details [and a local area map] you go to the InciWeb Wallow Fire page

Incident Overview

• Date Started: 5/29/2011
• Number of Personnel: Approximately 2,140 including 27 hotshot crews and 29 handcrews
• Location: south and west of Alpine, Arizona
• Cause: Human – under investigation
• Equipment: 8 dozers, 141 engines, 46 watertenders
• Size: 311,481 acres [487 miles² 1261 km²]
• Aircraft: 20 helicopters
• Percent Contained: 0%
• Injuries to Date: none
• Structures: 343 threatened; 1 damaged; 10 lost

Low humidity and high gusty winds are making containment nearly impossible. Fire lines are jumped almost as soon as they are cut, and this is a mountainous region. It will probably enter New Mexico tomorrow, and the smoke is spreading to Iowa. At this point the effort is to try to protect towns in the path, while waiting for the weather to improve later in the week.

Arizona Governor Brewer didn’t issue a state of emergency declaration until yesterday, which means they have probably blown through their Federal grant and will have to spend some of their own money on fire fighting. I expect them to ask for FEMA assistance at any time, because that’s what Republicans do, just ask Governor Goodhair of Texas. They will need to talk to the Tea Party whackoes in Congress, because they don’t believe in “bailouts”.

[For the latest information click on the fire symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Fires” for all of the posts related to wildfires on this site.]

From the BBC: Japan ‘unprepared’ for Fukushima nuclear disaster

Japan was unprepared for a nuclear accident on the scale of the one at the Fukushima plant, the government said in a report to be submitted to the IAEA.

The report says poor oversight may also have contributed to the crisis.

The authorities have pledged to make the country’s nuclear regulator (Nisa) independent of the industry ministry, which also promotes nuclear power.

It comes after Nisa doubled its initial estimate of leaked radiation in the first week after the disaster.

The nuclear safety agency now says 770,000 terabecquerels escaped into the atmosphere following the 11 March disaster – more than double its earlier estimate of 370,000 terabecquerels.
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Dr Cole explains Our News and Their News:

Americans live in a late capitalist society where the rich have gotten many times richer and the middle class has gotten poorer, where Wall Street bankers have stolen us blind and blamed us for living above our means, where persistent unemployment is worse than in the Great Depression, where most politicians and some judges have been bought by corporations or special interests, where authorities actively conspire to keep people from voting, where the government spies on citizens assiduously without warrant or probable cause, and where the minds of the sheep are kept off their fleecing by substituting celebrity gossip, sex scandals, and half-disguised bigotry for genuine news.

In the Arab world, masses of 20-year-olds have challenged their corrupt politicians and manipulative billionaires in the streets, demanding transparency, an end to arbitrary secret police, and free and fair elections untainted by influence-peddling and plutocracy. I have Arabic satellite t.v. on in the background most of the day, with its dramatic stories of personal risk and human tragedy and bold challenge to a rotten status quo. And I channel surf over to the American cable news and mostly find fluff or de-contextualized reports or, frankly, propaganda. So here is my life, the day’s news given synoptically, our news and their news.

The American media has no intention of reporting on things that actually matter. They read press releases and refuse to challenge lies. They endorse propaganda, and always side with the powerful against the rest of us.

The Local Puppy Trainer reports that Boat owner of ‘Fuelish Pleasure’ faces thousands in fines after causing firework cancellation

FORT WALTON BEACH — A boater who caused the cancellation of the Billy Bowlegs fireworks show Friday night faces upward of $100,000 in citations and fines.

Coast Guard officials refused to release the boater’s name, citing agency policy. The boat’s captain has a Louisiana driver’s license but docks in Mississippi, according to officials. It is a federally documented boat.
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The 55-foot Marquis yacht named “Fuelish Pleasure” was anchored inside the safety zone of the fireworks display before noon on Friday.

At the time, that area was marked as a safety zone. Announcements were broadcast throughout the day notifying boaters that their vessels had to be removed from the safety zone by early evening.
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Position: 11.8N 100.6W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [300°] near 3 mph [ 6 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph [ 75 kph].
Wind Gusts: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles [110 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1001 mb ↓.

Currently about 355 miles [570 km] South of Acapulco, Mexico.

This is an Eastern Pacific storm that looks good to become a hurricane on the west coast of Mexico, Some of the tracking has it heading for the Sea of Cortés [Gulf of California] which would be bad news for Baja, Sinaloa, and Sinora, but potentially good news for Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas as a rainmaker.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

A bit of background, the speech from the throne is the equivalent of the the State of the Union address in the US. While the Queen reads the speech in Britain, and Governors General, the Queen’s local representatives in Commonwealth Nations, the speech is written by the Prime Minister of the country involved and covers the same ground as the SOTU speech.

There is more pomp and ceremony, and the members of the parliaments tend to be better dressed and behaved than the US Congress, but it serves the same purpose.

Canada had a bit of excitement during this year’s speech, but it was hardly the equivalent of Representative Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” theater at Zero’s 2009 State of the Union address.

Ms DePape’s action has resonated with some people outside of Canada, among them, Michael Moore:

“For a young person to do that and to do it peacefully, and quietly and with grace, I thought it was a very powerful moment,” Moore told The Canadian Press on Sunday from New York.

“Every now and then there is an iconic moment where an individual takes action, and it inspires others to think about, you know, what else would we be doing.”

Moore has become 21-year-old Brigette DePape’s most prominent supporter, posting a photo on his website showing her holding up a “Stop Harper” sign in the Senate chamber during Friday’s throne speech.
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You may have heard that the Fraudster, Florida’s effort to rehabilitate the CEO responsible for the largest Medicare/Medicaid fraud in history, and his minions in the legislature are requiring people who apply for public assistance to take a drug test.

What you may not know is that the applicants have to pay for the test, and won’t get reimbursed unless they pass. It’s just too bad if you can’t afford the test. Florida only wants to help people who deserve it, not just any poor person. That would be as unthinkable as allowing poor people to file for bankruptcy. Hey, if you can’t afford it, you shouldn’t have decided to be poor. [/sarcasm]

You may also not know that the new company that the Fraudster created after his “retirement” from the corporation that paid the largest fraud fine in Medicare/Medicaid history, gives drug tests of the type required. Least you think that there might be some “conflict of interest” in this law, or the Fraudster’s requirement that state employees take drug tests, rest assured that the Fraudster turned control of the company over to … his wife. I know it’s unbelievable, but that is all you have to do in Florida to avoid conflict of interest claims.

Well the Northern Gulf Coast has managed to break all of the temperature records for the month of June this past few days, but that is suppose to be a coincidence, along with the drenching rains in California during the “dry season”, and the floods on all of the major North American river systems, and some of the minor systems, as in Montana, Wyoming, and Lake Champlain.

The fires rage in Arizona, Texas, and along the Georgia-Florida border.

In the news, we now know why Weiner said he didn’t send the picture, but wouldn’t say he hadn’t taken the picture. Turns out, he had sent that picture to other women, just not to the one that was claimed, and someone found it on-line and started the witch hunt. Long-term unemployment is worse than the Depression, and this is what the media wants to talk about.

In a related note, the actual charges against John Edwards are strange to say the least. Prosecutors are saying that he should have listed his mistress as a campaign expense, rather than dealing with the situation totally separate and distinct from his campaign. I assumed that he was in trouble for paying the costs from campaign funds, but he didn’t do that. I don’t see how this got through a grand jury.

Invest 94 can’t make up its mind to become a tropical storm in the Caribbean, but Invest 91 in the Pacific south of Acapulco seems ready to make the move.

On this day in 1944, along the coast of Normandy, things got a lot “hotter” as the D-Day invasion began.

Update: “Nevermind”. The Germans really are out to destroy European agriculture by identifying sources before the testing is done. People are going to be on bread and water before this is over.

The BBC reports on the latest suspect in the German E. coli outbreak: German beansprouts ‘probable’ cause

Beansprouts grown in northern Germany are suspected to be the source of an E. coli outbreak that has left 22 people dead, local officials say.

The agriculture minister for Lower Saxony, Gert Lindemann, said there was a clear trail of evidence pointing to a plant nursery south of Hamburg.

The nursery has been closed, though officials say the outbreak’s source cannot yet be definitively confirmed.

Germans are being advised to stop eating the beansprouts.

The BBC’s Stephen Evans in Berlin says the announcement may cause embarrassment to German authorities, who had earlier pointed to Spanish farms as the source of the outbreak.

Well, I always knew beansprouts were evil, so I wouldn’t be surprised, but it demonstrates how nasty this form of E. coli is, because a salad isn’t exactly overwhelmed by the number of bean sprouts that are added. This was from a local nursery, not even a farm, which explains why everything was so concentrated. It is unlikely that it produced enough to sell beyond Hamburg.

I think it would be time for the owners to consider a shift to solar power generation, as they are unlikely to remain viable in food production.

So when the Republicans went to the White House to talk about raising the debt limit and destroying Medicare, they declared that their plan had been endorsed by 150 economists.

It took some searching to find out who these economists were, and the “star” of the show is Robert Mundell of Columbia University. The name didn’t ring any bells, and I don’t remember him being mentioned by any of the usual suspects, so I went to Wikipedia:

Robert Mundell, CC (born October 24, 1932) is a professor of economics at Columbia University and the recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1999. Mundell laid the groundwork for the introduction of the euro through his pioneering work in monetary dynamics and optimum currency areas, for which he won the Nobel. Mundell helped to start the movement known as supply-side economics, and is known for the Mundell–Fleming model and Mundell–Tobin effect.

About the “Nobel” – Zero received the Peace Prize, so that doesn’t hold as much validity as it once did.

I don’t think the Irish, Greeks, or Spanish would greet him with open arms or support his theories, given their current situations, and the €uro is not exactly turning into the greatest thing since sliced bread for those living under its conditions.

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The BBC has some possibly better news to report: Signs that E. coli cases are stabilising, say doctors

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s national disease centre, said on Friday that in the previous two days there had been 199 new cases of the outbreak – bringing to 1,733 the number of infections.

The World Health Organisation said a further 103 people in 12 other countries had been sickened by the bug – all but one had recently travelled to or from northern Germany.

The United States said two of its military personnel in Germany were suspected to have come down with the illness.

Reinhard Brunkhorst, president of the German Nephrology Society, told reporters there were some signs that the outbreaks were slowing.
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“Conservatives” of the Tea Party variety are wandering the land and annoying people with their ignorance on display.

The first national leader of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, gave them sage advice: “It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.” It is a paraphrase of Proverbs 17:28, “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”

Alas, the lure of the microphone is too much and the ignorance gushes forth.

Having screwed up the meaning of the Boston Tea Party [it was a protest against a corporate tax cut], now you have another citizen of Boston, the silversmith, Paul Revere, working for the British‽

I don’t think it’s great poetry, but Henry Wadsworth Longfellow did supply the narrative. I must conclude that a good portion of the people currently running for the Presidency of the United States have failed Sesame Street.