Far South of I-10

Scott Adams is not only funny but makes a good point when he predicts that Hamas' policies will change now that they are in power: I have to think it will be difficult for Hamas to reconcile the whole “destroy Israel” platform with “We’ll all be at the Parliament building at noon talking about how to do it.”

I live near the gulf coast, so the idea of rising sea levels and hurricanes of increasing in intensity makes me think I should maybe be moving to Missouri or someplace. from PJM "Natural systems are resilient and bounce back," said Susan Cutter, a geographer with the University of South Carolina. "The problem is when we try to control nature, rather than letting her do what she does." The seas are rising, the planet is getting hotter and commercial and residential development is snowballing. Add those factors to a predicted increase in nasty hurricanes and what results is a recipe for potentially serious natural degradation, some say. "It may bring about a situation (in which) the change is so rapid, it's something that's very different from what the ecosystem experienced over the last three, four thousand years," said Kam-biu Liu, a Louisiana State University professor and hurricane paleoscientist. "We may be losing part of our beaches, we ma...

Doesn't it suck when you're super busy at work, but feeling so depressed that all I really feel like doing is sliding across the street to Big John's Icehouse across the street and tipping back about 15 beers. Instead I'll sit here trying to keep various balls juggled in the air, if too many fall and crash I'll ease on out with the walkin blues. Walking Blues I woke up this mornin' feelin' round for my shoes Know 'bout 'at I got these old walkin' blues, woke Up this mornin' feelin' round oh, for my shoes But you knoe 'bout 'at I got these old walkin; blues Lord I, feel like blowin' my woh-old lonesome home Got up this mornin', my little Ber- nice was gone, Lord I feel like blow-oon' my lonesome home Well, I got up this mornin' woh-all I had was gone Well-ah leave this morn' if I have to woh, ride the blind, ah, I've feel mistreated and I dont' mind dyin' Leavin' this morn', ah...

"It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying in Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have it no other way." New Orleans Mayor - C. Ray Nagin

Here in Alaska the governor is discussing a PR campaign would attempt to tell the rest of the US that Alaska is not just a consumer of Federal money, and it would "tell Alaska's story": (from a column by Beth Bragg) The governor wants to "tell Alaska's story" to the Lower 48 so folks down there have a better idea of what it's like up here. The goal is to end the ridicule we've been so good at inspiring lately, what with our bridges to you-know-where and our desire to drill for oil in a wildlife refuge. The thinking goes like this: If we can educate the critics with pictures of a desolate ANWR and defuse the comedians with pictures of a serene and congenial Ted Stevens, then we can move on to our ultimate goal, which is building bridges to you-know-where and drilling for oil in a wildlife refuge. Or as the Governor actually said: "Alaska does not just take. We give, and we have the capacity to give much, much more -- if permitted to do so,...

It seems like everywhere I've gone in the past six months has had a disaster of some kind. Hurricanes in New Olreans, Houston, barbados and mexico. Bombs in London. Now I'm in Alaska and there is a volcano erupting. The Augustine volcano is down at the southern end of the Cook Inlet. I'm up at the northeastern end of the cook inlet in anchorage. Plenty far away. The best coverage seems to be at the alaska volcano observatory , with maps and a webcam. Here in Anchorage the sun is just coming up (9:40 am local time), so if any ash is visible I should be able to see it soon. Luckily the ash is moving East, and not Northeast towards anchorage, because the safety equipment our office is issuing is a dusk mask and a plastic bag. The bag goes on your computer, the mask is for your face. Or vice versa. Ashfall is the only real risk, unless the volcano collapses and makes a tsunamit that will wash away Homer (doh!).

Well. I tried my best. I really did. I attempted to drink a beer in every bar that is open on Bourbon Street. I only made it from Canal to about St. Peter, before I staggered back and put down roots and stayed in the Green Door lounge. Apparently New Orleans is coming back to life, because right now I feel like I was shot at and missed, shit at and hit. There were several really good bands playing, one at the green door, and one at a new place, formerly a nudie bar that wasn't good enough to remember the name of. The Green Door had maybe ten people in it, when pre-Katrina it was hard to get in the door, and they were running 3 for one beer specials, before they would have sold a cup of beer for 6 dollars. Really great band playing covers. The former nudie bar had a four man blues group with a fantastic lead guitarist playing BB King style blues. So the city is coming back. The suburbs are swinging busy as everyone rebuilds, all that is needed is some leadership from the C...

An economist article makes some good points about climate change, and it sounds very even handed as you'd expect from one of the few good news magazines in the world, but one troubling aspect was the chart of temperatures: It has the typical hockey stick aspect, but I knew I'd seen it before at numberwatch.co.uk, which is a fantastic site and should be required reading of anyone that discusses statistics. I saw this same graph here in numberwatch's discussion of chartmanship , (go read the whole thing) Let us take some raw data that you wish to present to the lay public, say a plot of temperature against time: Now, it is fairly clear that the graph shows two flattish periods and two rising periods. Let us also suppose, for the sake of argument, that in order to satisfy your paymasters you need to emphasise the importance of the second rise, while diminishing that of the first. There are three techniques that help. The first is to put in a base line at the most helpful leve...

One of the books I've been reading this week is "Days of Infamy" by Harry Turtledove. Harry is the "Master of If", almost all of his novels are alternate histories and he cranks out about 1000 pages of quality writing per year. "Days of Infamy" posits what would have happened if the Japanese had followed up the pearl harbor strike with an invasion. A really good book, very believable history that shows how close we came to losing our ass in the pacific, and also how brutal the Japanese were to civilians and soldiers who surrendered. While I was reading this book, I also happened to catch a show on PBS about the railroad that crossed the bridge over the river kwai, and how it was constructed by POW's, many of whom were worked to death. It really drove home that the brutality portrayed in the "Days of Infamy" was probably understated. The show also interviewed a japanese engineer who wouldn't admit that he did anything wrong, and kep...

I'm over in New Orleans today, working in a client's office while a well is drilled offshore somewhere. I didn't go into town yet, I stayed out here in the burb's and from this office it looks like every third house has a blue tarp covering the roof. This area just had normal streetflooding that results when the pumps aren't turned on due to the workmen being evacuated, not due to a levee breach. But it does look like a mild war swept through the area. All of metairie seems to be bustling, help wanted signs are everywhere and every other vehicle seems to be full of mexican roofers. On the other hand, tonight I can look out through the darkness outside this office, and through one window I can see the thin ribbon of the causeway bridge stretching out to infinity, through the other window I can see that the center of New Orleans is ominously dark. I can remember christmas' from my childhood, when the soaring towers of downtown left their lights on in the shap...

I flew back home from alaska tuesday on one of the suckiest flights where I got upgraded to first class for one leg. I got pulled from a middle seat in a packed coach section where I was speaking with a nice old lady, brought up to first class for what I thought was the whole flight. Drank my 3 bloody mary's (they're free, you gotta drink 'em) and passed out asleep. I got woken up in seatle by someone checking my ticket, she tried to throw me out of 1st because my ticket had my old seat # written on it that they had used to find me in coach. I asked her to check, and she checked her list then said I was good. I resumed passing out. A small child's screeching woke me up as the other people were boarding. "Mommy mommy he's in my seat!", "Yes, dear, there's a man in our seat, but mommy will get him out of there"...a wispered conversation behind my back with a flight attendant... which was quickly followed by the flight attendant telling me...

Lawrence Simon is running a dead pool again this year and I thought it might be a good idea to sign up and join something instead of just lurking. Here is a list of the prospective entrants. No hard feelings, (except for the couple that I'm rooting for to win) for any of the entrants, it's a trip we all take, but if you can win me a $10 dominos card while your at it then great. here's my list: Name - Famous for what? - DOB Dick Van Dyke -Actor 12/13/1925 Saddam Hussein - Bad Actor 4/28/1937 Mohammed Ali - Fighter 1/17/1942 Jimmy Carter - Wimp 10/1/1924 Margeret Thatcher - Tough girl 10/13/1925 Earl Cambell - Tough Guy, tailed off with the saints 3/29/1955 Nancy Reagan - ex actress, ex first lady 7/6/1921 David Duke - ex clansman, ex politician, ex human 7/1/1950 Gerald Ford - clumsy guy, lost footing and vietnam 7/14/1913 Keith Richards - famous clean blood recipient 12/18/1943 Nancy Pelosi - representative, bloodless c...

I'm back up here in alaska again, and if I thought it was dark last month, wow, now it's uber-dark. Really dark until about 9, then dusky light until 4 pm, then dark. I'm not sure if I'll be here for the Solistice next week, I'm supposed to be in New Olreans next tuesday or so, if I don't leave here by Sunday I'll miss the traditional furlough or conjugal visit that most prisoners get. [one of my favorite movie scenes is the one in Face-Off, where travolta is trudging in circles wearing magnetic boots as exercise, and he turns out to be on an offshore oil platform converted into a prison. I saw the movie offshore, where my main exercise was walking in a circle on the heliport. All I was missing was some magnetic boots.] I just popped awake an hour ago as my alarm clock in Houston went off. It's now 3:30 am, and I'm waiting for a phone call so I can trudge through the snow over to the client's office and start work when the rig up there on the ...

James Lileks has a column summarizing 2005 . My favorite is his entry on Katrina: Hurricane Katrina strikes precisely at the moment when the dynamite charges, personally installed by Karl Rove, blow up New Orleans’s levees. Teams of the same ninjas the Bushies used to rig the Diebold voting machines have already disabled the buses that could be used in evacuation. Initial media reports indicate that refugees in the Superdome have resorted to murder, cannibalism, voodoo, keno, and possibly jai alai. FOX anchor Shep Smith is consumed on camera by zombies. His last words indicate that he shares their outrage, if not their desire for sweet, sweet brains...

In the comments, CajunRenard says: "I know, I know. You're a Bush fan. Gotta admire your loyalty. However, are you feeling safe now that all the WMDs are wrested away from Saddam? Are you ready to admit that we went to war with fabricated evidence?" To which I replied: "If you look at the post below " I too prefer my ammo dumps insect free " you'll see what I think. If the iraqis had hollow bombs ready to fill poison gas, and hidden bunkers filled with "pesticide" that affected exposed people like nerve agent, then they had wmd. the reason no wmd's were found was the searchers had a political motivation not to find them. Anyway, saddam was the wmd. Once the sanctions had ended he would have done what he wanted to do." One of the main reasons blogging does kind of work for me is I can say refer to my blog for what I think. I don't necessarily have to rehash arguments via email or phone or at parties. I used to enjoy political...

I'd like to post more to this blog, sometimes I think I have a lot to say about politics, work, life, etc, but when it comes right down to it, I'm probably too angry about politics to say anything coherent. It's obvious to me that I'm suffering from Bush Derangement, Derangement syndrom. I get so angry watching the slanted news, listening to NPR attack the president, reading what our idiot congressmen are saying that I can only spit. I really don't have any solution except to start carrying cd's in the car again. Listening to the Foo Fighters cd instead of NPR left me much more relaxed on Friday. Weather Channel instead of CNN. The dilbert blog instead of Slate. Oh yea, and I'm going to vote against all the incumbent Senators and representatives. It's 1992 all over again. Democrats scoring political points instead of demanding victory....out. Republicans saying they are working with the democrats, or demanding reports from the president...out too...

Well, I'm heading back home for turkey day. The office here very generously gave me and my coworker ULU knives with our names engraved in them. You can see ulus at ulu.com of course, they are used to shave blubber off of whales apparently, which should come in handy if the buffet line at Ryan's gets too long. I'm flying out in a few hours, trying to get my stuff together in such a way that it doesn't look like I dumped dirty clothes into a bag. If anyone ever sees me fold a shirt correctly I give you permission to shoot me, I've been replaced by an alien. Oh well, dump away. Taking a quick tour of the blogosphere in the few minutes I have left before I have to pay for another 24 hours of internet access. The Domestic Engineer has a funny/quaint/scary story about singing pants and conversations. If we were really in The Holy Grail, he'd shout back, "You're not fooling anybody, you know!" before hitting me over the head with a plank. But we...

Here's a photo looking to the west from my hotel. It's 2pm local time, you can see the long shadows of the buildings. The photo was taken with my new m:robe from Olympus, which is a safety award from the company I work for. Thanks! You can see there is a little blurring, that's because you have to tap the center of the LCD display to take a photo. I think it might have been cheaper and better to just put a "button", which is a technical innovation similar to a "laser". Oh well, as they say I shouldn't look a gift camera/music player in the lens. But since I had heard we were getting ipods, I had a friend rip a bunch of my cd's, and apparently he gave the music back to me in a fairly lossless format supported by an ipod but not by an m:robe. doh!

I'm clicking through channels while waiting to go to work and I came across a show on cspan2 interviewing Peter Schweizer " Do as I say not as I do: profiles in liberal hipocracy " This looks like a great book, I tried to take some notes on the question period: questions: School choice? the clintons sent chelsea to a private school, when the public schools she would have gone to were ones the clintons praised before they were elected. Hillary Clinton is pro children's rights, but she was a very strict parent and wouldn't allow Chelsea to get her ears pierced. But Hillary wants the rest of the country to allow teenagers to get abortions without notifying parents. .... Rich people and political affiliation - kennedys, clintons George soros are pro-taxes, but do their best to avoid inheritance and income taxes. The clintons bragged that they always pay the maximum in taxes, the author checked and it is ridiculous. They (liberals) are never called on their stat...

Here's a picture from yesterday as the snow fell. It was only about an inch of snow, but as I walked to the clients office yesterday, I felt like it was a blizzard. It might be cold as heck here in achorage, and not very sunny during the day, but they do have some pretty good seafood here. I had King Crab legs last night at a place called Sullivan's. We had to wait about 3 hours for a table so I joined the rest of the people in drinking knockouts, which is just vodka that has been marinating in a big jar with fresh pineapple. Then with dinner I switched to Grey Goose vodka over ice. Needless to say, my head feels like a gypsy family has been sleeping in it. Apparently if I had just stuck with Grey Goose I couldn't possibly get a hangover since it is so refined/expensive. Today the sun is out but the days are getting noticeably shorter about 10 minutes per day. Sunrise at around 8 am, sunset at 4:30 and it pretty much looks like 4 in the afternoon all day long.