Category: People

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People

Oh Danny, boy!

Danny Ayers speaks!

In his first podcast Danny Ayers joins with Adam Green and podcast regulars Alex Barnett and Joshua Porter in a podcast on OPML and reading lists.

I thought Danny did quite well and has a lovely voice. It reminds me a little of Brian Epstein’s voice, but I imagine that’s a regional similarity.

I would have liked to also have heard Anne Zelenka on the show in addition to Danny and Mr. Green. I thought she was involved in this discussion, and she might have added an interesting and unique perspective on the topic. Still, it was a decent show and it was lovely to hear Sparql’s papa’s voice.

Categories
Diversity People

In memory of greatness

Two great women passed away this last week: Coretta Scott King and Betty Friedan.

King did more than just fight for the rights for blacks–she fought for the rights for every person, black or white or yellow or red; regardless of religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Much of the King legacy must be equally shared by Coretta as much as her husband.

I remember reading publication after publication talking about how Coretta spent her whole life fighting for her husband’s legacy. She didn’t spend her whole life fighting for some ghostly image of MLK; she spent her life fighting for the same cause that took her husband’s life. If we can’t respect all that she accomplished, as an individual, in her life, at least we can honor her in her death.

Oddly enough, this is something Friedan would say–that Coretta Scott King was more than just the widow of Martin Luther King. She was an icon of the civil rights movement in and of herself.

Friedan: where would I be today if not for her work. Where would many of us women be. I was too young to be in the beginning of the women’s movement in the 1960’s but I have benefited from it.

I don’t think many people remember what it was like when blacks rode the back of the buses. I definitely don’t think people remember what it was like when women’s primary function, one of the few allowed by society, was to stay at home and take care of the kiddies. If they remembered what it was like, they wouldn’t say such silly tripe as, “I don’t agree with Friedan. I don’t agree with most feminism. I don’t believe women should get preferential treatment. I believe we should be treated equally”.

Categories
People Photography Places

After the Flood

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m working on a very long essay on the recent dam break here in Missouri, the hurricane effects in New Orleans and other topics, and am out taking photos as annotation. The writing may be a long time in coming, but I thought I would post photos as I go along.

Monday I went to the Johnson Shut-Ins to see the effect of the Taum Sauk Reservoir dam break. It was…extraordinary. The trees and much of the scrub in the area where the campground and picnic areas are almost all gone, or damaged beyond salvaging.

There were several of us about, most local to the area. We were gathered in a group trying to figure out where the water came from, when one man mentioned that the water came from a direction in back and to our left. How can this be, I asked, because the trees were lying down towards the left. According to another man local to the area, the water had come down with such force that it hit the mountain to the right and bounced back. It was this bounced water that took out the ranger’s home, pushed the semi off the road, and knocked down the trees by the road.

The campground and shut-ins got the water directly. So much so that rebar from the dam was twisted in and around the granite pillars of the shut-ins. In the summer, during the day, all 57 campground spaces are filled, as well as the space for 110 day use cars, with vehicles lined up to get in for miles. During a peak time in the summer, an estimated 1000 or so people could have been in the impact zone of the flood–a probable 250 in the direct path of the water.

I’ve also added some Google map images to the photos, to demonstrate the water flow and where items I photographed were found.

As the following Google maps snapshot demonstrates, the water flowed down between mountains, and came out pointed directly at Johnson Shut-Ins. It flowed down Black river, in both directions at first, and bounced back from the mountain bordering the Shut-Ins across from the water path.

Keep Out

Path of Water down Mountain

Black River

Unusual color in Black River

flood20

It hit the mountain, bouncing back and taking the Ranger’s home. The following photo encompasses both the path of the flood and the home. The light colored foundation in the right side of the following photo is what’s left of the home.

Flood Path in Relation to Park Ranger Home

Cactus

Knocking three cars and a semi carrying zinc into an empty field across from Highway N.

Location of Truck pushed off road

Debris, both from the dam (rebar and plastic liner) as well as from the ranger’s home was still scattered about in and among uprooted trees and the inches of mud and silt over everything. The following map shows a circle where the Ranger’s house was, and Xs marking where debris in the photos was located.

flood19

The front wheel from a child's bike

Lining from Reservoir was littered everywhere

Sign by Park Ranger's House

A Baby's Socks

Categories
People Web Weblogging

It’s a mountain Mohammed thing

“So I have a blog” the words read, as I scrolled down the entries at Planet RDF. And then I noticed the author: Tim Berners-Lee.

In his first weblog entry, Sir Tim wrote:

…it is nice to have a machine to the administrative work of handling the navigation bars and comment buttons and so on, and it is nice to edit in a mode in which you can to limited damage to the site. So I am going to try this blog thing using blog tools. So this is for all the people who have been saying I ought to have a blog.

For all those who claim to be first, there is no doubt who was first, though late to this particularly party. Probably all that Web 2.0 stuff floating around.

I do believe that Sir Tim is also the first weblogger to hold Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire. Mind the language, children. Mind the language. No more of this informal lower-case ’s’, ‘w’ when talking about the Semantic Web now.

Categories
Events of note People Political Weather

Bye Brown

As expected Michael Brown has resigned as head of FEMA. However, though a move in the right direction, it’s not enough. As the article mentions, the government needs to move FEMA back out into a department of its own, and, contrary to some who may believe otherwise, return it to dealing with natural disasters rather than this obsession with terrorists:

“When you have orders that go down the rung, people interpret them by putting a very tight box around them,” said Bob Freitag, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Hazard Mitigation Planning and Research.

Freitag said the reorganization in Homeland Security had a trickle-down effect in state emergency management as well. For example, emergency management officials from Washington, a state where earthquakes are the likeliest threat, will be devoting their entire annual meeting next week to terrorism instead, he said.

“The locals need more money and we have to get it from grants, and the money that’s available is for terrorism,” said Freitag, who worked at FEMA for about 25 years. “It’s not driven by national hazards. That leadership is not there.”

The Department of Homeland Security has enough resources to deal with terrorists. Life must go on, yellow alert or not.

Replacing Brown is David Paulison currently U.S. Fire Director. I didn’t know we had a U.S. Fire Director. Regardless, this is a man who headed up the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department, as well as overseeing the county’s emergency services. He also attended the Kennedy School of Management at Harvard, but we won’t hold that against him. He is qualified, and with his Florida background, particularly so when it comes to hurricane management.

I have to ask: why was this man reporting to Brown? He is so much more qualified, it’s almost painful to see.

One incidental impact of Katrina and the government mismanagement: states potentially impacted by an earthquake in the New Madrid fault are now taking it a lot more seriously.