Live blogging Wilma until the lights go out

From Palm Beach County FL

~7:00pm Sunday: Finished helping another fellow board up his place. This is the 3rd house I've helped board up. Am I the only one in south FL with proper tools to do this sort of thing? Seriously, jerking around without a good hammer drill takes forever. Some people are just pounding in masonry nails...makes a real mess of the stucco and concrete coming out. Might as well just shoot it with a Hilti gun if you're gonna do that and save a lot of time.

I've donated all the extra Tapcon's and washers I had to help other people. Home Depot is out of Tapcon's and fender washers. I was reduced to drilling holes in pennies and a bunch of electrical box knock outs I had been saving. FYI: drilling pennies is cheaper than buying real washers. With a drill press it goes pretty quick.

~1:30am Monday: Plywood was up on my crib yesterday. I still hear the sound of saws and hammers in the middle of the night though. Why do people wait like this? Working in the middle of the night sucketh greatly.

Still some houses in this neighborhood that haven't bothered to do anything at all. Too late now.

~2:30am Monday: Winds seem about 30mph. No rain yet. Leading edge of the rain looks about 2hr away on local radar. Streets are quiet now. People are either done or have given up.

~3:30am Monday: Winds seem about 35mph, guts to ~45. No rain yet. Trees getting whipped around a bit. Key West is getting hurricane force winds.

~4:45am Monday: Winds seem about 35 sustained, gusting to 50ish, light rain.

Iraq adapting fast to procedural justice

In a matter of hours we see a transition from a lust for summary justice to a willingness to allow the system to proceed. This is a significant change because it represents a level of faith that "the system" will likely converge on an acceptable result.

Saddam is nominally on trial here, but what is really being put on trial is the way he ran the country and the methods he used. In building the case point by point in public, rather than delivering a "summary bullet", the media perpetrated myths and apologia surrounding Saddam will fall along with him. It will no longer be possible for some to sweep this reality under the rug. Its very easy to say "oh, I know he was a bad guy", its quite something else to know exactly what "bad guy" means.

IRAQ THE MODEL

...“Why do we have to listen to this bull****?” said one of my friends.
“I prefer the trial goes like this:
Q:Are you Saddam Hussein?
A:Yes.
Then take this bullet in the head.”...

...As the prosecution went deeper into details and facts, the way we viewed the trial began to change an d those among us who were demanding a bullet in Saddam’s head now seemed pleased with the proceedings “I don’t think I want to see that bullet now, I want to see justice take place as it should be”.
We were watching an example of justice in the new Iraq, a place where no one should be denied his rights, not even Saddam.

We smiled seeing the news anchors lower their voices and nodding down when the prosecution grew stronger and more reasonable and convincing and they also abandoned the previous poetic sentimental tone that couldn’t stand in the face of facts and figures.

UN office doctored report on murder of Hariri

Seriously, can there be any doubt left at all about the heights in the UN power structure to which corruption extends? Oil for food scandal and now this obvious (and inept) assassination coverup seal the deal.

It should be clear now the UN is incapable of cleaning itself up - it is institutionally corrupt and there exists no higher authority capable of rectifying this.

I hate to say this, but Bill Clinton is starting to look GOOD as a candidate for UN Secretary General. His zipper scandals would be a refreshing change from the dreary soul crushing scandals and corruption we have now - Bill's scandals have entertainment value.

Times Online

THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.
The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

The mistaken release of the unedited report added further support to the published conclusion that Syria was behind Mr Hariri’s assassination in a bomb blast on Valentine’s Day in Beirut...

...One crucial change, apparently made after the report was submitted to the UN chief, removed the name of President al-Assad’s brother, Maher, his brother-in-law, Assef al-Shawkat, and other high-ranking Syrian officials.

The final, edited version quoted a witness as saying that the plot to kill Mr Hariri was hatched by unnamed “senior Lebanese and Syrian officials”. But the undoctored version named those officials as “Maher al-Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamal al-Sayyed”.

H/T Ace

Make your computer run faster!

OK, So I put that site meter gizmo on this moron blog and it tells me things...all sorts of creepy semi-intrusive things about people reading this stuff...none of which I or anyone else really cares about.

However, site meter did tell me some stuff, that being an engineer, I now feel obligated to reflect back to my readers.

A) Most of you are using a 32 bit color depth on your video settings. FYI - the human eye is incapable of discerning 32 bits worth of color depth - it buys you nothing, zippola, zilch. Just a bunch of worthless data your machine is sloshing around that just costs performance. The human eye CAN distinguish more than 16 bits of color depth, but the difference between 16 and 24 bit color is almost undetectable for ordinary web surfing and playing of video clips. If you do a lot of photo realistic editing/retouching and such, maybe 24 bits makes sense - but for the vast majority of people 16 bit depth is perfectly acceptable and will probably run visibly faster than 32 bit. Give it a try, you will probably like it.

B) Most of you (90%+) are running Windows XP or Windows 2000. The installation DEFAULT for these systems is to ENABLE some completely retarded "feature" called "transition effects". What this does is make your fast computer feel like an old 286 when you're navigating through menus. Did you knowingly pay hard cash for Windows software with intentional delay loops in it to make it feel slow? Probably not, but that's what you got. Right mouse button click on the blank desktop. Select "Properties". Select "Effects". Then disable that transition effect brain deadness and watch your machine start to feel like a new machine.

Dead man gets parking fine

Accusations unfounded? Ahem...

Courier Mail

A COUNCIL has apologised for slapping a parking ticket on the car of a dead driver. Police found the 71-year-old man slumped in his vehicle in a shopping centre car park in Croydon, in Melbourne's east, yesterday afternoon.

The man had reportedly been missing for nine days.

...Maroondah Mayor, Councillor Paul Denham, said the man received a parking ticket around 10.30am on Tuesday, two days before his body was discovered...

...Cr Denham has angrily hit back at claims the council was over-zealous in its pursuit of parking fines to top up its coffers.

"The accusations regarding aggressive parking infringement actions are unfounded," Cr Denham said.

Dinosaur of the day: KOOLASUCHUS

In celebration of my TTLB designation as "crawly amphibian", the Purple Avenger presents for your viewing pleasure a little heralded, yet facinating dinosaur : KOOLASUCHUS

... Until 1989 it had been thought that the temnospondyls had died out some 100 million years earlier, at the end of the Triassic period. The find of Koolasuchus changed all that - here was a fossil "living fossil" - a survivor from a far-distant time in the past.

As a typical big amphibian, Koolasuchus was capable of crawling on land, but would have been more at home in water. At over 5 metres long and equipped with a massive skull, it was a powerful carnivore capable of eating crustaceans, fish, and even small dinosaurs like the young of Leaellynasaura. It is probable that it could detect the vibrations of prey in the water. As the prey passed by, it could just open it's huge gaping mouth and snap it up.

"Journalists" who need to buy a vowel and get a clue

What's wrong with this SF Chronicle article?

An explosion set fire to a Houston refinery Sunday as workers tried to restart gasoline-producing equipment that had been shut down since Hurricane Rita...At full strength, the refinery produces 268,000 barrels a day of crude oil.

H/T Moonbattery

PETA dude freaks out over rat-boy

Hilarious.

Rat-boy/PETA vid

For your barfing pleasure - the Hillary egg seperator

Even I think this one is pretty gross.

Click here for QuickTime clip

You're busted with 1700lb of dope -- "Thanks, OnStar"

No more freeze pops for you kid.

Albuquerque Journal

A call made to OnStar by a 2-year-old boy helped him escape from a locked Cadillac Escalade. But his dad wasn't thanking OnStar. Police were. That's because when Bernalillo County Sheriff's deputies went to rescue the boy Wednesday night after being called by the vehicle security company, they found 1,700 pounds of marijuana worth more than $500,000 inside a trailer near the sport utility vehicle, investigators said...Sheriff Darren White said. "As the commercials say, 'Thanks, OnStar.'

Moose attacked moose statue

A pissed off moose is a thing to behold...from a distance.

AFTENPOSTEN

The Ramadi attack from one who was there

Who you gonna believe? The dude who was there or some reporter regurgitating crap while cribbing in the al-Rashid hotel?

Warriors Voice

"Insurgents Died Last Night...Plain And Simple "

Revealed: IRA bombs killed eight British soldiers in Iraq

Why am I not suprised?

INDEPENDENT(UK)

Eight British soldiers killed during ambushes in Iraq were the victims of a highly sophisticated bomb first used by the IRA, The Independent on Sunday can reveal...

Darfur explained - the REAL story?

Want to know why the FRENCH(oppose UN sanctions) and CHINA(abstains on Darfur UN vote) are being such assholes in the UN about Sudan? You see, Sudan has oil - quite a lot of it, and quite a bit of refining capability along the coast as well.

Being the treacherous weasles they are, the French would not jeopardize their claim to a $200B deal over a bunch of dirt poor folks down in the south. The Chinese are squishy on the genocide thing at the UN for the same reason O.I.L.

If one were just a tad conspiracy theory oriented, it would be easy to imagine a French/Chinese/Khartoum scheme to eliminate John Garang(check!) and eliminate the people who were supporting his movement(in progress, semi-check!) so the Garang/White Nile deal could be completely disavowed by the Khartoum government. After all, these are the same wonderful folks who bombed the Rainbow Warrior.

The French and Chinese are also looking to get "cozy" in WEAPONS SALES. Note that this French push for the Chinese weapons sales thing occurs in early 2004 -- coincidentally this is roughly the same time John Garang is putting together the White Nile deal with the Brits and roughly the same time the Janjaweed crew kicks into high gear eradicating/dislocating Garang supporters in the south. Pure coincidence? Maybe, maybe not...

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

BBC ARTICLE

Garang played an important role in a deal that gives White Nile a 60% stake in developing the Block Ba oil concession, a region thought to contain $200bn worth of untapped oil at current prices...

...founded by a former star of the England cricket team, Phil Edmonds, who developed a strong working relationship with the ex-rebel leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement...The company says Garang's death won't affect its exploration concession as the deal it signed is backed by other high-ranking figures in southern Sudan's semi-autonomous government...

...Meanwhile, the French oil giant Total claims to have rights over the same area under a 1980 agreement it signed with the other side in the civil war - the national Sudanese government.

Further, we see Garang disavowing the French claim to the oil fields HERE (gasandoil.com)

Total, along with partners Marathon and Kuwait Petroleum, says it is confident it will regain access to the stake, which it abandoned in 1984 after an employee was killed in civil-war related violence. Total executives say the central government is the only authorized body to grant oil concessions and that the provisional government of South Sudan wasn't a legal entity when it signed with White Nile.
Garang disagrees: "Total can cling to whatever (reasons) they like. We will cling to the oil, because it is ours."

THE CHINA CONNECTION

Harvard University feels strongly enough about the Chinese connection to the Darfur slaughter that they move to divest university investments in PetroChina in April 2005

The HARVARD GAZETTE had this to say about the divestiture action:

...Oil production is widely understood to be a crucial source of revenue for the Sudanese government, essential to the government's capacity to fund military operations, and an asset of exceptional strategic importance to the regime. According to a recent report of the U.S. Department of Energy, "With the start of significant oil production (and exports) beginning in late 1999, . . . . Sudan's economy is changing dramatically, with oil export revenues now accounting for around 73% of Sudan's total export earnings." [Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, Sudan Country Analysis Brief, July 2004.] As of January 2004, Sudan's estimated proven reserves of crude oil stood at 563 million barrels, more than twice the 2001 estimate. As of June 2004, crude oil production had risen to 345,000 barrels per day, up from 270,000 barrels per day just a year earlier. [Ibid.]...

Stay tuned - this saga will be updated as I find more

Economics on Gilligans Island

Interesting read. Facinating perspective on "money". Highly recommended.

The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III

File under Weird Shit: Harvard Med School tested Coca Cola effectivness as spermicide

Apparently it worked - Coke "classic" being the most effective of the
product line.

JOURNAL PAGE IMAGE

Curiously, there were no volunteers for the Drano and battery acid control groups.

Yemani AK47's traced to Saudi attack

To anyone who has been following developments in Yemen, this is hardly shocking news. But most of you haven't so I'll mention it. Its probably about time we do a little house cleaning in Yemen. I don't imagine the Saudi's are all that pleased with having a bunch of loons on their southern borders...

SJ MERCURY NEWS

SAN'A, Yemen - Two AK-47 assault rifles used in a deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia have been traced to Yemen's Defense Ministry, according to Western and Yemeni officials, raising new fears that the country isn't doing enough to fight terrorism.

The revelation comes five years after al-Qaida-linked militants bombed the USS Cole destroyer on Oct. 12, 2000, at the port in San'a, the capital, killing 17 sailors.

In other worrying developments, Yemeni militants are believed to be among foreigners fighting U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials have said.

No fun in Ramadi tonight

The Marines took all the party favors and the punchbowl.

CENTCOM

Canadian homelessness 3X that of the USA?

Here we have the CBC pitching the notion that there's 250,000 canadians "living in the streets". OK, I'll take them at their word on that.

Given the Canadian population this works out to about 1:131 Canadians "living in the street".

Now we see a new HUD survey coming up with a figure of about 1:400 for homeless in the USA.

Ain't socialism grand? High unemployment, comatose economies, and now high homeless rates as well. I must admit, that's a real winning combination if you're trying to run a country into the ground. Kudos to Canada - the "plan" is working!

Washington Times: DPRK counterfeiting US $100 bills

Of course anyone reading this blog already knew this quite a few days ago when I figured this out while groking a BBC piece about some crusty old hardcore Irish commie being arrested.

WASHINGTON TIMES

The Bush administration formally has accused North Korea of manufacturing high-quality counterfeit $100 "supernotes" for the first time, according to an indictment made public yesterday as part of a 16-year probe.
"Quantities of the supernote were manufactured in, and under auspices of the government of, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)," said the indictment of Irish national Sean Garland and six others.