7610

My expert hunters

This week has been a little odd. My hunters have been hunting and gathering. First, this weekend, Pip found this enormous roach and he did something with it. I've seen one other roach about this size, but Blur took care of that (that was pre-pip).

It looks like Blur has moved on to larger prey. Thing is, I didn't know we had a mouse. Didn't see and signs, droppings, nothing, and didn't ever hear the thing. But, I woke up in the morning, and there he was. A gift from Blurby.

I can't wait to see what kind of gifts and sacrifices I have when I get back from Baton Rouge.

Flight booked to Louisiana

Ok, so now I'm booked to go down to Baton Rouge. Looks like I'm leaving on Saturday October 1, and coming back on the 17th of October. This is becoming a reality!

I've never done anything like this before, and it will be a good experience for me. I'm a little scared to go down, judging by the memo on the packet that I got this morning.

Packing list for Louisiana (DR865)

This morning, I went to the Red Cross in preparation for getting deployed to Louisiana. I'm going to Baton Rouge, and will be doing Mass Care (I'm not quite sure what that is yet). Here's the text from one of the pamphlets that I got regarding a packing list:

Conditions in all areas of assignment for DR 865, 871 and 009 (the Astrodome shelter) are horrendous. Staff assigned to these operations should attempt to pack using back packs or duffle bags to unsure the staff member can carry their own gear repeatedly. Staff shelters and assignments are fluid. Staff MUST understand the extreme hardship conditions on these two disaster relief operations and ensure they are personally prepared to care for themselves and to remain safe and healthy. There is, and will be, NO electricity, thus NO air conditioning, no potable water, very limited cell phone coverage, and no hard line coverage. If lucky enough to be in a hotel, you must be able to carry your gear, as elevators may not work. Due to these conditions, very few stores and restaurants are open and those that are, have not been re-supplied. We must avoid staff becoming victims due to their lack of preparation for these assignments. Staff arriving prepared for their personal car and safety will ensure the limited quantities of supplies are available for the victims.

Staff members currently assigned to the operations recommend the following items and suggest packing them in zip lock bags:

• Flashlight and batteries, and extra batteries


• Personal First Aid Kit


• Sturdy, closed, water proof shoes or hiking boots (there are snakes, contaminated water, etc.)


• Personal food and snacks not requiring refrigeration


• Water (1-2 day supply)


• Glasses, rather than contacts


• Insect repellent


• Hand sanitizer/wipes


• Sunscreen, sun glasses and a hat (preferably one that covers the ears)


• Bedding and Linens -- something to sleep on (sleeping bag, air mattress, sheets) and towels and wash cloths, etc.


• Over the counter mediations to include Anti-diarrhea, antacids and pain/headache medications as well as any current prescription medications (3 weeks worth)


• Soap and toiletries (including toilet paper)


• Very light colored, light weight clothing


• One large, super tough garbage bag to triple as a suitcase, laundry bag, trash bag and/or poncho, etc, etc.

Sounds like I've got some shopping to do.

Getting Deployed

Today, I got a call from the Red Cross. They want to deploy me to Louisiana this Wednesday. I've got a ton of work to do before then, but here's to hoping that I get it all done. Time for me to pack up. Trust me, I'll be careful. I'll keep everyone updated as much as I can. Cheers.

Please help animals in the Gulf

We've all heard about Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita that is barreling down on Galveston, TX at this moment. There were many people that would not leave their homes because FEMA would not let them take their pets during rescue efforts. This is a tragedy on many levels.

Losing a pet is very depressing. Losing a pet because you cannot take your pet with you is something completely different. Usually, when one loses a pet, there is closure. When you have to abandon it, then you just don't know.

Finally, there is legislation proposed by Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA) and co-sponsors Christopher Shays (R-CT), Don Young (R-AK) and James Oberstar (D-MN) and Barney Frank (D-MA) to ensure that in the future, people will not be required to abandon their pets. According to reports, the bill will require local and state agencies to submit plans for how they will accomodate pets during emergencies in order to receive FEMA funding.

If you haven't already, please donate to the Humane Society of the United States to help pets and animals. As of September 20th, 2005, they have rescued 6,031 animals and reunited 400 with their owners.

Rescued pets are being listed at http://www.petfinder.org

George W. Dolls

Here is a funny site that shows what happens when a geek has too much free time. This guy bought a case of the talking George W. Bush dolls and modded them to be mo' betta.

Lots of cell phones

This is an interesting point.

According to Wireless Intelligence (whose site I think is misconfigured and running on SSL, but that's not my point), the number of cell phones worldwide recently passed 2 billion. It took about 20 years to pass the 1 billion point from the introduction of the first cell phone, and only 3 years for the next billion. Hurray! That's not my point either.

According to Geekzone, cell phone maker Nokia has recently sold it's billionth phone to some person in Nigeria.

That's my point. 2 billion cell phones in the world, and Nokia just sold it's billionth.

I think I've had one nokia phone in my life, one blackberry, 2 Sony Ericssons, a Samsung, 2 treos, and 4 motorolas (I think) since I entered the cell phone having world in 1995.

I'm not sure which phone I will get next. We'll see.

I'm still alive

I've had a lot of things going on, so I've been lax about posting here. I'm back. I'm going to try to make it a point to post more often.

Anyway, I've run into an interesting site today about GoldenPalace-esque advertising techniques. It's called: Bumvertising and basically, PokerFaceBook gives homeless people signs that have their URL on them and also give the homeless a "care" package containing such things as money, sandwiches, chips, water, peanut butter, etc. Quite ingenious really. Ethical? perhaps not.

Also, in doing my part to help out victims of Hurricane Katrina, The Good Times Will Roll Again.

Pigeon holing victims of Katrina

MSNBC reports that the FEMA claims page will only allow you to file a claim online if you're using Internet Explorer. WTF is up with that?

Granted, IE is the most popular browser in the world, but Firefox is the most rapidly growing competitor in the browser space. Safari and other browsers aren't supported either.

Listen Michael Brown, if you want to help victims out, you should make your pages standards compliant and make it as easy as possible for victims to file claims. C'mon now. Get your head out of your ass or step down.

Moth update

Apparently, my thoughts on the moth were wrong. I've been emailed and apparently, this moth is a Pandorus sphinx (Eumorpha pandorus). Oh well, I was close. This is from an email sent to me from Michael Schwartz from the US Geological Survey Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in North Dakota.

Volunteering for the Red Cross

Today I went to the Red Cross of the National Capitol Area to take my mass care training. The training itself was pretty....boring. I basically learned how the Red Cross runs. I'm sure that was useful, but I think that the training could have done a little more to prepare me for what to expect.

I did get my vaccinations today though. I got my Hepatitis A&B (combo) and tetanus shot today. The Hepatitis shot went in my right arm, and strangely, it's sorer than my left arm, where my tetanus shot was.

I'll keep everyone updated as to my "draft" status. Stay tuned.

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

By Sidney Blumenthal

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."

"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

Volunteering to help

While trying out the Yahoo! 360 service, I started a blog over there (don't worry, this one will remain my main blog). My first blog entry was regarding the hurricane that has devastated the Gulf states. However, that was before I was following the disaster down there as closely as I am now. So, after being bombarded by all the media attention that has been surrounding this tragedy (and justly so), I've decided to volunteer for the DC Citizen Corps to go down to the Gulf. I haven't gotten any confirmation that I'm going yet, but I've expressed interest.

I really hope I get to go, and if I can I'll blog everything here. If not, I'll write it all down, and blog it when I get back. It'll likely be a two week stint after the training. I feel like I should do this for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it's the least that I can do. Secondly, it will feel good. Thirdly, I do need a slight change of pace, and a new view on life. Hopefully I get chosen to go, and my supervisor will let me go. My office has said that we can take the time without using up vacation or any leave time, which is very generous of them.

If you're interested, here are the requirements:

• Must be a United States Citizen with no prior felony convictions and the ability to successfully complete a background check (if necessary).


• Must be at least 18 years of age


• Must be physically able to work in a disaster area without refrigeration for medications and have the ability to work in the outdoors all day


• Must be willing to work long hours under arduous conditions


• Workers may be exposed to mold, high heat and humidity and insects


• Must be willing to work in the vicinity of disaster debris, damaged facilities and related adverse conditions


• This assignment is temporary.


• Must not self-deploy. Individuals who self-deploy will not be reimbursed

If you meet those requirements, and are willing to volunteer, please contact Kilin Boardman-Schroyer, the Program Coordinator for Greater DC Cares at (202) 777-4457. If you can't volunteer, at very least donate or give blood.