That's shitty. If they cancel for snow, we get paid. Even if the university is open, but the elementary schools close for weather, I can use a sick day to stay home.
1: You can always use a sick day to stay home, can't you? Do you mean you don't have to lie about being sick?
I mean being honest. I get 20 vacation days plus holidays plus the week between Christmas and New Years plus two personal days plus 12 sick days. I would feel bad about being not honest after all that. It's not even hypothetical. I took probably two months (in a 16 month period) to care for my parents.
I feel I should learn to speak French at this point.
The non-technical staff get the same deal, except that some of them might be required to come in even when they wanted the day off (or the university is shut for snow) because a certain number of people need to be around keep crucial systems up and feed the head-injury monkeys.
I don't remember if THE State University ever cancelled classes, but still made us staff peons work. THE State University hardly ever cancels classes, but then is very rarely in the path of a hurricane.
Ugh gross. Our university does the same thing, but they are cartoonishly evil villains of capitalism. Our janitor totaled his car coming in to work during a blizzard about 6 years ago, and the department raised money from faculty to buy him a new one. After that, they transferred him to a different building because they weren't comfortable with his relationship to the department.
They did it once when I was there. I didn't think to check that classes were canceled*, so I went in. Everything was open and running.
* They canceled because of bitter cold, not the six inches or so of snow. I had just left Nebraska and didn't think it was all that cold.
7: Send him to the building with the economics department.
I don't get paid for typhoon days. I'm paid pretty well so it's ok, but it rankles.
The only time they've closed for weather since I've been here was for Snowmagedon. Of course, that was four days. I froze my feet because you can't keep a 3-year-old out of that much snow and you can't let them wander around on their own.
I don't get to freeze my feet. All you do is stay home and listen to the rain.
My apartment is made of sheet metal, so it's really loud.
That does sound loud. The whole thing is metal or just the roof?
When I was at college there were on two occasions protracted periods of riots. The university informed everyone that it couldn't guarantee the safety of staff or students and that all classes and operations would continue as normal.
A metal floor sounds really bad if you happen to live below anybody.
Roof and most of the walls. I think the floor is concrete under the laminate.
15: You could get a car with a built-in flame thrower. I've seen the pictures.
It wouldn't fit into the classrooms.
Also I don't think they make the flamethrowers anymore. They melted the paint on the car or something.
We only had one attempted spree killer the whole time I was in college. And he was, very fortunately, not at all competent at his chosen felony.
Or, if we had others, they didn't get very far at all in their attempt.
We had a serial killer when I was in 7th grade.
In the riots this year they set my dad's library on fire. The staff put it out after one tier of books (and apparently he was quite chuffed at their coolness and professionalism).
We only had riots for Super Bowl reasons. They kicked in the windows of the library and destroyed a bus shelter.
The sports riots usually happen in the soccer stadiums. No-one cares about college sport, really.
People care about college sports, but the Super Bowl is professional football.
For college football, mostly people limit the damage to burning couches stolen from their neighbors' porches.
The burning couches in Mossheimat are traditionally thrown from high rise apartment buildings on New Years Eve. Bonus points for hitting emergency services vehicles, apparently.
11 - I was on call for Snowmaggedon in Pgh. I happened to be staying at a friend's place the night of the storm at the bottom of the hill in Moby's neighborhood, and had to walk to the hospital in thigh high snow in sneakers. I lived on the top of Polish Hill at the time, so up hill both ways.
(in all honesty, a cop did give me a ride for the last half mile on the way in, but that was the one downhill part, so I don't think it should count against my heroism when my tale is passed down through the generations.)
FWIW, the first thing I thought of when I heard about the hurricane is Yay! Heebie's house is safe!
The last time we had class cancelled was because somebody threatened to Kill Whitey.
I had to help dig out a neighbor who was a doctor who needed to get to AGH. I have no idea how he got to work, because he didn't come home with car and there's no way he didn't get stuck somewhere else.
33: They didn't even make non-whitey go to class?
One day last winter, they decided not to cancel our classes but sent out an email announcing that the university administration would not work due to snow. (Not, like, ordinary administrative staff in departments. The higher-up types.)
You probably live somewhere with flying cars and public transit.
How is it, heebie? Power still on?
Should we all be quiet while we wait for her to answer?
FWIW, the first thing I thought of when I heard about the hurricane is Yay! Heebie's house is safe!
Aww, that's so nice of you.
Still dry here! Dramatic clouds have begin to gather, though, but that's all.
Heebie U officially closed its offices and sent staff home. So that's nice.
IN 5 years, CMU only canceled anything once, and that was a massive cold/snow event that was straining the whole system badly. Rumor was that the governor had to call the university president and insist that he shut down. Mind you, this happened in the middle of the day; they wouldn't cancel just because of a blizzard and forecast lows of -20°.
I don't know if they docked staff half a vacation day.
ISTR that MIT closed during the Blizzard of '78, when Governor Dukakis shut down the part of the state inside Rt. 128. Usually, "The Institute is open and operating normally."
The "You know, for us" was implied.
University of Michigan had a no-cancelling-class policy because some douchebag law student once sued for their lost tuition after a blizzard.
45- Nah, they closed for the April Fool storm ('97?) and Snowmageddon.
Category 4! How many categories are there?
This is so much more awful than a "weather jerk" that I can hardly express it. Trump has just pardoned notorious Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.
This comes as a Category 4 hurricane is bearing down on Texas and CBP and ICE have refused to lift their immigration checkpoints as had been done during previous natural disasters. So undocumented people and mixed-status families now have a choice between evacuating north and running into a checkpoint, or staying put and facing the storm.
I'm so far beyond anger and grief over this that I hardly know how to describe this stew of emotions. All I can think about is the actual people I know who have fought so hard on these issues and how this endangers their lives.
That's really weird timing for the pardon. I guess he's hoping it gets buried under Harvey news? I was thinking it was a base-pleaser and he'd save it to distract from Russia or something.
We cancel class/delay start all of the time in the winter, and faculty can cancel class if they feel like the weather is unsafe for travel. I love living among fellow wusses.
Hope all of our Texans stay safe and dry. I do not miss hurricane season in the south at all.
I lived through one far milder than expected hurricane when I was in the south. Because I didn't trust the locals, I bought shotgun shells. I still have those shells because I never shoot anything these days.
I think it's the result of a power struggle in the administration between his determination to do it and (a few) others' recognition of how bad it would look. (Jamil Steele on Twitter just called it "pardoning this generation's Bull Connor.")
Scheduling it for a Friday afternoon news dump is very standard for stuff people don't want covered, and it's par for the course that they wouldn't adjust their plans just because the country's fourth-largest city is facing a massive hurricane.
Sorry, I should have put this in the other thread. I got confused and thought Carl Ichan was Steve Mnuchin. I guess either one of them is much, much worse than a weather jerk anyway.
The message is more to the people he expects to lie and cover up to prevent him from being impeached.
I am very worried about the fascist goon rally tomorrow - they are trying to evade the police by relocating to Alamo Square.
Was Gorka the tropic storm before Harvey?
I'm trying to remember. I know if e.g Flynn gets a blanket pardon he can no longer plead the Fifth against providing information. But can a pardon also extend to contempt of Congress?
Still no rain. I'm feeling a little more on edge, though.
Does the theory in the NYT yesterday have any merit- the bill of rights supersedes the pardon power because they're amendments, so the president does not actually have the power to pardon violations of fundamental rights enumerated in the amendments?
63: It seems a little special pleading to me, but I definitely think it falls in the growing category of "not a crime laid out in law but a high crime worthy of impeachment".
62: What are the predictions for your town? Are high winds likely, or just flooding? Has the local water authority done anything to make flooding less likely?
I was impressed by how well my FL home town and county seemed to have learned ofrom previous hurricanes in the 1990s and apply that knowledge to later storms (at least, in cases involving canals to be cleared, water lines to be lowered, what storm windows will and won't do).
If impeachment is the only remedy nothing happens. I mean, you can imagine more obvious and extreme examples- Republican governor blatantly violates voting rights amendments, judge orders election thrown out, Republican SoS certifies results anyway, court holds SoS in contempt, Trump pardons, no remedy. Cops arrest reporters for not revealing sources, judge orders them freed, cops say no, judge holds cops in contempt, Trump pardons, no remedy. Basically we're on to "judges have made their decisions, let them enforce them"- if you can pardon someone for violating a federal contempt order, and it's clear you'll never be impeached for it, the judicial branch isn't worth the fake gold on Rehnquist's sleeves.
Thinking of the heebies with anxiety.
66: Yes, it certainly is bad and can get a lot worse.
After that, they transferred him to a different building because they weren't comfortable with his relationship to the department.
Assholes. It's probably been said above, but I felt the need to repeat it.
49: Harvard didn't close for the 97 April Fool's storm. What a bunch of wimps at MIT.
My hospital is the same, classifying everyone as essential. We don't get normal sick time (there is a bank of extended sick leave that is like short-term disability), just a combined earned time, out of which comes holidays, vacation and sick time.
During the shutdown after the Boston Marathon bombing (before I got there), they were going to make people take earned time.
My dept tries to be friendly and treat us well, but they have to follow the HR policies. After a year in my dept, you are eligible to work from home. I can't do it regularly (just during snow storms), because a lot of what I do involves interacting with different teams and I also need to interact with patients using a work phone.
For people who can't work at home the rule essentially is, get your way in to work, stay 20 minutes and go home. There was one day where the Senior Director said that non-exempt staff and those who couldn't work from home could make up the hours by working longer days if they wanted. I do think that there are sleeping rooms at the main hospital, but not at the clinics in the community.
I know of another hospital where they closed the outpatient clinics early and made everyone use their paid-time-off.
72
Things like this make me wonder why American workplace culture has to suck so much.
70
I'm pretty sure being an asshole is in our university charter somewhere.
73: I will add that the press got wind of the bombing shut down policy, and they reversed themselves.
I'm still reading that article about feminism and the workplace, but my short answer is: "all of the above."
Very mild here. For us, the main danger is the rivers backing up from the coast plus prolonged raining, but regardless, at the moment everything is mild.
75: Hopefully your luck will hold. Did you invest in the family sized submarine that I recommended in the last flood related thread? You might not be needing it this time, but you never know.
In unrelated news, I am officially no longer the owner of a property in Ohio; I got notice yesterday that the title transfer is official. So if a category 5 hurricane hits Cleveland, it's no longer my problem.
According to the news, you expect alligators, floating coffins, and raw sewage. Basically, it will be like living in Florida.
When a friend of mine got flooded out in Prague some years ago, she returned to find a corpse in her rhododendron bush. Not a fresh one - it had been washed out of a cemetery upriver.
I thought rhododendron bushes had better roots than that.
Make sure you put out barrels to collect the rainwater, never know when you might need it.
80: does she have the legal right to do that in Texas?
I bet it takes a lot of barrels to hold 40 inches of rain
Nah, standard 55 gallon barrels are about that tall.
I can't tell if 80 is earnest.
I meant 81. I can't tell if 81 is earnest.
81, 85: A couple of counties in CA and (I think?) CO made it illegal to collect / store rainwater. And my libertarian and conservative students are furious about it here in Arkansas.
But as far as I can tell, these laws have been passed in places where water rights are a big deal. And they're not aimed at rain barrels, but at property owners up the river who are stealing water from those who have water rights down the river.
(Those who actually know something about these laws, please feel free to correct me!)
I'd be surprised if counties have the authority to do this: water rights are generally handled at the state level.
That a prior appropriation state would care about rainwater collection is beyond obvious. The water in rivers and creeks comes from rain. If the water in the river is already oversubscribed, then of course actions that would reduce the water in the river would be relevant subjects for regulation. I could see states passing laws that exempt some sort of de minimis collection from regulation -- this would be much more common than a law outlawing collection, imo -- but there's just no way that a prior appropriation state can embrace the view that if the water falls from the sky onto your property, it's yours to do with what you wish.
Water rights are property rights. What kind of libertarian wants to disregard property rights?
One who sees the right is often exercised by Native Americans.
Hurriboring. Little twigs all over the place. Town shut down. Still a lot more to go.
We've got a lot of water right fights going on here, but not on the level of rainwater. Far too libertarian an area for that kind of squabble.
90. Glad it isn't raining. Looks like you'll miss any floods.
It's raining! It's been drizzling all day but it's picked up a bit now.
|| at our annual street festival we've got a bluegrass from Maine that just played Baba O'Reilly. Won't really be a teenage wasteland til the U starts up. Now it's a Civil war thing. Very Union very Maine. |>
Go straight to hell with your rebel yell we are the boys of Maine.
I don't think it's legal where my uncle lives in CO. They have to pay to use their well water.
Where does a Colorado mansplainer get his water from?
Maine saved the Union at Little Roundtop; they get to brag.
That's exactly the story:
And then appeared our lion, he was roaring bayonets
Charging down the mountain with what forces we had left
'Cause we're as steadfast as Katahdin,
We're as hard as winter's rain
Go straight to hell with your rebel yell
We are the boys of Maine
Tonight we had Anders Osborne. Holy shit, does that guy rock.
It's word to think he comes from Uddevalla, where I used to live.
102: good lyrics but I just listened to it and it's about three times too slow and mournful. It needs to be 160 beats per minute, Pogues style.
Some dude in the thread linked in 106 is using twitter, known refuge of trolls and villainy, to ask for emergency aid?
Huh, reading the NYT updates, apparently asking for help on twitter is common.
If it's so bad you feel compelled to seek refuge in your attic then get on the fucking roof! It's unnerving reading the number of people who are huddling in their attics.
I can understand not wanting to get on your roof if it's windy and rainy. I mean, if you're not expecting to get airlifted out. It would be scary either way.
||
Fuck, just need to vent: A friend of mine from the radical/bohemian/punk scene just got stomped by a couple of assholes whom she had confronted for saying racist, pro-Nazi shit outside a popular hipster bar. She got kicked ~20 times.
Unclear what the response will be/what she's looking for right now, I'll mention anything useful here.
Angry.
||>
That's terrible Natilo. Sympathies.
This seems trivial in the light of that but I just got off Facetime with my folks for the first time since I've been back from leave and my father had to bring up the "statues coming down" and "Robert Lee did a lot to reconcile after the war" I was so taken aback even though I know he's a Trump supporter. I mean FFS pops, you're fucking paisan who was born and grew up in Bensonhurst.
In ascending order of triviality, my sister just texted to badger me about going to her wedding. I knew this was going to happen, but she'd fallen silent for ~3 months and hell was that nice.
Houston is apparently going to be getting a lot worse over the next few days.
Holy shit, a lot more rain on the way.
Also:
https://twitter.com/brookejarvis/status/901840333259948032
112: That's awful. I'm sorry to hear it.
114: Tell her you'll catch the next one.
Do they still have mines in Pennsylvania? She works on a lot of those.
We have mines. More wells (fracking) than mines lately, but lots of mines.
Ok. I'll say it was Heebie.
Thanks. I'm feeling under pressure already because of the blame for killing the old Taylor Swift.
How is it, Texas? A friend linked this sobering article from April:
Talbott has a simple solution: allocate $26 billion, more than a fifth of the state's 2015 budget, mostly to buy property adjacent to the waterways, bulldoze and expand the canals. That amount of money, he said, could get all of Houston prepared to weather a city-wide, once-in-a-century storm. . . . But he said the city would not be raising $26 billion any time soon.
Carroll Robinson, a former Houston city councilman and current professor of public policy at Texas Southern University, said the city couldn't afford to delay needed projects until the funds come in.
"The city should literally issue debt so it can bring forward flood control projects," he said, noting that debt is issued to fund parks and sewers. "On a pay-as-you-go basis you just can't build and maintain projects fast enough."
He also suggested forming a regional flood control district with surrounding counties or requiring new homes in flood-prone places to build like beach houses on stilts.
But Houston is already stuck with tremendous debt, such that Moody's Investors Service downgraded its bond rating in March. Issuing more debt would be a very tough sell.
Talbott said that no substantial chunk of the billions of dollars to retrofit Houston would come from the federal government.
"It just wouldn't fit in their model of benefits and costs," he said.
I have little to add besides expletives.
Then again, if climate change has to drown cities, drowning Texan cities first seems just.
I think Houston is reliably blue. The Mayor is an African American Democrat. It's the other side of the state that needs to be drowned.
128: Jesus, Ajay. Chris is right about Houston, and even if he wasn't being amused about a city being destroyed by flooding is still kind of awful.
Definitely don't complain to God if a city isn't destroyed.
131. Schadenfreude. Still sorry about the other 2.3 million, though.
But Houston is already stuck with tremendous debt, such that Moody's Investors Service downgraded its bond rating in March. Issuing more debt would be a very tough sell
Eh? Even after the downgrade (which was in 2016), it's still in the second highest rating category. And Moody's cites restrictions on raising taxes as one of the main constraints on the rating, so it's entirely within Houston's power to increase it.
Do those restrictions come from Houston or the state?
133.last: assuming Houston has the power to vary its own tax rate; does it? Or is there some sort of balanced budget requirement?
OT: I either have fiber glass insulation in my eye or I have cellulose insulation in my eye or my eyeball has decided to pucker like a prune for reasons only known to itself.
134: Moody's cited Proposition 1 and H. I assumed city, but I suppose they could well be state.
139: No thanks. It already itches like crazy.
136: Heebieville is fine - some power outages, some downed trees, but no flooding and everything is mostly over. Sadtown, where Heebie U is located, was actually parked under the eye for a while. I don't know exactly what the situation is there, but I think it's not extensive devastation, at least.
I'm feeling super paralyzed and aghast at the situation in Houston, however, and fully expect it to extend to Beaumont and other cities.
(Aside from the sheer horror and extent of the flooding, and lack of a game plan, I have a bunch of questions about the secondary future-planning: I imagine Heebieville will take in a lot of refugees. Will the schools open on Tuesday, as scheduled, or will they become refugee centers? What kind of community organization and volunteer stuff is going to take place? Am I going to be super overwhelmed by it all? etc.)
Then lastly, a big feeling of "there but by the grace of god..." Feeling lucky is an uneasy feeling - it really highlights one's lack of control over these things.
Has Glen Beck added inflatable rafts to his prepper kit?
142.last is why I don't buy lottery tickets. I feel like taking specific steps to profit from unlikely but good things is too much of a reminder that unlikely but bad things can happen with greater frequency.
I mean, I used to buy them when the lady down the hall collected a dollar from everybody for the office to buy tickets. I figured in that case it would be horrible to be the only person I worked with not to get a windfall at the same time would be bad for my mental health.
How good is heebieville at this sort of thing, generally? Obviously things this severe don't happen often but... have they coped with minor disasters fairly well? Or is this all new?
To 133, parsing is a bit tricky, but I didn't think the implication was that the Moody's rating itself had ruined Houston's ability to issue more debt; rather, it would be a hard sell politically in general. And anyway moot point now; all those estimates are going to change.
Heebie, let us know if you need support down the line for the stuff in 142.3. We can all place mass orders of school supplies on Amazon and stuff like that.
Anyway, apparently a piece of fiberglass did to my cornea what a 80s-DJ did to a bunch of vinyl records. Apparently, it's not hard to fix.
I figured in that case it would be horrible to be the only person I worked with not to get a windfall at the same time would be bad for my mental health.
Same here. I mostly want to prevent everyone else from winning unless I do too.
But you all buy different tickets, right? Or everyone contributes a cent each?
148: Doesn't it just go away? Or is it more severe than just a regular scratched cornea?
Here everybody pooled their dollar and then somebody bought a bunch of tickets. So, if any of those tickets won, we'd all split the pool.
151: There are eye drops involved.
Holy crap, I just saw a picture of the Houston airport showing entire jumbo jets under water. You can mostly see the top of the tails sticking out above the surface.
And connection times are still better than through O'Hare.
146: lots of experience but I have no other place to an compare to know how well it's done. Lots of people took in refugees after Katrina. We've had catastrophic flooding ourselves in 1998 and 2015, big enough to get FEMA help, with moderately damaging floods in between.
My impression is that there's an outpouring of compassion and generosity after a calamity but very little done to prevent the next one. But I don't know how the compassion/generosity compares: is our response organized? Is it to scale? Or does it just exceed paltry expectations? Do other places put on an attitude about being put-out while ponying up more money? No idea.
147: I appreciate the offer. If something appropriate shows up, maybe I'll toss it out here.
Lots of people took in refugees after Katrina.
Someone in this group got on the wrong side of the gods.
Obviously things this severe don't happen often but...
My impression is that there's an outpouring of compassion and generosity after a calamity but very little done to prevent the next one.
Article on that subject
In theory, a 500-year flood is something that has a 1-in-500 shot of happening in any given year -- in other words, the sort of event that's so rare that it might not make sense to plan around the possibility of it happening. The problem is that 500-year floods are happening more often than probability predicts -- especially in Houston. And, especially in Houston, prevention planning hasn't evolved to acknowledge that a "500-year" flood isn't really a 1-in-500 chance anymore.
...
In the meantime, the reality of Houston's flooding has already shown the old models to be out of date. An area of West Houston called Memorial City, for example, was outside Houston's 500-year floodplain but flooded three times in the past decade: in 2009, 2015, and 2016.
Anti-flood policy tends to focus on 100-year floods, not 500-year ones. Many mortgage lenders require any homeowner living in a 100-year floodplain to buy flood insurance (homeowners with federally backed mortgages have to have flood insurance, as well). But homeowners living in a 500-year floodplain don't typically have to purchase flood insurance -- after all, 500-to-1 odds are pretty long odds.
Similarly, it's hard to make city policies to prepare for remote events. In Houston, for example, the city's current Hazard Mitigation Plan calls to discourage people from building homes in the 100-year floodplain, but it doesn't say anything about the 500-year floodplain.
There's a simple, probability-based reason for this. Everything that a person (or city) can do carries some amount of risk, and if a city prevents any activity that might be risky, it won't be able to allow people to build new houses at all. So if something really only has a 1-in-500 chance of occurring, it's not necessarily logical to force people to change their plans because of it.
...
In 2016, ProPublica and the Texas Tribune collaborated on a project detailing how bad the damage from an Ike-caliber storm would be -- and how little Houston had done to mitigate it. "We've done nothing to shore up the coastline, to add resiliency ... to do anything," Phil Bedient, a Rice University professor who co-directs the Storm Surge Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center, told ProPublica.
Even the things the city of Houston was trying to do weren't working -- the mitigation plan called to discourage building within the 100-year floodplain, but 7,000 homes were built since 2010 in low-lying areas of the city. And while the Army Corps of Engineers and Harris County had launched a partnership to widen channels and build bridges in the Brays Bayou area to reduce the impact of flooding, the city was unable to muster the resources to build new seawall or floodgates -- which Bedient and other experts agreed would be needed to mitigate the damage of a 100-year or 500-year storm.
Also, a really depressing statistic (emphasis mine).
Most people with flood insurance buy policies backed by the federal government's National Flood Insurance Program. As of April, less than one-sixth of homes in Houston's Harris County had federal coverage, according to Aon. That would leave more than 1 million homes unprotected in the county. Coverage rates are similar in neighboring areas. Many cars also will be totaled.
"A lot of these people are going to be in very serious financial situations," said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute. "Most people who are living in these areas do not have flood insurance. They may be able to collect some grants from the government, but there are not a lot, usually they're very limited. There are no-interest to low-interest loans, but you have to pay them back."
Sadly 156.2 sounds like the general nature of human response to tragedy. Local kid has cancer? Let's raise money for treatment and so the kid has a nice party or whatever. Regulate something that will reduce the incidence of cancer, maybe not for this specific kid but certain for some significant number? What are you, a commie?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that article seemed to be all (almost all?) about the storm surge, and not at all about the rain. Isn't the problem here coming from the other direction?
I haven't seen anything in the last couple of days about the refineries and chemical plants. Are they in operation? Damaged? Well enough protected from storm runoff?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that article . . .
Which one?
My dog punched through almost every layer of my cornea during a drunken game of tug-o-war (I was drunk, he was sober) and with steroids and antibiotics it healed back almost to normal. Only when it's dry or I absentmindedly rub it does it feel gritty.
Many refineries did shut down: I just saw that production has been cut by 10% nationwide, but I thought it was more like 25% locally. Looking for news nets a lot of vile articles about who's going to profit from disaster, though, so I'm not quite ready to pursue it further.
Looking for news nets a lot of vile articles about who's going to profit from disaster,
I live in a part of the world where that couldn't help but be one of my, well not first or second but close behind that, thoughts.
I read the Texas Tribune-Propublica article and the comments from the guy who just retired from running the flood control district are enraging.
The one I read yesterday and can't find the link to today.
Oh okay: the enraging remarks in 167 come from the same guy requesting $26 billion in 127. I take it he has no grip on realities beyond the political?
I'm not shocked that people are profiting from disaster, of course; I just don't want to read the breathless prognostications in Fortune. Then again, it's hard even to feel schadenfreude over rich people losing massive amounts of money; it so rarely changes anything. It's all in the game.
Like most Scooby Doo episodes, the problems are caused by real estate developers. I'm thinking of getting a van and a supply of ascots.
164: I was (soberly) repairing the bathroom vent fan.
I don't like wiring in electrical fixtures while drunk.
I'm in the attic, with only 2'6" of head space, surrounded by insulation I have pushed to the side, trying to google if a black wire should be connected to a brown wire. It's not a good idea to drink in that situation.
That should be plenty of room for a head.
I suppose, but if you forget, you got jabbed in the head by the bottoms of the nails holding down the shingles.
Tops of nails? Anyway the pointed end.
Augh, Moby, that's pretty much all of my fears in one scenario. I hope you're feeling better soon. I've had a few cornea scratches, including one because a stupid bug flew into my eye and got stuck there, and they're not fun but healed relatively quickly. If they didn't give you an eye patch, that seems like a good sign.
I was sort of hoping for an eye patch. I have been looking for a reason to buy a parrot.
I never actually felt bad, except when I was looking in my eye. That made me sick.
It looked like a white prune with red streaks and an iris.
I have been looking for a reason to buy a parrot.
Nothing looks as rented as a rented bird.
Anyway, I'm going to go back to this eye doctor because I basically went in thinking, but not saying, "Please reassure me I'm not going blind?" and she knew that somehow.
Apparently the picture of the Houston airport is fake.
I knew GHWB was too much of a non-entity to get an airport named after him.
Those weren't tails of the planes, they were shark fins!
If life hands you fresh water sharks, make shark-fin soup.
So, is shooting a ballistic missile over Japan a problem?
More of a problem than just splashing short-range missiles into the EEZ on the Korean side, which is what NK has mostly done up to now - this is only the third time a missile has overflown Japan in 20 years. Friends in Hokkaido who were woken by a loud alert on their phones telling them to take cover are feeling pretty spooked.
@nktpnd on Twitter is a good account to follow for analysis.
I'm more worried about the local unstable madman with nukes.
So: did local authorities make the right call in not calling for an evacuation? The Houston mayor's defence of the decision sounds reasonable to me, but I realize I don't have much sense of what is normal or optimal under the circumstances.
Also: Heebie! I'm glad things are basically fine in Heebieville.
And also: LB's 182 made me laugh.
192: I think it was the right call, yes. The city is just too big to evacuate that fast, and having all those people on the road with this kind of flooding would have been an even bigger disaster than what we're seeing now.
194: Absolutely. In particular, many of the roads are quite low-especially freeways* and frontage roads which is why there are all the pictures of water up to overpasses. Almost all of the roads flood (quite frequently) before surrounding areas (in many cases that is part of the "plan"** for floodwaters--and necessarily so), so the pictures make it look a tad more apocalyptic than it actually is. (Although surface streets are usually just a few feet lower than the houses given how flat, flat, flat*** it is.)
*In the city like most urban freeways they alternate between being elevated and sunken to lessen disruption of the surface street grid.
**But 167 is correct, the retiring flood guy is like a parody of the old Army Corps of Engineers way of dealing with this shit. Engineering! And earth-moving! "Progress must be totally unfettered you tree-hugging homos."
***Topos available here (5 ft. contours). Within the city, the bayous are in relatively narrow gullies that are up to 25 feet deeps or so. But the flat areas have only 5-10 feet of relief over long distances. One consequence is that the flood "heights" from various storms are relatively close--frequently fill up to the bank, but then every extra foot spreads out over a very broad area. So it takes a lot more increased flow to add any subsequent height.
Did he ever propose digging tunnels with nuclear bombs? That's the epitome of the old school infrastructure engineer- go big or GTFO.
My family's farmland is so flat that you can irrigate (evenly) it by turning water one at one side and letting it run to the other.
193: And I also still say portage like a Canadian, because the American pronunciation still sounds a little bit anti-French to me. But then again, to pronounce it with a gesture towards its French origins maybe sounds a little bit snooty and affected in a USian context?
Luckily, here in the ADKs, you can just call it a carry (yes, "carry" as a noun: it's that place where you need to carry your canoe or kayak through a bunch of weeds and bushes in order to avoid the rapids, or something like that).
198. Carry might be a calque. See The Great Carrying Place.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Carry
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Just had a bout of severe chest pain and tightness like I've never had before. Walked in 100+ degree weather a couple of blocks to the clinic.
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Not evacuating does seem like the right call, based on previous experience. But would it have been possible, even theoretically, to develop an evacuation plan that could have worked? My guess is that the degree of coordination required would be considered un-American outside of wartime, unless it was something the US was doing to another country.
12th-grade gym class: Father McPsycho takes us to a local lake, and dumps us into the middle of that body of water, in a couple of canoes with too few oars, and with not enough life preservers. "Today, Class, we learn how to paddle, ahem." We didn't know from tumplines, had never heard of a calque. Our object was to make it to shoreline without drowning.
And that's how I learned how to kayak, in my high school gym class.
201: Yikes! I hope things turn out ok.
201: Christ. Keep us posted as it seems prudent...
Good lord, Barry!
Walked in 100+ degree weather a couple of blocks to the clinic.
Um, having recently had a mild MI where I grayed out, Wow!
Barry, when you can please let us know how you are, very worrisome.
Hope the heeblets are all well too, such worrying times.
Everything checks out ok. Had an EKG and other more routine stuff. A panic attack apparently. At least I know my heart is in good condition.
Barry! A good heart is not so easy to find. So glad to hear yours is in working condition.
Fuck, Barry! Glad you had the inclination to get help, not curl up and (presumably, not) die.
128 was well out of line. I apologise.
And yes, we'll done on the not dying there Barry. Also well done on the not being blind, everyone.
Over here you can buy little cards to carry saying to the effect of "In the event of hospitalisation due to natural or man made disaster, I absolutely do not consent to being visited by/photographed with Margaret Thatcher/John Major/Tony Blair/David Cameron/Theresa May"
Do you guys have anything similar? If not, there's a business opportunity for someone.
208. Very relieved. You need to do something about that stress though.
Yikes, Barry! I hope there's a plan to treat that too. Goodness, and one to wrap md 20/400 in comfortable gauze until his body stops fighting him! (I've been going over to dualism lately and I don't even care.)
Oh good lord am I glad I didn't see 201 until after 208. Stay healthy, Barry. And everyone else.
(And 211 is appreciated. I get more and more humorless(tm) as the world gets more systematically awful.)
208
Great to hear you're OK physically! That must have been such a scare, especially coming off another health problem. Do you have access to decent mental health care? Panic attacks are no joke.
208: Yikes. Glad to hear it turned out OK. Also, seconding the last sentence in 216.
Thanks all. I think I'll take up my Tai Chi again, there's actually a large space in my (shared) office that is perfect for doing it and I've been coming in over an hour early every day.
Also somewhat relieved I won't have to give up drinking.
Ack, Barry! Glad your heart is ok. The panic is still not fun.
Thanks, ajay.
The first time I moved out of Houston in 1979, I just ahead of Tropical Storm Claudette which dumped 43 inches of rain on one small town just south of Houston (Alvin, birthplace of Nolan Ryan). However, the massive rainfall was *much* more limited and primarily fell in south and east of Houston where the coastal plain is even flatter and more featureless than Houston itself. It did ruin my girlfriend's car --she lived just north of there. Houses were lower than the streets in her older neighborhood, but elevated a few feet; but not the driveways.
Related: Maybe don't buy a used car for a few weeks.
I do think that Harvey is likely to cause the greatest amount of vehicular damage of any storm ever. not sure how well tracked that is, but one source estimated 250,000 for Sandy and 600,000 for Katrina and Rita combined.
Removing a million old cars from the road and replacing them with fewer more efficient cars might have some noticeable effect on CO2 emissions. This must be one of those negative feedback mechanisms conservatives are counting on to save all our coastal cities from destruction.
I just saw a nice cynical story on how disaster relief for Texas will be the sugar coating that get the debt-ceiling increase down. It may be right.
223: Given how Houston is set-up, there's no way it will result in fewer cars, unless people leave Houston. They may be cars that burn more gas than those they replaced since gas prices are pretty low now.
Yes. As I think I may have mentioned here before, if anyone thinks humans are going to do anything other than drive big cars and trucks around until the last drop of oil is used up, spending a few days in Houston will disabuse you of that at notion.
Fact sheet from Obama EPA "What Climate Change Means for TX" Emphasis on sea level/floods. All of this type of information now gone from the EPA website.
This must be one of those negative feedback mechanisms conservatives are counting on to save all our coastal cities from destruction.
Precisely what Julian Simon had in mind.
Nobody could have predicted Mumbai.
