Flood Emergency Management

Obviously New Orleans is in trouble. People should have planned for this. The reality is, some people have. NASA has looked into it before. Here's a really scary animation of what may happen. As for my previous comments about lowering the lake level, after a hurricane it's more likely to go up than down. (though anything that can be diverted or drained will help.)

Engineering Broken Levies

After surviving the hurricane, New Orleans is now in more danger from it's own precarious design. A 200 yard breach is no laughing matter, I read somewhere these are earthen levies. That means every minute of flow errodes more and deeper. This isn't about 3000 lb. sandbags anymore: It is now a serious engineering problem.

According to the mayor, Black Hawk helicopters were scheduled to pick up and drop massive 3,000-pound sandbags in the 17th Street Canal breach, but were diverted on rescue missions. Nagin said neglecting to fix the problem has set the city behind by at least a month.

Everyone knows what happens if you don't fix the crack in the dam fast enough. I hope someone down there has the know-how to fix this. I like the idea of using sand filler shipping containers (I'm imagining the kind on trains). The trick will be sealing the breach without increasing flow elsewhere and not creating high-flow channels that cause more erosion.

If there's any way to drain any of the lake into the ocean (I don't know if it's above or below sea-level) that's an obvious help too. (Even draining the lake an inch could make a big difference)

Professionally, it's dissapointing to see an engineering failure of this magnitude. It's even more disappointing when the obvious corrective action was missed, and the problem because worse. On one hand the mayor is right to complain about poor leadership, on the other hand, he needs to be constructive cause they're still in a huge mess. They need somebody large and in-charge down there and they need a damn good plan ASAP. Go Army! We're all rooting for you!

Accountability

I don't want to be a stickler, but accountability is the opposite of forgiving and forgetting...

Maybe I don't count since I was opposed to the war in Iraq from the get-go. At that fateful time in 2002 my wishy-washy argument against the war was the mundane, "I don't see any evidence that we should go to war with Iraq." I agreed with Pope John Paul II that Afganistan was a "just war" and Iraq was not. Lately however, popular opinion seems to have swayed toward a consensus that going to war was a bad idea. At times like this, it is good to recognize that some people knew it would be a bad idea and tried to stop it. I'm not talking about hippie Berkeley students and anti-war protesters. I'm talking about genuine elected officials. In an effort to encourage accountability, here's a list of our Senators and their votes. We voted to go to Iraq 77-23. Whichever way you feel, give them their due.

If you believe the Iraq war was not in the long-term best interest of the US, not worth the cost in dollars or lives, or generally a bad idea, then give props to these Senators for their foresight:

Akaka (D-HI)Bingaman (D-NM)Boxer (D-CA)Byrd (D-WV)Chafee (R-RI)Conrad (D-ND)Corzine (D-NJ)Dayton (D-MN)Durbin (D-IL)Feingold (D-WI)Graham (D-FL)Inouye (D-HI)Jeffords (I-VT)Kennedy (D-MA)Leahy (D-VT)Levin (D-MI)Mikulski (D-MD)Murray (D-WA)Reed (D-RI)Sarbanes (D-MD)Stabenow (D-MI)Wellstone (D-MN)Wyden (D-OR)

If you believe the Iraq war was in the long-term best interest of the US, worth the costs, and generally a good idea, then give props to these Senators for their foresight:

Allard (R-CO)Allen (R-VA)Baucus (D-MT)Bayh (D-IN)Bennett (R-UT)Biden (D-DE)Bond (R-MO)Breaux (D-LA)Brownback (R-KS)Bunning (R-KY)Burns (R-MT)Campbell (R-CO)Cantwell (D-WA)Carnahan (D-MO)Carper (D-DE)Cleland (D-GA)Clinton (D-NY)Cochran (R-MS)Collins (R-ME)Craig (R-ID)Crapo (R-ID)Daschle (D-SD)DeWine (R-OH)Dodd (D-CT)Domenici (R-NM)Dorgan (D-ND)Edwards (D-NC)Ensign (R-NV)Enzi (R-WY)Feinstein (D-CA)Fitzgerald (R-IL)Frist (R-TN)Gramm (R-TX)Grassley (R-IA)Gregg (R-NH)Hagel (R-NE)Harkin (D-IA)Hatch (R-UT)Helms (R-NC)Hollings (D-SC)Hutchinson (R-AR)Hutchison (R-TX)Inhofe (R-OK)Johnson (D-SD)Kerry (D-MA)Kohl (D-WI)Kyl (R-AZ)Landrieu (D-LA)Lieberman (D-CT)Lincoln (D-AR)Lott (R-MS)Lugar (R-IN)McCain (R-AZ)McConnell (R-KY)Miller (D-GA)Murkowski (R-AK)Nelson (D-FL)Nelson (D-NE)Nickles (R-OK)Reid (D-NV)Roberts (R-KS)Rockefeller (D-WV)Santorum (R-PA)Schumer (D-NY)Sessions (R-AL)Shelby (R-AL)Smith (R-NH)Smith (R-OR)Snowe (R-ME)Specter (R-PA)Stevens (R-AK)Thomas (R-WY)Thompson (R-TN)Thurmond (R-SC)Torricelli (D-NJ)Voinovich (R-OH)Warner (R-VA)

Sorry for the boring list, but these people deserve credit, both good and bad. I'd also like to add the names of 4 resolutions that were never agreed upon:

Durbin Amdt. No. 4865; To amend the authorization for the use of the Armed Forces to cover an imminent threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction rather than the continuing threat posed by Iraq.

-This would have explicitly tied the war WMDs. Wonder how things would have changed had we done that. I also wonder how people knew to vote against it.

Levin Amdt. No. 4862; To authorize the use of the United States Armed Forces, pursuant to a new resolution of the United Nations Security Council, to destroy, remove, or render harmless Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons-usable material, long-range ballistic missiles, and related facilities, and for other purposes.

-Even worse, this involves both WMDs and dipolmacy with other countries. It would have made for a short war though.

Byrd Amdt. No. 4868; To provide statutory construction that constitutional
authorities remain unaffected and that no additional grant of authority is made
to the President not directly related to the existing threat posed by Iraq.

-I don't know what this means, but maybe it would have ruled out the construction of prisons outside Iraq and new executive guidelines on "coersive techniques".

Byrd Amdt. No. 4869, As Amended; To provide a termination date for the
authorization of the use of the Armed Forces of the United States, together with
procedures for the extension of such date unless Congress disapproves the
extension.

-That's right folks, from the get-go we decided there would be no oversight, no accountability, no end date, and ultimately no plan. This ammendment came closest to passing...if 31 to 66 can be construed as closest. But since we're being detailed: the ones who thought it might be a good idea to retain some oversight, but voted for the war anyway:
Biden,Cantwell,Dodd,Dorgan,Harkin,Hollings,Kerry,Kohl,Rockefeller,Torricelli.

Everyone else gave the president a green flag and a blank check.
Credit where credit is due.

School ranking season

And yet again US News and World Report ranks its favorites based on arbitrary guidelines. Not to be outdone, The Washinton Monthly proves it can be even more arbitrary.

My usual complaint with these rankings is they score stupid things like graduation rate. If you graduate 100% of your class, hey you did perfect, right? You're probably turning out a good percentage of apathetic stoners, but at least you have a high ranking. The problem with this attitude is that it encourages schools to coddle students rather than work them. Now maybe my little trash-talking here is typical of engineers. My program dumped a good 20-30% of it's students off into other majors, some because they didn't like the subject, but most because they couldn't comprehend the material. I advocate this process: call it grading, call it weeding-out, call it natural selection...it works. Medical school has it's own competitive selection process, mostly because we don't want inept doctors. If you've ever driven a car over a bridge or flown on an airplane, you don't want inept engineers. You don't want inept lawyers or businessmen, or teachers, or anything else. Why do we reward schools that don't keep high standards? Elementary school is a fine place for "no-child-left-behind". College, on the other hand, should require some minimal display of merit.

Back to Washington Monthly.

Their list uses the percentage of students in Army or Navy Reserve Officer
Training Corps (ROTC), the percentage of graduates in the Peace Corps, the
percentage of federal work-study grants used for community service projects, the
total amount of research spending, the number of doctorates granted in the hard
sciences and, as a measure of social mobility, the percentage of students on
Pell Grants, with a bonus for schools whose graduation rates are higher than
expected for having so many low-income students.

Now I don't have children, but while choosing a college, I heard enough from my parents to know what their primary concern was: That after graduation, their massive expediture prove to be a good investment, and that I could make a decent living in a profession I find worthwhile. (And it would have worked, had it not been for grad school!). Lest this seem parentally biased, my thoughts were along the same lines-with a little added concern for the social environment.

For the record, my family was very proud when my sister applied to the Peace Corps, and I obviously endorse "doctorates granted in the hard sciences", but ranking education based any of the Washington Monthly's criteria is total rubbish. Perhaps they try to address that.

A word on our criteria. This is the first Washington Monthly College
Rankings. In future years, we would prefer to expand our criteria and develop an
even more comprehensive measure of the qualities by which colleges and
universities enrich our country. There's only one problem: Many of these data
aren't available. We would love, for example, to add a category measuring
academic excellence. It's nearly impossible, however, to directly gauge the
quality of education a student receives at a given school. [emphasis added]

Hmm. The assays for academic achievement were too poorly defined so they decided to measure something else entirely.

Say it ain't so...

Evidently Paul Wolfowitz and Ann Coulter are Cornell Alums. I know it's cold and grey up there, but really...

Sheehan

So if there's one story worth looking at this past week, it's this one.

The basic story is that Cindy Sheehan, mother of the deceased soldier Casey Sheehan, is protesting the war outside of the Crawford TX ranch where Bush is on a 5 week vacation. Ordinarily, I'm opposed to focusing on an individual story. Lots of mother's children die in Iraq (including a lot of Iraqi mothers' but whatever) and we tell them we're sorry and go on with life. It's somehow not fair or equal to focus on one person's story when such tales are fairly abundant. This, on the other hand, is a made-for-TV tale of woe.

What makes it novel is that she has chosen to protest in the the Texas desert in August. She is free to do so, because in her grief she couldn't hold together enough to keep her job. She has separated from her husband. She says "I'm not afraid of anything since my son was killed". And there you have that most dangerous of all things...someone who feels they have nothing to lose. Her's is a simple demand: she wants to meet with the President and ask him some questions. The fact is though, she has already met with the president since the death of her son, and another meeting is not likely to resolve her issues. The president cannot give her what she really wants, but neither can he defend himself from her pain.

In this situation, the administration finds it cannot go on the offensive. The administration cannot call her unpatriotic, since she spends her days and nights singing the praises of her son the soldier. The can't call her a wussy dove, because calling mothers wussy doesn't score points, and wusses don't tend to camp out in Texas in August. They can try to demonize her by emphasizing ties to various liberal organizations, but honestly, it's probably benefiting those organizations more than it hurts Cindy. They don't have the option of demonizing her son, because frankly, no one in government has a quarter of his character. Imagine how the discussion went when the administration found out he was an Eagle Scout (which people seem to find more endearing in martyrs than the living). Not just that, he was an altar boy. He wanted to be a chaplain's aide when he enlisted. And by-the-by, he was saving himself for marriage. If only I could have been there when the Republican spin-doctors learned that. We have a devout Eagle Scout who volunteered to go to war around the age the president was drunk driving into trees. Character doesn't get more untouchable than that.

Naturally, they're doing what they can to control this issue. Early last week, rumors had it that Sheehan would be forcibly removed or arrested. If that was ever anyone's plan they soon thought better of it. via Time:

Once Sheehan starts acting like a politician, say some Republicans and even some Democrats, she will become just another voice in the debate--easy, in other words, to neutralize. But until then, Bush's team cannot fire back hard, as it usually does when it is criticized. Sheehan must be handled, as an adviser to the President put it, "very carefully."

Plan B is to loose the spin doctors, observe smear campaign in action (caution requires strong stomach). But it looks like a solid majority of Americans side with mom on this one. Enough that the attacks themselves are creating backlash.

The story of one mother and one son. Arguably no more or less important than any other mother or child. And yet it is a captivating story...certainly one that has captivated the press. They too have a vested interest, some in selling the dramatic americana, some in forwarding their political views:

This weekend one of Bushes neighbors fired a shotgun across his yard, not pointed at the protestors, but certainly because of them. WaPo

He said he fired his gun in preparation for the dove-hunting season, but when asked if he had another motive, he said, "Figure it out for yourself."

The interesting thing is how the media writes it's ledes. Pick a news organization. Search their site for sheehan and shotgun. See what you get:

Organization 1:
Troubles Follow Bush
Mom to Continue Protest Against War
Mom's Protest Riles Gun-Toting Neighbor
Cindy Sheehan's Pitched Battle

Organization 2:
Protests to Continue at Bush Ranch Bush Neighbor Suffers Protest Fatigue -
Gunshot Spurs Havoc at Bush Ranch Protest

Organization 3:
Bush neighbor takes aim at 'doves'

So which is he? A riled gun-toter? Or a fatigued neighbor?

In watching the smear and the buzz and the blogging, it's almost easy to forget that the media didn't start this. And they won't end it. Because really this is about one 48-yr-old woman and the president. He's not likely to see her, so she stands in the heat while he goes to Little League games and bike rides on the 2nd of his five week vacation. It may be a long long vacation for both of them.

2 Dramatic Feats

Been a while since I've posted, because honestly, what can top olive crystals? Anyway I haven't had any thougts worth sharing lately, except to marvel at the 2 life-and-death technical challenges mankind overcame last week. Pop quiz for you: what were they? Of course they were the raising of the stranded Priz from 620 ft underwater and the repair of the Challenger as it circled the Earth miles in the air. True both situations were caused by some manner of human fault, but both rescuses are phenomenal accomplishments.

The Science of Olive Crystals

Lucky readers, today is science day! I'm about to share with you a marvel that not even I knew existed. But before I share with you the marvels of physical science, here are some paltry observations on social sciences.

-People's behavior is largely ruled by cost benefit.
-When one has a digital camera and the cost of photography is virtually nothing, one will take silly photos.
-When one has a blog and the cost is nothing, one will post said photos.

And now the story...


So I was shopping in the Italian Market area of South Philly. The market is a fine place, despite being a little stinky in the summer. Regardless, as I entered one shop I saw 8 large vats with different kinds of olives for sale. While perusing the olives, I noticed the most remarkable thing. The olives in one of the vats had actually self-assembled into a crystal structure! In case it was not immediately obvious from the photo, each olive is surrounded by exactly six other olives. (I have drawn in a pair of hexagons around two olives as a demonstration.) What you see is a 2D crystal lattice. I confess ignorance as to what it is called in 2D, but a similar 3D configuration is referred to as a hexagonal close packed crystal or a cubic centered face crystal. This packing (in addition to being visually pleasing) is also the most efficient way to pack spheres into a volume.

How, you ask, do stupid olives know to assemble themselves into such a fine struture? Well, they interact by virtue of whatever forces are applied to them. In this case the dominant forces are bouyancy, and I'm going to guess surface tension. If the olives are allowed to reach equilibrium, they will progress towards the lowest energy state available. To form the structure we see, there must be some attractive force between olives or overall force that drives them to the center (I'm guessing there is some sort of meniscus in the vat due to surface tension). The force is probably so slight you couldn't detect it by touch, but it is enough to cause a random correction of olives to order themselves and form an extremely precise structure. The olives do it because it is energetically convenient for them, given the nature of their forces and their environment.

I took a photo and posted it, because it was fiscally convenient for me, given the nature of my interests and my environment.

And yet consider: These olives only self-assemble in a vat and would never on a plate. Because it was easy for me, I have shared this with you, but I would never have blogged this photo from film.

This is the way the universe works: Often enough, it's not about the olives, it's about miniscule forces and the environment...

Bush keeps an open mind

One of these is a real quotation.

One:
During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views on human sexuality. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

''I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,'' Bush said. ''You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.''

Two:
During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views on abstinence and birth control. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

''I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,'' Bush said. ''You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.''

Three:
During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

''I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,'' Bush said. ''You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.''

Check here if you really need to look.

Who's Godfather Now?

Billmon has The Godfather on the brain. He keeps advising liberals to develop that cold ruthless practicality of Michael Corleone. I doubt Bush has been reading Billmon, but today he settled all family business.

Bolton:

Speaking at the White House, Bush said he was sending Bolton, a 56-year-old lawyer, to the United Nations with his "complete confidence."

Rove:

"Karl's got my complete confidence. He's a valuable member of my team," Bush said

Roberts:

But the Bush team said the memos from Roberts's service as deputy solicitor general are not covered by the law and should remain confidential. The result has the White House arguing that those papers deserve more protection than those produced by the White House counsel's office, which directly advises the president.

Hackett:

"He called the commander in chief a son-of-a-[expletive]," said NRCC spokesman Carl Forti. "We decided to bury him."

Executive right to torture:

The White House says it will oppose any restrictions on the president's ability to conduct the war on terrorism and protect Americans.

Among the detainee amendments is one that would expressly prohibit cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. Another would define "enemy combatant" and put into law the procedures the Bush administration already has in place for prosecuting detainees at Guantanamo.

I'm suddenly reminded of Michael, when, at the end of the movie, he looks his wife in the eyes and tells her he didn't kill his brother-in-law: WaPo

The Pentagon acknowledged yesterday that two former members of the military team handling prosecutions of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had alleged last year that the trial system was rigged in favor of the government.
A Pentagon spokesman said, however, that the prosecutors' charges had been "thoroughly investigated" and dismissed as unfounded. While declining to reveal specifics of the allegations, Lawrence Di Rita said an investigation determined they were "much ado about nothing."

What does it all mean? It means Paul Hackett sleeps with the fishes, and if Frist is still thinking of stem cell legislature, he should keep an eye on his horse. Note to Joe Wilson: leave the country if Bush gets scheduled for a baptism. It's not personal, it's just business.