The directions are printed directly on the heating bag (with pictures) in plain english. They are not on a seperate peice of paper or something like that. THere is also plent of other things to eat in the bag while waiting the 30-60 seconds for the main meal to heat up.
1) Declare marshall law; put the military in charge
Last I heard, martial law was declared. However, you do NOT want to put the military in charge and the military generally does not want to be in charge of a situation like this. Leave FEMA in charge like their charter is set up for and just have them give tasks to the military.
2) Drop paratroopers to secure sites for coming supply drops
Paratroopers would probably break their leggs coming down in some of those areas. Either that or be close to drowning in others.
3) Do air drops of food and medical supplies (water too)
Already being done or trying to be done.
4) Send in the SEALS with their dingy boats to begin to rescue people/pick off snipers/gangs.
Those boats don't hold many besides the seals, recruit all the people from the LA Bayou to do the rescuing (being done) and have the seals take out the idiots shooting at people.
5) Send in forward air controllers and ham radio operators- by parachute if needed. I would include military medics as well.
What would air controllers be able to do? hams? don't need them, just satelite phones or something similar. No need for licensed civialians that are good for nothing else. Medics? should already be on their way. However, there are a lot more civilian ones than military ones already on hand.
6) Commondere every single bus in the state of Texas, LA, MS, AL and AR and move into the city heavily fortified by military support
Aside from those other states still needing them, and some pesky 4th ammendment issues, it is also a case of being able to get the busses to the people or the people to the busses. It's not easy driving a bus through 3 feet of water. Also, at 60 people/bus, over 100,000 people (not sure how many still in the evacuation area) you would need over 2,000 bus trips. Drivers for the busses and a place to put the people afterwards along with food. Also, don't bother with the military escorts, just find a safe area that doesn't need a route to be guarded and get the busses and people there. Will take up much less resources and anyone who can be guarding can be used to keep order in other areas.
7) Use 2 aircraft carriers, park them as close to the city as possible. AC#1 gets used as military command and HQ. AC#2 is used to put evacuaees aboard for food/shelter. If AC#2 isn't available commondere a cruise ship and use it.
Much better to use a land HQ as HQ is then closer to the reports. Probably a few other advantages as well. As for putting evacuees on a Carrier? Not unless it is absolutely necessary. You would have to make sure none try to get near any ammo or restricted sections of the ship. Easier said than done. A Carrier holds ~5k people as is. When you "trust" everyone it works fairly well. Start adding random people, some of which who would probably try to break into a weapons locker (at the least) or try to cause some damage to the ship (at the worst, remember they have several nuclear reactors as a power source). Best use for the carriers is desalinzation of water and relay of food. But keep civilians that you can't necessarily trust off it.
Asking for British, Canadian, and Mexican forces to lend a hand is a good idea as well.
British and Canadian are fine, they all speak english and I'm prety sure I can trust them. Mexican forces probably do not and given some of the problems I have heard about I am not sure I would trust them.
This scenerio is NOT being managed in the right way and once this is over I want to see several independent and congressional studies as to what the breakdown was.
No one ever gets it right the first time (I don't remember something like thise happening to a city before). Nor do I a population of a million having to be relocated in under a week. I'm not sure there ever is a "right way" to manage a large disaster. As for an inqu
After that, any armed civilians should be given one warning to disarm and pick up a shovel. They say no? Two in the head.
See if they are trustworthy for helping out with security first. I know a lot of retired military who I would rather see with a gun and leading a group in a case like this than diging with a shovel.
Refuse to dig in and help? Two in the ass.
Nah, waste of ammo. Just refuse to give them food and water until they decide to help out.
Take a shot at the Guard or a rescue chopper? Two in the gut and let them roll around in water that's been filtered through a few hundred dead bodies. Infection and the sun will take them in a day or so, and they'll suffer like they deserve.
I think you're being to leanient on these guys. One in the gut, then string them up someplace in the sun (while still alive) to serve as an example to others.
Oh, and the fuckers roaming the Dome and raping girls in dark corners? Two in the thighs to shatter bones, one in the gut to promote pain and infection, and a gun butt to the face while they're still conscious, just to let them know why they're being removed from the gene pool.
Again, too lenient and a waste of ammo. Cut off their dick and balls, make them eat them and let them bleed to death from loss of blood.
In this case, however, it seems like their focus was so narrow on rescue and flood maintnence that they ignored that fact that there's no infrastructure to provide for these people. Bussing them hundreds of miles away to other states seems inefficient and will only handle a small percentage of those in need.
A few differences to consider.
In New Orleans or anywhere near it except with generators.
They did not have 3 feet of water in there way everywhere they go.
All the roads weren't knocked out (I think there is 1 highway to there right now).
They could build tent cities near where people lived (in 3 feet of water is not a good place to set up a tent).
They weren't dealing with over a million people that needed to be housed.
Rescuers and aid providers weren't being shot at.
Private companies were running supplies in U-hauls within a week since the military was able to establish some semblance of order (even though people were sitting in their front yards with shotguns to scare off looters).
These people were helping to maintain the order by scaring off the looters. In Louisiana right now the looters are shooting at the rescuers and national gaurdsmen, not the people trying to scare off the looters.
Katrina a day before landfall was quite obvious to be on the order of magnitude of Andrew, and Andrew hit an area that wasn't being kept dry by pumps and levees. The fact that preparations weren't being made before Katrina even made landfall is ridiculous. If the active duty military is scretched too thin because of overseas deployments, the reservists should have been called up before or as Katrina made landfall, and not several days after.
The area Andrew hit in florida wasn't below sea level like New Orleans is. If you're above sea level, the water will run out to sea and you will only have a temporary problem with flooding, not a permanent one.
As for military mobilization? The Louisiana National Guard is under direct control of the Governor of Louisiana. Start with that. Any DoD mobilization would require the Governor to ask for help first and the President to approve it second.
On a logistical side, how do you know what you are going to need before the disaster strikes? You can't always take everything, and if you judge wrong it can take longer as you have to redo what you mobilized for in the first place.
Is anyone else here concerned About the fact that this was a relatively minor disaster that was experienced
You consider a Category 5 Hurricane with levees breaking in a city that is below sea level a "minor disaster"? What would you consider a medium sized disaster? Asteroid impact that takes out an entire city or WW3?
Other people are getting huge piles of military rations (and actually complaining to TV reporters that the food is no good because it's "cold" - the same way that thousands of military personnel eat it every day).
One disagreement here. The DoD is airlifting MREs (Meal[s] ready to eat) to the people. I have eaten these before. These meals, while initially cold, have a nifty little wamer in them that will heat up the main course to over 100 degrees fahrenheit. You put the main meal bag into this second bag with a chemical in it and add (drum roll please) WATER! It doesn't matter how pure the water is because the main meal is in it's own waterproof sub bag that is (usually) still sealed when being heated. (Note, that the MREs were specifically designed to work with untreated water of questionable purity) If these people are stupid enough not to read the directions and find a cup of water in a city that is drowning under 3 feet of water, I don't really think they should be getting the MREs in the first place.
Watch a bit of New Orleans news, and think about how readily people dismiss the warnings about increasing severity of storms and other atmospheric extremes due to global warming.
Read this, then get back to me on if global warming is having a big effect on hurricanes.
Should have said "Ignored tsunamis as they are unpredictable and fairly rare" Earthquaked are quite common in the areas where they usually occur (such as the west coast) while tsunamis that can cause damageare quite rare.
Maybe I'm partial to where I live but Knoxville, TN doesn't have much of a 'natural disaster' problem, nor does most of Appalachia.
I live in VA, about 20 miles from DC. I agree, the region looks like the safest place to live. Only problem is the sometimes bad snow falls (as I see it) that occur in the mountains. It scars the shit out of me everytime I have had to drive through West Virginia when it is snowing and visability drops to under 30 feet during the winter. The entire area to me (usually) falls under the snow fall category.
One question. Don't you occasionally have the problem of the coal hills catching on fire (underground, that is?) Here is an example from PA
But for the city government, that lasted only a couple of days. The City's IT department ("DoITT") took an in-house VoIP experiment, and prematurely deployed it to over 50,000 of the City government's 75,000 desk phones.
I was up in CT in college on 9/11/2001 when the planes hit. Around the time second plane hit the WTC I gave my parents a call (who live about 20 miles south of the Pentagon) telling them to turn on the news and that it diddn't matter which one. That was the last time I was able to call them for the next day or so as all longdistance circuits into the DC area were either full (likely) or retasked under emergency measures to the federall government (also likely). The only way to I got in contact with the was over AIM.
The internet is turning/has turned into a backup communications system for the US. Unfortunately, it probably wouldn't help as much here. With lack of power, the equipment wont run and battery backups/generators would cut out to prevent shortcircuits due to flodding. Power over Ethernet has a distance limitation with it.
About the best thing to do here might be to bury all the powerlines in the area so they won't cut out with high winds and rain. Also, a fibre buildout of the phone lines (which is being worked on anyway) and the cities own communication system would help. Main problem is keeping power to the routers and the equipment dry. All possible, but all fairly expensive.
As has been said before, and I will repeat it for you. Humor is a way for people to deal with stressfull situations. It helps relieve the stress and calm people down. Without humor, we would probably all snap or breakdown. For now, let people have their humor. It may be gallows humor, but it helps people cope. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people here making jokes have friends/relatives in New Orleans.
(I am a US citizen, I live in VA, not that far from the Pentagon).
I once tried to figure out the safest place to live in the USA. I eliminated all places that have:
Tornados
Hurricanes
Earthquakes
Wildfires
Fierce Blizzards
Sweltering summers (100+ F, 40+ C)
Volcanos
Nor-Easters
Flooding
Ignored tsunamis as they are unpredictable
Had nothing left of the USA after that. Every area of the country has one probkem or another.
And for military bases? thats called long term planing. This is for worst case scenario. If, like many in the rest of the world think is true, and the iraqi people are not capable of being "free" then we will have to protect them. On the other hand, most of these long term bases aren't even started building yet and they probably won't be. the provision is there if they are needed though.
One thing I'm really surprised about. How come people don't realise these bases are eventually going to be used by the Iraqi army itself at some point? Build army base, use it for US Army, when US finally leaves, hand over base to Iraqi army. Sounds logical to me.
People advertise nonlethal weapons as safer, compared to lethal weapons. I'll believe that argument when patrol cops give up their guns in favor of nonlethal alternatives.
Except that someitmes the proper responce called for will be lethal force. It is generally a lot harder to defend against a bullet than most non-lethal weapons. Also, if someone is holding a gun threatening to use it, I would rather have the cops shoot to kill the guy from the begining than try the non-lethal weapon and possibly give the guy enough time to shoot before he is imobilized (or shoot due to muscle contractions/spasms from the non-lethal weapon).
Or, just as likely, somebody -- but we'd never know who, because the bomb would be imported in a lead-lined box, inside one of the many cargo containers that still don't get inspected
Different sources of uranium leave different signatures, even after having gone through a nuclear explosion. Extensive testing was done with this during the cold war to enusre that if someone attacked the US, we could retaliate at the correct party resposible.
So even if someone took the precautions outlined above by you, once it has exploded we could trace the source of the uranium/plutonium back to the original source and have a good idea of who created the bomb in the first place.
That's the problem with too many Americans (and yes, I am one myself, keep that in mind when you flame me): they think that waving their dicks around and threatening/bullying the rest of the world will make us safer, when in fact it does the opposite.
It's called posturing. Just about every animal does it. Posture big enough and your enemies will leave you alone. The USA and USSR did this all through the cold war. If you don't, you can get runover or get suckerpunched if no one thinks you have backbone enough to retaliate (Pearl harbor/WWII for starters).
That said, being completely peaceful will get you run over. Start by looking at Tibet.
We need to start using more nuclear reactors.
I agree. Just tell the anti-nuke lobby to shut the hell up then.
Look into low radiation nuclear power that can use the uranium we throw out from current reactors to produce energy.
Or we could just re-enrich the stuff or through it into a breeder reactor (ban on those was put into place bay Pres. Carter) this was in the original plan back in the 50s/60s, and toss it back in to our current reactors.
Nuclear waste regulation is kind of rediculous and treats anything radioactive as all bad. There is dangerous waste and benign waste -- just like everything else.
Again, see sugestion on telling the anti-nuke loby to go to hell.
The free-market laissez-faire approach is absolutely what got us into this mess.
The US has not had a freemarket aproach in power for over 60 years. Remeber "regulation"? Nuclear power is one of the most tightly regulated industries in the US.
Liberals, for the most part, have admitted that Nuclear power has advantages over wind farms --
Then they should kick out the anti-nuke lobby and help on getting some nuclear power plants built
but there also has to be better safety protocols adhered to -- we can't keep doing things with the same old greed and shortcuts that could create nuclear melt downs.
The current protocols on US nuclear reactors are sufficient as is. The only US nuclear meltdown of a commercial reactor was 3 mile island which released negligible radiation. The only reason the reactor melted down was due to the people rushing to get the reactor up and running by the end of the month (as stated in the necessary permits or they would have to reapply for the permits) they violated some of the protocols and something like 33 things went wrong. And that is the worst commercial accident in the US. We have all the protocols in place as is, we don't need to tighten them anymore.
Now if they could only get something better than 5k/sec on their dial-up, I don't think people would be running away like crazy.
Problem here is that you run into the theoretical limits of transfer over a phone line. 56kbit (your standard modem), 56kbit=7kbyte/s. Given that a little bit of that is overhead (packet header information and ECC) and all you really can expect over a modem is 5 or 6kbyte/s. No possible way to increase speeds past that under current technology.
My school was a bit more clever. They did the same thing, but instead charges the students by the page to print stuff from the printers. A nice way to do a little cost shifting on the school's part.
Some more detail is in order, i guess. The college libraries and IT computer labs would charge 10 cents/page for printing. The individual schools computer labs (the comp sci departments, engineering, etc...) would not charge. Hence why we snuck into the Comp Sci lab late one night to borrow the high end printer and print out 800 pages of flyers for a club event.
So how many people here find something interesting on the web, then print it out to read it if it is more than a few pages?
How many of these students will print out reams of paper that they would not have done if they had the book infront of them?
At work we kill lots of trees to print out tech manuals and product manuals that are sent to us electronically.
At school I did the same thing, especially with homework assignments. The school wanted all the professors to start sending out homework assignment electronically. However, it ends up costing the school more since all the students then go and print out the assignments on the school computers/printers. Cost per page of a photocopy is less than the cost per page of a lazer printer.
The problem with faith-based charities is that (almost) invariably they tie their charity work with promoting their faith. If they are given government money, and use it to promote their faith, then indirectly the government is supporting their religion.
If they use the money to promote their religion then they are not using it in the scope of whatever project they were assigned to use the money for. Hence they would have violated the terms of whatever agreement was used for recieving the money. However, what constitutes promoting hteir religion? (Note the following are paid for with funds from places other than government moeny) If a souphall run by nuns is given money, does the nuns wearing their nun outfit count? Does hanging a cross/ten commandments/star of david/crescent moon/shinto shrine on a wall count?
That said, on to "inderectly supporing religion". If a federal employee donates money to a religious organization, isn't the government then indirectly supporting religion?
It's bad enough religious organisations get a tax break simply because they are religious organisations - where is the athiest equivalent for that?
It's called a non-profit. The Muscular Dystrohpy Association, ACLU, EFF along with many science fiction/fantassy/anime conventions all have non-profit status. All religious organizations have top be careful in what they do to maintain non-profit status.
But at the end of the day, it still means that the government should not be seen to be supporting any particular religious view. 'In God We Trust', 'God bless the United States of America' et al all espouse a particular religious view, which cannot be sanctioned with backing by government, regardless of how generic it seems.
Just because the government can not sanction religion does not mean that they have to forbid giving money to a religious organization when the religious organization can do the job better/cheaper than anyone else.
The point is, the government is required to be mute on anything that could be construed as promoting any kind of religious view. If you remove all reference to $DEITY from government, how is that 'promoting' atheism?
If you ask me if I believe in god, and I say nothing, am I promoting atheism?
When it comes to religion, the standard government answer should be 'No Comment'.
I'll respond to yours of the 4 similar posts on this. I agree the governments response should be "no comment". However, for several years the governmetn could not give faith based charities money for helping people. It was forbiden to do so under the guise of seperation of church and state. Non-faith based charities could still recieve the money, regardless of whether that would have been the most efficient use of the funds. To me, that is discriminating against religion (maybe not encouraging atheism, but it is discriminating against religion in general).
I am not advocating giving to only faith based charities, only saying that it should also be illegal to forbid giving money to them solely because they are associated with a religion.
Perhaps the vigilantes ought to choose a different fight... For every perceived problem ("violence in games"), there is a solution ("ban them") that is simple, obvious and wrong. (With apologies to whomever's quote I've just mangled).
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken
I have a refrigerator magnet of this quote I keep at my cubicle at work.
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Do the directions come with each MRE?
The directions are printed directly on the heating bag (with pictures) in plain english. They are not on a seperate peice of paper or something like that. THere is also plent of other things to eat in the bag while waiting the 30-60 seconds for the main meal to heat up.
1) Declare marshall law; put the military in charge
Last I heard, martial law was declared. However, you do NOT want to put the military in charge and the military generally does not want to be in charge of a situation like this. Leave FEMA in charge like their charter is set up for and just have them give tasks to the military.
2) Drop paratroopers to secure sites for coming supply drops
Paratroopers would probably break their leggs coming down in some of those areas. Either that or be close to drowning in others.
3) Do air drops of food and medical supplies (water too)
Already being done or trying to be done.
4) Send in the SEALS with their dingy boats to begin to rescue people/pick off snipers/gangs.
Those boats don't hold many besides the seals, recruit all the people from the LA Bayou to do the rescuing (being done) and have the seals take out the idiots shooting at people.
5) Send in forward air controllers and ham radio operators- by parachute if needed. I would include military medics as well.
What would air controllers be able to do? hams? don't need them, just satelite phones or something similar. No need for licensed civialians that are good for nothing else. Medics? should already be on their way. However, there are a lot more civilian ones than military ones already on hand.
6) Commondere every single bus in the state of Texas, LA, MS, AL and AR and move into the city heavily fortified by military support
Aside from those other states still needing them, and some pesky 4th ammendment issues, it is also a case of being able to get the busses to the people or the people to the busses. It's not easy driving a bus through 3 feet of water. Also, at 60 people/bus, over 100,000 people (not sure how many still in the evacuation area) you would need over 2,000 bus trips. Drivers for the busses and a place to put the people afterwards along with food. Also, don't bother with the military escorts, just find a safe area that doesn't need a route to be guarded and get the busses and people there. Will take up much less resources and anyone who can be guarding can be used to keep order in other areas.
7) Use 2 aircraft carriers, park them as close to the city as possible. AC#1 gets used as military command and HQ. AC#2 is used to put evacuaees aboard for food/shelter. If AC#2 isn't available commondere a cruise ship and use it.
Much better to use a land HQ as HQ is then closer to the reports. Probably a few other advantages as well. As for putting evacuees on a Carrier? Not unless it is absolutely necessary. You would have to make sure none try to get near any ammo or restricted sections of the ship. Easier said than done. A Carrier holds ~5k people as is. When you "trust" everyone it works fairly well. Start adding random people, some of which who would probably try to break into a weapons locker (at the least) or try to cause some damage to the ship (at the worst, remember they have several nuclear reactors as a power source). Best use for the carriers is desalinzation of water and relay of food. But keep civilians that you can't necessarily trust off it.
Asking for British, Canadian, and Mexican forces to lend a hand is a good idea as well.
British and Canadian are fine, they all speak english and I'm prety sure I can trust them. Mexican forces probably do not and given some of the problems I have heard about I am not sure I would trust them.
This scenerio is NOT being managed in the right way and once this is over I want to see several independent and congressional studies as to what the breakdown was.
No one ever gets it right the first time (I don't remember something like thise happening to a city before). Nor do I a population of a million having to be relocated in under a week. I'm not sure there ever is a "right way" to manage a large disaster. As for an inqu
After that, any armed civilians should be given one warning to disarm and pick up a shovel. They say no? Two in the head.
See if they are trustworthy for helping out with security first. I know a lot of retired military who I would rather see with a gun and leading a group in a case like this than diging with a shovel.
Refuse to dig in and help? Two in the ass.
Nah, waste of ammo. Just refuse to give them food and water until they decide to help out.
Take a shot at the Guard or a rescue chopper? Two in the gut and let them roll around in water that's been filtered through a few hundred dead bodies. Infection and the sun will take them in a day or so, and they'll suffer like they deserve.
I think you're being to leanient on these guys. One in the gut, then string them up someplace in the sun (while still alive) to serve as an example to others.
Oh, and the fuckers roaming the Dome and raping girls in dark corners? Two in the thighs to shatter bones, one in the gut to promote pain and infection, and a gun butt to the face while they're still conscious, just to let them know why they're being removed from the gene pool.
Again, too lenient and a waste of ammo. Cut off their dick and balls, make them eat them and let them bleed to death from loss of blood.
In this case, however, it seems like their focus was so narrow on rescue and flood maintnence that they ignored that fact that there's no infrastructure to provide for these people. Bussing them hundreds of miles away to other states seems inefficient and will only handle a small percentage of those in need.
A few differences to consider.
In New Orleans or anywhere near it except with generators.
They did not have 3 feet of water in there way everywhere they go.
All the roads weren't knocked out (I think there is 1 highway to there right now).
They could build tent cities near where people lived (in 3 feet of water is not a good place to set up a tent).
They weren't dealing with over a million people that needed to be housed.
Rescuers and aid providers weren't being shot at.
Private companies were running supplies in U-hauls within a week since the military was able to establish some semblance of order (even though people were sitting in their front yards with shotguns to scare off looters).
These people were helping to maintain the order by scaring off the looters. In Louisiana right now the looters are shooting at the rescuers and national gaurdsmen, not the people trying to scare off the looters.
Katrina a day before landfall was quite obvious to be on the order of magnitude of Andrew, and Andrew hit an area that wasn't being kept dry by pumps and levees. The fact that preparations weren't being made before Katrina even made landfall is ridiculous. If the active duty military is scretched too thin because of overseas deployments, the reservists should have been called up before or as Katrina made landfall, and not several days after.
The area Andrew hit in florida wasn't below sea level like New Orleans is. If you're above sea level, the water will run out to sea and you will only have a temporary problem with flooding, not a permanent one.
As for military mobilization? The Louisiana National Guard is under direct control of the Governor of Louisiana. Start with that. Any DoD mobilization would require the Governor to ask for help first and the President to approve it second.
On a logistical side, how do you know what you are going to need before the disaster strikes? You can't always take everything, and if you judge wrong it can take longer as you have to redo what you mobilized for in the first place.
Is anyone else here concerned About the fact that this was a relatively minor disaster that was experienced
You consider a Category 5 Hurricane with levees breaking in a city that is below sea level a "minor disaster"? What would you consider a medium sized disaster? Asteroid impact that takes out an entire city or WW3?
Other people are getting huge piles of military rations (and actually complaining to TV reporters that the food is no good because it's "cold" - the same way that thousands of military personnel eat it every day).
One disagreement here. The DoD is airlifting MREs (Meal[s] ready to eat) to the people. I have eaten these before. These meals, while initially cold, have a nifty little wamer in them that will heat up the main course to over 100 degrees fahrenheit. You put the main meal bag into this second bag with a chemical in it and add (drum roll please) WATER! It doesn't matter how pure the water is because the main meal is in it's own waterproof sub bag that is (usually) still sealed when being heated. (Note, that the MREs were specifically designed to work with untreated water of questionable purity) If these people are stupid enough not to read the directions and find a cup of water in a city that is drowning under 3 feet of water, I don't really think they should be getting the MREs in the first place.
Face it, some people are just plain idiots.
Watch a bit of New Orleans news, and think about how readily people dismiss the warnings about increasing severity of storms and other atmospheric extremes due to global warming.
Read this, then get back to me on if global warming is having a big effect on hurricanes.
And earthquakes are predictable?
Should have said "Ignored tsunamis as they are unpredictable and fairly rare" Earthquaked are quite common in the areas where they usually occur (such as the west coast) while tsunamis that can cause damageare quite rare.
Maybe I'm partial to where I live but Knoxville, TN doesn't have much of a 'natural disaster' problem, nor does most of Appalachia.
I live in VA, about 20 miles from DC. I agree, the region looks like the safest place to live. Only problem is the sometimes bad snow falls (as I see it) that occur in the mountains. It scars the shit out of me everytime I have had to drive through West Virginia when it is snowing and visability drops to under 30 feet during the winter. The entire area to me (usually) falls under the snow fall category.
One question. Don't you occasionally have the problem of the coal hills catching on fire (underground, that is?) Here is an example from PA
But for the city government, that lasted only a couple of days. The City's IT department ("DoITT") took an in-house VoIP experiment, and prematurely deployed it to over 50,000 of the City government's 75,000 desk phones.
I was up in CT in college on 9/11/2001 when the planes hit. Around the time second plane hit the WTC I gave my parents a call (who live about 20 miles south of the Pentagon) telling them to turn on the news and that it diddn't matter which one. That was the last time I was able to call them for the next day or so as all longdistance circuits into the DC area were either full (likely) or retasked under emergency measures to the federall government (also likely). The only way to I got in contact with the was over AIM.
The internet is turning/has turned into a backup communications system for the US. Unfortunately, it probably wouldn't help as much here. With lack of power, the equipment wont run and battery backups/generators would cut out to prevent shortcircuits due to flodding. Power over Ethernet has a distance limitation with it.
About the best thing to do here might be to bury all the powerlines in the area so they won't cut out with high winds and rain. Also, a fibre buildout of the phone lines (which is being worked on anyway) and the cities own communication system would help. Main problem is keeping power to the routers and the equipment dry. All possible, but all fairly expensive.
Either that or maybe the United States will actually address and attempt to fix global warming with this hurricane blow?
Lets see what Meteorologist William Gray the guy who predicts the hurrican season has to say.
With last year's hurricane season so active, and this year's looking like it will be, won't people say it's evidence of global warming? G: The Atlantic has had more of these storms in the least 10 years or so, but in other ocean basins, activity is slightly down. Why would that be so if this is climate change? The Atlantic is a special basin? The number of major storms in the Atlantic also went way down from the middle 1960s to the middle '90s, when greenhouse gases were going up.
He's skeptical on mans cause of global warming and the effect on hurricanes.
his is a massively sad event, and we get jokes?
As has been said before, and I will repeat it for you. Humor is a way for people to deal with stressfull situations. It helps relieve the stress and calm people down. Without humor, we would probably all snap or breakdown. For now, let people have their humor. It may be gallows humor, but it helps people cope. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people here making jokes have friends/relatives in New Orleans.
(I am a US citizen, I live in VA, not that far from the Pentagon).
I once tried to figure out the safest place to live in the USA. I eliminated all places that have:
Tornados
Hurricanes
Earthquakes
Wildfires
Fierce Blizzards
Sweltering summers (100+ F, 40+ C)
Volcanos
Nor-Easters
Flooding
Ignored tsunamis as they are unpredictable
Had nothing left of the USA after that. Every area of the country has one probkem or another.
And for military bases? thats called long term planing. This is for worst case scenario. If, like many in the rest of the world think is true, and the iraqi people are not capable of being "free" then we will have to protect them. On the other hand, most of these long term bases aren't even started building yet and they probably won't be. the provision is there if they are needed though.
One thing I'm really surprised about. How come people don't realise these bases are eventually going to be used by the Iraqi army itself at some point? Build army base, use it for US Army, when US finally leaves, hand over base to Iraqi army. Sounds logical to me.
People advertise nonlethal weapons as safer, compared to lethal weapons. I'll believe that argument when patrol cops give up their guns in favor of nonlethal alternatives.
Except that someitmes the proper responce called for will be lethal force. It is generally a lot harder to defend against a bullet than most non-lethal weapons. Also, if someone is holding a gun threatening to use it, I would rather have the cops shoot to kill the guy from the begining than try the non-lethal weapon and possibly give the guy enough time to shoot before he is imobilized (or shoot due to muscle contractions/spasms from the non-lethal weapon).
Or, just as likely, somebody -- but we'd never know who, because the bomb would be imported in a lead-lined box, inside one of the many cargo containers that still don't get inspected
Different sources of uranium leave different signatures, even after having gone through a nuclear explosion. Extensive testing was done with this during the cold war to enusre that if someone attacked the US, we could retaliate at the correct party resposible.
So even if someone took the precautions outlined above by you, once it has exploded we could trace the source of the uranium/plutonium back to the original source and have a good idea of who created the bomb in the first place.
That's the problem with too many Americans (and yes, I am one myself, keep that in mind when you flame me): they think that waving their dicks around and threatening/bullying the rest of the world will make us safer, when in fact it does the opposite.
It's called posturing. Just about every animal does it. Posture big enough and your enemies will leave you alone. The USA and USSR did this all through the cold war. If you don't, you can get runover or get suckerpunched if no one thinks you have backbone enough to retaliate (Pearl harbor/WWII for starters).
That said, being completely peaceful will get you run over. Start by looking at Tibet.
We need to start using more nuclear reactors. I agree. Just tell the anti-nuke lobby to shut the hell up then.
Look into low radiation nuclear power that can use the uranium we throw out from current reactors to produce energy.
Or we could just re-enrich the stuff or through it into a breeder reactor (ban on those was put into place bay Pres. Carter) this was in the original plan back in the 50s/60s, and toss it back in to our current reactors.
Nuclear waste regulation is kind of rediculous and treats anything radioactive as all bad. There is dangerous waste and benign waste -- just like everything else.
Again, see sugestion on telling the anti-nuke loby to go to hell.
The free-market laissez-faire approach is absolutely what got us into this mess.
The US has not had a freemarket aproach in power for over 60 years. Remeber "regulation"? Nuclear power is one of the most tightly regulated industries in the US.
Liberals, for the most part, have admitted that Nuclear power has advantages over wind farms --
Then they should kick out the anti-nuke lobby and help on getting some nuclear power plants built
but there also has to be better safety protocols adhered to -- we can't keep doing things with the same old greed and shortcuts that could create nuclear melt downs.
The current protocols on US nuclear reactors are sufficient as is. The only US nuclear meltdown of a commercial reactor was 3 mile island which released negligible radiation. The only reason the reactor melted down was due to the people rushing to get the reactor up and running by the end of the month (as stated in the necessary permits or they would have to reapply for the permits) they violated some of the protocols and something like 33 things went wrong. And that is the worst commercial accident in the US. We have all the protocols in place as is, we don't need to tighten them anymore.
Now if they could only get something better than 5k/sec on their dial-up, I don't think people would be running away like crazy.
Problem here is that you run into the theoretical limits of transfer over a phone line. 56kbit (your standard modem), 56kbit=7kbyte/s. Given that a little bit of that is overhead (packet header information and ECC) and all you really can expect over a modem is 5 or 6kbyte/s. No possible way to increase speeds past that under current technology.
My school was a bit more clever. They did the same thing, but instead charges the students by the page to print stuff from the printers. A nice way to do a little cost shifting on the school's part.
Some more detail is in order, i guess. The college libraries and IT computer labs would charge 10 cents/page for printing. The individual schools computer labs (the comp sci departments, engineering, etc...) would not charge. Hence why we snuck into the Comp Sci lab late one night to borrow the high end printer and print out 800 pages of flyers for a club event.
So how many people here find something interesting on the web, then print it out to read it if it is more than a few pages?
How many of these students will print out reams of paper that they would not have done if they had the book infront of them?
At work we kill lots of trees to print out tech manuals and product manuals that are sent to us electronically.
At school I did the same thing, especially with homework assignments. The school wanted all the professors to start sending out homework assignment electronically. However, it ends up costing the school more since all the students then go and print out the assignments on the school computers/printers. Cost per page of a photocopy is less than the cost per page of a lazer printer.
The problem with faith-based charities is that (almost) invariably they tie their charity work with promoting their faith. If they are given government money, and use it to promote their faith, then indirectly the government is supporting their religion.
If they use the money to promote their religion then they are not using it in the scope of whatever project they were assigned to use the money for. Hence they would have violated the terms of whatever agreement was used for recieving the money. However, what constitutes promoting hteir religion? (Note the following are paid for with funds from places other than government moeny) If a souphall run by nuns is given money, does the nuns wearing their nun outfit count? Does hanging a cross/ten commandments/star of david/crescent moon/shinto shrine on a wall count?
That said, on to "inderectly supporing religion". If a federal employee donates money to a religious organization, isn't the government then indirectly supporting religion?
It's bad enough religious organisations get a tax break simply because they are religious organisations - where is the athiest equivalent for that?
It's called a non-profit. The Muscular Dystrohpy Association, ACLU, EFF along with many science fiction/fantassy/anime conventions all have non-profit status. All religious organizations have top be careful in what they do to maintain non-profit status.
But at the end of the day, it still means that the government should not be seen to be supporting any particular religious view. 'In God We Trust', 'God bless the United States of America' et al all espouse a particular religious view, which cannot be sanctioned with backing by government, regardless of how generic it seems.
Just because the government can not sanction religion does not mean that they have to forbid giving money to a religious organization when the religious organization can do the job better/cheaper than anyone else.
The point is, the government is required to be mute on anything that could be construed as promoting any kind of religious view. If you remove all reference to $DEITY from government, how is that 'promoting' atheism?
If you ask me if I believe in god, and I say nothing, am I promoting atheism?
When it comes to religion, the standard government answer should be 'No Comment'.
I'll respond to yours of the 4 similar posts on this. I agree the governments response should be "no comment". However, for several years the governmetn could not give faith based charities money for helping people. It was forbiden to do so under the guise of seperation of church and state. Non-faith based charities could still recieve the money, regardless of whether that would have been the most efficient use of the funds. To me, that is discriminating against religion (maybe not encouraging atheism, but it is discriminating against religion in general).
I am not advocating giving to only faith based charities, only saying that it should also be illegal to forbid giving money to them solely because they are associated with a religion.
Then lets also add:
It also means the government does not have the right to encourage aetheism over religion.
Perhaps the vigilantes ought to choose a different fight... For every perceived problem ("violence in games"), there is a solution ("ban them") that is simple, obvious and wrong. (With apologies to whomever's quote I've just mangled).
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken
I have a refrigerator magnet of this quote I keep at my cubicle at work.
Heh, well, maybe if they put more sex into video games, all those kids would instead decide they want to make love, not war :)
It's called a Dating Sim. They are from Japan. See also H Games.