My brother spent the Labor Day weekend working with Boston-area hospitals to ensure there was complete coverage over the weekend while he was rounding up members of a FEMA medical assistance team. Joe and the team flew out yesterday to help establish a field hospital. Godspeed, ladies and gentleman. You make us all proud.
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New Hampshire’s National Guard deploys for Katrina
Saturday morning, the announcements at the Hopkinton State Fair asked attendees to thank the New Hampshire National Guard members they might see scrambling about the fair grounds. Just after setting up a recruiting display for the weekend, they received their 36-hour notice to deploy to assist in the cleanup of Katrina. Five hundred troops flew out yesterday. Godspeed, guys and gals.
Forewarned is Forearmed
Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog [edit: link gone] links to a popular site with an Emergency Kit Guide. “Check out this list of ingredients for a jump bag to have by the front door when there isn’t time to grab anything except the kids.”
Also, if you’ve got a little more time, review the publications available on the DHS Ready.gov site. [ed: Updated for 2017, new administration, new documents]
Please help if you can
Coming to grips with the catastrophe
Glad to hear Ernie the Attorney made it out of Nola safe and has been reunited with his kids:
But they don’t fully grasp the enormity of this catastrophe. Probably they don’t want to. This is not the sort of thing that the human mind can assimilate in just a few hours, or even a few days.
Ernie The Attorney
The Pain in Rain is Mainly in the Drain
Living not far from a large flood control project, Laura and I observe every spring that it’s not the rains and snow melt here that are the problem, but the many, many acres of upstream lands that drain through our nearby river.
Doc Searls: The Katrina Tsunami
Doc has an extensive commentary on The Katrina Tsunami. Key points: the networks aren’t reporting anything new or timely and the commercials are more obnoxious than usual. We knew what the potential catastrophe would be like years ago and Doc points to some recent computer modeling that’s chillingly accurate.
Want to help? Send money to the Red Cross if you can (1-800-HELP-NOW), or volunteer or give blood.
Print envelopes directly from Tiger Address Book
macosxhints points out 10.4: Print envelopes in Address Book. “Did you know you can print envelopes directly from Address Book in 10.4? According to the Address Book help, this is a new feature. I know I haven’t seen it before.” Spiffy.
USA Patriot Act renewal controversy
Compare and contrast:
Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Patriot Act Section 213: With respect to the issuance of any warrant or court order under this section, or any other rule of law, to search for and seize any property or material that constitutes evidence of a criminal offense in violation of the laws of the United States, any notice required, or that may be required, to be given may be delayed if–
(1) the court finds reasonable cause to believe that providing immediate notification of the execution of the warrant may have an adverse result (as defined in section 2705);
(2) the warrant prohibits the seizure of any tangible property, any wire or electronic communication (as defined in section 2510), or, except as expressly provided in chapter 121, any stored wire or electronic information, except where the court finds reasonable necessity for the seizure; and
(3) the warrant provides for the giving of such notice within a reasonable period of its execution, which period may thereafter be extended by the court for good cause shown.’.
— Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT)
There’s loads more good info at the ACLU’s Reform the Patriot Act website. Read, heed, and contact your Senators.
“He who would give up Liberty in exchange for temporary security, deserves neither
Liberty nor security” — Benjamin Franklin.
InfoWorld RSS ads lower signal-to-noise ratio
Back in June, Dave Winer blogged about the obnoxiously large picture ads in the InfoWorld RSS feed: “Today I unsubbed from a feed because its ads were too big in relation to the value of the content.”
I agreed with Dave’s sentiment. The ads are large and distracting. I regularly read the InfoWorld articles online (I also subscribe to the print magazine), so I get plenty of “impressions” from the ads. I much prefer the RSS feed to be a plain-text lead that tells me what the story is about so I can decide to go to their web site and read the story. My click on their link is my consent to subject myself to their profit-making ads, in exchange for an interesting and relevant article. My subscription to their RSS feed should not be. Adding insult to injury, they include a couple lines of text ad at the bottom of each article, doubling their hit rate at subscriber expense. That said, it is small, text-based, and clearly set off with “ADVERTISEMENT.” I’ll take those over the gaudy bandwidth-wasting graphics any time.
A quick Google of “InfoWorld site:scripting.com” shows that Dave cites them as a source over seven hundred times, a pretty valuable set of links from a highly-ranked source.
I hope InfoWorld reconsiders the over-commercialization of their feed, and goes back to enticing us to their web site instead.