Happy New Year, everyone

And if you drink, please don't drive. I don't want to have to leave my party to clean up after yours.

-B

Excessive Scruffy petting may lead to dehydration

I may have commented on this before, but when Scruffy is petted, he purrs so strongly that he drools. Five minutes ago, he got an extended petting/brushing session. By the end of it my face was all wet with his drool, all of the fur around his mouth was dark with drool, his whiskers were wet with drool, and several drops of drool lay on the table before us.

At this point he probably weighs between 7 and 8 pounds (a little over half of a stone), and there were probably between 7 and 8 mL of drool, at least, spread over all of these surfaces, which would account for between 1 and 2 percent of his body weight.

Maybe I should start weighing him before and after petting him.

Feline training has begun

Over the past few weeks Shadow has become a bit less active (she's no longer a little kitten, and I think that's the reason for it), and of course Scruffy has never been terribly active when I'm around, so it seemd to me that it was time for some training.

Last night or the night before I made chicken, and I prepared some of it for the cats (no herbs, spices, etc - just chicken with nothing added). I cut this chicken into pieces of perhaps a half square inch and froze it, and tonight I defrosted and diced one piece for use in training.

Shadow's exercises consisted of convincing her to climb her pole to close to the top, after which she received a few pieces of chicken, then she had to climb up and come down again to get more. The only problem seemed to be that she sometimes had difficuty seeing the chicken, which I held on a neutral colored dish (and which is neutral colored to begin with); perhaps I'll get a green plate to use in the future.

During this, Scruffy wandered over to investigate what his sister was up to. He was willing to sniff at an extended finger, but when I moved to get him a piece of chicken, he ran off. So, his training took place at his lair; if he sniffed a finger he got a piece of chicken. Unfortunately, there's no easy or comfortable place for me to stand and reach him when he's there, so his training session was shorter than his sister's.

At present they are silently playfighting as they sit in the shoebox. They don't fit in the shoebox without spilling over its edges when they are content to merely lie there peacefully, so their playfighting has a very comical look to it.

I suppose it's about time to start on my holiday cards...

...it being Christmas eve and all.

I actually sat down and wrote the generic letter last week; all I need to do is print it, address and sign the cards, add personal notes to many of them. Actually, I'll probably need to look up a lot of addresses, too. I looked for holiday card address list some onths back but must have lost it when I moved over to this computer.

And of course I have to stamp and mail the cards, but that's nothing too dificult.

Somehow this always seems to evolve into an overwhelming project.

I don't know how anyone ever gets through it all. Hallmark must make a killing, though.

Season's greetings to all from Scruffy, Shadow, and myself.

- Badger

A half-bath takes less time than a full bath

Scruffy is currently looking all prim and proper up front, and something like a drowned rat behind, since it finally occurred to me that even if his hind quarters need cleaning (for the usual reasons) his front quarters don't necessarily. So, today he got a half bath (yesterday he got a full bath, not only for the normal reasons but also because he smelled foul. I tried being a bit lenient with the bathing and cleaning, reasoning that cats generally manage to keep themselves clean, but although he licks himself enough to give himself hairballs if I don't brush him regularly, he apparently isn't very successful at keeping himself clean.)

So, for the future, half baths will be replacing full baths when feasible.

Green toys are good toys

Shadow seems to be able to see her green ball better than her balls of other colors. If, as I understand, cats see in blue and green, this would make sense.

Teen pregnancy, Jamie Lynn Spears

I gather from the news radio that an actor (actress, if you prefer, but would you call a female doctor a doctress?), Britney Spears' sister, Jamie, is pregnant. This would probably escape the attention of the media and the public if she did not also play the title character in Zoey 101, a TV show on Nickelodeon. Like most people, I have a few thoughts on this.

From the point of view of a medical provider: my job is to look after a patient's health interests. Just as I would discuss the value of an immunization against the measles, and the value of simple hand washing to reduce the spread of disease, I'll be discussing the value of safe sex - what it is, how it work, how successful it is, etc.

I know that there are parents who don't want their children to learn about these subjects until they are quite old, or are married. I think that I understand their concerns. Our society has long repressed sexuality, condemning it and its discussion, so there's a taboo to overcome. To intelligently discuss love and sex (two separate things) necessarily involves facing our own beliefs, which the parent may not be comfortable doing. The discussion also acknowledges that their child is getting older, which by extension means that they, the parent is also getting older. It's not just the poets who connect sex and death.

Maybe if we were less uptight about death, we'd be less uptight about sex.

Morality and religion also are involved. If, as parents, we firmly believe that sex outside of marriage is sinful, then instructing our children how to have sex feels like a betrayal to our beliefs and our children's well-being. But it doesn't have to be. A discussion of safe sex can very easily include a discussion of morals. Frankly, it should. Sex is a biological need, but it is often more than a mere mechanical act; it involves and entangles emotions and human relationships. Kids and teens have limited experience (they haven't lived long enough to accumulate it) and can benefit from a parent's guidance.

As a medical provider, I specifically will not discuss the morals of sex and sexuality. First, it's not my position to do so, but more importantly, moral judgment on my part can only interfere with good medical care.

My cats hang out in their carrier

One of the last things I do before going to bed is to take all of the cat toys that make noise and lock them into the cat carrier. Between doing this and turning my air filter up to top speed, when its fan produces a sort of white noise, I am able to sleep through the night without that cats waking me as they frolic. In the morning, I unlatch and open their carrier's door, leaving it to them to retrieve what toys they want to play with. My hope is the cats will see the carrier as their toybox more than as the path to the vet. Several times I have seen Shadow disappear into the box and reemerge carrying a toy, so I think this is working to a degree.

Of course, when I need to carry the cats somewhere in their carrier, I remove it from its usual location by my bed, empty it of most of the toys, and place it in the middle of the floor, which may offer its own cues as to its immediate purpose. From time to time I place the carrier in the middle of the floor and just leave it there, to reduce the validity of that cue, but I tend to leave the toys in place.

The result, and this is probably more due to the cats' sweet nature than to the dual identity of their carrier/toybox, is that I rarely have any difficulty in getting them into their carrier.

Then last night I collected the noisy cat toys and knelt down to place them into the carrier, but in placing my hand into the carrier I immediately encountered a warm, furry face. Shadow was lying in the carrier, stretched out and relaxing, and a closer look showed Scruffy in the carrier as well.

:)

I hate rubberneckers

Honestly, I hate rubberneckers. These are those people who, on driving past a motor vehicle accident, or even just someone who has been pulled over for speeding, turn to look at the accident or motorist instead of paying attention to where they're driving. You're going to steer your car toward whatever you're looking at (consider the moth effect). Your car weighs a ton, minimum; pay attention to where you're driving!

Speed limits don't work, reprise

In a previous post, I commented on how speed limits don't successfully regulate traffic speed. On my drive home today I realized that if they did successfully regulate speed, they would be problematic.

Speed limits often apply to long stretches of road, which typically include straight and curved portions. On a curve, of course, some of the tires' griping force must be devoted to turning the car; on a straight road all of the grip can be applied toward propelling the vehicle, or stopping it, should the need arise. So, straightaways can safely be driven faster than curves. The condition of the road may vary widely, too, within the area of a single speed limit. Inclement weather must also be considered, as must lighting and other traffic. I'll leave to the side considerations on the type and condition of the vehicle, and the skill and condition of its driver.

The point of all of this is that applying a single speed limit to a stretch of road within which these variables vary is misleading, as it suggests that the entire stretch can be driven at that speed. A driver following this suggestion will then either take some portions of the road too fast, or other portions too slow.

What's the solution? Short of a fully automated roadway system with fully automated cars, I don't know, but it certainly isn't more speed limit signs.

Sweeney preview part 2

In my previous post, I said that I wasn't impressed with what little I'd seen of Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd. Having now seen the rest of the clips, plus the associated behind the scenes videos, I think I have determined what it is that I don't like about Burton's Sweeney Todd.

Perhaps because he has moved from the stage to the screen, and perhaps because the songs in Sondheim's Sweeney are so difficult to sing, Burton has underplayed the singing tremendously. Many of the lines are spoken, rather than sung, and not all of the actors seem to be good singers. He has not given the music the same treatment, however. The result is a lush musical score that supports, and overwhelms, some very flat singing. The comparison makes the singing look very bad, to the point of being distracting.

This is unfortunate, as much of the rest of Burton's vision seems to be on target. I'm not nuts about his staging of "Epiphany," but I don't know that it could have been handled any better. "Epiphany," for all of its qualities, may not be translatable to the screen. The rest has real potential, but I found the disagreement between the music and singing to be too great a distractor. For a show like Sweeney, where almost all of the dialogue is sung, this is a major concern.

More as I have it.

Sweeney preview

This link leads to a series of clips from the upcoming Sweeney movie. I watched 3 of them, but wasn't impressed.

Dr Maturin, a glass of wine with you

I have long been a fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels. Some time back a friend of mine suggested that I consider turning them into a graphic novel. I balked at the time - I would probably need to be Geoff Hunt to successfully put Mr O'Brian's work into drawings or paintings - but the idea has stuck with me. Though I don't know about graphic novels, the idea of writing a vignette or two, even just for myself, is appealing. Raw materials abound in several accounts of that period of history, some of them contemporary, and how nice it would be to revisit Jack and Stephen.

No more plastic bells...

Both cats ran into trouble today. It started with the my discovery, on waking up, that Superfund Cat had once again soiled himself to the point of needing a bath, and had spread his feces about the bathroom and a window sill, too. Shadow had gotten some of his feces on one of her paws, but she could be spot cleaned.

Superfund Cat's bath went easier this time. At least in part this was due to my having a better sense of how to do it - I placed a towel in the tub to give him some traction, and the water was warmer than last time, but he did not enjoy the experience. He shivered as I toweled him dry, so I held him to me until the heat came up, then moved him to the floor heating grate.

Once he stopped shivering and seemed okay, I wolfed down breakfast and ran out of the house for an appointment, coming back in an hour, and then this is a neat thing about giving him a bath: he fluffs out as he dries (he's a long hair). He kind of has his own fluff cycle.

Then about an hour ago I found Shadow sniffing about the floor and eating something. Closer inspection revealed a broken piece of the plastic bell from a cat toy at her feet, and it looked like she had eaten at least one other piece.

The internet was not much help, other than to say that this might be a problem. So I called the off-hour animal hospital to confer with them. If she had eaten this plastic, I should bring her in, they said. Plastic can cause an intestinal blockage, which can be fatal. The consult would be $125, and X-ray, should one be needed, would be over $200, and on top of that any other diagnostic or therapeutic measures that looked to be necessary.

I'm already a bit hard up for cash - I'm in debt to my credit cards for more than I care to admit, I don't have enough hours at work, and yesterday I learned that I lost several hours of teaching that had previously been assigned to me.

You can therfor imagine my relief when, in gathering my jacket, etc together prior to placing Shadow in the carrier I found the rest of the plastic bell. It had occurred to me that it might be helpful to have a complete bell to show the vet and give her a sense of what Shadow might have swallowed, and the bell on the toy I picked up was missing a piece the size of the piece I found earlier at Shadow's feet.

After calling the animal hospital back to say that I wouldn't be coming after all, I had the chance to sit and realize how very attached I have become to Shadow. The thought of her dying of this was very painful. My beautiful kitten.

...and more water

This morning's pleasant discovery was cat feces on the bathroom floor, again. Shadow had some of it in her foot fur, and I spot-cleaned her, but Scruffy seemed to have sat in it, so he had to be bathed.

No surprise, he wasn't pleased, but things went better this time than last time. I did feel sorry for him, though, particulary when he started to shiver as I towled him dry. If he wasn't so skittish, I'd consider getting a hair drier, but as it was, I held him to me and cranked up the heat, then brought him to the floor heating grate once the radiators had warmed up.

One thing that is kind of neat about bathing him, though, is how he fluffs back out in an hour or so, being a longhair cat.

So, along with the water on the kitchen floor and the remaining dampness in the living room, there's water and cat feces all over the bathroom.

Water, water everywhere

Cats are, perhaps, notorious for their dislike of water. I think this is a simplification, however; I think it's more that they will accept water, but only on their own terms.

Scruffy and Shadow get their water in a steel bowl with a rubberized bottom. The bowl is pretty large for them - too big, as it turns out, as it often ends up with dirt or food in it before it's even half empty. A lot of water gets dumped when I clean the bowl and refill it with fresh water. So, the solution is a smaller bowl, yes?

Well, no. I bought a smaller bowl, and filled it with water, and Shadow, on discovering it, spent several enjoyable minutes pawing at the water, dipping her paw in it (then shaking her paw off, sending water everywhere) sloshing it out of the bowl, and in the end the bowl was empty, and the floor was very wet. Fool that I was, I refilled it, and was treated to a repeat performance, so we went back to the large bowl. We waste the same amount of water, but at least it isn't all over the kitchen floor.

Then, yesterday, the toilet broke. The part of the handle that's inside the tank snapped off (this is the only toilet I've seen where this was plastic, though I suppose they all are these days), so I have to lift the lid off of the tank in order to trip the valve and flush the toilet. Until this is fixed, poor Shadow is banned from the bathroom while the toilet is flushed.

So, I've taken a washtub and partially filled it with water, then placed it on the floor. This is a source of fascination for both cats, though Scruffy doesn't have the nerve to approach it while I'm nearby. And again, it's paw at water to see it move, then hastily withdraw paw and shake it off. Shadow will actually climb part way into the pan, getting her front legs (and occasionally a back leg, too) soaked in the process. As she walks forward she lifts each paw out of the water, shakes it off, then puts it back in the water.

So, I have water on the kitchen floor, water on the living room floor, and have to get my hands wet to flush my toilet.

Probably I should talk to the ladnlord about the toilet - I guess that is his job.

To seek revenge may lead to hell...

...but everyone does it, though seldom as well.

I don't really have a television, or to be more accurate, my television has neither an antenna, a cable connection, or a satellite hookup, so it was not until last night that I saw an ad for the Sweeney Todd movie.

We did Sweeney in high school - Stephen Sondheim's version from 1979, and I expect that the movie is based on this musical, though of course the story of Fleet Street's demon barber dates back at least to the late 1800s. In college I found a straight play version from - the 1920's, I think. It was wretched, with improbable language and no real reason given, or even speculated upon, for Sweeney's actions. I caught the Circle in the Square production in the 90s, though I missed last year's Broadway production.

For those unfamiliar with Sondheim, I should state here that he does not write ordinary musicals. There is no fluff here; this is not Anything Goes. There is real substance here, and the Sweeney is more thriller or horror than anything else. The back story, as I mentioned, is also compelling.

I'm also curious to see what Depp does with the role. Needless to say, I'll be seeing this movie, and I'll write more once I do.

Re: your mail

I used to be kind of embarrassed about the amount of email, much of it unread, in my email inbox. Then I read this article in the online Wall Street Journal, having been directed to it from this blog entry. Knowing that I'm not alone makes things a little better (I rejoiced when the school said it would delete all email older than 3 months from their servers this past summer. Unfortunately, they haven't made good on their promise).

Part of the email problem, it seems, has to do with too many people emailing out "free brownies in the kitchen" emails. But a lot of it has to do with indiscriminate use of "Reply to All". Last year someone forwarded a message to a previously little-known listserve here at the school, and everyone responding to it felt obliged to Respond to All, generating 20 or 30 emails regarding whatever the original message was about. People who found themselves on this email list now had 20 or 30 extra, unwanted email messages, and wanted off of the listserve - "Please take me off this list" they wrote, and hit "Reply to All". This, of course, generated more email in everyone's inboxes, prompting more "Get me off this list" email, and eventually the "get me off this list" emails outnumbered the original messages by at least three to one. By the end of the day IT had shut down the listserve for the weekend. When they restarted it Monday morning, several more "get me off this list" emails appeared before the whole thing finally died out.

Now, the school does provide a spam blocker with their email service, but that only catches email that is either flagrantly spam or comes from the company that holds my student loans. All of the friendly fire slips through. My solution is to sort directly from the inbox to the trash: "reminder - talk on psychoceramics of middle europe", trash; "sublet available", trash; "For sale", trash; "[No Subject]", trash. "For Sale" deserves special note. It looks helpful, on its surface - "ah, this person is selling something. Is there anything that I want?" Trouble is, there are things that I want - a new printer, a '73 Pacer in lime green; but I have no idea if this person is selling them. "Car for sale," or better yet, "1973 lime green Pacer for sale" would be more helpful.

Why the ambulance crew doesn't wear their seatbelts

This is another one on risk:

It used to strike me as strange that EMTs and paramedics typically don't wear their seatbelts. I don't mean in the back of the ambulance during a call. It's hard to be belted in and still treat the patient (though there are some harness systems designed to meet this purpose). But up front, or in the back when there's no patient (say, on the way to a call) - no seatbelt. I have also seen a lot of orthopedic surgeons who ride motorcycles, and almost every respiratory tech that I've ever met smokes.

My theory on this? I think that these people are brought face to face with human misery, and with the frailty of the human body, much more often than is healthy. Eventually, one of two things happens. Either they recognize those human frailties in themselves, and either change careers or go mad with it; or they decide that they're immune. "I won't get COPD or lung cancer from cigarettes, and I'll prove it by smoking them and not getting sick." "My body is not fragile, and I'll prove it by riding a motorcycle, not wearing my seatbelt, etc." "I'm too good a driver to get in an accident," etc, etc. "I am imune."

Which brings me to another point. If I'm putting on my seatbelt when I get into your car, don't be offended. It isn't necessarily your driving that I'm worried about. It's every other driver on the road.

Or be offended, if you want. Because maybe it is your driving that I'm worried about.

[Risk link added 28 Nov 2007]

It's all in my head

The thing about depression - well, one thing about depression - is that it saps the patient of the desire for a cure. It's a sort of psychological cancer that causes a slow inward collapse. And for me the implosion often seems to coincide with the end of the semester, when I really need to be productive, and productive in very specific projects, if I want to pass.

The comparison to cancer is particularly apt as psychologocal illness is now where cancer was perhaps 20 years ago. Some of you may recall that we didn't used to talk about cancer; it just wasn't discussed. We've moved past that, as a society, where cancer is concerned, but we're not there yet on psychologocal illness.

Of course, of course, it's all in my head, though...

Q: What did the doctor tell the patient who had brain cancer?
A: "Don't worry, it's all in your head."

Please stand by...

I'm emerging from my two week funk, but now it's time for final papers, exams, etc. So, a quick update:

Cats: still getting bigger. Scruffy is more trusting, though it's still an issue. Presently he's stretched out with his sister on my old school bag, which is impressive, given how exposed a position that is. Shadow seems frustrated at the lack of spiders and crickets in the apartment - she's eaten them all and it takes time for them to respawn. She also destroyed another dangling feather toy thing, so I'll have to find another one.

Practicum: still not done

Thesis: have a meeting with my advisor tomorrow (Friday)

Katrina: Bush shares some of the responsibility at the local level, too, basically because he encouraged government at all levels to abandon their non-terrorism disaster prepredness preparedness work. Eventually I'll get around to writing about that in some more detail.

Cold weather: sucks

Things should be back to normal fairly soon; please continue to tune in.

- B

How the Bush II administration manufactured the disaster in New Orleans, Part II: the federal response

[What follows is an excerpt from a study I wrote on the Katrina debacle; I'll make the references more useful once I can figure out how to do it without driving myself nuts - B]

Perhaps the most obvious problem with the federal response was that it took too long to start in earnest, and thus too long to become effective. Michael Chertoff, the Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and the person who, by virtue of his title, is responsible for organizing the federal response to nationally-significant disasters, apparently failed to appreciate the magnitude of the disaster, in spite of FEMA (as well as other Washington officials, the Governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the Mayor of New Orleans) having been provided with strikingly accurate predictions of Katrina’s path and strength by the National Weather Service at least two days in advance. Similarly, New Orleans’s vulnerability to flooding has long been known - reports of flooding in that city due to Hurricane Betsy (1965) read like a first draft of the flooding reports generated after Katrina. More recently, federal, state, and local officials and emergency managers convened in 2004 to participate in a disaster drill in which a fictional Hurricane Pam was said to have caused massive flooding in New Orleans, trapping many residents and overwhelming local response capabilities. Reports generated by the Hurricane Pam exercise were yet to be released when Katrina hit, but the general conclusion that an event of this sort would require government at all levels to respond in a coordinated, well planned fashion was startlingly clear.

The potential for disaster was therefor obvious to anyone who was looking, and emergency managers should be looking: hazard and vulnerability analyses form the basis of successful emergency management. What is more, once Katrina crossed Florida, it was likely to hit somewhere on the country’s Gulf Coast, with devastating effects when it did. Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff might be able to claim that he didn’t know that New Orleans, Louisiana, or Mississippi would be hit, but he can’t claim that he didn’t know that his agency would need to respond to somewhere on the Gulf Coast in order to clean up after Katrina. {{16 Berger, Eric 2001;21 McQuaid, John 2002; 14 McQuaid, John 2002; 18 Schleifstein, Mark 2002; 20 Schleifstein, Mark 2002; 15 Schleifstein, Mark 2002; 17 Haddow, George D. 2006; 7 Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina 2006; 36 Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 2006; }}

Secretary Chertoff’s initial lack of action is all the more puzzling in that President Bush declared states of emergency, at the requests of their respective governors, for Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Since this declaration activates the federal response to a disaster (anticipated or actual), it is peculiar that Secretary Chertoff, whose department was responsible for coordinating that federal response, failed to take decisive action subsequent to its being issued. In the words of the Report of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Secretary Chertoff “made only top-level inquiries into the state of preparations, and accepted uncritically the reassurances he received. He did not appear to reach out to the other Cabinet Secretaries to make sure that they were readying their departments to provide whatever assistance DHS – and the people of the Gulf – might need.” (report page 7){{36 Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 2006; }} At first glance, one might suppose that this was because he believed that his subordinate, FEMA Director Michael Brown, was handling preparations. But a memo signed by Secretary Chertoff, and dated 30 August – a day after Katrina collided with the Gulf Coast, undermines this argument. In the memo, Chertoff appoints Director Brown the Principal Federal Official for the federal response to Katrina. In the same memo, Chertoff refers to the President Bush’s White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response, and indicates that not only will DHS be a part of this task force, but it will “assist the [President’s] administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina.”{{12 Chertoff, Michael 2005; }} This raises several questions, among them why did Secretary Chertoff wait until after Katrina hit to assign Director Brown to lead the federal response, and why was DHS assisting the President's response? It should have been leading the response.

[End of excerpt]

Here is an interesting clip from 2006 in which President Bush takes "full responsibility" for the failure of the federal response to Katrina.

prologue: the Clinton Administration
Chapter I: Dismantling FEMA

FEMA trailers making inhabitants sick

I do want to quickly comment on this, though, as I just found it on line. Two years after the event, many victims of Hurricane Katrina are still living in FEMA trailers. Worse, it appears that the trailers are giving off formaldehyde, which is making their residents sick. This past summer, newspapers as far away as Canada reported on this issue (Consider the (Montreal) Gazette, on 28 August, p A15), and it appears that at least one lawsuit has been filed.

What this illustrates, among other things, is a lack of necessary planing on the part of FEMA and other agencies. It appears that the formaldehyde is in part related to the speed with which the trailers were constructed and put into use, as whatever trailers that might have been available at the time were inadequate in numbers or quality (you probably remember the difficulty that many people had in getting trailers - there just didn't seem to be enough of them - from your morning paper or evening newscast).

Ok - I'm at my limit for the moment. More complaining tomorrow.

OK, I've been off for a few days

Usually, I'm able to update daily, or even a few times a day, but it's been a difficult week. No motivation. None. But I feel some motivation coming on, in the not too distant future...

Oh, Shadow caught a cricket the night before last. Once I had brought it to her attention, it hopped once, and she hopped once, and that was about it for the cricket. Last year when it got cold I had something of an invasion of crickets, but I haven't seen any more this year. I suppose that after their scout failed to return, they decided to seek warmth elsewhere.

How the Bush II administration manufactured the disaster in New Orleans, Part I: Dismantling FEMA

I've already discussed the nature of FEMA as President George W. Bush inherited it, but I'll recap quickly here: by the year 2000, FEMA was internationally recognized as a leader in disaster management; reported directly to the President of the United States; recognized and promoted the value of hazard mitigation (which accounts for about 90% of successful disaster management); and had encouraged many, if not all states to focus on their own disaster management programs. FEMA under President Clinton had also successfully consolidated federal emergency management responsibilities, reducing confusion and increasing the efficiency and success of federal responses.

President Bush reversed many of the nation's disaster management gains. His first budget eliminated funding for Project Impact, a program that worked on building disaster-resistant communities, later citing uncertainty as to its usefulness. Before the budget appropriations passed through Congress, however, Seattle suffered a 6.8 earthquake, from which it only received minimal damage; Seattle's mayor publicly credited Project Impact with enabling his city to survive the quake so successfully.

Congress subsequently restored funding for Project Impact, but for this discussion the point is that Bush had sought to eliminate a program that successfully improved the nation's emergency management capabilities. What is more, President Bush appointed Joe Allbaugh to head FEMA; Allbaugh had no experience in emergency management.

Allbaugh publicly indicated that mitigation and preparedness would be high priorities for FEMA, but the events of September 11th, 2001 intervened. Shortly after September 11th, the Bush administration embarked on a massive reorganization of the federal government, focussed on meeting the threat of terrorism. Among many other changes, this reorganization created the Department of Homeland Security and demoted FEMA, placing it under DHS. Many disaster management responsibilities were stripped from FEMA and dispersed among several other governmental bodies. DHS's mission, and thus FEMA's mission, became almost entirely focussed on terrorism. Mitigation, outside of the context of terrorism, was almost entirely abandoned.

In the wake of 9/11, the focus on terrorism is understandable; indeed, it was terribly overdue. In focussing on terrorism to the exclusion of all other hazards, however, the federal government lost much of it's ability to respond to natural and accidental disasters. Capabilities at the state and local levels also degraded as these governments, influenced by the direction of the federal government (much as they had been influenced under James Lee Witt and President Clinton) abandoned their own nonterrorism-related preparedness functions.

DHS's initial Secretary was Tom Ridge, who stepped down following the 2004 presidential ellections. He was replaced by Michael Chertoff, a federal judge. Chertoff reviewed the state of DHS and released a six-point agenda. This agenda focussed heavily on anti-terrorism activities, but made no mention of nonterrorism-related mitigation. Thus, by the time Katrina formed in the Atlantic, the nation was no longer prepared to meet it.

[Stay tuned for Chapter II]
[Prologue: The Clinton Administration]

NOTES [(added 1 Nov 2007)]:
1. Disaster management and emergency management are interchangeable terms.
2. See Haddow and Bullock's Introduction to Emergency Management, 2nd edition, (C) 2006, at chapter 2 for a larger discussion of the above points.

How the Bush II administration manufactured the disaster in New Orleans, prologue: the Clinton administration

There was, and to a lesser degree continues to be, a lot of finger pointing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This blog started too late to address events as they unfolded, but I ran across this letter yesterday, so I guess that the issues are still current.

First, I'll point out that our government is divided into three branches: legislative, judicial, and executive. Disaster management is an executive function.

Second, to truly understand the issues behind the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, we should probably go back to the Clinton administration. In 1993, Clinton appointed James Lee Witt as the director of FEMA. Witt had been Clinton's director of Emergency Management in Arkansas, and had successfully responded to several major flooding disasters in that state. Witt was also a successful politician in his own right. Thus, when disaster struck the country during the Clinton administration, the man directing the federal response had hands-on experience in disaster management, and knew how to work with other people effectively.

Clinton also emphasized the importance of disaster management by making FEMA a cabinet-level position: Witt reported directly to the President of the United States. This, coupled with Witt's subsequent work with state governments, convinced many states to place a similar emphasis on their own disaster management capabilities.

Finally, under Witt, FEMA focused on mitigation. For instance, they created Project Impact. This program focused on predisaster mitigation, by asking communities to evaluate their own hazards and assets before disaster struck, and to take steps to reduce the likelihood and/or impact of those hazards.

Thus, while disaster responses during the Clinton administration were not perfect, they were generally quite strong (Oklahoma City may be cited as an exception, in part because the criminal nature of the act blurred lines of responsibility), and the Bush II administration inherited a FEMA that was internationally known as a successful disaster management organization, as well as a nation of states and communities that recognized the value of, and were committed to addressing their own disaster management needs.

Stay tuned for Chapter I, where President G. W. Bush dismantles one of the world's preeminent disaster management organizations.

NOTES:
1. Disaster management and emergency management are interchangeable terms.
2. See Haddow and Bullock's Introduction to Emergency Management, 2nd edition, (C) 2006, at chapter 2 for a larger discussion of the above points.

The political vanguard

This is one of three photos of a patriotic van available here. I believe that this van is owned by a veteran, and I think that this makes the statements even stronger.

Most of the writing on the van concerns the appalling situation we have made in Iraq, but this view also shows "Remember Katrina".

I think that there are some real similarities between the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the still-evolving drama in the nation that was Iraq. Both are disasters. Both are disasters in large part because of poor planning on the part of Americans in power. Both continue to be disasters because of poor planning. Both occurred under the same President.

It's kind of sick that the US government has sent more people and equipment halfway around the world than to one of its own cities.

But what the owner of this van is really pointing out is how complacent we've become. Many of us are unhappy, but I don't see many people doing anything more than complain. And I can't exclude myself from that description.

We live in a nation that allows us to protest loudly, even garishly, against our government. But that right is worthless if we never avail ourselves of it.

Stay tuned for a future post in which I discuss how Mike Brown wasn't as responsible for the post-Katrina mess as people like to think he was.

[30 October 2245hrs: edit: add link to "Stay tuned..."; correct spelling; tags]

EMS kicks ass

Maybe ten years ago I purchased a waterproof shell (jacket) from Eastern Mountain Sports. A year and a half back I was too lazy to lift a box off of the jacket when pulling it out of my trunk, and as I pulled it, it tore.

All of the do-it-yourself kits for patching Gore-Tex seem to be for temporary use only, so I finally brought it in to the local EMS store to see what it would cost to get it repaired. Around $13, most likely, I was told. Given the cost of a new jacket, that's a great deal.

I picked up the repaired jacket yesterday - they patched it with a new piece of Gore-Tex, in the same color as the old, and from a few feet away you can't even tell that the patch is there. Up close it looks like a pocket. But the best part is this: the repair was free; they didn't charge me anything.

Scruffy is a Superfund cat

Remember how I said that Scruffy was separated from his mother at too young an age, based on how he follows Shadow around like a puppy, and doesn't know what to do with himself in her absence? Well, another piece of it is that he doesn't really have the litter box thing down. He does use the litter box, but his attempt at burying his feces, though I often hear him scraping away busily at the litter, is generally inadequate, to say the least. He often manages to step in his feces in the process, though, and since he frequently has loose stools, he then proceeds to track fecal matter all over the bathroom floor (and sometimes the walls, too), to say nothing of the rest of the apartment.

I have half a mind to send him back where he came from.

The amount of time, effort, and cleaning supplies that this cat will cause me to spend during his 20 year life will rival that of a moderately-sized Superfund site.

Of course, given how high strung he is, he'll probably die of a heart attack by age 12 or 13, so maybe I'm only dealing with a minor Superfund site.

Looking up an old friend

A few days ago, the cats dug up the business card of a woman whom I went out with once or twice some months back. She was a cool person, and attractive for other reasons, too; but we knew from the beginning that it wasn't going to work romantically because we wanted different things from a relationship (marriage and children were high on her present list of priorities, and I'm just not there yet).

We enjoyed the time we spent together, though, so I was a bit disappointed for myself when an old flame walked back into her life, and even more so when she then dropped off the face of the earth.

The competing fondness of friendship and hurt of - abandonment? - resurfaced with her card. Do I want to call her? I am curious as to how things worked out for her. I wonder if she is now engaged, or even married, and if she is pregnant.

At the same time, I wonder if I'd might prefer her to say that she was single again. It isn't that my wish for her to be happy, including marriage and child(ren), is false, but I guess my own needs and desires are more immediate, at present.

There's also the possibility that, if I reached her voicemail, she might not return my call. She did drop off the face of the earth, after all.

So, each evening since the card showed up, I've debated whether to call her or not until it's too late in the day to call, and then I abandon the issue for another 20 hours. Today I noticed that her card seems to have vanished again. Just as well, I suppose.

Turn signals aren't about fashion

I was walking across a parking lot today when I saw one of those cars (an SUV, actually) whose rear turn signal were blue - the bulb was blue, behind a clear lens. Now, I've already gone-off about how most people are bad drivers, but since 95% of driving is routine, it only matters 5% of the time, so it won't surprise you when I say that this is the kind of setup that I don't like. Here in New York State, a flashing blue light is a volunteer firefighter or the rear-end of some other emergency vehicle; blue turn signals fall into the category of WTF is that!? And WTF is one of the last things that a driver should have to worry about.

Clear lenses on tail lights are just as bad, during the day. They make the back end of the car look like the front end. Is that car coming toward me, or going away from me? Again, WTF?

Weight obsession

I was led to this post from another blog.

Weight is a medical issue. Just about everything becomes more difficult to do as weight increases: the heart has to pump harder, to force blood through more miles (yes - miles) of vasculature; the musculoskeletal system must support and move the additional weight, which it is not prepared to do; the respiratory system is impaired both by extra tissue in the mouth/neck, which can cause sleep apnea, and because an overly large abdomen must be moved out of the way for the diaphragm to drop and the lungs to expand; etc.

And, it's a scientific issue. We are only starting to understand why some people gain weight while others don't. The nature of a proper diet is debated. How to calculate what a person's proper weight is is also unclear. So, weight is a complex issue.

Weight and body size are intimate details of our lives that are on public display every day; anybody we meet in person, anyone who just sees us is instantly informed about how much we weigh - not exactly, but close enough for it to be uncomfortable, particularly in an image-obsessed society such as our own. People whose weight or size are grossly at odds with our ideas of fitness are an easy target for people who feel more secure by pointing out other's faults. The anonymity of the internet only adds to people's boldness.

The same people are also the recipient of well-meaning advice. We are a social people, and we like to advise others, perhaps because it enables us to show off our knowledge. I suspect that often, advice is given more to satisfy a need on the part of the giver, rather than the receiver. Unsolicited advice also carries with it a subtext: "you're screwing up, somehow; I can show you how to do better. Aren't I so helpful, aren't I so superior?

Differentiating between well-intentioned advice and deliberate insult is not always easy. Some remarks fall into both categories. Perhaps they all do. In any event, they often say more about the speaker than about the intended audience.

See here for some more thoughts.

Update

1. I found another spider late last night, but I was too exhausted to bring it to Shadow's attention. What's more, she was asleep, and it seems rude to wake her for that.

2. Some time back I wrote about placing clothes in Scruffy's lair(s). I don't know what effect this has had, if any, but Scruffy is doing better. He also hasn't coughed in a while, so I think he's healthy, too.

3. Welding class has now ended. For our last class the instructor collected scrap steel in various sizes, and we sorted through it to build sculpture. I made a horned snake out of a busted chain hoist and a mouse with a wind-up key for a tail.

4. I am now another year older. Amazing how that can happen in just 24 hours.

Shadow has a larger vocabulary than I do

She chirps, chirrups, squeaks, and miaows, with what sounds like inflection. She puts the sounds together and recombines them, along with other high-pitched sounds that I don't know what to call. It's very cool, but I wish I could understand it beyond the most basic "hello" and "food?"

I think she's part Siamese.

I think we're out of spiders

I wouldn't go so far as to say that my apartment was overrun by spiders, but I did encounter then on a daily basis.

Enter Shadow. Shadow chases and eats spiders. And, having discovered this, I help her, either by lifting her to those spiders that are just out of reach, by chasing out-of-reach spiders down toward her, or by capturing them in a plastic cup, then letting them loose in front of her.

I went looking for a spider to capture in my cup last night, and again tonight, but no spiders could I find.

We appear to be out of spiders.

How is it that Stephen Colbert can run for the Presidency in only one state?

As many of you know, Stephen Colbert has announced that he is running for the President of the United States. This raises several issues:

* Each state individually regulates who will appear on their presidential ballots. Thus, it is possible to run for President only in South Carolina, as Mr Colbert is doing. More importantly, the state requirements often place third party candidates at a severe disadvantage: candidates from the Democratic and Republican parties are generally guaranteed a slot on the ballot, while third party candidates must fight for the same right. Consider Ralph Nader's Presidential campaigns, particularly that of 2000, in which the number of votes he received enabled his party to appear on the ballots of more (though still not all) states in the 2004 elections.

* A related issue is that, since a candidate only needs 270 electoral college votes to gain the presidency, and those 270 votes can be assembled from as few as eleven states, a candidate can be elected president without appearing on the ballot in 39 states (or the District of Columbia).

* And then there is the issue of the electoral college itself. When we cast our ballots on election day, we are not actually voting for a president. We are directing our state's electors to vote for the candidate of our choice. Since the distribution of electors does not reflect the distribution of the population, and since each state's electors (typically) vote together, winning the popular vote is not necessary to become President. (Remember Al Gore? You know, the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his ecological work?) This also assumes that the electors vote as they are directed.

What can you do? Well, I see two options:
1) Sit on your ass and do nothing, or,
2) Get behind the movement to reform the voting process, such as the National Popular Vote's proposals on electoral college reform.

I lick my cats

I realize that this is weird.

Long before my kittens moved in, it occurred to me that, if I was to successfully communicate with a cat, then I should probably use its language as much as possible. This is why, for example, I hiss at my cats if they do something that they shouldn't - it works far better than saying "no!", no matter how forcefully I speak. I extend a finger as a surrogate nose to say hello to a cat, and with my own cats I sometimes extend my own nose to theirs (gently, gently). So when I realized that cats demonstrate affection for each other by grooming each other with their tongues, I decided to do the same. The result last night was a relaxed, purring Shadow who fell into that deep, limp, twitching sleep while lying on me.

"No reentry" is not the same as "emergency exit only"

A week or so back I discovered that one of the school's exit doors was locked or jammed shut, and alerted the security department. I was in the same building again today, and decided to see if this had been addressed.

It had been. I had to give the door a shove, but it opened into a stairwell. The door was labeled "No reentry on any floor," and had no knob or handle on the stairwell side. But the stair looked to lead out to the parking lot, though, which was where I wanted to go, so through the door and down the stair I went.

Two flights down I found the door to the outside, equipped with a big latch that read "EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY: PUSH HERE TO EXIT. ALARM WILL SOUND." After a brief debate as to whether I should just open the door anyway, I retreated back up the stairs, pulling at the knobless doors until I found a level with someone still working, and I pounded on the door until they let me in.

And this is the thing that really gets me: on witnessing my release, a woman came up to me and proceeded to lecture me on how "no reentry" means "emergency exit only."

I wonder how this woman ever gets out of the subway system, where half of the exits are no reentry and the other half require payment to get back in.

Why does Scruffy have to sleep on Shadow's head?

Scruffy and Shadow have resettled into our home after their time being boarded at the vet's. Scruffy seems to be enjoying the new chew-resistant kitty condo, though he still spends a fair bit of time in his lair behind/between the bookcases, but what really strikes me is his need to be sleeping on his sister's head. (Sorry - no pic at present, as I lifted him off of her head (for the 3rd time) before it occurred to me to take one.) This particularly bothers me because it increases her respiratory rate, which suggests to me that he is making it hard for her to breathe.

All of this is exacerbated by their decision to continue to sleep in the same shoebox, in spite of the fact that they're getting bigger, but the shoebox isn't. Or maybe it's more of his decision to crawl into the shoebox that she is already all but filling. Very cute, but I worry for Shadow's health.

Oof!

Badger spent the weekend helping his brother move, and is still recovering. New post(s) tomorrow, hopefully.

- Badger

Cyber-kitten

Shadow and Scruffy are being boarded at the vet this weekend, as I'll be in Pennsylvania to help my brother move. While they're there, Shadow will receive an indentification microchip, as her nature makes me worry that she may escape at some point. I don't have any type of vestibule or hallway between my living space and the outside world (I actually live in a tiny house with a main room, a cramped bathroom, and a tight kitchen, but somehow it seems easier to call it a studio apartment. House seems to suggest more than one room. More importantly, I rent the house, so I'm not really in a position to add a vestibule of any sort. [Digression over.])

The chip is really neat, though it's not a new concept. The idea is to attach a unique, indelible identifier to the cat (or dog, or wonder llama) so that, should it escape and be found, the ID can be compared to a database to find the animal's owner and reunite the two. Previously, and perhaps still, tattooed ID numbers were used - these were placed on the back of the animal's neck; the microchip version is injected in the same place; waving a wand over the animal's neck reveals the animal's ID number.

The vet's comment was that it unfortunately wasn't a tracking device, only an identification one (Kitty Lo-Jack would be really cool), but Big Brother issues aside, I still think this is pretty neat. And I am Big Brother, too, or Older Brother at least.

More Scruffy pills -> more Scruffy unhappiness

Scruffy lost his appetite and stopped eating after a day or so of his medication, and I was advised by the vet to stop the medication for the moment. After his recheck yesterday, his medicine was restarted. Last night and this morning he came when I opened the canned food, but he didn't put in an appearance tonight, which meant that I had to pill him again.

Since the last time, I had learned both a better way to hold his head and to use a syringe to give him a bit of water and help him swallow the pill, so I was feeling reasonably confident of being able to give him his meds with little trauma to both of us. I rinsed out the syringe, laid out his pill, and went over to his bookcase lair.

Collecting him and carrying him to the kitchen was no trouble, but then things went rapidly downhill. First, I couldn't quite remember how I was supposed to hold his head. Thus, it was a bit of a struggle to get him in an opened-mouth position that allowed me a free hand to drop in his pill.

Then, once I successfully got the pill in his mouth and clamped it shut, I realized that although I had cleverly placed the syringe within reach, I had failed to preload it with water. I was using one hand and both legs to hold Scruffy, so getting to the sink wasn't going to happen. Luckily, I found the cup of water I had drawn from to rinse out the syringe earlier.

At the end of the whole thing, I had successfully given him his meds, but not with nearly the ease I had hoped.

Log off now and get your 30 minutes of exercise

I'm going to keep this short, for reasons that should become obvious. CBC is reporting that many Americans are spending less time having sex in order to spend more time online. Why do people do this? And will it effect our ability to survive as a species? In 50 years, will the only people left be those without internet access?

Come on, people! Do your part for the human race!

Post-spay convalecence day 2: cerebellar function intact

Shadow now seems to be much better than she was in the hours immediately after she was spayed. She has recovered her coordination, and she is moving about the apartment at her typical pace, though without the occasional mad dashes in chase of imaginary prey. She is moving a little gingerly as she climbs, and I expect she's still a bit confused and dismayed by her scar and her shaved-off fur. Rough-housing with Scruffy also seems to be off the to-do list for the moment, which is good because I don't want to have to separate them, and I very much don't want her surgical scars to be disturbed until they're quite healed.

I'd like to say that she appears to be in little or no pain, since that's true; that's how she appears. But it's not really useful as animals rarely show pain. Her meows do seem to be higher pitched, and she is less talkative. I suppose this might reflect her current pain and discomfort, but whatever it is, I hope she gets her old voice back. She also used to be more vocal, and used a wider vocabulary, too.

We'll have to see what tomorrow brings.

Separation anxiety

Remember how I said that Scruffy followed Shadow around like a puppy? Scruffy spent all of yesterday alone. He then spent the evening with me, because Shadow was in no shape to receive him. And while I don't know what he did in my absence, after Shadow and I came home he spent almost all of his time in his bookcase lair, until I foolishly made him aware of her presence in the apartment, in the bedroom area. Then he spent all of his energy doing two things:

1) trying to get to Shadow, and

2) trying to continue to avoid and hide from me.

Most of this consisted of sitting in front of the gate to the bedroom, sniffing at it, and occasionally trying to paw his way past it, but once Shadow had recovered enough that I turned off lights to try to get some sleep, Scruffy climbed up the pole to gain access to the bedroom, then quickly repeated this performance after I had chased him off and turned off the light again. Ultimately, I had to place one of the litter boxes in the kitchen and shut him in there for the night.

This leads me to wonder what he would do if she vanished for several days. If it weren't cruel to Shadow to send her off (does anyone know of a kitty sleep-away camp?) I'd experiment and find out, especially since I seem to recall reading that isolating a kitten from other cats can bring it to turn to people for interaction.

Though maybe that's a bit manipulative.

Convalescence after spaying, day 0: cerebellum on vacation

Shadow has now been spayed, and we have returned home. She is presently curled up and asleep in the deepest, darkest corner under my bed, which is probably the best thing for her.

We got home between five and six, but the post-surgical instructions included not letting her out of her carrier until eight. So, a few minutes after eight I lifted the towel off of her carrier and opened the door.

After taking a few moments to collect herself she appeared, but I was appalled at her condition. She might have been drunk as she swayed some while standing, then when she tried to walk she had real difficulties with balance. Her strength seemed much reduced, too, as she couldn't climb onto the top of her carrier. With me in attendance, she slowly explored the small part of the apartment that I had walled off for her, never walking more than a few feet before sitting again to recollect herself.

Interestingly, when she came to the scratching pad she had no trouble scratching at it in a coordinated fashion - I suppose that the scratching action must be handled by a non-cerebellar pathway that is resistant to the anesthesia.

The taming of Super Scruff, the timid cat, part 12

Scruffy continues to do better and better, and is now willing (though not thrilled) to be picked up from his lair between the bookcases (he lost his cardboard box lair because he ate it, which explains the radio-opaque spots in his intestines on X-ray). The expression on his face and the attitude and tone of his body all suggest that being picked up is something that he resigns himself to, rather than enjoys, but he's no longer bolting, or trying to squirm free at any cost. It has been several days since he clawed me, though I have picked him up at least once a day since the end of last week.

Of course, he still runs and hides if I come near him while he's out in the open, but his stints in his lair have become much shorter, often lasting less than a minute.

Hooray for Scruffy!

I feel a bit guilty about spaying Shadow

Shadow is due to be spayed tomorrow. (Scruffy will be neutered in the near future, but it seemed best to wait until he was healthy again.) I received the reminder phone call this morning, including the instructions to let her have no food or drink between 9pm tonight and her appointment tomorrow morning. And there are two things that leave me feeling a bit guilty: depriving her and her brother (both growing kittens) of food, and having arguably unnecessary surgery performed on her.

The surgery is the larger issue. It feels a little like playing God to decide for another animal whether it should be able to have offspring or not. Actually, it feels a lot like playing God. If the situation were reversed, I know I wouldn't want to be sterilized.

All of this is balanced against the understanding that if I leave both cats unaltered, I'll probably have a new batch of kittens in the not-too-distant future - kittens that I will have trouble finding good homes for (I don't have the room, energy, or finances to add several more cats to my home), as there is an overpopulation of cats and kittens living in shelters. And, on a more selfish note, If I leave her unaltered I'll have to deal her being in heat every month or so for several years.

Surgery is not without risks, though, particularly since it will involve what I expect will be general anesthesia. And I worry that she will be scared, with strangers pulling her out of her carrier and gassing her into unconsciousness, as she struggles against them.

My poor Shadow :(

Tailgaters suck

On the parkway yesterday some moron in a white SUV followed me so closely that I couldn't see his headlights in my rear view mirror. I won't tell you how fast I was going (I don't want to receive a ticket in the mail), but I was will tell you that I was traveling at highway speed.

Of all of the moronic things that drivers do, this may be the one that most angers me. Because if something happens right in front of me, I have to choose between swerving and rolling over, hitting it, or slamming on my brakes - at which point the car behind me winds up in my back seat.

The irony is that if he manages to avoid me, and to avoid rolling over, he'll have successfully reinforced his asinine behavior ("I didn't have an accident; of course I can follow that close"). And if he does rear-end me, well, I shouldn't have slowed down that fast, right?

If only I could drop caltrops from the back of my car.

Scruffy's diagnosis: bronchitis; unhappiness for all

Based on his history, physical examination, and X-ray, Scruffy has received a Dx (diagnosis) of bronchitis. While this is far better than the asthma I feared he had, it's nothing to celebrate. For his part - well, he's sick. He's coughing. He's uncomfortable. He has a fever. What's more, he now gets chased down twice a day, and when he's caught (as he invariably is), no amount of scratching, biting, or yowling can save him from having yucky-tasting stuff rudely shoved down his throat. (His appetite is poor, so hiding the meds in his food isn't successful.)

For my part, I now have to terrorize him twice a day in order to ensure that he gets his meds, and I have a collection of fresh cat-scratch scars to prove it.

All of this occurs just as he was really starting to trust me, to sometimes allow me to approach and pet him, and to even enjoy being petted from time to time. Every time he progresses a bit, something happens that I have to chase him down again. If this cat ever comes to really trust me, it will be a miracle. If I manage to pill him for two weeks and don't give him an aspiration pneumonia, that will be another miracle.

On the other side of things, he has grown - he weighed 5.5 pounds on his visit to the vet on the 3rd, up from 4.3 pounds less than a month before. So it's not all bad.

* Aspiration pneumonia @ Wikipedia; @ eMedicine.
* Asthma @ Wikipedia.
* Bronchitis @ Wikipedia.

The connection between cats and our bipedal stance

I'm playing with Shadow with a plastic bottle cap. Sometimes I slide or roll it along the floor, other times I bounce it off of the floor or a wall. In her excitement, she sometimes winds up standing on her back legs, as her front legs grapple with the bottle cap.

This is not the first time she's done this, nor is she the only cat I've ever seen do this, but today it occurs to me, as she takes a few steps on her hind legs to keep her balance, that this behavior might in some way be related to our two-legged stance as human beings. Perhaps cats that can successfully stand on their hind legs are better able to catch prey, or something. Carried to an extreme, this would eventually yield fully bipedal creatures.

Today, I cut metal with fire

The oxyacetylene torch: personally, I think this is very cool. I made a simple jigsaw puzzle out of 5" scrap strap steel. Since it was made from scrap, it has a lot of slag and stuff on it from the practice welds it was exposed to. I can't decide if I should leave the slag there or grind it off.

If an artist can keep a secret apartment in plain sight, couldn't They do the same?

The Providence Journal is reporting that a group of artists assembled a rudimentary 750 square foot apartment in the parking garage of the Providence Mall, and lived there for up to three weeks at a time until mall security finally discovered them - four years after they started the project. Construction of the apartment involved smuggling cinder blocks, furniture, and a Playstation 2 into the garage; all told 2 tons of materials and furniture were involved. Now that they have been discovered they face some legal trouble, but that's not what caught my eye here. The real problem was that Providence Mall security somehow overlooked this apartment for four years. (By contrast, a burglar did find the apartment, and made off with the Playstation.)

Providence isn't a target in the way that New York and Washington, D.C. are, but think of the amount of weapons, explosives, and operatives you could hide in 750 square feet - that's bigger than my house. The garage is very close to I-95 (an exit ramp leads into it), and not very far from the Amtrak station.

I don't mean to be alarmist, but between Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center (twice), Madrid and many other incidents, can't we at least check out the darker, unused corners of our parking garages from time to time? Remember that the Oklahoma City and 1993 WTC incidents involved bombs placed in garages.

I mean, please.

Update: cats

A few folks have asked about the cats generally (using email) so I thought I'd provide a recap and update:

Shadow continues to be very affectionate and willing to be petted at length - I don't think she has ever voluntarily ended a petting session. She's also a big fan of chasing things that move, particularly if they disappear into a box or around a corner - I can actually see her sympathetic nervous system activate as her pupils expand to fill her eyes.

Scruffy continues to have a harder time - he's shy, and his shyness reinforces itself, since just about the only interaction he has with me is when I chase him down for the vet, for meds, etc. On the few occasions where I have petted him, though, he seems to enjoy it, so I think he's caught between the desire for affection and the panic of his shyness. He has to go back to the vet on Wednesday, for his cough, which I'm starting to think may be asthma, in part because he adopts the posture of the cat in this YouTube video of a cat suffering from an asthma attack. His activity seems unaffected, though, except when he is in the midst of a coughing fit, so it could be worse.

And that's the news from Lake Wobegon.

[symp nvs system link added 2 Oct 2007]

An attempt at cat psycology

As I've said, Scruffy is timid, rarely consenting to be petted, and often bolting to a hiding place of comfort when I approach. He actually seems to have regressed some since the last time I caught him - we had rather a fierce struggle and I suspect that I hurt him in the process. On the up side, the struggle increased his respiratory depth and rate, which was helpful as I wanted to listen to his lungs (he had started coughing again), but from his standpoint he has real reasons to be afraid.

So it occurred to me that he has these places of refuge, and I understand that smell plays a larger part in the lives of cats than it does in our lives. So I took the pillowcase from my bed and tucked it into the back of his adopted sleeping box in the hope that my scent will become associated with comfort.

We'll see what happens.

My village is not your trashcan

I was driving home today, and someone in the car front of me at the stoplight tossed a cigarette pack out onto the street. I was reminded of a story I heard of someone braver than I: when this guy saw someone drop a cigarette butt on the floor or street, he would pick it up and approach the offender, "Excuse me, but you dropped something" The offender would then typically put out his hand to receive whatever he had dropped, and would receive the cigarette, ember end down (and often still hot) into their hand.

If I had more courage I'd do that. And I'd have done something similar here, too. Instead I just sat there in frustrated anger.

Back when I was a kid I remember going to Shea Stadium for a friend's birthday. A woman sitting in front of us (and upwind of us, more importantly) refused to stop smoking, though we asked her politely. Eventually we chanted "Lets Go Mets!" for several innings straight and filled the hood of her sweatshirt with peanut shells. I don't know that it was appropriate but it sure made us feel better.

Maybe I should start driving around with a bag of empty peanut shells: you litter in my village, I litter in your car.

The siren song of the ambulance

Driving with the lights and siren is some of the most exhilarating and some of the most stressful driving I do. On the one hand, I get to drive fast; proceed through a red light; drive around slow, stopped traffic by crossing over the double-yellow, and of course there's all of the excitement of the call. On the other hand, I need to maneuver around drivers who drive erratically on my approach, who fail to yield because they don't hear me or simply don't care, and I'm worried about arriving too late. Oh, and the ambulance handles like a pig. A top-heavy pig.

All of this makes the driving more complex, and more demanding, but there's also the two-way radios (we've got four in each ambulance, each with several channels to chose from) the Nextel, the airhorn, and the siren. I can switch the siren over to hands-free, but then I lose my electronic airhorn (although really, it's the real airhorn that clears traffic - that thing sounds like a freight train). There's also the PA. Thank God the ambulance has an automatic transmission.

So, why do I do it? Well, there are a few reasons:
* I get to drive fast, proceed through red lights, etc
* I get to turn on the flashing lights and the siren
* I occasionally get to use the God microphone PA: "Please move to the right" (the PA is an often overlooked asset that few drivers use, and even fewer use well, but more on that in another post)
* I get to save lives, treat the injured, etc, but...
* ... if the patient throws up, he doesn't do so on me

Some people take their jobs too seriously

The Medical College, in its infinite wisdom, decided that all of its students' computer accounts were security liabilities, and decided that their passwords now need to be changed every 90 days. The initial setup also required using three or four of the following: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. No more than four characters in a row could be repeated from any of the past two passwords. Or maybe it was three - I can't get into my account right now to read the requirements, so I don't have access to the email instructions.

This isn't the first time this has happened.

I really do wonder what The Medical College thinks is so valuable in our accounts. I also wonder who's making the security decisions, since the real vulnerability of the accounts has not been addressed; while I don't know of any student accounts being hacked, about once a month someone forgets to log out, and a facetious classmate makes use of this by sending an embarrassing email from the unlocked account to the whole class. Why don't logins expire after a period of inactivity, if the accounts are so valuable?

Monday I get to go in and inconvenience the IT staff when I ask them to reset my password. In the interim I will not be able to clean out my inbox and my email will meet and exceed the storage limits set by IT's administration, no doubt creating computing havoc in some corner of The Medical College's empire.

For the moment, though, it's kind of nice not to have email access - all those problems that I can't learn about and so needn't address.

Maybe I'll suggest that we be required to change our passwords every 90 hours, instead of every 90 days.

Subject line, anyone?

I really dislike receiving email with no subject line. If you can't be bothered to include a subject line, why should I be bothered to read it?

Note that a subject line of "hi" is just as bad, in 99% of cases. If you're writing me to ask to borrow my flux capacitor tester, then your subject isn't "hi", it's "[can I] borrow your flux capacitor tester?"

Dutch deploy special ambulances for fat people

Reuters reports that the Dutch are asking ambulance patients what their weight is, and deploying special ambulances with built-in lifts to handle patients over 220 lbs. I remember from when I was in Leeds two or three summers back that all of their ambulances were fitted with either ramps or lifts for the same reason. They thought it strange that here in the US we are still lifting our patients into our ambulances manually, and I have to agree.

The problem may be that we're just too fat. Manhandling an 800 lb patient into an ambulance isn't easy, no matter how many people you get for a lift assist or how long your ramp is. The 750 lber wasn't easy, either. I suggested we use a Ryder truck.

They thought I was joking.

President Ahmadinejad of Iran at Columbia

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is in New York today, and will be speaking at Columbia University. Perhaps I should not be surprised that this has generated controversy. I'm listening to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC as I write this; today's broadcast includes a discussion of this issue, and seems to have garnered a decent variety of opinions.

One point that has come up is the statement by John Coatsworth, the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, that he would invite Adolf Hitler, "[i]f he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion, to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty". Now, debate may have been a poorly chosen word, as it invokes an image of people standing at lecterns, intelligently discussing an issue from opposing sides; but his larger point, which I think is getting missed by many people, is that President Ahmadinejad represents a very real phenomenon in the world: there are people who deny the existence of the Holocaust and who strongly dislike Israel, and who call for its destruction. There are people who are opposed to much of what the United States likes to think that it stands for. The comparison to Hitler is apt, in part because many Americans did not believe that Hitler's beliefs were as severe as they were, or that his policies were as destructive as they were. A speech by Hitler on American soil might well have revealed his views and policies for what they were, prompting the US to enter the war earlier than it did, and potentially shortening the war (including reducing the war's casualties).

(Let me be clear: I am not advocating that the US go to war with Iran. Nor am I saying that we should shut our eyes to that possibility.)

As I understand it, President Ahmadinejad was initially invited to speak to the students of the School of International Studies, some of whom will presumably go on to assist future American diplomats or even to be diplomats themselves. The point is to expose these diplomats-in-training, who may have to deal with President Ahmadinejad (or some facsimile) professionally, to a person of his views in an academic environment before the students have to deal with it in a professional environment.

At least one caller on the Brian Lehrer Show indicated that students could get this type of exposure anywhere. I beg to disagree. In school I read about racism in books, and saw documentaries on it, but the phenomenon only became real to me once I witnessed it in person. Reading President Ahmadinejad's speech in a newspaper, or even seeing it on a newsreel would not have the same effect, and would not carry the same weight as seeing and hearing him in person. If this wasn't the case, we wouldn't pay tens or even hundreds of dollars to see our favorite artists in concert, families of murder victims wouldn't want to be personally present at the trial of the killer of their loved ones, and neither the wreck of the Arizona nor that of the World Trade Center would be tourist destinations. (Incidentally, why is it that people pose for pictures in front of the tangible reminders of some of the saddest, bloodiest days in our nation's history, and smile as they do so? Thousands of people died here: why are you smiling?)

Another point is whether President Ahmadinejad will consent to be questioned, or whether he will simply deliver his speech and then refuse to answer any questions. The solution to this is to have him answer at least some questions first, as a condition for his being able to speak.

Another caller made a comparison between the university's allowing President Ahmadinejad to speak, but kicking ROTC off campus. I think that this comparison is the result of a major misconception of what Columbia is. Columbia is not a monolith, with a single dictatorial leader making all decisions. It is a collection of schools, each of which is semiautonomous, and each of which has several departments, the departments also being semiautonomous. Comparing the actions of a department of one school with those of another, or those of the upper administration, or those of the student body doesn't reveal any sort of hypocrisy, but merely underscores the heterogeneous nature of the institution. As an analogy, if I like the Yankees, but my brother likes the Mets, is my family hypocritical? Or if I'm a satunch conservative Republican in the Christian Right, but my wife is a flaming liberal Independant who identifies with the Quakers, is my family hypocritical?

Shadow and the mystery of the flushing toilet

Shadow has developed a fascination with the toilet. I left the door to the bathroom open by accident, and it became a bit of an issue not to hit her with the stream.

Flushing is a major phenomenon. She stands on her tip toes, fully stretched out to see and reach into the bowl. On the one hand, the movement attracts her. On the other hand, it's WATER, which is repugnant. So she makes little darting grabs, then jerks her paw away, hoping to be able to move fast enough to catch the movement but not get wet in the process.

The glory of steam engines

Stream engines, and I'm thinking of steam locomotives, in particular, are much more romantic than their electric, doesel, and horese-powered counterparts. I think that there are many reasons for this, not all of which have to do with the locomotives per se, but I think part of it has to do with the fact that they act, to a certain degree, as if they are living things.

I must admit that I didn't realize this on my own, but consider the steam locomotive. You may only have seen them in movies, but that's good enough. Listen to it. You can hear it breathe. And by listening to that breathing, you can tell how hard it's working: as it works harder, it breathes faster, just like we do.

Incidentally, if you're even in York, take time to visit the National Railway Museum. This museum has two large rooms that are open to the public, one each for locomotives and rolling stock. Their warehouse is also open for viewing via a catwalk, as is their restoration shop. Most of the locomotives are steam, from the 1820s through the mid twentieth century, and tucked in among all of these locomotives is a rebuilt 4-6-2 whose sides have been cut away to expose the locomotive's inner workings.

Part of the floor beneath this locomotive has been cut away and replaced rollers that press against some of the drive wheels. As the rollers spin (slowly, perhaps half a revolution per second) they cause the drive wheels to rotate. The drive wheels drive the main and connecting rods, which drive the rest of the machinery. The result is that you can see all of the locomotive's parts in motion, as if the locomotive were in use.

[Title edited 9/28/07]

James Cameron's Titanic

I found a post about "me movies," movies that really aren't good, but that I (or you, for your "me movie") like anyway.

My "me movie" is Cameron's Titanic.

I know that the movie won 11 Oscars plus any number of other awards and nominations, but really, the dialogue is poor and the story contrived. But that's not even the point, because that movie isn't about Rose and Jack. It's about the title character. The story of Jack and Rose is perhaps the world's largest MacGuffin, enabling Cameron to explore the first the ship, and then the disaster and its immediate aftermath.

As a Titanic buff, what more could I want?

Cameron's Movie on IMDB and Wikipedia.

Sackcloth and ashes

Right here, I want to say that I'm not proud of this.

While I had the cabinet door open in order to pull out a can for the cats' dinner last night, Shadow decided to explore the cabinet itself. She's done this before. I worry about her getting caught accidentally, so in an attempt to associate the cabinet with negative experiences, I closed the door after her, as I have done in the past.

The first time I did this, I opened the door again after perhaps a second. Shadow was entirely undeterred, and was still busy checking out the contents of the cabinet. The second time I waited waited - she meowed a bit, then after a minute she managed to push the door open from inside.

Last night I took a full trash can and placed it in front of both of the cabinet's doors.

I could hear her moving about from time to time, and the door thumped from time to time as she tried to push it open. I could hear her meowing piteously as I washed the dishes. Eventually, she fell silent.

I finished the dishes and waited for her to call again, as if her call might alert me to her predicament. I called her. I tapped on the cabinet door. Finally, a small, plaintive meow, and I opened both of the doors and set her free, acting as if I had just discovered that she had been trapped.

I imprisoned her for between 10 and 15 minutes. She was very happy to be freed. She purred and rubbed her face in mine for several minutes. As I write this, she is sitting in my lap. And today, when I had the cabinet open to get their breakfast, she looked in, but didn't even stick her head in, in spite of my purposely leaving the door open to see what she would do.

I think I may have scared some of the confidence and adventurousness out of her. I enjoyed those aspects of her personality. Even if I didn't, I certainly scared and abused her.

There isn't even a way that I could discuss it with her. I can't even say that I'm sorry.

I lie in ashes.

Be careful with Tabasco sauce

My kittens are teething. You can actually see the new canines growing in alongside the old ones - it's pretty cool. But as part of the process Shadow has developed a taste for chewing at paper and cardboard. You may imagine how I'm not a fan of this, bibliophile that I am, not to mention the papers I need to grade and those I need to hand in to be graded. So I turned to the Tabasco sauce.

I'm not sure where I read this, but apparently cats don't care for the taste of Tabasco, and won't chew on anything that it's smeared on. I spent the first part of this evening smearing Tabasco on the edges of several cardboard boxes, and on several power cords (another favorite chew-toy). Then, for reasons I now forget, I rubbed at my eye.

Never do this. Tabasco sauce burns. Badly. In growing agony, I stumble toward the bathroom, flip on the light and pull off my glasses (no contacts since the cats moved in) and start splashing cold water into my eye. This does several things
- it slowly washes some of the Tabasco sauce out of my eye
- it slowly liberates some of the T. sauce still on my fingers, allowing it to wash into my eye
- it triggers my asthma, and I get short of breath
- it attracts Shadow, who is fascinated by anything that I do in the bathroom. If I'm stumbling into the bathroom, this is going to be a good show.

So it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to wash my hands. I fumble for the soap, peering through a burning eye that I'm starting to wonder if I'll need professional treatment for (viz, an ambulance and the ER, since there's no way I can drive in this state). And in my fumbling I drop the soap into a puddle of kicked-up kitty litter.

By now all of my splashing of cold water has frightened Shadow into retreating into the corner between the bathroom door and the shower stall, but the dropped soap piques her interest. I fumble around my cat and pick up the kitty litter-encrusted bar of soap. Now I have to wash the soap in order to wash my hands in order to wash my eye, which feels like its melting, along with all of the skin around it. I'm having sympathy for the Nazi officers near the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'm also having sympathy for my friend Mike, who was sprayed in the face with pepper spray as part of his training in the police academy.

Eventually, the pain subsides enough for me to turn off the water, sit down, and spend several minutes coughing. For the first time in months, I use my inhaler, but as is often the case, I can't breathe the albuterol in nearly as deep as I'd like to. Nevertheless, my attack subsides at a reasonable rate, probably in part due to my air filter.

I love my pets; really, I do.

I've also decided that I love my air filter.

Blueair is clean air

I'm allergic to my cats. I knew this before I got them. But I figured that I could get an air cleaner, or maybe wash the cats from time to time. I bought these car wash wipes and tried them on Shadow, but she immediately started licking her self all over, so I don't think that the wash helped any. So, I went with the air cleaner. I did some research, and chose the Blueair 501, ordered it off eBay and got about 35% off the MSRP (it still cost me a chunk of change), and it actually arrived today - I didn't expect it until the beginning of next week.

My first thought was that this thing is big - it's the size, shape, and color of an overgrown tower computer - over two feet tall and all else in proportion, but I pulled it out of the box and plugged it in (no setup to speak of) though it's only been running a few hours, I feel better than I have, when at home, in several days. I still a bit congested, but the asthmatic symptoms are much less. I am impressed.

Nevertheless, I think I'll be washing the cats again.

LG's resilience

Little Gray Kitten (Scruffy) has developed a cough, so, much as I knew it would be a setback in his ability to trust me (and much as I knew it would mean another bill), off to the vet we went. He was a lot easier to catch this time, since I forgot to close the door to the bathroom and he ran in there to escape me. The only thing in there to hide behind is the toilet, and now that I know to wear work gloves, that offered him little protection. Shadow came along, too, in the hopes that her presence would made things easier for him, and just in case he had something that she'd need prophylaxis against.

In the waiting room we met a very loud Doberman puppy, but eventually we were allowed into an exam room and things calmed down a bit. Turns out Scruffy's neck lymph nodes are a bit swollen, so he may be fighting something off. Another possibility is that he's trying to cough up a hairball, and the third possibility is asthma.

Since his activity and appetite don't seem to be diminished, we're playing wait and see. If it's an infection, he'll either clear it and improve, or he won't and he'll start to show other symptoms. If it's asthma, then the air cleaner I ordered yesterday or the day before should help some. If it's a hairball, well, the vet gave him something to help him pass it.

Once we were home, he disappeared as soon as he could escape the carrier, but only a few minutes later he peeped his head out from under the bookcase in order to hang out with his sister, and as they were near the computer, I offered him a finger. Surprisingly, he sniffed at it. Even more surprisingly, he allowed me to stroke him under his chin for a few moments.

Only some minutes ago, he again allowed me to pet him, albeit only for a few moments. This time, his sister wasn't even in sight. And when I came to sit down at the computer, I found both cats occupying my chair, but he allowed me to pick him up and relocate him, instead of running off.

His resilience floors me.

That's Mr Badger

I'm not used to being addressed as Mr Badger. People either use my first name or use my last name without any title. But in the classes that I teach, particularly the SAT prep, it's happening fairly often.

Admittedly, I'm twice as old as these students, but Mr Badger still seems a bit peculiar. Usually it's the signal to hang up, because the caller is a telemarketer.

At least I now realize that they're talking to me the first time they speak, rather than only after they repeat themselves.

At a certain level, I resent how scared Scruffy is of me

That's it; I just do.

Driving safely

A few days ago, I went off on how people generally drive badly, but I realize that I didn't indicate what good, safe driving actually consists of. So I thought I'd make a few comments on that, since I get the sense that this is a bit of a mystery to some folks.

Mind you, this is not an all inclusive description...

On learning to drive, a former girlfriend of mine said that the basic deal was to yield to anything that moves, and make no sudden movements. This encapsulates a few of the core principles of safe driving:
* if you hit something, you'll damage it, so go to great lengths not to hit anything;
* if you hit someone, you'll damage her/him/etc, so go to great lengths not to hit anyone;
* you won't always be able to see the people around you, so be sure to give them adequate warning of your actions so they can get out of the way;
* you won't always be able to see the vehicles around you, so be sure to give them adequate warning of your actions so they can get out of the way;

all of which seems pretty simple. Use the steering wheel to go around people, and use the brake pedal to stop before you hit them. Oh, and be sure to use your turn signals before turning, because there might be a bicycle in your blind spot. And use your turn signals before changing lanes, because there might be a car in your blind spot.

Note that using your signals as you turn or change lanes isn't the same thing. If I don't turn on my signal until I'm actually changing lanes, I'm going to hit you before you'll have a chance to see my signal and react to it.

Because that is the point of the signal: to give warning of what your car is about to do, and to give that warning early enough for everyone else to react to it.

Glancing toward your blind spots is also probably a good idea before changing lanes. Even if you've been good about signaling, there's no guarantee that the guy in the next lane is paying attention.

Speed is another issue. Not the speed limit, but the speed and relative speed of vehicles on a street. Speed is important because, as graduates of high school physics may remember, the (kinetic) energy of a car is proportional to the square of its speed (so if I double the speed, I quadruple the energy). And if I double my speed, I'm going to more than double (quadruple?) the distance I'll need to stop before I hit Granny as she crosses the street; all of which means that the length of road in front of me that I need to worry about becomes increasingly large. God help me if I'm only a carlength behind that 18 wheeler.

Which brings me to another point, one that I learned personally several years back. I was driving south on I-95 through Connecticut, and I was, in retrospect, following an SUV too closely. The SUV eventually changed lanes, getting out of my way, but I wasn't the reason it moved: the dead deer in the roadway was. I didn't see the deer until I was on top of it, since my view was blocked by the SUV. (Yes, I did hit the deer; no, I didn't die). Lesson: the closer you get to the vehicle in front of you, the more it obstructs your view.

I'll pass over what might have happened if the driver of that SUV had stood on his brake pedal instead of changing lanes.

Okay; enough for now. Be careful out there.