Mark Byron

Jewell of the Charles

Back in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, a security guard named Richard Jewell who found the bomb and helped clear the area became a "person of interest" of the FBI, not charged with a crime but not cleared, either. If memory serves, he had to sue to clear his name.

We've got echoes of that with the Hispanic Cowboy from the Boston bombing, a cowboy-hat wearing volunteer medic named Carlos Arredondo who took people to the medical station. Arredondo now is getting the white-glove treatment from the FBI.

He says Boston Police and the FBI came to his Roslindale home and questioned him about the bombing. When they left, they took some items.

“They took my clothes, my shoes my pants, my t-shirt, whatever they needed I provided to them,” Arredondo told WBZ-TV.

Hopefully, he won't get the Jewell treatment; authorities often forget lessons of the past unless they're reminded of them.

Sandy Eggo

That's what happens when you drop a waffle on the beach. If that happens to a Whopper later in the day, you get a Sandy Burger; you get insecure when that happens. Or, if the tyke gets loose on the beach, it's a Sandy Baby; that's John Riggins' favorite, even though that is a supreme courting of dissaster.

We're getting the effects of Sandy in Michigan... and the eye is about 250 off the Joisey shore.

New York is shut down, the subway system under lockdown and the NYSE and NASDAQ taking at least one day off; the NYSE talked first about having electronic trading only, but that meant having their IT monkeys making it into the exchange, which is now problematic. ECNs will have a field day filling in the gap.

It'll be an interesting week.

 

 

Superhero 101-Winterized

We're getting a new twist on bad winter storms; the Weather Channel is setting up a naming system like the one for tropical storms. The names are drawn from various mythoi, from Greek (Athena, Zeus) to Star Trek (Khan, Q; TWC doesn't acknowledge either root) to Masters of the Universe (I learned that Orko is from MotU and is also a Basque thunder god).

Even Yogi Bear (or a generic yoga practitioner, your choice) gets the honor of being on the inaugural list, although it would be a rather nasty winter that would have the global warming crowd on its heels (or switching gears to climate change as the issue) if we got to a Y-storm.

Unlike tropical storms, which has the National Weather Service as its namers, this new system is farmed out to the private sector. It will be interesting to see if Winter Storm Athena and Brutus are acknowledged broadly if and when they do come.

Isaac Isn't Katrina

At this point seven years ago, Katrina was packing 182MPH winds. "Barometric readings lower than the worst storms in modern history. Cat 5 is >155, IIRC. If they had a Category 6, Katrina would be in it, heading for Cat 7."

At the last report 11 minutes ago, Isaac is not even up to hurricane status, packing only 70MPH winds. It is heading to the Big Easy almost seven years to the day after Katrina, but is no where near the monster of his older sister.

That being said, even a garden-variety Cat-1 hurricane can bring lots of damage; A Swamp People episode is bound to come out of this and a new governor in MS gets to test his mettle like Gov. Barbour did seven years ago. However, LA is the ground zero, and Bobby Jindal will have the bar set high after being a bit too ready for Gustav.

Ker-Pow vrs. Kirpan

No details as to who or why, but someone shot up a Sikh temple in Milwaukee (how's that for our melting pot in action?) earlier today; the body count is six plus the shooter, who was "put down" by a policeman.

Sikhs often get confused for Muslims, as they come from India (and thus have darker skin), wear turbans and beards; they aren't Muslims but an Indian hybrid that tried to unite the Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent.

One interesting footnote in Sikh garb is a small dagger, a kirpan, that Sikh men are supposed to have on themselves 24/7. In a post-9/11 universe, that gets some raised eyebrows and often comes afoul of concealed-weapon laws, creating a good First Amendment free-exercise trip to the courts in many cases; an Italian case was in the news last week.

However, ker-pow trumped kirpan in this case. It will be interesting to see what might have motivated the shooter and whether is was a mistaken-identity issue of taking out frustrations on Muslims on South Asia folks who kinda look the part if you don't know your cultural geography.

Goin' Fission

I've yet to blog on the Japanese situation; I'm a bit stunned and short on words.

I was watching the tsunami come ashore in real time during the wee hours of Friday morning Eastern time; I was coming off a on-line tutoring shift at 1AM and channel-surfed into the news channels as the waves were hitting the Sendai area. It was surreal, watching both Fox News and CNN carry the same helicopter footage of the wave hitting; things were too long-range to see any people, but there was an eerie sense of watching a live snuff film.

Japan is in better position to handle such things; we borrowed their term of Harbor-Wave for what we used to call tidal waves, after all. Even for them, dealing with a 9.0 earthquake close to shore created a no-win situation, killing thousands and likely tens of thousands.

Unlike the Haitians or South Asians hit by major earthquakes in the recent past, the Japanese don't need too much financial or logistical help. However, the scale of the damage may have long-term effects on the global economy, as the Japanese might wind up cashing in a lot of their foreign investments in order to import goods for rebuilding; along side that, we'll see a large disruption of their economy. This is Katrina on steroids, without the advance warning that you get for a hurricane.

The current crisis revolves around a nuclear plant in Fukushima, where three reactors have partly melted down. So far, the damage has been largely contained, with some modestly radioactive discharges used to vent the containment buildings.

This seems both discouraging and encouraging at the same time for the future of nuclear power. It's discouraging in that we have three reactors on the verge of a meltdown, but encouraging that they took the worst Mother Nature can throw at it and not go China Syndrome on us... so far. If this holds up, fears of another Chernobyl should be tamped down, although you will still have some folks worried no matter what.

Nuclear power is fairly non-polluting as long as you avoid meltdowns and major releases and figure out what to do with the plants once they are deactivated; that last part is a major work in progress, as NIMBY-itis plagues any plan to store waste long-term.