Artesian Spring not well for N.O.

Artesian Spring not well for N.O.

I’ve been watching some of the Fox News Channel coverage of the current situation in New Orleans.

Sheppard Smith, in particular, was commenting on the fact that flood waters are rising in the city. Some of this appears to be caused by some known partial breeches of the levee system. But Smith said many observers were convinced that there must be some additional mechanism involved. This could be something as simple as leaks in levees below water level on both sides – these would have to be rather slow leaks to not cause turbulence that would be spotted from the helos that are flying recon.

I’m not a hydrologist or geologist, but I did take “rocks” as my required lab science at UVa; so, I have a few musty concepts in the back of my head and a lot of intellectual conceit.

Let’s give this puzzle a try.

1. FACT: Much of New Orleans, and all the part Smith was talking about this morning, is below sea/river level.

2. GUESS: New Orleans is built, at least in part, on unconsolicated alluvial material.

3. FACT: For centuries, human occupancy of New Orleans has depended on a complex system of levees to keep out the river and pumps to get rid of rainfall and sewage.

4. FACT: The hurricane has added an appreciable amount of water all over the area – the River, Lake Pontchartrain, the bayous, etc.

My conclusion? Water is seeping up into the city. This would be happening even if there were no damage to the levees. This may have been going on all the time, perhaps with the pump operating authority being aware of it, or perhaps not.

The key changed variable from normal operations in New Orleans is that pesky point 4 - increased the hydrostatic pressure pushing in on the city transmitted through subsurface waters. Think of New Orleans as a very large ship attached to the bottom of a shallow sea. If you raise the water level around the hull, the pressure at the lowest point rises – maybe to a point where little cracks that were annoying seasonal wet spots become sprays of water entering the hull.

Now, remember that New Orleans is not a ship with a solid hull. This brings us to point 2 – which means that at some level the groundwater within the levee system is connected to the groundwater outside the levees. So, some of that excess water from Katrina may be making itself felt inside the city by upwelling from below.

It’s just a thought. Only time will tell.  

Iraq on brink of meltdown ... or not

Telegraph | News | Iraq on brink of meltdown:

"The minority Sunnis, who were the masters under Saddam Hussein, are implacably opposed to the federal nature of the constitution. They fear that it will place oil wealth in the hands of the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south."

The word I get from Baghdad is that the constitution will make oil a national patrimony and require that oil revenues be shared among the provinces on a per capita basis.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Shanghai Cooperation Organization:

"Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS).This is a SCO permanent organ based inTashkent, capital ofUzbekistan.It will be officially launched in January 2004.Its main function is to coordinate SCO member activities against terrorism, separatism and extremism."

This is from a site maintained by the PRC's foreign ministry and describes one of the programs of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization composed of PRC, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Note the mention of separatism and extremism as on a par with terrorism and you see more evidence that the PRC's interest in the West's war on terror is to provide cover for its efforts to suppress calls for greater autonomy or independence for its majority Muslim and Turkic (specifically, Uighur) province of Zinjiang.

Also of interest in this context was the recent comment by a senior Russian military official that the current war games with China do not signal the emergence of a China-Russia military alliance. In the same statement, however, this official said that close military cooperation would continue to develop between Russia and China within the framework of the SCO.

Enviros in court to halt third world economic development

BREITBART.COM - Just The News:

"'This is the first decision in the country to say that climate change causes sufficient injury to give a plaintiff standing, to open the courthouse door,' said Ronald Shems, a Vermont attorney representing Friends of the Earth.

"That group, in addition to Greenpeace and the cities of Boulder, Colo., Santa Monica, Oakland and Arcata, Calif., sued Overseas Private Investment Corp. and the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Those government agencies provide loans and insure billions of dollars of U.S. investors' money for development projects overseas. Many of the projects are power plants that emit greenhouses gases that the groups allege cause global warming."

Leaving aside the issue whether the US government has any business forcing taxpayers to subsidize US exports and private direct investment in foreign countries, this decision by US District Judge Jeffrey White raises a serious question whether the operating policies of federal agencies should be subject to the whim of first one jury and then another in an endless parade of lawsuits.

Remember, the issue is not whether the agencies are operating within their statutory authority, nor whether their operations are legal where they occur overseas. The plaintiffs merely allege that some measure of global warming will be caused by the operation of power plants or other facilities constructed in foreign countries with the help of these agencies and that it will harm them here in the US.

The answer to the first part of that complaint is certainly yes, there will be some incremental production of CO2 or other greenhouse gases. The problem, almost insuperable it seems to me, is to prove that the plaintiffs will suffer harm and to what degree. There are several dangers here that ought to concern all of us.

First, assuming all this were true, is this the sort of case that ought to be decided in court or through the legislature?

Second, can the government be trusted to put forth the best case available against global warming or will they trim their sales to suit the prevailing political winds?

Third, a case like this can turn on the inclinations of the presiding judge in terms of which experts to certify and how much expert testimony to allow to each side.

Fourth, will a jury of average folks be able to sort through all the atmospheric chemistry and global circulation models and the other paraphernalia of the global warming debate, or will the plaintiffs succeed in framing the issue in the minds of the jurors in terms of greedy capitalist exploiters and their enablers in government crushing the health of the little guys (them, i.e. the jurors) for private gain?

Connecting point four back to point one, the adversarial system in our courts works best when jurors are disinterested. This sort of case makes it very hard for jurors to consider the case in terms other than their own self interest.

Pat Robertson follows in the footsteps of George Stephanopoulos

Stephanopoulos Urged Foreign Assassination:

"Though Iraq war critics now argue that by 1997, the Iraqi dictator was 'in a box' and posed no threat whatsoever to the U.S., Stephanopoulos contended that Saddam deserved swift and lethal justice.

"'We've exhausted other efforts to stop him, and killing him certainly seems more proportionate to his crimes and discriminate in its effect than massive bombing raids that will inevitably kill innocent civilians,' the diminutive former aide contended."

Carl Limbacher and the Newsmax.com staff point out that - in contrast to the present firestorm over Pat Robertson's musings on the subject of a bullet for Hugo Chavez, there was hardly a peep from the MSM when Stephanopoulos made a similar suggestion in a 1997 Newsweek magazine opinion piece titled "Why We Should Kill Saddam."

While I do appreciate the hypocrisy of the opinion elites on this issue of assassination versus war, I still wish Robertson had kept his mouth shut. All he has done is divert attention from Chavez' project for a continental dictatorship which he calls by the high-sounding name of Bolivarian Revolution. Simon Bolivar waged war for years and caused the deaths of thousands in his failed attempt to fulfill that dream two centuries ago. The difference between then and now is that Chavez' rule would be communist and totalitarian while Bolivar's ambitions were merely monarchical and authoritarian.

Chertoff's volta face - is it for real?

U.S. to Beef Up Border Force:

"In a terse Aug. 11 letter to Chertoff, she [Gov. Janet Napolitano, D-AZ] said her office met with Border Patrol officials who 'indicated the agency is not interested in participating' in a joint effort to target human traffickers. In the letter, Napolitano said ICE representatives were not interested in exploring a joint operation in Phoenix, where human smugglers maintain safe houses for transient immigrants.

"'This bewildering resistance is a further example of ICE's inattention to Arizona,' she said."

It is amazing that it has taken the action of the Democrat governors of Arizona and New Mexico to get Bush's Department of Homeland Security to begin to talk seriously about border enforcement, a subject that polls very well all across the country and which Republicans generally favor slightly more than Democrats. Still, the proof is in the pudding and so far Chertoff has only agreed to consider the recipe.

An amazing statistic is buried in the this story. Arizona claims that state and local police have arrested 510,000 illegal aliens this fiscal year and there are still about six weeks left. That amounts to just over one arrest every second, day and night, all year long.

High gas prices? Ticket prices? Consumer alternatives? Or, could Hollywood's trouble be lousy movies?

Summer Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle - New York Times:

"At Universal, Mr. Shmuger said he intends to reassert 'time and care and passion' in movie production. Some of his own summer movies, he conceded, should never have been made.

"He declined to name them."

Attendance at theatres is expected to be down 11.5% this summer over last. Something is wrong and, finally a few folks in Tinseltown are beginning to wonder if there might be a role for quality in their product. It's about time.

Good movies do get made, of course, but they often come from unconventional sources. Mel Gibson's Passion is one example. Another is a wonderful little film which I watched on DVD last night - Because of Winn-Dixie.

Winn-Dixie, dog or movie, is a pure delight. By turns sad, sweet and funny, it ranks right up there with the best of Frank Capra in my opinion. The story is hardly unique - we often see troubled children who suffer for the sins of the adults around them. But the film has heart. It is never mean and always hope shines through. And, whether being sweet or not, the dialog of the children is very natural, not a lot of forced wise-cracking as one too often sees in films and television with child characters.

The cast is also wonderful. Jeff Daniels as the troubled preacher raising his daughter after his wife deserted them shows a man badly beaten but not yet down for the count. Veteran actresses Eva Marie Saint and Cicely Tyson are wonderful as always. And singer-guitarist Dave Mathews shows a remarkable talent for physical comedy. AnnaSophie Robb is a treasure as both the protagonist and narrator. And those dogs (four took turns playing the title role) are the best entertainment to come out of France since Maurice Chevalier.

Because of Winn-Dixie - *****
Buy it for your children, or the child in you.

What happens to multiculturalism when a growing minority wants a monocultural society?

The dream of multiculturalism is over - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune:

"Immigrants who were drawn to Europe because of the Continent's economic success are in rebellion against the cultural, social and even psychological sources of that success."

This IHT opinion piece by David Rieff of the NYTimes is thoughtful and moderate in tone while daring to raise the issue whether multiculturalism can work, at least with Muslim immigrants. Rieff doesn't really stray from the liberal reservation - his concern is motivated in part by the danger of the anti-immigrant right - and he asserts Europe's need for immigrants due to what he correctly calls its "demographic freefall." I don't recall Rieff saying so, but the questions he raises also pertain to the long-stalled accession of Turkey to the EU.

Maybe Europe needs to open its doors to Mexicans. Europe is largely Catholic and most Mexicans are Catholic, so the religious issue should not present the sort of problem that Islam does to European culture. The US really doesn't have jobs for all the immigrants we have and yet the flood continues. Redirecting the flow to Europe might simultaneously benefit the US, Mexico and Europe.

After you read this article from the International Herald Tribune, you might want to take a look at the last paragraph of my August 8 post. There, I briefly discuss Jean-Pierre Raspail's chilling novel The Camp of the Saints.

Cover up of 9/11 intel failures continues to unravel

"Second Officer Says 9/11 Leader Was Named Before Attacks - New York Times"

We now have a serving Navy captain join the former civilian contractor in confirming the report of a retired Army lieutenant colonel that Mohammad Atta's name and photo had been identified as a terrorist in the US as early as January or February of 2000 - more than a year and a half before the 9/11 attacks in which Atta was a key player.

Meanwhile the Pentagon says they have no documents naming Atta at that period and the 9/11 Commission staff denies having received a pile of documents, including some naming Atta, developed by the DOD intel operation code-named Able Danger which employed the three persons who have come forward to name Atta as a target of their efforts long before the attacks.

The purpose of high-level commissions and studies and such almost always results in a white-wash. The 9/11 Commission is in that grand tradition as is the study of UN management headed by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker.

PRC's war on terror, or is it war on democracy?

FT.com / World / Asia-Pacific - China sets up squads to combat terrorism :

"Zhou Xiaozheng, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing, was sceptical about the ability of any new force to have a real impact on the root cause of unrest. 'The crux of the problem lies in an unbalanced society which lacks justice and equality,' he said.

"Mr Zhou went on: 'As the income gap widens, and officials become more and more corrupt, better equipped police will only be used to protect the rich people and residents of big cities.

"'The only way out is to actively and steadily implement a reform of the political system.'"

I knew it was a bad sign when the People's Republic of China signed on to the Bush administration's global war on terrorism (GWOT). What China was looking for was a free pass for its continuing repression of minorities, in particular the Uighur-speaking people of Xinjiang who are overwhelmingly Muslim and members of the Turkic rather than the Chinese racial group.

Prof. Zhou in the quote above is, of course, speaking of the much larger problems of domestic unrest throughout China which I have mentioned previously. This article from the Financial Times notes official PRC statistics that last year saw 74,000 riots and lesser protests, up from only 10,000 in 1994. At about 200 incidents per day nationwide, the announcement of a new police formation to be deployed in only 36 cities doesn't seem like such a major augmentation to the organs of state security.

One thing in this report does seem odd, however. The force intended for Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, is to have three helicopters and an armored vehicle; and elsewhere we are told that the largest cities like Beijing and Shanghai will each have a 600-man force while those in the other major cities will be "slightly" smaller. That doesn't seem like much in the way of air and armor assets for a force of several hundred men.

Still, this new force will probably be of great advantage in keeping a lid on things at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the other major tourist destinations. After all, painting a pretty face on China is almost as good as having a pretty face. I'll try to go into this in more detail when I finish Ross Terrell's book on China.

Putting money where your mouth is in global warming debate

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Climate change sceptics bet $10,000 on cooler world:

"The Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have agreed the wager with a British climate expert, James Annan."

Since these two Russians work at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics in Irkutsk (probably the coldest city of its size in the world) you can hardly accuse them of betting on the side that would make them comfortable. The grounds of their confidence is that the sun is expected to enter a less active sunspot phase for several decades and their data show that earth temperature is more sensitive to solar activity than human actions such as the burning of fossil fuels.

Although I side with the Russians on this one, Dr. Annan, on the staff of the Japanese Earth Simulator supercomputer project in Yokohama, deserves credit for offering to make wagers to demonstrate his confidence in his work. This article says he would like to see a formal futures market in climate which would allow those with an economic stake in future climate conditions to hedge their risk. This sounds like a very interesting idea.

I really mean it this time - Book Notes

I'm reading The New Chinese Empire by Terrill at the moment; very informative, especially if, like me, your knowledge of Chinese history is limited to the highlights of the last hundred years or so. More on this book in a week or two when I have finished it.

The last book I finished was Engines of Creation by MIT professor K. Eric Drexler, the father of nanotechnology in the US. If you are looking for a "how to" manual for building nano-scale devices, this ain't it. Originally published in 1986, I read the revised 1990 trade paper edition, so the work is a bit dated from the technology viewpoint. But, for the non-technical folks like me, the mostly conceptual and philosophical introduction to the field which Drexler provides is both informative and thought-provoking. Perhaps the hardest concept to wrap one's head around is what happens to the distinction between living and non-living systems when a nano-assembler is perfected which can not only repair itself, but make copies of itself, from materials that it draws from its environment. To borrow a phrase from that old Memorex audiotape commercial, "Is it live, or is it nano-tech?"

Hollywood Party by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley is a must read for political types who love movies and movie buffs interested in politics. I had read articles and seen movies and documentaries about HUAC and SISS, the Hollywood 10, the Blacklist, Ronald Reagan receiving death threats while head of SAG, etc. But all that only scratched the surface. I had no idea of the role of the CIO and of old-fashioned jurisdictional squabbles in that period of Hollywood history. There really were Reds trying to influence the movies, and sometimes they succeeded. There were also a lot of well-meaning folks on both sides of the camera who had little appreciation for the broader dimensions of the struggle. Billingsley does a good job bringing out the nuances of the labor disputes that wracked the industry for years.

First published in 1973, French Academy laureate Jean Raspail's The Camp of the Saints is a very disturbing novel which may be even more relevant today. Three decades ago, Raspail described a future time when a flotilla of barely seaworthy vessels sets out from India to ground themselves on the Mediterranean coast of France and how the authorities are powerless to deter them. Of course, Raspail was aware that there was already a sizable, unassimilated population of North African Muslims in France when he wrote. He wrote that he chose to use the device of an illegal alien invasion from the Ganges region to avoid needlessly and uselessly exacerbating existing racial tensions in France. Now, in the light of the war on terror, of plots to bomb the Metro in Paris (one was broken up in 1996) and recent bombings in Madrid and London, many are questioning whether even a post-Christian Europe can accommodate a vibrant and militant Islamic sub-culture. Food for thought, and, purely on its literary merits a "ripping good yarn" as the Brits say.