Well, I must say THIS is good news…I was just about to order some titanium Wile E. Coyote umbrellas…

Rich

NASA says comet fragments won’t hit Earth
Space agency tries to quash rumors of killer tsunamis, mass extinctions
By Tariq Malik
Space.com
Updated: 7:36 p.m. ET April 27, 2006

Chunks of a comet currently splitting into pieces in the night sky will not strike the Earth next month, nor will it spawn killer tsunamis and mass extinctions, NASA officials said Thursday.

The announcement, NASA hopes, will squash rumors that a fragment of the crumbling Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (SW 3) will slam into Earth just before Memorial Day.

“There are some Internet stories going around that there’s going to be an impact on May 25,” NASA spokesperson Grey Hautaluoma, told SPACE.com. “We just want to get the facts out.”

Astronomers have been observing 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, a comet that circles the Sun every 5.4 years, for more than 75 years and are confident that any of the icy object’s fragments will remain at least a distant 5.5 million miles (8.8 million kilometers) from Earth — more than 20 times the distance to the moon —at closest approach between May 12 and May 28.

“We are very well acquainted with the trajectory of Comet 73P Schwassmann-Wachmann 3,” said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office, in a written statement. “There is absolutely no danger to people on the ground or the inhabitants of the International Space Station, as the main body of the object and any pieces from the breakup will pass many millions of miles beyond the Earth.”

The main SW 3 fragment, dubbed Fragment C, will make its closest pass by Earth on May 12 at a safe distance of 7.3 million miles (11.7 million kilometers), NASA said, adding that skywatchers will be able to use small telescopes to spot the comet chunks by scanning the constellation Vulpelca during the early-morning hours.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments have been watching SW 3’s disintegration. The comet’s numerous fragments stretch across several degrees of the night sky. For comparison, the moon’s diameter covers about one-half a degree in the sky.

“Catastrophic breakups may be the ultimate fate of most comets,” explained Hal Weaver, a planetary astronomer of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in a statement.

Weaver led a team of researchers during the Hubble observations of SW 3, and used the space telescope to study the break up of comets Shoemaker-Levy 9 — which was ripped apart by Jupiter’s gravity and hit the giant planet between 1993 and 1994 — Hyakutake in 1996, and 1999 S4 (LINEAR) in 2000, NASA said.

Hubble’s new SW 3 observations suggest that chunks of the comet are pushed behind its tail by the outgassing of Sun-facing pieces. Smaller pieces appear to be ejected from their nucleus faster than their larger brethren, while other fragments seem to simply fade away.

When set alongside studies by other observatories, Hubble’s images may help astronomers determine what is causing the comet’s disintegration as it nears the Earth and Sun, the space agency added.

German astronomers Arnold Schwassmann and Arno Arthur Wachmann first discovered the SW 3 comet in 1930 while hunting for asteroids. Despite its relatively short orbital period, the icy object was not seen again until 1979, and then was missed during a 1985 pass.

Since then, however, astronomers have kept a close eye on SW 3 and in 1995 observed its initial break up.

Aside from a great sky show, the comet poses no danger to Earth and its inhabitants, NASA officials said.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12521174/

Here’s the latest news regarding how bad the Avian Influenze/Bird Flu/H5N1 flu might turn out to be….

How about 33 percent of the population of the United States?

Source

Study: U.S. couldn’t slow flu pandemic
U.S. lags behind Europe in preparedness, researchers say

WASHINGTON (AP) — A mostly unprepared United States could do little to slow pandemic flu if it hits anytime soon, according to a new computer model.

And Britain is only a bit better off, the same study suggests.

If the U.S. government does nothing, a deadly global flu outbreak is likely to strike a third of the population, according to the results of a computer simulation published in Thursday’s journal Nature.

If government acts fast enough and has enough antiviral medicine to use as a preventive — and the United States doesn’t right now — the number could drop to about 28 percent of the population, the study found.

“Both cases we came up with were very pessimistic,” said lead author Neil Ferguson of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College in London. “There is no single magic bullet for stopping pandemic flu.”

So far this year H5N1 bird flu — which doesn’t move easily from person to person — has infected 204 people and killed 113, according to the World Health Organization. Most of the human cases and deaths have been in Asia, but birds with the disease have hit Europe.

Combining use of the antiviral Tamiflu with school closings could reduce the disease’s toll a bit, Ferguson said. But efforts to stop flu from entering U.S. borders — usually on planes with sick passengers — won’t work, he said. At most, such efforts can buy a couple of weeks’ delay before the disease sets in, he said.

Ferguson’s computer simulation is the second released this month and is more pessimistic than an earlier study led by Timothy Germann, a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist. He said the flu could be less infectious and that efforts could slow it a bit.

Even Germann, who said no one knows which study is closer to reality, isn’t that optimistic.

“It would have to be a very weak pandemic strain for us to be able to stop it right now,” he said in an interview this week. “Most likely we wouldn’t be completely prepared.”

If the United States were like Britain and had enough preventive drugs for one-quarter of the population, computer models show that the number of people getting sick would drop from about 102 million to about 84 million in America, Ferguson said.

However, right now the United States has only enough medicine on hand for about 5 million people, or about 1.7 percent of the population, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS Spokesman Bill Hall said the agency has ordered enough drugs for another 23 million people, and those should arrive by the end of the year. The plan is to have enough medicine for about a quarter of the population by 2008.

“Twenty-five percent doesn’t go very far, and we don’t have anywhere near that,” said study co-author Donald Burke, professor of international health and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health. “If it does occur before we have enough drug and enough vaccine, then the epidemic will have a substantial impact.”

If a country gets enough Tamiflu for half its population, it could then act aggressively in dosing families of flu-struck patients, and that could cut the flu attack rate by 75 percent, Ferguson said. So instead of 102 million infected Americans, it would be 33 million.

“France could do this now; this is highlighting the gap between U.S. and Europe,” Ferguson said.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/04/26/preventing.pandemic.ap/index.html

Strikingly astonishing news…

Kill FEMA? Start all over again? (…shades of killing Civil Defense, and coming up with FEMA…Jimmy Carter…1978…)

I dunno…it may be the only thing that may be able to bring SOME semblance of control to the leading disaster response agency of the United States…

What do you think?

Senate Panel Recommends Abolishing FEMA
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

The nation’s beleaguered disaster response agency should be abolished and rebuilt from scratch to avoid a repeat of multiple government failures exposed by Hurricane Katrina, a Senate inquiry has concluded.

Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says in recommendations to be released Thursday.

Taken together, the 86 proposed reforms charge the United States is still woefully unprepared for a disaster such as Katrina with the start of the hurricane season a little more than month away.

“The United States was, and is, ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic event of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina,” the recommendations warn. “Catastrophic events are, by their nature, difficult to imagine and to adequately plan for, and the existing plans and training proved inadequate in Katrina.”

The recommendations, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, are the product of a seven-month investigation detailed in a Senate report to be released next week. It follows similar inquiries by the House and White House and comes in an election year in which Democrats have seized on Katrina to attack the Bush administration.

President Bush will visit Louisiana and Mississippi — which bore the brunt of Katrina’s wrath — on Thursday.

Katrina, which hit last Aug. 29, was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. The storm and its aftershocks killed more than 1,300 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage.

The Senate report urges yet another overhaul of the embattled Homeland Security Department — FEMA’s parent agency — which was created three years ago and already has undergone major restructuring of duties.

It chiefly calls for a new agency, called the National Preparedness and Response Authority, to plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters. Unlike now, the authority would communicate directly with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts to budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress. But it would remain within Homeland Security to continue receiving resources provided by the larger department.

The proposal drew disdain from Homeland Security and its critics, both sides questioning the need for another bureaucratic shuffling that they said wouldn’t accomplish much.

“It’s time to stop playing around with the organizational charts and to start focusing on government, at all levels, that are preparing for this storm season,” said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown said the new agency would basically have the same mission FEMA had a year ago, before its disaster planning responsibilities were taken away to focus solely on responding to calls for help.

“It sounds like they’re just re-creating the wheel and making it look like they’re calling for change,” Brown said. “If indeed that’s all they’re doing, they owe more than that to the American public.”

But Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, who led the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee inquiry, said the new agency would be “better equipped with the tools to prepare for and respond to a disaster.”

Describing FEMA as a “shambles and beyond repair,” she said the reforms “will help ensure that we do not have a repeat of the failures following Hurricane Katrina.”

Written in matter-of-fact terms, the recommendations do not place blame on any official or government agency. But a spokeswoman for Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Senate panel, said he will file “additional views” to the report accusing Bush of failing “to provide critical leadership when it was most needed.”

“That contributed to a grossly ineffective federal response to Hurricane Katrina,” Lieberman said in a statement.

The House report, issued in February, similarly criticized Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA’s Brown for moving too slowly to trigger federal relief. The White House report, which came a week later, took a softer tone and singled out the Homeland Security Department for most of the breakdowns.

Many of the rest of the Senate recommendations were far less dramatic, ranging from creating a Homeland Security Academy to encouraging plans to evacuate and shelter pets during a disaster.

Without specifying where the money would come from or how much was needed, the recommendations call for more funding for disaster planning and response at all levels of government. They also urge clarifying levee maintenance responsibilities — a concern because of structural weaknesses of the New Orleans’ flood walls that spawned deadly floods after Katrina hit_ and suggested better contracting procedures to avoid waste or fraud in the rush to get aid to disaster victims.

The Senate plans were issued as Congress’ investigative arm predicted FEMA is destined to repeat million-dollar mistakes of disaster aid waste and fraud unless it quickly can establish controls for verifying names and addresses.

Gregory Kutz, managing director of special investigations for the Government Accountability Office, said he has little confidence that FEMA will be ready by June 1 start of the hurricane season to safeguard taxpayer dollars should a disaster like Katrina strike again.

A FEMA spokesman said agency officials are working hard to improve and tighten controls in its disaster aid program.

___

On the Net:

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: http://hsgac.senate.gov/

As some of you might know, I won the New Century Scholar award for Wyoming several weeks ago. With that comes a free trip to Long Beach, where I’m staying in the Westin Hotel…a very nice, 4 star, and extremely expensive place to spend a couple of nights.

I’m here for the awards ceremony, as well as the opening night of the American Associaton of Community Colleges, being held at the Long Beach Convention Center. Tomorrow night I get to pick up my scholarship winnings at the official New Century Scholar reception. Hint…look at the very BOTTOM of this page for my picture.

From http://www.ptk.org/knb/apr06/h0421064.html

“Fifty outstanding community college students will be honored as 2006 New Century Scholars during this week’s American Association of Community Colleges Annual Convention in Long Beach, California. New Century Scholars are the highest-scoring nominees for the All-USA Academic Team in each state. They each receive $2,000 scholarships from the Coca-Cola Foundation and the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation. Learn more about the 2006 New Century Scholars online.”

Just finished the rehearsal phase of the presentation for tonight. Very interesting. The Grand Ballroom here in the convention center is HUGE. Two giant screens on either side of the stage. Looks like a couple thousands chairs as well.

The New Century Scholar part is the middle part of the presentation, after the opening remarks by the PTK CEO and so forth. We march on (of course I’m the very last one on stage), and then they present us, and then people cheer (think Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the minstrels rejoice)…and then Coke is given the Truman award (they’re the money for the New Century Scholar), and then Coke goes away, the lights go down, and we all march off stage back to our front row seats.

Sometime after this event, PTK will be shipping all participants a DVD of the event, so all will be able to see the whole thing.

Fun.

After the presentation tonight, the ballroom at the Westin has live video feeds, where us PTKers, er, um…Scholars…will get to watch the Hallmark awards, which I think is the international convention for PTK…going on this very same weekend in Seattle (you’d think they plan better!).

That’s the place for free pizza and soda…yum.

Around lunchtime, I did walk uptown on Long Beach Blvd. to “Acres of Books“, and found three VERY good used books for $20.03…all pertain to production stuff for our business, and future plans…film making, screenwriting, and online community planning.

You would love AOB. Think Half Price Books, when they were in that old store off Northwest Highway in Dallas…the one that had the Ship looking thing in the middle of the ground floor…but with stacks stacked HIGHER, and rows much narrower. I could stand in the aisle and both shoulders touched bookshelves across from each other. There must have been MILLIONS of books!

Weather is still cool here…and very breezy. Got some video last night before sunset of the bay, the Queen Mary, and ALMOST got video of a seal swimming around the giant boats…kept going underwater before I could grab him on video.

I can’t believe the prices here….haven’t found a 7/11…or even seen a gas station in this neck of the woods. Spent $14 at Borders…got the one PODCASTING book , and 4 alkaline batteries for the digital camera. Breakfast via room service was over $30. 2 eggs, sausage, coffee, OJ, a small basket with 3 danishes, and hash browns….jiminy christmas!

My lunch here at the events center, a piece of roasted chicken, mashed taters, brocolli, bottle of coke, and bottle of water, and a tiny bowl of salad … $17! On Jo Anne’s (the college president, who is also here for this convention) credit card of course…

Tomorrow evening is the “official reception” for the NCSers…I think that’s when I get the check (which I hope isn’t a gift certificate for $2,000 worth of Coke products!

Anyway…that’s about it for now. Gonna go snoop around this floor and find any freebie stuff that have…and fill my pockets!!!!

More later…!

Rich

I received this in an email from a friend this morning. I think it’s a great synopsis of the history of terrorism against the U.S. the past quarter century.

Please share your thoughts on this…What do YOU think the U.S. should do to ANY terrorists, terror organization, or country that harbors terrorists?

Rich

When WWIII StartedThis is not very long, but very informative You have to read the catalogue of events in this brief piece. Then, ask yourself how anyone can take the position that all we have to do is bring our troops home from Iraq, sit back, reset the snooze alarm, go back to sleep, and no one will ever bother us again. In case you missed it, World War III began in November 1979…that alarm has been ringing for years

US Navy Captain Ouimette is the Executive Officer at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. Here is a copy of the speech he gave last month. It is an accurate account of why we are in so much trouble today and why this action is so necessary.

AMERICA NEEDS TO WAKE UP!

That’s what we think we heard on the 11th of September 2001 AD (When more than 3,000 Americans were killed) and maybe it was, but I think it should have been “Get Out of Bed!” In fact, I think the alarm clock has been buzzing since 1979 and we have continued to hit the snooze button and roll over for a few more minutes of peaceful sleep since then.

It was a cool fall day in November 1979 in a country going through a religious and political upheaval when a group of Iranian students attacked and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This seizure was an outright attack on American soil; it was an attack that held the world’s most powerful country hostage and paralyzed a Presidency. The attack on this sovereign U. S. embassy set the stage for events to follow for the next 25 years.

America was still reeling from the aftermath of the Vietnam experience and had a serious threat from the Soviet Union when then, President Carter, had to do something. He chose to conduct a clandestine raid in the desert. The ill-fated mission ended in ruin, but stood as a symbol of America’s inability to deal with terrorism.

America’s military had been decimated and down sized/right sized since the end of the Vietnam War. A poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly organized military was called on to execute a complex mission that was doomed from the start.

Shortly after the Tehran experience, Americans began to be kidnapped and killed throughout the Middle East. America could do little to protect her citizens living and working abroad. The attacks against US soil continued.

In April of 1983 a large vehicle packed with high explosives was driven into the US Embassy compound in Beirut When it explodes, it kills 63 people. The alarm went off again and America hit the Snooze Button once more.

Then just six short months later in 1983 a large truck heavily laden down with over 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through the main gate of the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut and 241 US servicemen are killed. America mourns her dead and hit the Snooze Button once more.

Two months later in December 1983, another truck loaded with explosives is driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait, and America continues her slumber.

The following year, in September 1984, another van was driven into the gate of the US Embassy in Beirut and America slept.

Soon the terrorism spreads to Europe. In April 1985 a bomb explodes in a restaurant frequented by US soldiers in Madrid.

Then in August 1985 a Volkswagen loaded with explosives is driven into the main gate of the US Air Force Base at Rhein-Main, 22 are killed and the snooze alarm is buzzing louder and louder as US interests are continually attacked.

Fifty-nine days later in 1985 a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro is hijacked and we watched as an American in a wheelchair is singled out of the passenger list and executed.

The terrorists then shift their tactics to bombing civilian airliners when they bomb TWA Flight 840 in April of 1986 that killed 4 and the most tragic bombing, Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 259.

Clinton treated these terrorist acts as crimes; in fact we are still trying to bring these people to trial. These are acts of war.

The wake up alarm is getting louder and louder.

The terrorists decide to bring the fight to America. In January 1993, two CIA agents are shot and killed as they enter CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The following month, February 1993, a group of terrorists are arrested after a rented van packed with explosives is driven into the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and over 1000 are injured. Still this is a crime and not an act of war? The Snooze alarm is depressed again.

Then in November 1995 a car bomb explodes at a US military complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killing seven service men and women.

A few months later in June of 1996, another truck bomb explodes only 35 yards from the US military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It destroys the Khobar Towers, a US Air Force barracks, killing 19 and injuring over 500. The terrorists are getting braver and smarter as they see that America does not respond decisively.

They move to coordinate their attacks in a simultaneous attack on two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.. These attacks were planned with precision. They kill 224. America responds with cruise missile attacks and goes back to sleep.

The USS Cole was docked in the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling on 12 October 2000, when a small craft pulled along side the ship and exploded killing 17 US Navy Sailors. Attacking a US War Ship is an act of war, but we sent the FBI to investigate the crime and went back to sleep.

And of course you know the events of 11 September 2001. Most Americans think this was the first attack against US soil or in America. How wrong they are. America has been under a constant attack since 1979 and we chose to hit the snooze alarm and roll over and go back to sleep.

In the news lately we have seen lots of finger pointing from every high officials in government over what they knew and what they didn’t know. But if you’ve read the papers and paid a little attention I think you can see exactly what they knew. You don’t have to be in the FBI or CIA or on the National Security Council to see the pattern that has been developing since 1979.

The President is right on when he says we are engaged in a war. I think we have been in a war for the past 25 years and it will continue until we as a people decide enough is enough. America needs to “Get out of Bed” and act decisively now. America has been changed forever.. ! We have to be ready to pay the price and make the sacrifice to ensure our way of life continues. We cannot afford to keep hitting the snooze button again and again and roll over and go back to sleep.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto said “…it seems all we have done is awakened a sleeping giant.” This is the message we need to disseminate to terrorists around the world.

Support Our Troops and support President Bush for having the courage, political or militarily, to address what so many who preceded him didn’t have the backbone to do, both Democrat and Republican. This is not a political thing to be hashed over in an election year this is an AMERICAN thing. This is about our Freedom and the Freedom of our children in years to come.

If you believe in this please forward it to as many people as you can especially to the young people and all those who dozed off in history class and who seem so quick to protest such a necessary military action. If you don’t believe it, just delete it and go back to sleep.

This weekend was the one hundredth anniversary of the Great 1906 San Franscisco earthquake, which killed over 1,800 people. While this is one of the strongest earthquakes in history on the west coast, another quake of even larger proportions is just waiting to happen. The article below is a review of what has been accomplished in preparing for the next quake…and what has NOT been accomplished.

In other words, lots of work still needs to be done. Nothing can stop the next big quake…only mitigate the effects and damage that might happen, so that less people are hurt or killed.

Read the article, and then review your own preps…could YOU make it through a huge catastrophic event, on your own, with food and water for you and your family…or would you be dependent on the GOVERNMENT to provide for you….just like the Feds did for those folks gathered in the Superdome in New Orleans a few months ago…for DAYS without help?

Make the call. Get your preps ready, and know what you have to do, if it’s only YOU, and no government coming to your rescue.

Rich

Bay Area far from ready for the next ‘Big One’
Repeat of 1906 earthquake would leave San Francisco region devastated

By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 10:48 a.m. ET April 17, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO - 1906 will happen again. And it will be worse than you can possibly imagine.

Years of work costing billions of dollars to shore up infrastructure and retrofit buildings, bridges and procedures will mitigate the impact of a “major” or “great” earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, but only a little. When the Big One finally hits, the destruction will be immense, utterly overwhelming rescue and recovery efforts, according to a review of more than a dozen recent government and academic reports and interviews with numerous experts in seismology and disaster preparedness.

Among other things, the review — assessing measures taken over about the last 20 years — found that only about a tenth of the region’s governments have shored up their municipal water systems to survive a major disaster. Disaster-response experts identify the water supply as the crucial link in the recovery chain both to fight inevitable widespread fires and to help keep survivors alive.

And while doctors say critical care in the first 72 hours is what keeps most people with major injuries in hospital beds and out of body bags, most of the region’s hospitals would be unable to provide any reliable patient care.

Being one of those kind of people who tries to ready for any little thing, I usually have on my belt a Gerber multitool (which I use at least a dozen times a day), and a MiniMag double A flashlight in its own little holster. This is great for college, when you’re digging under desks trying to fix other people’s computers, traipsing across campus after dark after closing the lab, or fixing the car in the parking lot at Walmart after the rear bearing goes out on the ALTERNATOR, of all things.

Well, the cool tool above is an UPGRADE kit to any AA minimag flashlight, that allows you to LED based light, with a greatly increased lifespan of your batteries.

Takes only minutes to change out a couple of parts, with NO tools needed, and the light seems to be ever so much brighter, at least what I’ve seen under the desks I’ve worked on lately. Give it a try!

Aa Mini Maglite LED Conversion Kit, You Save $3.02 - Use keycode SPRINGFLING at checkout, Expires 05/10/2006