In the Public Garden, Boston:
10 May 1986. Kodachrome 64. Exposure unrecorded.
The Economist Gulliver blog makes a good case that media coverage of Irene was appropriate for the threat:
Hurricanes are serious business. They have the capacity to cause billions of dollars in damage and kill hundreds or thousands of people. They have political consequences, too—no politician wants to be blamed for a disaster the way President George W. Bush was after Hurricane Katrina. Moreover, it is very unusual for a hurricane to hit America's north-east, where around one sixth of Americans live and a quarter of the country's economic output is produced. An unusual, potentially disastrous event that was certain to affect millions of Americans and put billions of dollars of property at risk is just the sort of thing the media should be covering. Just because Irene wasn't the disaster that some Americans feared doesn't mean it wasn't important to cover it.
Another way to look at it, just because Irene didn't cause more damage doesn't mean the preparations and coverage were wrong. Just two days ago it looked like Manhattan, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk, Hoboken, and Jersey City—places where millions of people live just a few meters above sea level—could experience devastating damage from a storm surge. This is, remember, the first hurricane to hit New York City in about a century.
I'm very happy the storm did as little damage as it did. And even though it turned out to be unnecessary, I'm glad Mayor Bloomberg and Governors Cuomo and Christie took the actions they did to prepare for what looked like, earlier this weekend, an unprecedented disaster.
On a school field trip, at an El stop in Chicago:
October 1985. Canon AE-1P, Kodachrome 64, exposure unrecorded, probably 80mm, probably here.
Beloit College, just across the Wisconsin line and just outside the Chicago area, puts together a list every year to describe the incoming class of first-years. Last year's list made me cry. This year's list provoked a different emotion, one that I can't quite make out with my age-addled brain:
2. Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents.
12. Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
22. John Wayne Bobbitt has always slept with one eye open.
39. Moderate amounts of red wine and baby aspirin have always been thought good for the heart.
60. Frasier, Sam, Woody and Rebecca have never Cheerfully frequented a bar in Boston during primetime.
75. The New York Times and the Boston Globe have never been rival newspapers.
OK, time for my Geritol...
Breaking news:
Nearly 300,000 New York City residents were told Friday to get out of their homes in a first-ever mandatory evacuation as officials ordered an unprecedented shutdown of the city’s mass transit system for Saturday in advance of Hurricane Irene, raising the prospect of a singular scramble as hundreds of thousands of residents try to get out of the massive storm’s way.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered an evacuation by 5 p.m. Saturday for low-lying areas that house about 270,000 people. Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said subways, buses and commuter trains in the city, on Long Island and in the northern suburbs will begin their final runs around noon Saturday.
Officials earlier ordered Fire Island evacuated, starting half an hour ago.
Hurricane Irene, currently category 2 on the Staffir-Simpson scale, looks like it's heading straight for New York City. Both the NYC and New Jersey emergency management agencies have published maps (pdf) showing the likely flood zones for various categories of hurricanes. They're scary.
I used to live in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y., and Hoboken, N.J. Both areas would be affected by a category 1 hurricane. My place in Hoboken, in fact, was only 2 m above sea level. My stuff would probably be OK—I lived on the fourth and fifth floors—but a moderate storm surge would likely flood the entire city of Hoboken, and make it impossible to live there for weeks.
I hope all my friends in the New York Metro are taking reasonable steps to protect themselves and whatever stuff they can get out. It's going to be a wet weekend in the Northeast...
Update, 13:27 CDT: New York City and the surrounding area have decided to shut down all commuter train, subway, and Amtrak service in the region starting at noon tomorrow.
Yesterday I wrote about a criminal trial here in Chicago in which a woman was charged with felony eavesdropping for recording a conversation with two police officers. Under Illinois law, this "crime" carries the same penalties as rape and manslaughter. The law needs to go, whether through repeal (unlikely) or being overturned by a Federal appeals court (more likely).
Good news for Tiawanda Moore this afternoon, but bad news for Illinois civil liberties: she got acquitted:
[A] Criminal Court jury quickly repudiated the prosecution's case, taking less than an hour to acquit Moore on both eavesdropping counts.
"The two cops came across as intimidating and insensitive," said one juror, Ray Adams, 57, a pharmacist from the western suburbs. "Everybody thought it was just a waste of time and that (Moore) never should have been charged."
The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago last year challenging the law, saying it was unconstitutional to prevent people from openly recording police officers working in public. A federal judge dismissed the suit, but the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments next month in the ACLU's appeal of the decision.
The 7th Circuit has a reputation for evenness. We can hope, at least; but the ACLU's case will probably take another few years to finish.
Do you ever eat fish? If so, are you aware that many fisheries are unsustainable, that popular fish species have high incidence of contamination, and that while generally good for you, some sushi can give you heavy metals with your wasabi?
For years I've carried around a pocket sustainable seafood guide the Monterey Bay Aquarium publishes semi-annually. Now they've got a smartphone app for both iPhone and Android. No more printing it out on paper! W00t!
Instead of writing a banal post about American Airlines' changes to their million-mile program, here's something one of my co-workers just brought to my attention. A woman is on trial in Illinois for secretly recording a conversation with a cop she alleges was trying to get her to drop a harassment case against another cop. Because the person she recorded was a police officer, however, the crime is a Class 1 felony—the same class that includes second-degree murder[1], rape[2], and carjacking[3]:
Tiawanda Moore, 20, is charged with two felony counts of eavesdropping on a public official for allegedly recording a four-minute portion of the Aug. 18, 2010, interview on her BlackBerry, which she had hidden in her lap.
Moore, of Hammond, Ind., was being interviewed at police headquarters about her complaint that a patrol officer had grabbed her breast and given her his phone number when he came to her boyfriend’s South Side apartment on a domestic disturbance call.
The American Civil Liberties Union has worked for years to get the law overturned. Their case against the Illinois States Attorney seeking to overturn the law is currently before the 7th Circuit. Updates as warranted.
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[1] i.e., unintentional homicide or manslaughter; see 720 ILCS 5/9-2(d)
[2] 720 ILCS 5/11‑1.20(b)(1)
[3] 720 ILCS 5/18-3(c)
Via Raymond Chen, on Monday the Nashville Sounds, Milwaukee's farm team, turned a triple play against the Omaha Storm Chasers:
For those who don't know baseball's rules, a few things happened. First, a ball is "caught" (for an out) if the fielder making the catch gains full control over the ball before it touches the ground or another player, even if it touches a part of his own body—or his cap, as happened here. In the video above, this put the batter out.
Second, if a fielder catches a fly ball, all runners have to return to their last safe base before they can advance; this is called "tagging up." In this case, the runners started on first and second, and had advanced past second and third, respectively. The runner seen touching second base actually needed to make it back to first. So the fielder touching second put the next runner out, which is why the runner you see at second tried desperately to get to first again. He didn't make it; the first baseman forced him out.
It may have been an inelegant play, but hey, it ended the inning in 15 seconds.