Accidental Blogger

My Tailor is from Mumbai!

It is human nature to want to find a personal connection to triumph and tragedy. Cries of solidarity, "Today we are all Americans," (here, here and here) were heard from all over the world after 9/11/2001. John McCain declared, "Today we are all Georgians," during the recent Russian-Georgian conflict (although there is reason to believe that Georgia attacked first). Being an Indian by birth, the Mumbai tragedy is of course somewhat more personal to me than it is to the average American, Japanese or Argentinian. But I can hardly claim, "Today I am ... or we are all Mumbaikars."  [Mumbaikar= Bombayite] I cannot in all honesty, quite imagine what the death and injury of the victims mean to them and to their families. But we try to empathize by imagining ourselves facing the same terrifying ordeals that the victims must have encountered.  Several of my friends, all of whom know that I come from Delhi, have called in the last few days to inquire if everyone in my family was alright. The first thing that I myself asked my sister and my journalist brother-in-law was if every one they know in Mumbai was safe. Not everyone was. A former colleague of my BIL is presumed dead. She was in a room in the Taj Hotel that was adjacent to the one where the terrorists had initially gathered on the 6th floor. Text messages from her cell phone went out for nearly two hours following the first conflagration, after which there was no further communication. Does the death of this journalist whom I had never met and which made me quite sad, turn the Mumbai incident into a personal experience for me? I don't think so, unless you compute "personal" in a very loose six degrees of separation kind of way.

We are NOT all Mumbaikars today but it is a polite way to show solidarity by saying that we are. But of course, there are several genuine Mumbaikars within the Indian American community and anxiety was understandably widespread among them when the news of the carnage first broke. Houston Indians gathered at the city's India House to offer prayers and express support for India. Among them were many from Mumbai whose "personal" stories are reported in today's Houston Chronicle.   

Namit spoke of the purple prose of Indian writers in the aftermath of the attack in Mumbai. How about some pale yellow journalism? While reading the Chronicle's general human interest story, I came across a ridiculously irrelevant piece of trivia:

Despite a decade or more of bombings and suicide attacks in their native city, former Mumbai residents said the carnage that began Wednesday and ended Saturday with nearly 200 deaths outdid their worst imaginings. They joined with religious and civic leaders at Houston's India House cultural center on Sunday.

"This attack wasn't an attack on India. It wasn't an attack on Westerners. It was an attack on humanity," said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, who wore a gray suit tailored for him during a visit to Mumbai. [emphasis mine]

Now, Judge Emmett, a very active public official who was responsible for the evacuation plan during Hurricane Ike, is I am sure, sincerely outraged by the terrorist incident in Mumbai. But what in the whole wide world, does his gray suit tailored in Mumbai have to do with anything? I don't blame Judge Emmett for wearing his desi suit during the visit to India House and I don't even mind that he may have mentioned it to his Indian audience and to the reporter. However, why did the reporter choose to report it? How many degrees of separation are there between the judge, his tailor in Mumbai and a terrorist act?

My Bleeding City

Author Suketu Mehta in the New York Times on the Mumbai terrorist mayhem.

MY bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.

Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim man living in a shack without indoor plumbing what kept him in the city. “Mumbai is a golden songbird,” he said. It flies quick and sly, and you’ll have to work hard to catch it, but if you do, a fabulous fortune will open up for you. The executives who congregated in the Taj Mahal hotel were chasing this golden songbird. The terrorists want to kill the songbird.

The rest of the article here.  (Mehta is a bit over the top with his sentimentality, just as many New Yorkers were after 9/11. But what he says about the religious tolerance of big, diverse Indian megapolises used to be true only a decade or so ago - that's the India in which I grew up.)

A Melamine Anniversary Post (Sujatha)

(In which we look again at the prevalence of melamine in various food chains, now confirmed to include human babies of practically all countries that use infant formulas from multinational companies like Nestle and Bristol-Meyers Squibb.)

Around the world with Barack Obama

I noted in my post yesterday that the whole world was watching to see if the United States of America, a country with a majority white population, could bring itself to elect a dark skinned president of mixed race. The US voters came through for Barack Obama, confronting and overcoming a cultural challenge as old as the nation's history. The world took note and for the most part, from Jerusalem to Jakarta, people rejoiced. (see photo montage)

We heard in the comments section from Jatinder from Hong Kong, congratulating Americans for "doing the right thing." On Tuesday night, before the final election results were in and around the time things were beginning to look promising for Obama, I received the following e-mail from Matthew, a friend from Australia.

Am watching events unfold at work by the minute - it all looks good. I am relieved that your countrymen, on the whole, have shown how much they care about a positive future. It might be a bit early, but congratulations from an Aussie - you've made a fantastic decision. I'm under no false illusions, every character is flawed and there is no such thing as a 'saviour' but this is such a step in the right direction for the world and believe me, we feel it strongly too.

In wading through numerous foreign news outlets reporting the outcome of yesterday's election, I came across mostly positive, even exuberant reactions to President Elect Obama, mixed in with regional hopes and concerns for the future. I found just one very curious headline. It too celebrated the impending victory of Obama but for a very wrong reason. The Greek newspaper Avriani declared on the front page: (translation via an Athens news agency)

AVRIANI: "The anticipated victory of Obama in US elections signals ...the end of the Jewish domination - Everything changes in USA and we hope that it will be more democratic and humane".

How weird!

Greece no longer has a significant Jewish population. The once large and thriving Jewish community of Salonika was butchered by the Nazis and most of the survivors left at the end of WWII. So why would Greece be concerned with domination by Jews, unless as an expression of its own vestigial anti-Semitism? Particularly ironic is the fact that the newspaper appears to be celebrating Obama's victory in anticipation of a more "democratic and humane" USA while exposing its own vicious prejudice. Brian Leiter's Texas Talibans are everywhere - even in Greece.

Yobama!

Yes, we did !!!

I was a young girl in India looking from afar in awe when the civil rights movement in the US was under way. Today as a middle aged woman and an American citizen, I am equally thrilled to be a participant in the logical grand finale to those distant events of forty years ago. There was a certain inevitability to Barack Obama's historic win. I am glad it has happened in my lifetime and my children's.

Obama is the winner in an American presidential election. But this was also a world election. No matter what happens internally in the US regarding the economy, jobs and the "war on terror," with the election of Obama to the highest national office, we have cleared a stubborn cultural hurdle that desperately needed to get out of our way. The whole world was watching. Beginning this morning, US prestige world wide will begin to be restored after being in the dumpster for eight long miserable years of ignorance, ineptitude, aggression, corruption and divisiveness.

I am a bit woozy after a late evening spent with like minded friends when some good red wine and champagne flowed freely. I will end with my congratulations to the disciplined Obama campaign staff, tireless volunteers, donors, bloggers and voters who did their bit to bring about this much needed change in the country's mood and aspirations. Also, best wishes and the best of luck to Senator Obama and Senator Biden for their upcoming tenure at the helm of the nation's tilting ship....  Peace!

Gobama!

Can we or can't we?

Whatever is on your schedule today, be sure to vote, if you have not done so already. It is an important election and an exciting one. Make certain that you are a player in the outcome.We at Accidental Blogger, hope that you will vote for Senator Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates on your ballot. As I have warned before, nothing is yet decided. We really do not know how things will turn out at the end of this evening. So, if you are an Obama supporter, please don't be complacent. Remember 2000 and that every vote counts.

The tracking polls, the mood and most other indicators point to a possible Obama victory. So why am I not counting my chickens? Why the nail biting? Well, like most other "twice bitten, thrice shy" Democrats, I am not at all sure that things will really go our way this time. Even some pro-Obama columnists are joking nervously. One of them (Ellen Goodman) writes:

BOSTON — Have you noticed that the spookiest colors of the season are not orange and black but red and blue? As Halloween slips into Election Day, the race for the White House has scared more grown-ups than any trip to the haunted house.

I’m not talking about John McCain’s farewell fright tour, although it is sad to see the senator trade in his superhero costume for that of fearmonger. After trying on assorted masks, he’s settled on profiling his opponent as “Barack the Redistributor” who will take money away from hardworking Americans, “coddle criminals” and, no doubt, ask Bill Ayers to be secretary of state.

With all the infighting in the coven around the maverick and the fair maiden, it’s tempting to call the McCain campaign the Gang That Couldn’t Fly a Broomstick Straight.

But the striking thing is not how the Republicans are trying to scare undecided voters. It’s how spooked the most committed Democrats are.

The closer Obama comes to victory, the more terror strikes deep in the (blue) heartland. The better things look, the more they worry that it’s “trick or trick” time. The election, like that dollar bill on the sidewalk, will be whipped out of their hands....

Every optimistic scenario for Obama is countered darkly by pre-emptive conspiracy theories explaining how it could turn into bad news....

Do you remember when the Obama rallying cry was “Yes, we can”? Now we are in the scary season and here’s the new mantra: The only thing we have to fear is hope itself.

Also some bloggers are having a bit of post-Halloween fun at the expense of the white- knuckle Dems.

I guess we have a right to be nervous. Not much has gone our way for a long time although the 2006 congressional races turned things around a bit. Perhaps 2008 will break the jinx more decisively and put the White House too on our side of the ledger. I am not crunching favorable numbers and statistics. I am worried about a somewhat more iffy factor.

Go Obama ... and Bob Barr!

B Movie (Sujatha)

This morning, the local channels and newspapers were abuzz with the news report that a young McCain campaign worker had been robbed and assaulted near an ATM in Pittsburgh.

[Ashley]Todd is a 20-year old Texas woman, a volunteer for the McCain-Palin campaign, who told police she was robbed and attacked by a man in Bloomfield.
A police report states that Todd said the incident occurred around 9 p.m. Wednesday night near an ATM.
Todd said she made her ATM withdrawal and was approached from behind by a man who put a knife to her neck and demanded money.
She said she gave him $60 and managed to step away from the robber.
But, then Todd claimed the mugger spotted a McCain sticker on her car, and became angry.
She said she was punched in the back of the head, knocked to the ground and the man etched the letter "B on the right side of her face.
Among other things, police are checking security cameras in the neighborhood to see what, if anything, they may have recorded.

 

A Drudge report photo of the young woman showed a reversed letter B on her cheek, but could not be authenticated by the KDKA news channel reporters.

The Pittsburgh police were skeptical about certain inconsistencies in Todd's report and administered a polygraph test to her, for which they have declined to release the results. They have however released this statement regarding the changing stories Ms.Todd keeps coming up with.
The moot point in the statement :
  "We have received photos from the ATM machine at the Citizens Bank and the photographs was verified as NOT being the victim making the transaction." (sic)

Is the whole thing real or just a hoax perpetrated on credulous media? Is this just another blatant attempt to play on the 'hidden racism' in Western Pennsylvania that Congressman Murtha was castigated for talking about in regards to Obama's chances at electoral victory here?

The whole thing seems like the plot of a bad B movie to me.

Update from KDKA news:

A Pittsburgh police commander says a volunteer for the McCain campaign who reported being robbed and attacked near a bank ATM in Bloomfield has confessed to making up the story. Police say charges will be filed. More details to follow.

Hmmmpf,  it's not even a full moon, and the loonies are creeping out of the woodwork!

Lipstick on Pigs Part Deux (Sujatha)

With the difficulties Ruchira has been having trying to get out even short posts while in India, she has asked me to post this for her.

Ruchira:

A great illustration of putting lipstick on a pig.

It seems that the RNC spent money to dress up the entire Palin clan. So much for small town values and the maverick point of view.

The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

Sujatha:

So, let's get this straight, this cool $150,000 in Palin family clothes funded by the generous donors to the RNC, combined with Senator McCain's $8000 makeup artist and $500 Ferragamo loafers, not to mention the tinfoilly possibility that Palin had some cosmetic surgery done in preparation for her VP bid, they are not Joe Sixpacks, as they like to style themselves, but made-up mavericks.

 

Update(less than 10 minutes later, such is the speed of the Internets!):
Damage Control Time:

McCain-Palin spokesperson Tracey Schmitt's response: "With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it's remarkable that we're spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses. It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign."

So, the prospective Veep will not need the clothes after the campaign is over ??? Color me puzzled.

And also, doggone it, why is talking about pantsuits and blouses any less important than the Ayers connection, considering the 'important issues facing the country right now' ? Will we talk about it? Yes we will because we can-  You betcha!

 

Paul Krugman wins the 2008 Nobel for Economics (Sujatha)

Paul Krugman has won this year's economics Nobel Prize.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/paul-krugman-wins-economics-nobel/?hp

(Thanks for the link, Ruchira.)

In a charmingly self-deprecating interview on the New York Times:

“For economists, this is a validation but not news. We know what each other have been up to,” Mr. Krugman said. “For readers of the column, maybe they will read a little more carefully when I’m being economistic, or maybe have a little more tolerance when I’m being boring.”

He said that he does not expect his critics to let him off any easier because of his new accolade, though.

“I think we’ve learned this when we see Joe Stiglitz writing,” Mr. Krugman said, referring to the winner of the economics Nobel in 2001. “I haven’t noticed him getting an easy time. People just say, ‘Sure, he’s a great Nobel laureate and he’s very smart, but he still doesn’t know what he’s talking about in this situation.’ I’m sure I’ll get the same thing.”

Update:

Despite Ruchira's and my suspicion that his recent prominence in denouncing the set of events that led to the market meltdown played a decisive role in confirming his win of the Nobel prize, the prize committee indicated otherwise:

Perhaps better known as a columnist than an economist to the public, Krugman has also come out forcefully against John McCain during the economic meltdown, saying the Republican presidential candidate is "more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago." Krugman (pronounced KROOG-man) also has derided the Republicans as becoming "the party of stupid."

Tore Ellingsen, a member of the prize committee, acknowledged that Krugman was an "opinion maker" but added that he was honored on the merits of his economic research, not his political commentary.

"We disregard everything except for the scientific merits," Ellingsen told The Associated Press.

The 55-year-old American economist was the lone winner of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award and the latest in a string of American researchers to be honored. It was only the second time since 2000 that a single laureate won the prize, which is typically shared by two or three researchers.

Who won the debate? - "That one." (Sujatha)

I think  this article by Mary Lyon mirrors my impressions quite well on the presidential debate last night, and saves me the trouble of having to write in detail about it.

Nobel Quibbles (Sujatha)

The Nobel prize for medicine this year has been awarded to HIV and HPV pioneers: Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of France (HIV)  and Harald zur Hausen of Germany (HPV).

"Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur won half the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.4 million) for discovering the virus that has killed 25 million people since it was identified in the 1980s.

Dr. Harald zur Hausen of the University of Duesseldorf and a former director of the German Cancer Research Center shared the other half of the prize for work that went against the established opinion about the cause of cervical cancer.

"The three laureates have discovered two new viruses of great importance and the result of that has led to an improved global health," said Jan Andersson, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

The discoveries made it possible to diagnose both infections, and led to the development of two vaccines that prevent cervical cancer, and more than 20 drugs that can keep HIV patients healthy."

But this isn't without controversy, as US researcher Robert Gallo feels that he should share credit with the French scientists for the discovery of HIV.

"U.S. researcher Dr. Robert Gallo was locked in a dispute with Montagnier in the 1980s over the relative importance of their roles in groundbreaking research into HIV and its role in AIDS. Gallo told The Associated Press that he was disappointed at not being included in the prize.

Montagnier told the AP in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he is attending an international AIDS conference, that he was still optimistic about conquering the disease.

The prize, he said, "encourages us all to keep going until we reach the goal at the end of this effort."

Montagnier said he wished the prize had also gone to Gallo.

"It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he said."

Nobel prizes cannot be shared by more than three awardees, and in this case, while Gallo's contribution to establishing the connection between HIV and AIDS and the technical advances to isolate the HIV were seminal, the Nobel prize committee decided that the work performed by Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi in first discovering and characterizing the virus was more deserving.

Gallo's dispute with Montaigner over who should get credit for the HIV discovery goes back to the late '80's:

His dispute with Montagnier reached such a level in 1987 that then-President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France penned an agreement dividing millions of dollars in royalties from the AIDS blood test. The settlement led to an agreement that officially credited the Gallo and Montagnier labs with co-discovering the virus.

In the 1990s, however, the U.S. government acknowledged that the French deserved a greater share of the royalties. The admission solidified the French position that Montagnier had isolated the virus in 1983, a year before Gallo.

It might be that Eurocentricism played a role in this selection (i.e. in keeping it between the French researchers, rather than splitting between Montagnier and Gallo), but disappointments and surprises aside, it definitely makes an interesting case for how to honor all those who were excluded from these prizes, despite their significant contributions to the various fields that are awarded Nobel prizes.

A little more detail about Harald zur Hausen's discovery that the Human Papilloma Virus is an etiologic agent in a variety of cancers, including cervical cancer, based on which vaccines have been recently developed and approved for use in the general population here in another pre-Nobel article:

In his early work, zur Hausen demonstrated that Burkitt's lymphoma cells contained Epstein-Barr viral DNA, thus proving that viruses can persist in human tumor cells, and are associated with tumor growth. Zur Hausen and his colleagues were also able to demonstrate the association of Epstein-Barr virus in epithelial cells of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

...

In the 1970s and 1980s, zur Hausen provided the key investigative findings that led to the recognition that certain types of HPV are the etiologic agents of cervical cancer. This observation and the detailed studies that followed provided the basis for the extensive epidemiologic studies that independently validated the importance of these findings worldwide. Zur Hausen's subsequent research on the immunogenicity of this virus set the stage for the development of a vaccine.

"Dr. zur Hausen is responsible for a body of scientific research that laid the foundation for one of the most important events of the past year in cancer research and public health - the approval of an effective vaccine for HPV," said Margaret Foti, Ph.D., M.D. (h.c.), AACR chief executive officer. "We expect this vaccine will lead to a marked decrease in the incidence of cervical cancer and ultimately protect countless young women from this disease."

Zur Hausen's work has also linked HPV to several other cancers including laryngeal carcinoma, penile carcinoma, and epidermal dysplasia.

Gardasil, a controversial vaccine to guard against the HPV strains causing the majority of cervical cancer still hogs the limelight occasionally, more due to the reports of dire adverse reactions (dizziness, neuropathies or worse) which have been reported in a tiny fraction of the several million shots administered so far. Dr.Zur Hausen's work was undoubtedly the precursor which led to this vaccine being developed as a possible way to combat cervical cancer, even as its efficacy as a preventative therapy is still out before the jury.

Note: For those who might not have seen this, Ruchira's husband Dr. Sudhir Paul's research in discovering a possible avenue of attack against the HIV, is highlighted in this post on A.B.

An Unhealthy Obsession(Sujatha)

A couple of weeks ago, an insert containing a DVD was in my Sunday newspaper : 'Obsession', with the O represented by a Crescent and Star, well recognizable as the symbol of Islam, and the N ending in the business end of a machine gun. The linkage implied was all too clear, despite miniscule disclaimers to the contrary about the majority of Muslims being peaceful- that " Islam = Terrorism".
The DVD purports to give an 'insider's view' of the  'War against the West', but I didn't feel too keen to give that piece of propaganda any viewing, until a week ago, a second DVD arrived, this time in the mail. My, those are some determined people trying to get out their message. So I kept it aside, intending to view it when I could make the time, to see why it was generating generous quantities of protest letters to the editor.

This morning, however, reading about a 'Hazmat' incident at a mosque in Dayton, it became all too clear what the target audience and the intended effect was.

The Muslim community gathered Sunday, Sept. 28, 48 hours after an unknown irritant disrupted worship at the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton.
"We were in the midst of the Fifth Prayer when people started coughing," said Ismail Gula, the society's secretary.
Gula said the building was evacuated and the service to break the daily fast of Ramadan continued at a nearby facility.
He said he had no idea what might have caused the incident. "It might be anything," he said.
Gula said he had received many calls of support from Christians and Jews over the weekend.
...

Also on Sunday, members of several Dayton religious groups were scheduled to view and discuss a DVD about Islamic radicalism mailed to some area homes and circulated with newspapers here and around the country.
"Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," was a paid advertising insert in the Dayton Daily News, Springfield News-Sun, Hamilton JournalNews and Middletown Journal, all owned by Cox Ohio Publishing, on Monday, Sept. 22. It appeared in more than 70 other newspapers nationwide.
The Rev. Gary Percesepe, executive director of Greater Dayton Christian Connections, characterized the DVD as "fanning the flames of fear and prejudice against Muslims, with the potential to inspire hate crimes."

What was the provenance of this DVD, which is being distributed by the millions through newspaper inserts and direct mail?  Why are they playing the fear card as in " The threat of Radical Islam is the most important issue facing us today...It's our responsibility to ensure we can all make an informed vote in November"

This NPR link sheds some more light on who is behind this:

Obsession was produced by the Clarion Fund, a 501(c)(3) charity, which cannot get involved in campaign politics.
But its spokesman has said the newspaper distribution had one purpose: to make terrorism a presidential campaign issue where it counts — in the battleground states. He said Clarion did this with a half-million dollar grant from a secret donor.
And others have been promoting Obsession in other ways. Joe Wierzbicki, a political consultant, offered free copies of the DVD to listeners on a talk show in Detroit last month. He was promoting a free screening of Obsession on Sept. 11 in Dearborn, a city with a large Arab population.

The DVD (at least the trailer and the couple of scenes that I deigned to watch) was rife with clips of Arabic and Iranian propaganda of kids yelling 'Death to America' , imagery of the aftermath of bombings in Israel, the ubiquitous footage of 9/11, a self described former PLO terrorist now reformed and equating Palestinian propaganda with the methods used by Nazis to revile Jews. The interesting twist is that the same techniques were being used to revile Muslims through a good part of the film (based on the chapter headings which were all vilifying 'Radical Islam').

Where will it all end, this incitement to hate and violence? Will this Obsession convert Muslims into the new Jews, at least in America?

Stormy Emotions

This morning I began day twelve without electricity and as usual found myself feeling hot, mildly grumpy, anxious and a bit more dispirited by the failure of Center Point Energy to restore power at our corner of the street. After my morning cup of tea (the hot water was obtained from a neighbor's kitchen last night and stored in a thermos), I began the daily routine - making and receiving calls from neighbors asking whether there was any new information. There was none. A bit later, around 8 O'clock, a utility company bucket truck, suitable for transformer repair came by and stopped before our home. I was thrilled to see it. Then it disappeared never making it to the back of the homes where the faulty transformer is located. (It hasn't returned) After that I made the first of my two daily calls to the power company and got the old and predictable "we are doing the best we can" message. For the second time in twelve days since Ike roared through here, I lost my temper. I didn't quite yell but did not mince my words regarding what I thought of the company's performance. The young woman at the other end of the line was unfazed and sternly asked me to be "patient and logical." Oh well.

Some sense of camaraderie and "There by the grace of God.." is restored every day on reading the morning paper and realizing that there are many like us camping out in their own homes with the help of extension cords, others who cannot borrow electricity from a neighbor because entire neighborhoods are out and still others who must live in shelters or with friends and relatives because their homes are unlivable. Amidst the news of despair and frustration, there are also reports of people dealing with their predicament with the occasional humor.  They are painting funny signs on their devastated property, joking with reporters and neighbors, blogging or writing to the editors of newspapers with their take on storm interrupted lives.

                                                                                                                                          

Houston's excellent mayor, Bill White (a Democrat whom I wish to see run for governor) has been in the news a lot lately. Most reports are laudatory for the calm and efficient job he has done in keeping things under control in this huge city of several millions after a major catastrophe. One recent news item however was about the usually unflappable mayor getting into a spat with some female FEMA workers over the distribution of relief items. White is reported to have used harsh words, some of them expletives. The awful governor of Texas, Rick "Good Hair" Perry tut-tutted and advised White to keep a civil tongue.  Most Houstonians found that laughable.  They are squarely behind White for showing his impatience with inefficiency.  And no one found his salty language objectionable.

So it took a hurricane for most Houston's citizens to learn that Mayor Bill White has a temper. After all, he not only rarely raises his voice in public, he rarely changes tones. But those who have worked with him know him to be a man whose patience is short and who is more than ready to express his annoyance when people have not done the job he thinks they should have.

Some were surprised, however, to learn that he had used language unfit for Sunday school to express his anger last Tuesday at finding trucks loaded with ice, water and food sitting at the Reliant Center while thousands of people waited in lines for the supplies for hours at Points of Distribution (PODs).

One city official recalled seeing him "eviscerate" employees with perfectly printable words with such force that "I'm sure they would have preferred to be cussed out."  Another said, "He is capable of breaking arms over the telephone." .....

....White [is] a Democrat. That is relevant only because other local Republicans had been discussing what they saw as White's misbehavior, and at least one Republican official mentioned it to a reporter. In addition, somehow the Republican governor of Georgia got worked up enough to send a complaining letter to the Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry — though not to White.

Perry wrote an unctuous letter of apology back and released it — something that could possibly be seen as an early move in a possible governor's race between Perry and White.

But any political advantage sought by publicizing White's behavior seems to have backfired. A story on the flap by my colleague Brad Olson drew more online readers and more comments than any other story yesterday, overwhelmingly in White's favor.

White's Facebook page is lit up with "attaboys," though not just on the outburst.

Here is another example of a citizen expressing his solidarity with Mayor White in today's Houston Chronicle.

Parenthetical point

I'm sure Mayor Bill White wished he had used more politic language with those Georgia Forestry Commission workers, but I say, you (expletive) go, brother! The same issue of the Chronicle showed people standing in line for hours — some camping out overnight — in the (expletive) heat for food stamps. My family is one of the unlucky few without power for 11 (expletive) days now (despite CenterPoint's estimate of a Monday restoration). It's a (expletive) mess here. So thank you, White, for expressing some of our (expletive) frustration. Most of us have no one to vent to who isn't in the same (expletive) mess. And if those workers didn't expect to find tired and frustrated people here, then they (expletive) well should have.

SEAN PARKER
Humble

For more storm related photos of Houston, Galveston and vicinity, see here.

Dirty Laundry - The Great Equalizer

Yesterday was day nine without electricity in our home. Only four houses on our street remain unplugged. All the other neighbors had their power restored the Sunday after the storm.  As I have mentioned in previous posts and comments, although not having our own electricity is proving to be very cumbersome, we have until now managed to stay in our home with the help of our neighbors by borrowing electricity to run a few appliances and getting hot water for tea and coffee as needed. Yesterday I did a load of laundry in a friend's house. So there is no pile of dirty clothes in my utility room waiting for the washer & dryer to come back to life.   

Not everyone in Houston has the good fortune to share the amenities of their neighbors' homes because there are still several neighborhoods where all the houses are in the dark. The situation with the power supply has been an entirely random affair - wealthy and poor neighborhoods have been equally affected. There are less affluent areas who have had their electricity restored and some of the ritziest addresses in Houston are languishing in the heat and the dark. Given the right climatic conditions, the rich and the poor get equally sweaty and designer clothes need washing just as much as a faded t-shirt.  As a result, Houstonians from widely different social backgrounds are bumping into each other for brief but amicable interludes in the area laundromats, which in Houston, mostly go by the name of "washeterias."

Blown Transformers

In my home and at the Large Hadron Collider. 

How costly is a storm?

Today is the sixth consecutive day that our house is without electricity. We are minimally functional with borrowed electricity from our neighbors through an extension cord. After six days, I am getting used to it and learning to improvise around the limited access to electricity - a situation which would otherwise have been a debilitating handicap. All of us can imagine the difficulty of leading a normal daily routine in which almost every household implement comes on with the flick of a switch or the push of a button.  But those who are really "plugged in"  will appreciate this article by a young and thoroughly wired person. No, the lament here is not for hot food, hot tea or coffee, not even light or air conditioning. Some people, (that also includes adults like my husband), feel most hampered by their electronic gadgetry going dark and silent.

My life, and maybe yours, is bathed in a blue-green electronic glow. When the flat-screen TV isn't on, the laptop is. The BlackBerry goes everywhere, and so does the iPod. My books are loaded onto an electronic reading device, a Kindle. I Twitter.

I check my friends' progress on Facebook. Many of the people I Twitter or have as Facebook friends I've never met, probably never will meet. But I follow them going to work, unable to sleep, angry in traffic, naming new babies. They're part of my life.

Unplug me and I die a little.

During Ike, the rules changed. Sure, some of us tried to plan ahead for electronic catastrophe, charging the cell phones, buying wrong-size batteries and trying to dig up that totally retro non-cordless phone, but sometimes even that wasn't good enough.

After the storm, cell phone service was at best spotty, at worst nonexistent.

Sure, there was battery life in the laptop good enough for a DVD or two, but who remembered that the wireless router was electric too? (Not me.) A camera wasn't much good with an uncharged battery. Cock your ear, and you could hear the collective keening of tweens whose Nintendo DS or PSP had run out of juice.

I noticed that the writer of the piece mentions some old-fashioned gizmos which came in awfully handy during our marooned hours right after Ike blew by. Most households these days have cordless or cell phones (many of the younger generation don't bother with land lines at all). The former doesn't work without electricity and the latter is useless when the cell towers are hit. Ike, like other big storms, damaged both. But our land phone line didn't go down during the rampage. I found a fifteen year old corded phone in a closet (the type you can't use while walking around the house) which proved to be the life line during the 24 hours after the storm and continues to be so in our lengthy "powerless" state. We also found an old shortwave radio in my son's room. It worked for a while on batteries but then broke down. My husband spent better part of last Saturday in the garage, sitting in the car listening to the radio and charging his lap top.

While the above article is lighthearted in an Erma Bombeck kind of way, the following one by Richard Parker, professor of journalism at UT Austin, takes a somber look at what a storm the size of Ike really costs a huge city like Houston, located so close to an ever warming body of water.

An excerpt:

Ike and Ruchira: Update (Sujatha)

I just spoke briefly with Ruchira a short while ago.While they are currently without power, there's no structural damage to the home and the water is still on. It may be a few days  before Ruchira gets back online, though.
She said that it was a very bad storm, the worst that she has ever been through. The power was restored relatively quickly to most of her neighborhood, except for her house and a couple of neighbors, who had downed trees near power lines that caused a blown transformer near them. She is not sure when the utility people will get to them, because other areas are currently higher priority. It could be a few days or even weeks depending on how bad the situation is in the worst affected areas. They may move to a hotel room if any become available, if the power isn't restored soon.

A Storm Named Ike

Those of you who have been paying attention to the news in the past couple of days must already know about Hurricane Ike which is poised to crash somewhere on the Texas coastline within the next twenty four hours or so. Ike is a huge storm that is expected to cut a wide swath and cause widespread damage. As of now, most computer models predict a landfall very close to Houston - near the Freeport - Galveston area. Depending on the punch it packs, Cat 2 or 3, the coastal areas will see huge storm surges, high winds, power outage and structural damage. Houston, the biggest city and the largest population center in the path of the storm will feel the effects of the storm and experience disruption of services. Tornadoes are likely to develop in places much further inland - as far as Austin and San Antonio.

Unlike the time of Rita in 2005 when we evacuated, my husband and I decided to stay put this time although Ike's impact is projected to be much more severe than that of Rita which eventually left Houston alone. As far as we can tell, it will be rough. However, after much thought, staying on seemed to be the easier decision than evacuating.  Most of our neighbors and friends too are staying back except the elderly couple next door who had some concerns with their health and mobility. They have moved in with their son in town for the duration of the storm.  Our county does not have an evacuation advisory. In fact, we have been asked to stay so that we don't clog the roads for others who must get out from the low lying coastal areas.

“We are still saying: Please shelter in place, or to use the Texas expression, hunker down,” said Judge Ed Emmett, the chief administrator for Harris County, which includes Houston. “For the vast majority of people who live in our area, stay where you are. The winds will blow and they’ll howl and we’ll get a lot of rain, but if you lose power and need to leave, you can do that later.”

We are surely going to see very hight winds and the break down of electric power and possibly water supply - for how long, we don't know. This morning, we took stock of our pantry and cupboards.  We have plenty of drinking water, bread, crackers, cookies, fruit, canned goods, candles, matches, batteries and flash lights. We also have a small charcoal grill and a short wave radio that can run on batteries. Also, our cars will be in the garage and their radios will be working. We plan to ride out the storm and keep in touch with our neighbors. If the power stays out for more than a couple of days after Ike, that is when we might leave town.

There was a devastating hurricane more than a hundred years ago that caused total havoc in the city of Galveston. That was before the time when the National Weather Service assigned names to storms. Although the hurricane of 1900 did not have an official name, it too earned a name beginning with the letter "i."  Isaac's Storm was named after the unfortunate meteorologist entrusted with the job of keeping an eye on the weather in Galveston that fateful September day.

It almost happened in Texas

The Hadron Super Collider near Geneva, Switzerland has been in the news recently. Today is D-Day (some think Doom's Day), the day scientists all over the world will be eagerly waiting to find out what happens when a bunch of accelerated protons are made to collide with each other, resulting in a spectacular smash-up of matter. [see here for several related articles]

What many remember but others may have forgotten is that the building of the Super Collider was originally begun in Texas until the US govt (under the Clinton administration) decided to drop the project. Now that the atom smashing party has begun and all eyes are on a tunnel in Switzerland, many in Texas are experiencing a "what if" feeling.

If you are reading this, rest assured the startup of the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland early this morning, did not immediately fulfill naysayers' predictions that it would create a black hole that would gobble up the world.

Scientists planned to fire the first stream of protons around a 17-mile tunnel at 2:30 a.m. Houston time, a prelude to experiments that will send them crashing head-on into each other at velocities previously unattained in laboratories. The LHC will be more powerful than any existing atom smasher.

In theory, the collisions should reveal traces of elusive theoretical particles, including the Higgs boson, postulated to be the missing link explaining how the building blocks of the universe attain mass. It could also reveal the nature of mysterious dark matter that makes up much of the cosmos.

It's a bitter sweet moment for Texas physicists, who 15 years ago were working on the Superconducting Super Collider project, a $4 billion effort near Waxahatchie that would have created a particle accelerator three times larger than the LHC.

After spending $2 billion on the effort, Congress pulled the plug in 1993, handing off future leadership in a vital scientific field to the CERN laboratory near Geneva. It resulted in an exodus of American scientists to Europe to work on the hottest physics project on Earth. Former President Bill Clinton, who signed the legislation killing the project, later admitted he thought the cancellation was a mistake.

Although Americans are contributing to the LHC experiment, it will not have the impact on U.S. scientific development or the economic and academic benefits for Texas that would have come with the Supercollider.

We wish the venture scientific success, and no black holes, but we can't help regretting that it didn't happen in Texas.

Lipstick Lines (Sujatha)

Too much lipstick on everybody's brains and the airwaves. (Word origin c. 1880,as per Merriam Webster Collegiate dictionary, history going back 5000 years all the way to ancient Egypt)  Whether it's on a pit bull or a pig or a Vice presidential candidate, it has exploded into the news cycle like nothing else, despite the amazing list of alternative stories to focus on. But I'll give in to this temptation and keep the lipstick on the top of the page, at least for today.

From Juan Cole:

"John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick."

From the New York Times:

"Last week, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and vice presidential candidate, introduced herself to the Republican National Convention by asking a question: What’s the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom, which is how she typically describes herself.

“Lipstick,” she said, in the line of the night.

Here in Lebanon today, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois also made his own lipstick allusion, drawing on a very old aphorism as he belittled attempts by Senator John McCain and Republicans to embrace the change mantle that has been central to his campaign.

“John McCain says he’s about change, too – except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not change. That’s just calling the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig – it’s still a pig.”"

--snip---

"Palin campaign spokesman Maria Comella: “Barack Obama’s comments today are offensive and disgraceful. He owes Governor Palin an apology “

Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki: “That expression is older than my grandfather’s grandfather and it means that you can dress something up but it doesn’t change what it is. He was talking pretty clearly about the fact that you can’t just call yourself change when you’ve voted with George Bush 90 percent of time.”"

Seriously, is the McCain campaign insulting Sarah Palin by claiming that Obama compared her, rather than the McCain policies, to a pig? I wonder why they would sabotage the perception of their own VP candidate by doing so. I think Sarah Palin ought to castigate her own campaign for being so foolish as to put lipstick on the McCain campaign pig, and point out that she, if anything, is the lipstick on the campaign, not the other way round. Or the pitbull with the lipstick, if she prefers the other mixed metaphor.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I do not use lipstick and have no pitbulls or pigs in this particular race for metaphors.)

Sex, Lies and Video Tapes

And of course, Republican politics.  Jon Stewart of the Daily Show has a compilation of right wing pundits and pols weighing in on small town mayors, teen pregnancy, media misogyny .... and whining. (via The Presidential Candidates)

And here is someone who knows Sarah Palin.  (link: Namit Arora)

Republican "Family Problems"

After hurricane Gustav's glancing blow derailed the Republican convention for a day, the news media and tabloids are all over hurricane Bristol, the real storm which is at the center of this year's GOP festivities that threatens to expose the hypocrisy of the party's "Family Values" bigots. Of course, the sanctimonious right wing morality brigade is spinning like Dervishes to put a holier than thou gloss over Sarah Palin's messy personal story. John McCain is resolute in his claim that Palin was thoroughly vetted but nobody is buying. The public too sees the irony of the events that have unfolded at the cost of one 17 year old whose ambitious parents spared little thought before pushing her into the national limelight at a vulnerable time in her young life. Many are asking now, "What about other young pregnant teens, especially poor ones, who may or may not have the financial or family support that Bristol Palin apparently does? Will the Republican Party show the same understanding and sympathy for them?"

Here is a sample of letters to the editor in today's Houston Chronicle; only one letter asks everyone to butt out of Sarah Palin's personal life.  And a cartoon by Chronicle's Nick Anderson.  (Anderson should have added, "...and I am a Democrat" to the young woman's statement."