BoSoxGal wrote:I just read that Houston is the only major city in the US without zoning laws, thus the chemical plants in the middle of low income neighborhoods. They've just declared this whole mess a 1000-year flooding event. Those poor people - as we learned from Katrina, it's not just the short term property damage and loss, but the long term psychological impact on those affected.
A 1000 year flood sounds so unlikely. Most people don't understand risk, but are quite happy to play the lottery. Even if the probability (= risk in one sense) of winning is billions to one, someone is going to win. So 1000 year floods happen quite often.
Those chemical plants are a real cause for concern. The one we have been focusing on is the Arkema site where they store organic peroxides. These have a very unstable O-O bond which degrades easily and can lead to explosions if the stuff is not kept at a low enough temperature. Hence they are maintained in cold rooms/tanks which I am sure have multiple redundant chillers and generators for power cuts and so on: normally safe enough. But if the plant floods all those Plan Bs will fail; and all you can do is stand back and wait for chemistry to take its course and go Bang!
They've already had one explosion and expect the rest - 7 more chemical storage units - to also explode, because they can't access the site and don't have power to turn the cooling units back on. Residents in a 1.5 mile radius have been evacuated.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
They've just declared this whole mess a 1000-year flooding event.
Yeah, right. That may "sound good on paper" but that's the buzz phrase needed to get Billion$ in funding from Washington to rebuild. And then they'll rebuild, and in another 1000 years and/or 10 years, whatever comes first, Hurricane Harvey2 will come creeping out of the Gulf once again howling a collective "fuck you, you stupid idiots."
If the city planners don't start thinking outside the leaky box and recreate Galveston and the surrounding cities like Amsterdam then the Feds might as well give that reconstruction money to Bernie Madoff to manage.
History repeats itself only because no one was listening the first time.
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
You couldn't pay me enough to live on the Gulf Coast - and I'm not just saying that, in 2012 I turned down a $180k/yr. associate position with a Houston oil & gas law firm that was recruiting Montana lawyers to work leases in the booming Montana/North Dakota energy market - one of my colleagues had been hired there and when they needed more bodies she tried recruiting me.
I tried really hard to convince myself that I could find a cute little bungalow in the Montrose neighborhood and spend weekends in Galveston or down in Corpus Christi and acheive some measure of happiness to go along with all that money - but I kept remembering the first time I saw Houston when I was 18 years old, driving through in the nighttime hours as we crossed the country on our move from Arizona to Maine. I thought it was like something out of a nightmare; it's the ugliest city I've ever seen.
And it floods, too.
If I'm ever gonna be in a flood, I much prefer the Taunton River Watershed.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
Here's an excellent argument for bringing back flogging:
Texas Has Had It Up To Here With Harvey-Related Price Gouging
Twenty dollars for a gallon of gas; $8.50 for a bottle of water ($99 for a case); hotel rooms jacked up seven times the normal rate.
Those are just a few of the headline-grabbing numbers that have been reported to the State of Texas’ Attorney General Ken Paxton.
According to Paxton’s spokesperson, Kayleigh Lovvorn, over 684 such cases of price gouging have been reported so far. And the numbers are only expected to increase.
The overwhelming number of reports in the wake of Hurricane Harvey has Texas Governor Greg Abbott up in arms. At a press conference on Wednesday, he said:
“The attorney general of Texas is taking swift and aggressive action to prosecute price gouging. If you price gouge anybody, you could be subject to penalties of up to $25,000 per incident. If you’re a business, you can be put out of business by the Texas attorney general if you dare try any price gouging. It’s un-Texan, and we will not tolerate it.”
Paxton himself previously chimed in–alerting businesses that if any victims of price gouging are over the age of 65, the penalties could be increased to $250,000 per incident.
What do you expect, when the so-called president leads the way, shilling his $40 hat wherever he goes and talks about Harvey
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
I didn't realize it was illegal (but a quick online check reveals it is) and I'm glad to see them cracking down on it. When I hear some of the things people have to done help each other, I hope these jerks are severely punished.
I'd like to see that for the purveyor of stupid hats as well, but guess we'll still have to wait a while.
Lord Jim wrote:Here's an excellent argument for bringing back flogging:
Texas Has Had It Up To Here With Harvey-Related Price Gouging
Twenty dollars for a gallon of gas; $8.50 for a bottle of water ($99 for a case); hotel rooms jacked up seven times the normal rate.
They're using Australian pricing?
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
The Canadian province’s Minister of International Relations, Christine St-Pierre, offered to send equipment, power crews, sleeping materials and hygenic products to Texas. But Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos turned down her offer and simply asked for “prayers from the people of Quebec.”
"The dildo of consequence rarely comes lubed." -- Eileen Rose
Praying to the same god responsible for the flooding and death? Yeah, sure, that'll work.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
If it's got to landfall somewhere, it would be nice to see it destroy Mar a Lago - that would save the American taxpayers a shitload of money in the coming months because Trump wouldn't have a winter WH to visit 3 weekends per month.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
