On the road this week. I leave you with the latest from a geo-blog which must go in my feedreader once I get back. It seems that Hollywood is putting out another sciencepocalypse (or is that scienceageddon?) film, this one entitled 2012: Ice Age.

There’s a volcano. It unleashes a glacier. Don’t ask me how. But it’s a fast glacier. A really, really, really, really fast glacier [that’s] like a brazillion thousand miles across and can get from the Arctic to the US in a day or two, because it is seriously pissed off and has installed a turbo. And then it destroys New York City, because that’s what you do when you’re the world’s fastest glacier that’s been set free by a volcano.

… One of my guildies suggested that this movie should actually be Speed 3, with Keanu driving the glacier. I am not ashamed to admit that I would pay perfectly good money to see that.

Oh, and one more thing. I’ve completely lost my mind seeing as how I just signed up for the 2011 Susan Komen Houston Race for the Cure. For the next fifteen weeks, I am back on the Couch Spinning To 5K wagon. If I’m not blinded by all the pink around me on race day, I may just make it to the end. (But first, once I hit “Update,” I am going to find a corner and cry like a little girl.)

Here is a good article on the latest from the oil patch: ExxonMobil Announces Three Discoveries in Deepwater Gulf of Mexico

I’m not going to name any names, but there has been some stupid reporting on this in the last couple of days. Note to self: Write a primer on how not to report an oil discovery. For now, my request to people doing so is to make it somewhere between “Look at me in my domestic-drilling cheerleading outfit and oil-soaked pompoms” and “The eeeevil ooze comes from a giant container in the ground which we suck out through a straw.”

Prospects are named way before they are drilled. This one was already named years ago – Hadrian. It sits 250 miles southwest of New Orleans, at 7000 feet water depth and the prospect itself is of Lower Pliocene age, which I approximate as 15,000-20,000 feet subsea. I gather Hadrian was slated to drill this time last year but was put on hold by the moratorium. A huge find by Gulf of Mexico standards, but don’t believe the rest of the hype about billions and billions of barrels behind it.

Update: The “possible tens of billions of barrels” confusion arises from the fact that Reuters is reporting the Hadrian sands as Lower Tertiary in age, when in fact they are Lower Pliocene. How to report an oil discovery Tip #1: Get yourself a geologic time scale and look it over.

This is what I tweet to my friends.

Because my opinion matters somehow. Well, it did to the LA Times blog, where I am quoted only three tweets down from Steve Martin Yes That Steve Martin.

Here it is: Get over it, you frustrated, misprioritizing tensionball of a nation just waiting to burst. I really don’t care if former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford “hiked the Appalachian trail” or if Anthony Weiner eWeinered. They are representatives of the people, not gods. Judge their politics. What is wrong with this world? The French think Dominique Strauss-Douche is some sort of entitled hero because he forced himself on a woman (and one so much weaker than him on the socioeconomic scale), while we Americans clutch our aprons at the slightest whiff of consensual sexual activity.

Have at John Edwards. He broke laws. Newt Gingrich – complete misogynistic asshole, but he hasn’t done anything illegal, although his actions do make me question his opinion of women. Arnold Schwarzenegger? That’s something to be sorted out among Maria Shriver, baby mama, baby and him. Public Official does not mean your personal life ought to be splayed out there for everyone in the United States of Stepford to have a conniption over. If they are representatives of us, then let’s treat them like we would our own fallible selves and let them sort their lives out in private.

I completely disagree with the notion that a person who cheats on and lies to his or her spouse would do the same to the public. These are separate realms. But, come at it from this angle: They’re politicians; they lie all the time and about more important stuff. Where’s this outrage when they prevaricate on The War On Terror, Wall St. bailouts and public healthcare? Policy lies kill and steal from many, while a politician who runs around on his or her spouse or tweets his schlong maybe burns our retinae and thus steals five minutes or so from our lives.

Just hope and pray that that place from which you source your morality doesn’t come to bite you in the behind if, heaven forbid, you should ever flub up. And don’t you dare think you’re a better human being because you’re faithful to your spouse but gleefully bless sending young people to die in foreign lands daily, in the name of our so-called freedoms.

But, most importantly, I am never using the Direct Message feature on Twitter again.

2011 Harris County Evacuation Zones And Routes

Me: “Hey, it’s the first day of hurricane season.”
D: “Oh, boy.”

Jeffrey may not evacuate New Orleans, but I will Houston. It’s never the hurricane itself that I worry about, but the aftermath, which involves the human inability to plan ahead. We’re not staying here for two weeks of no power (experienced by many Houstonians after Ike) while roaches and other critters of the bayou try to get into my house for the relative cool (experienced by many Houstonians after every drizzle). And when I heard my next-door neighbor had a tree fall on her house and her shed mysteriously catch fire after the last hurricane … I’m out.

But wait. After the most shameful (non-)evacuation ahead of 2005’s Hurricane Rita, the City of Houston released a new evacuation plan in 2007.

With less than two weeks until hurricane season, Harris County released a new evacuation plan based on ZIP codes [this PDF takes forever and a day to load at the HCOEM website] to get families to safety if a storm strikes.

… ZIP codes will be used to identify the houses in the three storm surge areas. Up to 300,000 people live in the most vulnerable neighborhoods. He said people who live on higher ground should be prepared to shelter-in-place.

Um no. Even though we live approximately 110 feet above sea level and far, far away from any actual surge zone, just no.

Peep this: The set of 2011 hurricane names are the same as 2005, except for the hurricanes that happened. Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma have been replaced with Don, Katia, Rina, Sean and Whitney. I’ll bet you Katia is a weenie.