New Orleans geeks, are you interested in having dinner with Dave Coustan, corporate blogger for Earthlink. I’m aware it’s short notice, so we’re going to keep it as informal as possible. This is a great opportunity to expand and share our knowledge of the availability and emergence of communication technologies and sustainable development in New Orleans.

Mark, Bart, Ashley, Loki, Ray, Schroeder, other geekazoids and wannabes, you in? If so, please leave a comment. Neither Alan nor I have picked a time and place yet; this depends on your interest. I’ll update this post as things get clearer.

[Update: Alan informed me that meeting with Mary Rowe of Blue Moon Fund has moved to next week.  So far, it looks like Alan, Karen, Becky (maybe), and me for dinner with Dave.]

… are doomed to look it up.  Today in history (thanks to Wikipedia):

1297 – Battle of Stirling Bridge: Scots led by William Wallace defeat the English

1773 – The Public Advertiser publishes a satirical essay titled Rules By Which A Great Empire May Be Reduced To A Small One, which is written by Benjamin Franklin

1906 – Mahatma Gandhi starts Non-Violence movement

1970 – The Ford Pinto is introduced

1973 – A military coup in Chile headed by General Augusto Pinochet topples the democratically elected President Salvador Allende. Pinochet remains in power for almost 17 years

1982 – The international forces, which were guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian refugees following Israel’s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon, left Beirut. Five days later, several thousand refugees were massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps

1987 – 9-1-1 Emergency Number Day

1990 – President George H. W. Bush delivers a nationally televised speech in which he threatens the use of force to remove Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait, which Iraq had recently invaded

1998 – Independent counsel Kenneth Starr sends a report to the U.S. Congress accusing President Bill Clinton of 11 possible impeachable offenses

Today, I offer three vignettes from the exploration of reality.

9/11 + 5

How detached from reality and humanity must one be to think that killing in the name of one’s religion, i.e. opinion, garners rewards and that, too, in the afterlife? What level of human thought prompts one to debase oneself and hurt others for the sake of afterlife recompensation and, even worse, probable recompensation? Watch out for the second edge of that thing called faith.

Whatever has happened since 9/11, however misguided our nation’s response has been and although my personal beliefs don’t contain a Hell, I hope one was invented for the miserable hijackers of that awful day and that they went straight there.

“I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers,” said Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, between attempts to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach. “But instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?”

Help Gut Morwen’s House

A favorite pin reads, “Reality is for those who can’t face science fiction.” Surrounded by all the reality one can take over the past year, fiction has taken a backseat, be it in the book, movie or video game category.

In fact, after cheering for the Big Easy Rollergirls on Saturday night, I’m hoping to spend Sunday (September 17th) and the weekend of September 23-24 clearing Morwen‘s house, who, as Ray says, “has found that she can’t gut her house by herself, and the waiting list to get help from places like ACORN is over four months long. With the looming city deadline for gutting being a moving target, this is rather nerve-wracking for her as it is for everyone else in her situation.”

Julie, who allows herself to be known as “Maitri’s best friend” (among other dubious titles), is driving down to assist. Please sign up at the Post Rising Tide wiki if you can help out and “put down your date preferences. Then take a look at the list of equipment needed and tell us what you can loan or donate from that list. If you can donate any cash to the cause, please put that down as well.”

Second Life Breached

Friends who live far away have offered opportunities to stay in touch online via World of Warcraft or Second Life, but after days spent mapping, blogging, and emailing at a computer, a keyboard and mouse are the last things I want to touch.

[continue reading…]

Gulf of Mexico earthquake felt in Southeast US – 6.0 on the Richter scale

06/09/10 14:56: 7.83 GMT
GULF OF MEXICO
Epicenter: 26.339 -86.568
MW 6.0 Depth 10km (6.2 miles)

Sweet! An intraplate earthquake right south of Alabama. *swoon*

This earthquake was centered beneath the Gulf of Mexico, well distant from the nearest active plate boundary. Such “midplate” earthquakes are much less common than earthquakes occurring on faults near plate boundaries … This is the largest of more than a dozen shocks that have been instrumentally recorded from the eastern Gulf of Mexico in the past three decades, and it is the most widely felt. The most recent significant earthquake in the region occurred on February 10th, 2006 and had a magnitude of 5.2. We have not associated this earthquake with a specific causative fault.

In other words, this moderately deep earthquake did not occur along a fault, although the moment tensor solution suggests movement along an almost N-S-oriented normal reverse fault with a shallow southwest dip. Eeeeenteresting.

At 9:56 this morning, I was cleaning my floors with the old Eureka Wind Tunnel, a seismic source unto itself, so I may or may not have felt the quake. Also realize that a seismograph located here would go nuts every 15 minutes, i.e. when the Magazine Street bus goes by. Do you know how irritated this geologist is at not having experienced an earthquake in her own backyard? If, however you felt it, let the USGS know.