Killer Dophins Loose in the Gulf!

January 9, 2006 | 7 Comments


All my friends thought I was crazy when I told them about the killer dolphins set loose by Hurricane Katrina. However, the Guardian: Observer ran Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina, a story that adamently confirms that:

Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

This story was reported to them by 72 year old Leo Sheridan who has worked for government and industry. He said he had received intelligence from sources “close to the US.” Sheridan is known for reports about other military related dolphin deaths and crop circles.

Other frightening news on the dolphin front was reported by America’s most respected news source.

Additional detail was provided by a respected British author:

In our effort to leave, we caused a weather distortion, and as such have taken the dolphin race with us to act as our agents in galactic control.”

When asked to elaborate upon the dolphins, they replied:

“The dolphins were conducting a case study of the primitive humans and how they used the tools at hand to advance their agenda. They allowed themselves to be retrofitted with primitive weapons by the humans, let themselves be ‘trained’. They were on the verge of prooving their thesis that primitive government is overrated, and is doomed by corruption though the lack of intelligence in the upper classes of society when we were forced to extract them. While their thesis remains unprooved, they gained valuable experience in terrorizing with head-mounted implements. We plan to upgrade them from dart guns to lasers in the near future.”

When the galactic president, Zaphod Beeblebrox, was asked to comment, he refused to say anything but “I for one welcome our head-mounted laser-wielding attack dolphin overlords.”

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Bush Finally Takes Responsibility

September 15, 2005 | 2 Comments

I have complained loudly about the president on many occasions. I feel he has led us into bad situations and made foolish decisions time and again. As part of this I’ve felt with each mistake has come a redirection of blame, or a series of excuses. Some have even started a call to impeach Bush. With all that went wrong in initially responding to Hurricane Katrina, I was sure the president would once again redirect blame.

Instead I was shocked to see the follwing video on WashingtonPost.com: Bush on Failed Rescue: ‘I Take Responsibility’

Thank you for finally being an adult Mr. President. I’m here to say the American people appreciate honesty.

katrina, george bush, bush, george, george w. bush, mistake

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Alphabetic Series of Screw-Ups

September 13, 2005 | 2 Comments

On an Ed Helms Daily Show segment titled “Beleaguered Bush“, they come up with an alphabetic list of the Bush Administration’s major disasters.

Check it out:

Abu Graib
Bin Laden
Chalabi
Deficit
Enron
Failure to Find WMDs
Halliburton
Iraq
John Bolton
Katrina
Locusts
Mars Attacks
North Korea
Osama & Jenna
Pregnancy: Osama & Jenna
Queer Revolt
Rodents of Unusual Size
Syrian War
Tigers
Unicyclists, Nuclear
Voldemort
WWIII
X-Rated Tape: Osama & Jenna
Yam Shortage
Zero People Left on Earth

They left out ‘G’ which is depressing. Anyone got anything great to put in for ‘G’? Comment and let me know.
Bush, George W. Bush, Jon Stewart, impeach bush

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Barbara Bush Detached From Reality

September 12, 2005 | Leave a Comment

The famous quote “Let them eat cake…” which was probably never uttered by Marie Antoinette. She supposedly said this upon hearing that the lower classes of France were starving, lacking mainly bread. Regardless of its true origin, the quote has repeatedly been used to refer to the rich or empowered being horribly out of touch with the common man, so out of touch that they would utter something horribly ignorant in the face of their suffering.

Now undeniably, a quote like this has been uttered, recorded, and cannot ever be defended with some obscure hope for contextual justification.

While visiting the Hurricane Katrina refugees, Barbara Bush said:

“And so many of the people in the arenas here you know, were underprivileged anyway. This is working very well for them.”

So unforgivable… Explains a bit more about the ignorance and lack of sensitivity in her son George.

From The National Ledger: Barbara Bush: Let Them Eat Cake

With this one unfortunate slip of the tongue, a few moments of a radio interview, she has gone far towards helping us more clearly paint the economic boundaries of America in 2005. The lives of these people, in effect, really had no value without money. Losing your house, friends, community, and sense of place is a good thing. Be our guests, and we might even feed you some cake if you’re good boys and girls.

If you still don’t believe it, listen to the MP3.

More on this:
Barbara Bush: Relocation ‘working very well’ for poor
Barbara Bush: Things Working Out ‘Very Well’ for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans
Barbara Bush on Hurricane Katrina Refugees

Katrina, rich people, ignorant, ignorance, stupid, Bush, George W Bush, quote

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Google Earth, an Eye on Katrina

September 10, 2005 | 59 Comments

On CNN this morning they ran a segment about Google’s satellite imagery available through Google Earth. I’ve been excited about Google Maps and Google Earth for awhile, so enjoyed watching them show shots of New Orleans before and after Katrina. Google has made updated Katrina related imagery available on their site. One thing CNN said that amazed me was that just a couple years ago they paid over $10,000 for access to satellite imagery Iraq. Now Google is providing a similar service to the general public for free.

If you don’t have Google Earth yet, go get it. This is one of the coolest desktop applications I’ve played with in a long time. I like that I can bookmark my favorite locations and add notes. Then I can play back a tour of those points automatically. I’m certain I will end up wasting a lot more hours using this. I’m even considering paying the fairly reasonable $20 yearly fee to get Google Earth Plus.

The following are some fantastic related sites that have sprung up since the inception of Google Maps and Earth.

Another great must see site is Google Sightseeing. They’ve highlighted some of the most interesting things to see in Google Maps or Earth.

I’ve also recently been turned on to Google Earth Hacks. This site has a lot of great downloadable features to work with Google Earth specifically.

The Google Earth KML Tutorial has information about how to create KML files for sharing Map data.

Finally gCensus has combined census data with Google Maps to produce some fantastic results as you zoom in. This is a very useful resource.
googleearth, googleearth.com,satellite,map

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Is Katrina Bush’s Waterloo?

September 6, 2005 | 9 Comments

800Px-New Orleans Survivor FlyoverA lot has been said on the topic of Bush and the nation’s failure in New Orleans. I put some blame on the shoulders of America in general because we elected Bush, twice. Sure liberals claim they voted for the other guy (me included), but are we all sure we couldn’t have done something to prevent this loon from taking office and wrecking everything this country stands for? I do mean everything. Conservatives, look at what you believe in, fundamentally, does Bush really speak for you?
Anyway, instead of me rambling on further about how terrible this all is, I’ll simply state Bush should resign in shame and just quote other people who are more eloquent than me.

New Orleans Times-PicayuneAn Open Letter to the President

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, “What is not working, we’re going to make it right.”

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.
[...]
We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.
[...]
We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

From A Failure of Leadership by Bob Herbert, NYTimes Op-Ed Columnist (9/5)

The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the U.S. and around the world.

The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately to rescue tens of thousands of American citizens who were suffering horribly and dying in agony was there for all the world to see.

From A Can’t Do Government by Paul Krugman, NYTimes Op-Ed Columnist (9/2)

At a fundamental level, I’d argue, our current leaders just aren’t serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don’t like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can’t-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

From United States of Shame by Maureen Dowd, NYTimes Op-Ed Columnist (9/5)

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it’s happening in America. [...] it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

From The Larger Shame by Nicholas D. Kristof, NYTimes Op-Ed Columnist (9/6)

It has also underscored the Bush administration’s ongoing reluctance or ineptitude in helping the poorest Americans. The scenes in New Orleans reminded me of the suffering I saw after a similar storm killed 130,000 people in Bangladesh in 1991 - except that Bangladesh’s government showed more urgency in trying to save its most vulnerable citizens.

If Bush does not take any blame for any of this, everyone liberal and conservative should finally give up on this administration. The failures keep adding up: weapons of mass destruction? abu ghraib? greeted as liberators? and have we caught Osama Bin Laden yet? So many failures… Katrina may not have been directly his fault, no one controls the weather, but the causality of the poor response is clear. I hope this can be Bush’s Waterloo.

How long before the AMA lists Bush as a leading cause of death in Americans?

More resources:
Concord Monitor: “Bush: Katrina response ‘not acceptable’ He’s under fire from both parties”
Blogcritics.org: George Bush Poll: Slightly More Popular Than Hurricane Katrina

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My Brother, The Hero

September 2, 2005 | 2 Comments

Pj-1My brother, Philip John “PJ” Tirrell (Jr), is an amazing person. I’m convinced I could actually write an entire book about the guy, but what makes me think of this at the moment is his impending departure for New Orleans. A veteran of the first Gulf War, he returned to the states and made his career as a professional firefighter. Apparently helping people in times of extreme crisis or disaster is what drives him. He stayed in the Guard after returning and was called up again last year. He returned from Iraq for the second time this February.
He is now headed out with the New Hampshire 744th to help with Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

The Concord Monitor: “New Hampshire Guard headed for New Orleans” says:

Gov. John Lynch announced his decision to send 488 troops yesterday for a mission that is expected to last at least 14 days. Units being activated include the 744th Transportation Unit based in Hillsboro, troops under command based in Concord, a field artillery unit in the North Country, a military police unit in Manchester, a field artillery unit in southern New Hampshire and members of the air refueling wing in Newington.

Interestingly enough one of my students is in the North Country unit and has also been activated.

Finally I want to take this opportunity to thank all the volunteers and guard units who are helping in this effort and helping to better mankind in general. I truly appreciate it.

Update:
More on the 744th in Louisiana:

From Concord Monitor: State reaches out to Katrina’s victims

Four Concord firefighters are on their way to help with relief efforts, too. Firefighter Philip Tirrell, a sergeant with the 744th Transportation Co. who returned from Iraq last March, will be in New Orleans by today to help with cleanup and police duties. Lt. Robert Chaisson and firefighter Alexander Matson will leave tomorrow to volunteer.

Other related press coverage:
Union Leader: NH Guardsmen leave for ‘battle’ on new front

concord, guard, gulf war, hero, hurricane, hurricane katrina, katrina, national guard, new hampshire, New Orleans, Philip Tirrell Jr, public service, tirrell

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