The El Paso Miracle

An interesting article about the astonishingly low crime rate in El Paso, which would seem to be a candidate for a high crime rate, in light of what's going on just across the Big River.

Creaking back to life?

As my friend Cory pointed out the other day, it's been a LONG time since I posted anything here. In fact, it took me a while to even remember my password...

But, I'm feeling a bit like posting these days, so I may put some more stuff up. Or not. I suppose time will tell.

You said it, brudder...

". . . THE COUNTRY IS GETTING STEERED INTO CHAOS AND INSOLVENCY AND WAR BY ITS UNREAD UNINFORMED DULLARD SHEEP CONSTITUENCIES AND YOU JUST LET THE CANDIDATE SAY ONE MORE TIME WITHOUT OBJECTION THAT HE'S GOING TO CUT TAXES WHILE HE CALLS FOR FREE 24 KARAT GOLD FRANKFURTERS TO BE INSERTED INTO EVERY AMERICAN'S ASS JUST BECAUSE BUTT BULLION POLLS WELL."

Berkeley Breathed on Salon.com, discussing his feelings about the current state of America, and why he's sending Opus "into the ages."

Watching the horror...

You can watch live web feeds of 4 Houston TV stations covering Hurricane Ike at http://www.maroonspoon.com/wx/ike.html

Reporters I can understand. The woman there on the seawall with her two small kids, looking to see what is going on, not so much. She doesn't want to leave her house, so she's exposing her kids to this. Aaaargh!

Galveston in the bulls-eye

Dr. Jeff Masters over at Weather Underground says "Storm surge heights of 20-25 feet are possible from Galveston northwards to the Louisiana border."

A 20-foot surge could make the island totally disappear (see this spooky animation created in 2005 when Rita came through, showing what a 20-foot surge would do to Galveston), so this looks to be bad. Like REALLY bad. Like Katrina-like bad. I hope I'm wrong...

Large Hadron Rap

To satisfy all of our advanced-particle-physics-rap urges (although I think MC 900-foot Jesus did this song already in about 1988):

Heads up, Corpus Christi

I lived in Corpus Christi for about 3 years in the mid-1990s. It's a nice town. I hope they come through this okay, but they look to be on the "bad" side of the storm if it follows this track. There isn't a whole lot of population on the coast between Corpus Christi and Harlingen/Brownsville to the south, so if it does come in there hopefully they won't get too badly hit. Good luck y'all!