Been a while

Every now and then you seem to hit your stride, and then something derails you. In the case of this blog, success may have been my worst enemy - I was doing well, I felt like I had something to say - and then Carnival was done and I had said what I had to say. And I was left with a "so now what..." Last week I had things to say, but I was just out of the habit.

Last week we joined a gym. It was great to finally do so. We visited three of them, and picked the first one, as usual. Linz calls me an impulse buyer, but quite frankly, since so much of what I come across isn't "right", once I find something that feels right, I know it. Which reminds me of the day before we joined the gym when I had to buy shoes. That wasn't fun - and it was a lot less fun for Linz than it was for me. I hated most of the shoes I saw. Granted, that's my normal feeling. Once I have to buy shoes I realise how ugly I find most shoes. But that isn't anything new. I like very few shoes, but generally once I find a pair I like, I like them. The problem, in this case, was that I never saw a pair I liked - I only saw shoes I either disliked or disliked intensely. In the end we went to a running shoe specialist, where the guy knew what he was talking about and was able to recommend a pair of shoes which weren't too ugly and, far more importantly, suited my feet - probably better than any pair I have owned.

The gym was a different matter. I really didn't know what to do, didn't know where to start. I find gyms intimidating for a number of reasons. One is that I am in such bad shape that I fear people will laugh at me, or worse yet, feel sorry for me. The treadmill was ok, and we played around with the machines a little. It was ok. Then on Saturday we got someone to show us around, suggest a routine, and help figure out weights and reps. It was great - and empowering. And we haven't gone back since. Yesterday the weather was too intimidating - we got into the car and the wind was buffetting it around, and then we heard a tornado warning for Logan County. Not knowing where that was relative to us, I thought it best that we go home and find out. And once we got home, of course, we never left again. Today we had a valid excuse for not going - Linz is feeling unwell - but it still means that we are not going. I am afraid of breaking my stride again. But not that worried - I feel confident that we will be back as soon as Linz feels well enough. I am looking forward to it, I want to go back. And, for a change, I was able to pace myself in such a way that I felt like I was getting something done without overdoing it.

Ash Wednesday

And then it was done...

As far as Carnivals "in exile" go, this was by far the best. The weekend was far better than the actually days themselves - it's difficult to stay in the mood while you have work to deal with, while you are embedded in a matrix of people who really have no interest or awareness in what's going on. Still, it was nice listening to the radio from home, listening to people who were worked up, were in the mood for it all. In that regard 101 was more effective because they have several djs who are less professional - not the slick radio presenters, but people much like people you know in real life.

Anyway, it's over. 101 is back to Filmi, it would appear. Haven't had a chance to check the others yet. Does Lent still bring more sombre music?

Carnival Sunday

Starting to feel the fever pitch, the sense of being alive. It's Carnival. I may be a world away, but it's still Carnival. I can't go to work tomorrow! That's just so wrong. Doesn't anyone realise what day it is? I'm ready to go out at 4 am (which it 2 am here), ready to stay up all night to listen to Dimanche Gras. But I won't. I'm sleepy enough as it is, I have to get a good bit of work done for tomorrow, and I have to get an abstract in by Wednesday for ESA. Who came up with the bright idea of putting the abstract submission deadline on Ash Wednesday? What were they thinking? :)

Carnival Friday

As far away as I am, it's still Carnival Friday. I could blame it on having access to Trinidad radio, but the truth is that it's there no matter what. Carnival is Carnival. You can be happy about it, or you can let it break your heart - but you can't ignore it. It's in your blood. The fact that I have access to Trinidad radio means that I can enjoy the feeling instead of having this immense sense of being excluded, of the biggest thing in the world happening, but you can't be there.

It's so difficult to not be home for Carnival. Sure, not being home for Christmas sucks too, but there is so much more to Carnival. It's the high point of the year, and no matter how long you spend in exile, no matter how many Carnivals you miss, I can't imagine it not being the high point of the year. Listening to a flood of chutney soca only makes it more intense. Kaiso is something I feel strongly about, but I don't feel the sense of "ownership" of kaiso that I do of chutney. Still, no matter how much of a sense of immediacy the radio can give you, it will never be the same, and it will never fill the sense of longing, the knowledge of what you are missing.

Wot a ting

The day after I spend my money for Homeviewtnt, 101 decides to stream for free, at least for the Carnival season. I'd say their free stream is better quality than the paid stream. No complaints - complements what Homeview has. Real chutney. Now I happy.

HomeView and Filmi

Finally (rather too late) subscribed to Homeviewtnt. So far so good - except that the only real kaiso available is 105, which seems to be covering pan-round-the-neck competition. Not exactly meeting my desire to figure out what's in play for Carnival 2006 (can't believe that in just a week I will be missing yet another Carnival).

So what do I find myself listening to? Filmi on 103.

I remember when I used to hate this kind of music. It was just too inaccessible to me. It didn't seem musical, it seemed terribly discordant. Now, hearing it for the first time in so long - I can't imagine anything better. Ok, I would probably prefer chutney, I would probably prefer dub. But other than that...and yeah, this one is about as inane a film song as I have heard (because the chorus is in English - I wonder how some of this stuff would suck the rest of the time if I could understand it).

In a general sense, listening to music in a language you can't understand seems strange to me. It's one thing is Spanish, where I can still figure out a good few words, here and there if not everywhere. Hindi is another issue. I know the odd word here and there, I know a number of other words that I don't understand...but for the most time I have no clue what they are saying. And yet the music still says something to me - there's the music, the sound of the words, and the intonation of the singing.

Review Sessions

It would appear, based on the comments I have come across in the past, that the best feature of my teaching is my review sessions. This is unfortunate, since I would rather be better at engaging students than at helping them cram for exams - but the truth is, I have been taught to cram, to spot, and all these other good things, so it makes sense that I am able to model the behaviour I have learned.

The issue now is how to make that into a useful pedagogical tool. Rather than working against your strengths, can you work with them? Anyway, first exams are today. Let's hope they do well.

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

Awake! (not Greece - she is awake)
Awake, my spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake
And then strike home!

It seems a lifetime ago that I lived for Byron's words, when poetry was the thing that brought me to life. I wasn't even sure, as I sat down to write, whether this was the correct year; and it wasn't until I sat down to write something while anticipating my 36th birthday that I even remembered the poem.

Reading Byron was like waking up from a dream. To read the start of the poem is the feel a rush of life into you - to feel something that you haven't felt in maybe a decade - since the depression grew so deep that it drowned out the poetry. I left my books behind when I went to Michigan - no more Byron, no more Yeats. Somehow, without realising it, my workd grew smaller. All that remained was Christy Brown - and eventually even his words faded and were forgotten.

And after the depression had been pushed back, I no longer cared. I stopped writing - I didn't have the passion, I didn't have the hurt. But it was so much better than what had gone before that I did not mourn what I had lost. I still do not mourn it - it was a more than fair trade. But until this moment, until I clicked on the Google link and read the words: 'Tis time my heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move:

To read those words was to feel something come alive - and yet it was a chance to appreciate the beauty and the sorrow without letting it overwhelm me. Before, when I read those words they were true, I read the poem and I became it. I read Yet, though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love! and I knew that it was true, that no one could love me, that I would never be loved. Now I know that it isn't me speaking, it's Byron. Then I did not know the difference.

I remember when 36 was ancient. I thought that Byron's death was perfection - he was old enough to have lived, but still young enough to care. While it really sets into stark relief my own lack of achievements, to compare my life to Byron's, it also serves as a kick in the ass - it serves to motivate me. But it does so in a good way, not in a hopeless way.

Turning 36 is still a big deal. I wish I didn't have to teach. Not because I feel I shouldn't work on my birthday - actually it's a fine day to work - it's ok to go to work on a day over which you feel ownership - you, Andrew Ridgely and India. What I would have liked is a little quiet time for reflection right around 11 am. Well, maybe I should take into account the time difference, and celebrate 9 am instead of 11 am. If I get ready early enough I'll have a few minutes to reflect.

I always get an itch almost, over the first 25 days of the year. My age is the year. So to be 35 in 2006 feel wrong, and it only feel right when my birthday finally arrives and I, too, and 36. Like a racehorse, my "true" birthday is January 1. But at the same time, it's always a little weird to get a year older.

Teacher as performer

It comes back to the same idea of teacher as performer. Overheard someone in the coffee shop talking about a really good prof - one who had him on the edge of his seat, wanting to be the one picked to answer a question. You've gotta think - "wow, how does he do that?"

The first excuse that comes to mind is both simple, easy and lazy. "Oh, it must be because he gets to teach classes on exciting, controvertial topics", or "oh, he has an upper level class with a more engaged student body". And then you think about last semester, and you realise that no, it's your own fault. You had the chance, and although it was your first semester (for one of the classes), you just didn't get into the things that would have really engaged them. Sure, if it were my class I could make it more exciting...

Well, I pretty much "own" my sections of General Botany. How do you make cells and cell division exciting? How do you manage to engage them? Well, let's see - what is tomorrow all about? Cells and microscopy. Not very exciting, you say. And you are somewhat correct in the position. But that's really just lazy thinking. You need to ask the question "what can I do to make the material more exciting?" But there I am stumped. How do I excite people about plant cells? Simply being excited about the material isn't really good enough.

What is the consistency of a cell? Solid, liquid, gas, solution or colloid? Not very exciting - but you can make it engaging. Cytoplasmic streaming is always cool, if I can get them to see it clearly enough. And how does vinegar affect the cell? Well, it denatures the protein. So I need to introduce them to the idea of proteins, and how pH affects the structure of a protein. I suppose that might be the right place to start - after I get them looking at the Elodea leaves, hopefully.

Teaching

I realised something very interesting today - I'm having fun teaching. I suppose, since it's the fourth semester that I am teaching this class I should say "it's about time". Summer wasn't bad, but it was difficult to teach two classes back to back - now, after doing two-hour sessions for a third semester it really isn't a big deal. Of course, when I mentioned it to Gordon, about "having fun" teaching, his first question was "are you getting them to talk?" My first thought was focussed on today - and the answer would be no, not much talking. But then I thought back over the four days I have taught, and I realised that I am getting them to talk - far more than I would have thought possible when I started all this. There's a distinct difference between the two classes though - my first class is more talkative than is my second class. Tomorrow's class has more opportunties for them to talk, more chances for interactions. I hope it goes well.

So I suppose I have learned a thing or two about interactive teaching. I can't be someone other than I am, but I can do a decent job of acting. An effective, engaging teacher needs to be something of a performer. It isn't just a part of their personality. While the great ones are quirky, you can be good without needing to be great. Right now, being "better" is a good starting point. If I can be better, then eventually I can be good. My personality and my way of speaking are a challenge, a hindrance, but they are not insurmountable obstacles.

Typically Trini?

What does this mean? "Eats at the same restaurant every day"? I have never heard that as a Trinidadian thing to do. But, yeah, I do. So what? Is there something Trini about that?

Not that I would read NRO's corner, google took me there, but still...

HURRICANE ROGER [Rick Brookhiser]
Neither the Transit Workers' Union nor its leader Roger Toussaint has won many friends. The tabloids are on the warpath against them, but they are following the popular mood as much as shaping it. I'm hearing disgust in unexpected places: Ed Lover, the hip-hop radio host, was mocking Toussaint's accent. Out of the blue, my trainer called him a typical Trinnie (Trinidadian). "What do you mean by that?" I asked. "He's been here for years, but he still talks like a Trinnie; he probably eats in the same restaurant every day." (My trainer is from another island.)
Seems like New York is suffering from Hurricane Roger.

Classes

First day of classes for the semester. Nervous and excited. Already have one problem on my plate - a student who insists on sitting in on a full section. May work out fine, someone may drop (is there a waiting list?) Shall see

Happy New Year

Well, it's been about a month since I posted, and my traffic has slipped down to two visits a week, so I figure I might as well post something just for the sake of posting.

My job hunt seems to be going nowhere. That after spending all that time with Bob revising my cover letter and c.v. I'm still hopeful - while the pickings are a lot slimmer than they were, there's still a flood of ads on the Chronicle every Monday, and there are still ads with deadline dates scattered across February and up to March 1.

And now onto classes. The semester starts on Tuesday (Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day), and I have two sections of Intro Bot and the Appalachian field trip class. So far I have already gotten a scheduling-related email from a student (a little bit last minute, to see if you can switch classes at this stage...good thing I check my email on weekends). On one hand, I am excited for classes to start back; on the other, I am not so thrilled. I do have to put more effort into fixing what's wrong with my teaching - that's both a challenge (and thus motivating, since it gives me a chance to play at a role of being someone other than I actually am, maybe someone more interesting than I am in reality) and a bother, since I will never be good enough, and if past experience is anything to go on, I won't succeed. I suppose that while success is a good thing, the real motivation is the challenge of trying to figure out how to do it.

Job hunting

They called to check references on Friday. Good news, even if they didn't reach Gordon. At least it suggests that I am still in the running for at least that one job.

Reading a post about job hunting on the Chronicle, I started to feel better about this. Making it to the stage where they are checking references is probably a pretty good sign. I suspect that it may mean that their first choices didn't work out, and they have moved onto a second tranche, but that's fine with me once I get considered. That said, I find the whole idea of interviewing to be terrifying. I doubt I will interview well, especially considering that I have never really been interviewed. Ok, I have had a grand total of three job interviews in my life - one with NIHERST, one with the Ministry of the Environment, and one phone interview with Gordon.

Anyway, there's no point in talking about interviews at this stage.

Mushtaq 1977-2005

I don't know what to do with a death of a friend. I don't think I have ever had to sort something like this out. I don't have anything useful to think. It's even hard to say you'll miss someone when you haven't seen them in years, when you have probably had as few actual conversations as we had. But it doesn't change the fact that he was like family. It's all the more difficult to sort out something like this because you don't actually feel entitled to mourn - you feel like you'd have to appreciate a person's company more to be entitled to mourn them.

He always seemed so bright, upbeat and lively. He always seemed a positive person.

I don't even know how to pay my respects. I can't imagine how Ishaq, Nisa, Bedah and their mother feel. His cousins as well - they seemed more like brothers than anything. I really have no ideas what he was up to, what he was doing with his life.

I'm glad Carol told me, but I wish I had heard something sooner.

Jobs

A week past the nibble and no follow-up calls to my references. Did I fail the phone-interview disguised as a phone conversation? Maybe. That's rather a shame - Georgia wouldn't be a bad place.

I have no concept of time in the academic job search. I wonder if the applications I sent out for December 1 have passed their 'sell by" date already. It's so hard to tell. Oh well, I'll stay optimistic, and at the same time hope that I'll be welcome to stay here another year, if need be...and focus on churning out some seroius pubs.

John Lennon. 1940-1980

Twenty-fifth anniversary of a tragic day.

Job hunting

I got my first nibble in my job hunt this week. Just a follow-up call, but at least I made the first cut - they considered me worth calling my references, and they gave me a call. I failed on what may have been the most important question - "why are you interested in us"? (Ok, the most important questions were really "are you still interested in us" and "do we have your permission to call your references", because without saying yes to them I was automatically out.

As to the "why" question, I mumbled something about being interested in a small school. Gordon said that I should prepare a "stock" answer, but I have no idea what it should be. Why am I interested in . I don't think "because I am hoping for a pay-cheque" is the right answer. I don't see how I would come up with a stock answer. I am interested in a place where I have the chance to know my colleagues and my students? I don't want to teach classes with 2-400 students? Something like that. I like teaching smaller groups.

As for Georgia? I suppose proximity to Florida and South Carolina would be something to bear in mind. It seems like an environment that's closer to tropical - kinda almost subtropical. That kinda thing. And, of course, proximity to Savannah River and UGA are good things too. If you have to be at a small school you should at least be near to a bigger school with a proper library and more potential colleagues. That kinda thing.

For the moment it's just a day-dream, but it's a good sign nonetheless. It's reassuring - at least someone is interested in me, based on my (rather slim) cv. Gives you reason to hope.

Evaluations

Doing evaluations today. Gives me a few extra minutes to avoid teaching and try to find my sanity. Or something like that.

But seriously, evaluations are scary. I'm just not that entertaining a teacher, and this semester was not a good one, given the teaching load. And yeah, I realise I'm kinda boring - as a speaker in general, certainly as a lecturer. My tendancy toward really long pauses, too many "um's", that kinda thing...I don't really know how I got this way, and I don't really know how to change. It sucks. So I have evaluations.

"That elusive national unity" (to use Carol's phrase)

Qualifying for the World Cup did more than heal the trauma of 1989 - it gave a glimpse of what could be. National unity seemed only to exist outside of Trinidad - until we won in Bahrain.

As various studies have shown, the things that unite us are greater than the things that divide us, but race and politics seems to be unsurmountable obstacles. In 1986/87 after the NAR won there was a brief window of unity, but even then there were those who were on the outside. PNM supporters felt unwelcome at the party, and as things went bad they grew more bitter. But this was different. Even people who lost money betting against them are still winners. For once it isn't a zero-sum game. Victory can come without being at someone else's expense. And that, I suppose, makes all the difference

Is there anybody out there?

Sure, if you look at the hit counter, there are a few people who end up here other than Linz and me. But it feels lonely. It feels like I am just talking to myself most of the time.

Part of this is probably a matter of being too vague. It isn't a content kinda blog, where you could come and learn something. And it isn't a diary sort of blog in which you could get some insight into a person's life. So what's the point of this?

That's the question I need to answer. Why do I blog? Why am I doing this? What should I be writing about? Or should I be writing at all? (Granted, I should not be writing now, since class starts in 2 minutes!)

Operation Falafel

This diary at dKos has a great point - with O'Reilly endorsing terrorism, it's time that people did something about it.

Remembrance Day

I wanted to say something yesterday for Remembrance Day (or Armistace Day, or Veterans Day as they call it here in the US), but the truth is, I said it last year. I don't have anything major to add, not on a personal note.

It's an interesting realisation - this blog is more than a year and a half old. Amazing how time flies.

Drama

Ok, I'm an elitist snob. But I liked this place better when it was fewer families, more students. Last year, on our side of the building we had me, three undergrads in the apartment downstairs, a couple (marine/student and his wife, also a student, I think) and Neil and Ann (tech and grad student) below them. Simple, all OU people.

Now we have a strange looking man covered with tatoos downstairs, a couple with several small children next door (nice people, but they always smoke on their landing, and the cigarette butts in the bucket outside the door can lead to quite a smell), and finally the people below them - the ones who inspired the title.

Core group - guy who appears to divide his time between drinking and driving a taxi, and woman who appears to divide her time between drinking and yelling at him. Then there's a boy in his early to mid teens (seems to live there, or spend a lot of his time there), and older girl (twenties, pregnant) who appears not to live there, and what appears to be her siginficant other - in the real world I would just assume husband, but in this redneck fairystory I will say boyfriend. Anyway, a fire engine and paramedics show up, they are banging on her door trying to get the woman to open it while the others hand around outside, talking to the firemen about what sounds to be her drug and alcohol use, and something about her trying to stab the boy or something.

It makes me uncomfortable to live near them for a number of reasons. I don't like the idea of sharing a building with people who might get drunk and leave a cigarette burning or the stove on. I don't feel comfortable around them - they seem physically threatening, capable of violence, even if it's not directed at me or Linz. And their loud arguing impinges on my home time.

Can't say I like how interesting this place has become.

The dot-com Presidency

Apparently the US election took place a year ago today. Has it been that long, has it been that short? You mean we've still got more than three years of Bush? Well - three years from now I expect the Republicans will have stolen another Presidential election with rigged voting machines. Lets just hope it's enough of a margin that they can't, that no-one will believe them. You can always dream...

Bush and his "man date", his "spending political capital". Explains why he ran seven companies (and one country) into bankruptcy. You don't spend capital. Unless you're a dot-com during the bubble. Bush, the dot-com President.

Indictments and nominations - same old khaki pants, I suppose you could say. The Bush regime is corrupt. But everyone knew that already. But will they pay for their crimes? Do politicians ever pay for their crimes? Sure, the odd one here or there goes to jail, but if I had to guess I'd say that the conviction rate for political crimes is a small fraction of the conviction rate for other classes of crimes.

Like so many bloggers, all I can do is spout off. Not like these people who actually know what they are talking about. But that takes time and effort. News analysis, when it comes down to it, requires that you read (and hopefully understand) the news. Like I have time for anything like that. So maybe I should follow that other rule - write about the things you already know. But even there, it isn't like I keep up with breaking stories. Maybe I should though - go each week and read through Science and Nature and TREE and figure out what's really going on. You might really get some readership if you could provide content and not just random one-liners. Wow - that would be something. Actually it's worth thinking about - one day, when I have time.

Brings me to a new train of though - how long will the blogspot and the livejournal entries survive? I used to have a page on msnhomepages. My blog before there was such a thing as blogs. It's gone now, not even saved by the Wayback [whatever it's called]. That really made me sad, when I finally confirmed that it was gone forever. That sort of ephemerality makes me wonder about this stuff. I used to have an X-drive account, I had all sorts of other free email accounts. All forgotten, probably lost. I've lost the contents of my hotmail account a couple times. And a whole slew of email lies inaccessible on the old laptop.

What lasts and what is ephemera? Wikipedia looks solid, but it depends on continued input of donations. We have created enough value that I would think it's fairly secure for the time being. We are so widely mirrored that we have made a real dint on knowledge, and even if it were to cease to exist, the ripples of Wikipedia would remain detectable in human knowledge for a little while to come.

I can't believe it's November already. Where did the time go?

On the first day of Fitzmas...

Got the third post on the thread at Kos. Whoo-hoo!

Wow - John Stewart corrects Ed Helms pronounciation of Tobago. Cool.

One more reason I don't shop at Walmart

This is just lovely -

An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.

Hire younger people, pay people with seniority less, and this gem

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."

While I feel a little guilty linking to the NYTimes (I am boycotting them over Times Select and Judith Miller), I'm too busy being outraged by Walmart (again) than to care about being pissed off at NYT.

Waiting for Fitzmas

Well, still waiting. At least the news has gotten interesting again. It's also cool to see Al Franken out hawking his new book which, as he points out, is prescient.

I also filled out a Harris Poll survey yesterday in which they used to "i-word" - do I think Bush should be impeached, and why. Of course I said yes, and among the three reasons I listed the fact that he had abandoned his post on 9-11 and run away and hid. I doubt many people will share my opinion, but it's nice to get to say it to a pollster. More important though is that fact that they are asking it. Chris Bowers (I think) on MyDD has been asking that pollsters ask the question for months, because he felt that there was groundswell for impeachment, but if pollsters were not asking the question there was no way for people to know.

Another interesting point was made today at HuffPo - that this is worse than Watergate - 2000 American soldiers have died because of these guys actions.

Fitzmas

Hoping for Fitzmas tomorrow. Will we get the indictments we want? Hoping for Rove and Libby. Hoping for Cheney. Will we be so lucky? Not going to be too shocked it Cheney doesn't get it. I would be unhappy if Rove and Libby got away with their treason.

Leucaena and Mora

Are Leucaena and Mora two sides of the same coin? Is this all a community assembly question? Are they both a matter of "who gets there first"?

Old Friends

I finally got around to looking up my old webpage, my blog from the days before the word blog existed...to find it no longer exists. Navigated my way through the wayback archive of msnhomepages to the link to my page - but there was nothing there. Quite sad.

On a more positive note, I have decided to make the effort to look up people. I finally caught up with Barry - ok, he caught up with me - and I've spoken to him a few times online. Spoke to Parv today, and to Sanjay last night. To round things off, I've emailed Jen Clevinger - need to email Curtis. It's amazing to see their family picture - last time I saw him, Alex was a baby - now he's 7. Curtis and Jen look pretty much the same though. What was weird was the realisation that I had never mentioned them to Linz, or never mentioned them enough for her to remember their names. And my past is full of stuff like that - people I know, people who were good friends, who have just slipped away. It isn't like I don't want them still to be my friends - it's just that distance slipped in.

Job hunting makes me want to look for people. Saw job ads at Georgia Southern - wasn't quite qualified for the position, but it did make me think of dropping Lissa a line. Another person I haven't seen since 1998. I can't believe it's been that long. It's amazing where life can take you. I ran into Ted Feldpausch at ESA this summer. People you knew pretty well and yet would have a hard time coming up with in your head. Networking is a funny old thing - something I don't understand, but I can see how it would be valuable. It makes all the difference in the world to know someone on a list of job applicants, I'm sure it does. Anything that makes a person stand out from the crowd.

Trinidad Politics

I'm back to the stage where I don't even want to read newspapers from home any more. You look at the Guardian or Express and all you see is murder after murder. I'd say I'm reminded of 1995, but the truth is, compared to this 1995 was nothing.

It's obvious that Manning is incompetent, he really isn't up to the job. I won't go as far as to say that he's complicit in the crime wave - crime tsunami, really - I don't believe that he is. But he isn't up to doing anything about it. He has been blessed by spikes in oil prices that allowed him to bring a budget full of tax cuts and other goodies. Will it be sustainable? I wasn't able to figure out what sort of an oil price it was predicated on, so the answer is "who knows". In a normal economy, driven by internal factors, this level of crime would depress the economy enough to force any government to act. The problem is that government revenue is all the more dependent on external factors, and while high crime can make foreign investors think twice about getting involved in a country, these are oil companies - compared to a lot of places they operate, Trinidad is still a safe country, even after a string of bombings.

So elections are not due until the end of 2007. More than two years away. It should be plenty of time for the government to start to crack down on crime and spread enough patronage to keep themselves in power. To be honest, as much as I despise this government, it's beyond the point where I can take pleasure in their failures in the hope that it will get them voted out of office. I would rather they do something, get crime under control, even if it meant that they were given another term in government by the grateful populace. I just don't believe that they can do anything. Manning failed in 1991-1995, and he is failing in precisely the same way in 2001-2007, or hopefully 2001-2006 (one can always hope he calls another snap election and gets voted out again, but I don't think that even he is that stupid).

So what of the UNC? Will Dookeran's election (or annointment, really) as party leader be the thing that people are looking for? Dookeran has been an almost mythical figure for a long time - Abu Bakr wanted him as interim Prime Minister after the coup, he remains the most popular politician in Trinidad and Tobago. The problem, I suspect, is one of whether people will see him as running the UNC, or simply being a new face for a party run by Bas. For the time being, Bas is still the man in charge, and everyone knows it. Not only is he still Leader of the Opposition, he is also the puppetmaster within the party. His slate was able to win control of the party executive, and he retains the support of the rank and file, and of the core supporters of the party. For the time being, the party is still his, and it looks like he wants to pull a Lee Kwan Yew and stay as "Senior Minister". I don't think that will do the trick. In order to win over the "swing voters", people have to believe that they are voting for Wins, not Bas. Too many people do not trust Bas, even though they aren't happy with Patrick.

What is interesting is that Bas' slate was able to win control of the party executive, while Dookeran's slate failed. In 2001 it was the other way around - Bas' slate failed, and Ramesh's slate won. It says something about the membership of the UNC. In 2001 Bas backed an "NAR" slate - people like Carlos John, and Ramesh backed a solidly Indian slate. In 2005 Bas picked the Indian option, leaving Dookeran to back the integrated, ex-NARite slate. And once again the Indian slate won. (Ok, maybe "ex-NARite" is the wrong term, since Kamla and the skinny man were people who stayed in NAR in 1991). What does that mean for the party? Well, like anywhere else, the party membership, the core of the party, is not the same as the people who will or may vote for it in an election. The UNC is a party of the grassroots, of the sugar worker - these are the people who have followed Bas for the last 30 years. The "NAR element" - Indian or mixed, middle to upper middle class - may be solidly within the party, they may have given their allegience to the UNC, but they are probably not as well represented among party members.

But all this is speculation based on feeling and impression, and not on any data. But at the very least, we have the prospect of the next election being Naps versus Pres!

Intellectual Immigration

There's an interesting "first person" in the Chronicle today, about a Danish academic moving to the US. In it he talks about the European "intellectual immigrant" moving to the US, and holding on, holding onto the old traditions that have been forgotten at home (like changing from brown shoes to black shoes at 6 o'clock). That I can understand - the need to find little ways to set yourself apart for fear of being submerged in the culture, for fear of becoming an American.

On the other hand, he talks about the difficulties faced in adapting to American culture, the difficulties of trying to fit in. And I realise how Americanised I am. For one, Trinidad is terribly Americanised, far more than people realise or want to admit. American television, music...it's a lot more of a cultural homogeniser than you realise. I suppose I realised that during the International TA Orientation at MSU in 1994. I felt pretty silly having American slang explained to me.

Then there is my childhood in Canada. I try to minimise it, but it is a huge part of who I am. The connection to Canada is strong and deep. It isn't home, but it means something real to me.

And then there is my American PhD. There is no need for me to adapt to American academe - it's all I really know beyond the undergrad level. You don't think about things like that, but I am most certainly a product of an American scientific tradition.

Job Hunting

Well, I finally got a job application out today. It felt really good to get it out, but now I don't know what to do next. I feel like, ok, that's done, I don't have to think about that again for a while...when, in reality, I've just barely gotten started.

It also makes you think about networking. Talking to Jen about applying for her former job. Thinking about emailing Lissa - I would if I thought there was any way that I could fit myself to the jobs posted by Georgia Southern. And the fact that there's another MSU grad at the school I just sent an application to. I can't say I really know her name, I can't put a picture to her face, but it's still a point of commonality - if she is on the search committee she should recognise my name, or at least my references (Pete and Tom, at least). There's a job at Toronto - it would be a great job, but I rather doubt I am what they are looking for. Nonetheless, the thing that I wonder about is whether Sean Thomas would remember me, after I bothered him at ESA this summer.

My main point is, I now understand a little better why things like ESA are important for people who are trying to get hired, get noticed. Ecology, science as a whole, is such a small world. It's a shame I have never been better at schmoozing. I know people, I think I leave something of an impression on people...but I don't know enough people, and I don't know the movers and shakers, the rising stars.

OU Suicide Bombing (update, of a sort)

So it's been five days since Joel Henry Hinrichs blew himself up outside my building. The best source of information I have come across is the Wikipedia article, but that does not delve into the rumours that are flying around. There are verified reports that he tried to buy ammonium nitrate a few days before the bombing, but the store clerk refused to sell it to him because he couldn't say how much he needed or what he needed it for. There are unconfirmed rumours (or, at least unconfirmed as far as I can tell) that he was attending mosque regularly and that he tried to enter the stadium but was refused entry because he did not allow them to search his backpack. Whether this is true or not is unknown - I was hearing that story almost from the start, and to me it seemed like it started as speculation by the reporters on the scene. While people are now saying that "someone" saw it, I am inclined to take it with a grain of salt. I'm sure there are security cameras that recorded the whole thing, I am sure that whether he had a ticket or not is verifiable...we'll hear something sooner or later, which will contain some aspects of the truth, but probably not the whole truth.

It's still mostly sad. They replaced the bench he blew himself up on by Monday afternoon. I don't think I'd want to sit on the new bench though. What drove him to do this? The other wild speculation - whether there might be some deeper plot behind it, and the simple fact that, hey, someone blew themselves up outside my building really haven't sank in. I don't feel any real sense of danger about the whole thing. Of course, someone could have made a bigger bomb and walked into the building at 9:20 am any morning, when the corridors are packed with people, and have hurt as many people as they wanted to. There is no such thing as absolute security, just measured risks.

Gordon says that we will not be able to get back into the building until at least noon. Still cordoned off by the police. Again, it feels strange. Who was this person? What were they planning to do? Why did they choose that spot? Disgruntled botany student who was unhappy with a grade? I sure hope not.

Suicide bomber at OU?

Someone blew themselves up outside our building at OU. Rather disturbing. Was it a 'suicide bombing' or a 'suicide by bomb? It was reported to have taken place in "the courtyard near the George Lynn Cross Hall, Botany-Microbiology Building on OU's campus". Right near my office. Gordon, the department chair, reported a broken window, but no other reported damage. I suspect probably Linda's or Jia Li's office.

It was veyr worrying at first, when news reports came from people inside the stadium, who could only report on the general location based on the sound. Then came the reports of the "courtyard" at GLCH. More worrying, though at least it meant it wasn't in the building. Finally, Gordon's email clarified things - he has more information about the building than the news media (not that, I suppose, they are very motivated to report on the condition of the building).

It's mostly puzzling. It's just difficult to figure out what I feel. Oh well...

And just for Linz, here's another post to push Wednesday's futher down the page. It doesn't say much, but given all the space the headers and footers take up, I'm sure it does the job. :)

From Jay Leno via Bill from Portland Main's Cheers and Jeers on Daily Kos (how's that for a trail of evidence)

"Today a Texas grand jury indicted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme. This is the most embarrassing thing to happen to the Republicans since yesterday."

Well put. Crooks, crooks, crooks. "The Republican Party: Making Kleptocrats and Mafia Bosses Look Clean by Comparison". Ok, so I lose the slogan competition.

Educational standards?

Somehow I managed to miss the news that a graduate student at Ohio State was about to defend a dissertation looking at the effects of teaching ID creationism and evolution to high school students.
The first question one should raise in such a situation is how is it ethical for the university to be involved in teaching students something that is scientifically unsupported. What sort of lapse was made by the human subjects oversight committee?

The second question is more subtle. Two of the student's committee members were the only two OSU facility to have come out in favour of ID. Ok, fair enough - people can constitute their own committees. But, the School of Teaching and Learning requires that two committee members must come from the science education programme, and that the committee members should reflect the expertise needed for the dissertation. Neither of these were true - none of the committee members met either criterion.

It makes you wonder - was it an underhand scheme by the student, or was it a cynical ploy by the committee members? You see this more and more - dishonest actions by ID'ers to try to claim scientific credentials. They (mostly) claim to be Christians, but they turn out to be using lies and deceit to further their agenda. Makes you wonder what side they're really on.

To quote kos "Holy fucking shit." Tom Delay indicted. Cool.

Finally, some good news.

Saw Eugenie Scott speak last week. Most of what she had to say was not new to me (although she put it well) but she finally explained the whole "methodological naturalism"/"philosophical naturalism" thing.

It's interesting to see what Phillip Johnson has to say about defeating materialistic science. Methodolical naturalism (= methodological materialism) is the basis of science - that you have to limit yourself to "materialistic" explanations in science. It doesn't matter whether you believe in the supernatural or not - as a scientist you need to limit yourself to known or knowable physical processes. Sure, you can propose new processes, hopefully they will be something you can measure (which is the problem with string theory, of course, because there may not be any way to measure strings). But if you move beyond methodological materialism, into the type of science Johnson wants, you create irrefutable hypotheses. Which means, you have no science, no medicine, know way to distinguishing truth from fiction.

Imagine your doctor including the supernatural in his diagnosis. If you can't rule out demonic possession, or a curse, you need to attack the matter on all fronts. Which means, I suspect, that every hospital would have to hire a few pundits (given the number of Hindu doctors). If Johnson was serious about this, he should be advocating this. I'd love to see that.

Why Baton Rouge is Still Bush Country - WaPo

I suppose not every Rethuglican is a racist or a nut. Some of them are driven by something very different - a fear of change, failure to adapt to a changing world. Much like What's the Matter with Kansas, the question of why the working class, acting against their own interests, go out of their way to support the crooked Bushite kleptocracy. Being adrift in a world you can't control, you look for a 'regular guy'. Of course, why they choose the elitist, draft-dodging Yalie is another question. But they see him as their man, for some incomprehensible reason.

How do you drag people out of their holes? This dissociation from reality is widespread. People follow leaders who lie to them and tell them what they want to hear, rally them behind the flag and jingoistic nationalism, tell them that they can embrace the simplicity of the biblical creation story as if it were the literal truth...drawing the lines in the culture war between progressives and regressives. The made-up idealised 1950s, when black people could be freely lynched, when women were not people, when my marriage and the marriage that produced me would have been illegal in parts of the US... These are the things that progressives must deal with.

We dodged a bullet. For a while it looked like Rita was coming our way.

I wish I had tried to contact Anson beforehand. I don't know where he was. I sure hope he was home, and not in the Gulf or Indonesia or somewhere like that. I'm sure there were people in from Houston who were halfway around the world drilling for oil while their families were left alone to face Rita. It's tragic for the towns that Rita did hit, but I am glad that it did not hit one of the bigger cities where so many more people would have been affected.

That's not a reassuring way of looking at things really. I remember talking to Gus on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. To me, death and destruction on that scale is horrible, without any redeeming factor. And then Gus said that the bombing saved his life...he was a prisoner in a Japanese camp in Indonesia, and was scheduled to be shipped off the next day to a forced labour camp...a mine, I can't recall the name...that was simply a black hole, a place where no one survived. It gives you perspective. Rita not hitting Galveston and Houston means ruined lives elsewhere.

And there we have it. The way forward. Only problem is, while Daou outlined the problem, that the netroots need to go after the Democratic party establishment and the press, I don't have any idea how I can contribute to that effort...all the more since I just live here, I'm not an American or anything...

The Big Questions

I suppose I write here out of a desire to be read. I'm not sure if I have anything worth saying, but that's entirely beside the point. The medium allows anyone to "publish" - without editors, without a need to have anything to say. But if you want to be read, shouldn't you try to get people to read what you write? There's the rub. The only way that I could reasonably generate traffic my way would be to post a link on my Wikipedia user page. Wikipedia being what it is, and my standing in the community being what it is, I know I would get at least a few readers. Unfortunately, it would serve to draw my Wikipedia identity closer to my real-world identity. And that might not be good. Safe to hide behind the cloak of anonymity I can be as outspoken as I want to be. Breach that security, and I become that much more visiable.

Why does it matter if my Wiki-identity is matched with my real-world identity? One reason is the whole job-search idea. Someone has posted as the Chronicle a piece entitled "bloggers need not apply". The idea that blogs are likely to hurt your job search. If blogs might hurt, then who knows how my Wikipedia contribution might be viewed...

Bill Maher tells it like it is:

America must recall the president. That's what this country needs. A good, old-fashioned, California-style recall election! Complete with Gary Coleman, porno actresses and action film stars... but seriously, Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you anymore. There's no more money to spend. You used up all of that. You can't start another war because you also used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people.

You've performed so poorly I'm surprised you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man.

Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans...Maybe you're just not lucky!

I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, "Take a hint."

Before the 2000 elections, the NYTimes published a story about how Bush had run seven companies into the ground. Now, as predicted, he has run the country into the ground too. Granted, I never imagined he could have done so spectacular a job. I remember when Reagan was a corrupt, war-mongering failure who ran the country into recession and brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. But at least Reagan had the excuse of Alzheimer's. And, at a fundamental level, Reagan still had something of a connection with ordinary people. He was not the imperious one - he had Maggie to fill that role. Hmm - I never thought of that - George Bush combines the worst of Reagan and Thatcher, and has none of their good qualities. Well, I suppose Blair just doesn't have enough of a spine left to have anyone's bad qualities...

John Roberts

It's really interesting to watch a little bit of the confirmation hearings. It makes me realise how easily I am convinced of basic goodness of people. It seems odd to say that, given my antipathy to people like Bush and Patrick, but it's true. I have no desire to see Roberts confirmed. Based on what I have read, he is almost certainly an awful choice for a Supreme Court justice, let alone Chief Justice. Forget about his opposition to Roe - he has shown himself to be anti-environment and, if not a racist, certainly a comfortable "fellow traveller" with them. And yet, listening to his confirmation hearings he sounds like an eminently reasonable person. Of course, that was also my reaction to Rumsfeld during the Abu Ghraib torture hearings. But then, I realise that I have a tendency to take statements (and people) at face value, at least initially. I collect and store data, and only process it later, when I need to. That really isn't the best way to read scientific articles, of course.

I think I have entered the realm of Katrina fatigue. I don't want to see more pictures of people searching desperately for their loved ones. Granted, I have never been that big on human interest stories - I could connect with faceless crowds outside the Convention Center better than I can with stories of people scattered across the country trying to get their families back together. Somehow humanising it makes it so small that it becomes ordinary. People ge separated from their loved ones all the time, teary reunions happen in "ordinary" times. People go to great lengths to house a family made homeless by a tragedy. To me, seeing these stories makes the big picture fade. The scope and scale of destruction is almost incomprehensible. That works. Struggling to get your mind around the scale of things - the difference (and lack of difference) between 80% of New Orleans under water and 60% is something that resonates with me. People trying to carry on with their lives in a flooded city...a city flooded with toxic water. I get that.

One thing that definitely brings on denial is Hurricane Ophelia. What makes matters worse is looking at all the other storms brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. The only thing you can do is block it out.

We love you Jon

"Now, for you people who are saying, `Well, stop pointing fingers at the president...left-wing...the media's being too hard:

No. SHUT...UP! No! This is inarguably---inarguably---a failure of leadership from the top of the federal government.

Remember when Bill Clinton went out with Monica Lewinsky? That was inarguably a failure of judgment at the top. Democrats had to come out and risk losing credibility if they did not condemn Bill Clinton for his behavior. I believe Republicans are in the same position right now. And I will say this: Hurricane Katrina is George Bush's Monica Lewinsky. The only difference is that tens of thousands of people weren't stranded in Monica Lewinsky's vagina."
--Jon Stewart

The heros

• Jon Stewart
• Keith Olbermann
• Howard Dean
• Al Gore

I wish there were more people who would call it like it is, and do it for the general good, not for their own gratification. I am so disgusted with Bush, and now the right wing noise machine is ramping up, spreading its usual lies - no, nothing is the fauls of Dear Leader. Well...maybe that's true - it's all Darth Cheney and Turd Blossom. Actually that way of thinking is probably harmful - it let's him off too easily.

On the other side, giving credit where credit is due, David Brooks continues to say some intelligent things about Katrina. So I suppose it proves that he is neither stupid nor evil, just an ideologue with some level of human compassion. Of course, I remember the good old days when Safire praised Gore and dismissed Bush. But then he fell into total attack mode, and by the time his writing was not only hackery, it was devoid of thoughtfulness and intelligence. Let's hope that Brooks continues to let humanity get the better of him for a while. Maybe some of it will stick...

Again, why I like Gore more than any other American politician:

Gore accompanies about 140 arrivals from New Orleans but declines to take credit
From the Knoxville News Sentinel

About 140 people - mostly elderly and infirm - arrived Saturday at McGhee Tyson Airport on a chartered mercy flight from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, welcomed to East Tennessee by a bright sun and a host of medical professionals straining at the reins to help their fellow human beings without regard to whether they were on the clock.

Former Vice President Al Gore arranged the flight and was on board, but he declined to take credit for the airlift, fearing it would be "politicized."

Looks like he's the only person who heeded Mayor Nagin's call for "no more press conferences".

An interesting converation on Springer on the Radio - his caller uses the term Leadership by title only. I suppose that's a really good point. The Department of Homeland Security took over responsibility for all national disasters, took control of FEMA and dispersed it through the ranks of the new organisation. That works fine, until something happens. Then, all of a sudden, they say "no one could have forseen this" and other crap like that. It's the same refrain as after 9-11, when Condi said "no one would have predicted that they would fly planes into buildings", when in fact, they had, or like Iraq, where Rumsfeld said "stuff happens" as Baghdad was looted. And they continue to lie about troop strengths in Iraq, while Zarqawi captures a town in western Iraq. Will this now become Fallujah II? Or does he realise that the needs of the Gulf Coast (funny, how that draws your mind to the "Gulf War") will divert troops away from Iraq, and will divert American attention from Iraq?

From Atrios

It's bad enough that the preznit leaves Washington for 5 weeks, but now we know that when Katrina hit there apparently wasn't enough of any stature still in charge. When the president is away shouldn't someone be manning the phones, just in case?

Has anyone seen Cheney yet?

WaPo has a telling quote from none less than William Kristol:

"Almost every Republican I have spoken with is disappointed" in Bush's performance, said William Kristol, a conservative columnist with close White House ties. "He is a strong president . . . but he has never really focused on the importance of good execution. I think that is true in many parts of his presidency."

What is "strength" if it doesn't include execution? He's a strong leader but he isn't good at getting things done? Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron, unless of course, if when you say "strong leader" you mean "bully".

http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/KATRINA0000.HTM

Anne Rice in the New York Times

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.

I'm glad I got to see the city, if only briefly, this summer. We almost didn't stop - it was raining, Linz was tired, we thought we would always have a chance to come back later. Maybe we will, I hope they rebuild. New Orleans is a cultural treasure. Was, at least, and I sincerely hope will be again.

You'd think it should start getting better soon. New Orleans is evacuated, for the most part. The terrible pictures of people living in filth and dying in squalor are gone. I expected the pictures to get better, the stories to shift, ever so slowly, towards reconstruction. How wrong I was. Now the eyes of the media are shifting to the outlying towns - to St Bernard Parish and smaller towns in Louisiana and Mississippi...places that have yet to see FEMA and federal aid. Once again, I find myself unable to get my mind around these things. I'm beyond yelling. Ok, we knew already that the Bush regime was uncaring. They gutted FEMA for political and ideological reasons. But why are people still drowning in their homes? How long does it take to do something? How can bureaucracy be this hidebound and heartless?

Ok, so I am wrong. I thought I was beyond blaming things. George Wills says that this strikes at Bush's strength, at the perception that he is decisive. It's incomprehensible to me that Bush could be seen as decisive, after 9-11, when he dithered and then abandoned his post and ran and hid...but that's beside the point. For whatever reason, people saw Bush as decisive. Up until now. I still believe in the Republican spin machine and it's ability to fool people who want to be fooled. But I can hope that it opens people's eyes to the type or person they have for a President.

On Fox News this Morning Juan Williams was showing that he is not totally a mouthpiece for the White House - he was actually using language like tax cuts for the wealthy. And there was someone on the panel who said no, this won't stop Congress from making the tax cuts permanent. In addition, something I had heard reference to before - the Republican leadership tried to repeal the Estate Tax on Tuesday, while the government was doing nothing for the people hit by the hurricane.

Elsewhere - Soledad O'Brien wanders a totally empty New Orleans. Empty of the living, at least. The dead bodies still lie there, covered with blankets.

Wow.

There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.

ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.

Why am I not surprised. And from someone at MyDD

On Wednesday morning a group of approximately 1,000 citizens pulling 500 boats left the Acadiana Mall in Lafayette in the early morning and headed to New Orleans with a police escort from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department... The DWF agent did not want to hear this and ordered them home -- ALL FIVE HUNDRED BOATS. However, two friends were pulling a smaller 15ft alumaweld with a 25 hp. The DWF agents let them through to proceed to the rescue operation launch site...They reported to me that there were over 200 DWF agents just standing around and doing nothing. They were kept there for approximately 3 hours. During that time they observed a large number of DWF agents doing absolutely nothing. Why? Because FEMA would n ot let them HELP!

Watching CNN later that night, there was a telephone interview with a Nurse trapped in Charity Hospital in New Orleans. She said that there were over 1,000 people trapped inside of the hospital and that the doctors and nurses had zero medical supplies, no diesel to run the generators and that only three people had been rescued from the hospital since the Hurricane hit!

I can't come up with one logical reason why the DWF sent this large group of 500 boats/1000 men home when we surely could have rescued most, if not all, of the people trapped in Charity Hospital. Further, we had the means to immediately transport these people to hospitals in Southwest Louisiana.

Sheriff Lee and Senator Gautreaux - 1000 of Louisiana's citizens responded to the public's pleas for help. They were prevented from helping by Dwight Landreneau's agency, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries which had been taken over by FEMA. When I learned that Charity Hospital has not been evacuated and that no one has been there to attempt a rescue, I became angry.

It was because of this that my friend and I have been trying launch boats both yesterday and today but to no avail. It looks like FINALLY the Governor has just said SCREW FEMA, get those boats in the water and help save my citizens.

I have turned into one of those people who blog by quoting other blogs. I'll get back to my normal non-existent posts eventually. The shock and horror just builds and builds.

What really breaks my heart is watching the people who are still in the midst of it. It's one thing to be horrified at the response, or rather the lack of response, from the government. It's quite another to see the people who are there, to see the stress on their faces, to see people going horrors that just don't end. How do you deal with horror that never ends? Hmm...maybe that's what it's like to live in parts of Gaza or the some of the camps in the West Banks. It's lower level, but I can't imagine what life without hope.

Aaron Neville singing Amazing Grace. People walking - walking with nowhere to go, no one to take them in. No rooms here, keep moving, or no more gas - how do we keep moving? Help from neighbouring states and neighbouring towns, but none from FEMA or the government.

Pictures of people dying - babies no longer responding, not waking up. Elderly people - hundred year olds, with no idea where they are.

Rehnquist is dead. He was 80. It's hard to say what this means now - Bush will appoint another right-wing extremist. Does he still have the political capital left now? It's hard to say. Another wrinkle in the whole matter.

As miholo on MyDD pointed out, New Orleans was built where it should be.

Steve Gililard via kos (I should really read Gilliard more)

Well, motherfuckers, and that means you, fat ass Goldberg and your master, Rich Lowry, PNAC Bitch Beinart, the racist wannabe white Malkin and the little fucktards at LGF, Bareback Andy and "Diversity" Instacracker, all you backstabbing, fag hating uncle tom ministers, you can see Dear Leader in action. America's largest port is gone, maybe forever, gas is $5+ a gallon and FEMA is coming. Whores come faster with old men than FEMA is getting to NOLA.

How did your wartime President react? Like Chiang Kai-Shek when the Yellow River flooded in 1944, with corrupt indifference.

Bush, the man your fever dreams built into the next Winston Churchill when he is really the live action Chauncey Gardiner, has failed to everyone, in plain sight, without question. Rick Perry is trying to save his ass, but it ain't working. NOLA looks like ANGOLA and that ain't flying.

Chiang Kai-Shek when the Yellow River flooded. Wow. That's almost a classical reference. Wish I had the skill with words that these people have. Of course, here I rant without an audience - no-one but a few close relatives even know this thing exists. I could up my traffic a lot (any traffic means it would be upped a lot) by either putting it in my sig at kos (and posting a comment, for a change) or by putting a link to it at my Wikipedia userpage. But that has its own problems, because that would amount to 'outing' myself, in a place where I would much rather retain a small amount of anonymity. The whole Stromfront/Nazipedia thing was a little chilling. I'm probably not worth noticing to those types, but it's nice not to have to worry about these things.

Last night, on CNN, hearing Sanjay Gupta talking about watching Tulane Hospital being evacuated, watching healthy hospital workers being airlifted out, while patients at Charity Hospital, people being kept alive with hand-powered ventillators, were left sitting at Charity's makeshift helicopter evacuation point... Aaron Brown kept coming back to this point. The private hospital was totally evacuated, and the public hospital still had all of its patients and no electricity. What is behind these decisions? Sure, you know that the rich get preferential treatment. You know that the government cares far more about the rich than it does about the poor. These are all part of the sad reality of life. But even I find it hard to believe that the corruption goes this deep, that the people in charge of emergency relief would make a consciouis decision to rescue the people who can afford a private hospital, and leave those who are forced to go to a public hospital. This is mind bogglingly corrupt and evil. Is there another explanation for this? I sure hope so. I just can't imagine what it would be. The hospital staff at Tulane were airlifted out while the patients were left behind at Charity. WTF.

I never thought I would find someone more incompetent than Patrick Mugabe. WTF. Five days and people have never heard from FEMA. WTF. And Bush poses with these two women in Mississippi, women made homeless, looking for clothes...and he says "isn't there a Salvation Army down the road". Nope. Destroyed by the storm. But no, he doesn't know, he doesn't care. What is his job again? And this is the post-9/11 disaster preparedness???

Listening to the mayor of New Orleans on Randi Rhodes...it's heartbreaking. Tragedy is tragedy, now matter where it strikes, but this is in the richest country in the world, this is in the world's last superpower, this is the country with more resources to throw at this than any other country in the world. How could people be so inhumane? What type of people let things like this happen and fail to lift a finger, fail to care the least about other human beings? I suppose black people in New Orleans (and white people too) are just shit that sticks to the shoes of the elite, of people like Bush - much like the Iraqi people, whose deaths matter nothing to this sick and corrupt regime.

I am beyond disgusted. It makes me sick.

I think Atrios hit the nail on the head. Soulless monsters.

These are our rulers? Jeebus help us all:

MCINTYRE: And as to your question about political, I talked to a lot of people at the Pentagon today who were very frustrated about the fact that the perception was being created that the military didn't move fast enough. And they did it somewhat as political. They thought that part of the motivation was the critics of the administration to make the president look bad.

And they seemed to question the motives of some of our reporters who were out there and hearing these stories from the victims about why they had so much sympathy for the victims, and not as much sympathy for the challenges that the government met in meeting this challenge.

And I have to say thinking about that, it doesn't really seem all that unusual that you would tend to understand the plight of the victims a little more than the bureaucrats in Washington.

BROWN: Yes, I mean, I'm glad you told us that. And they have every right to believe they believe and think the way they think. I mean, and I mean that. But you've got people who have been living as refugees. It is not hard to understand why our first heart beat goes in their direction. We'll worry about the bureaucrats later.

Only soulless monsters who'd had 4 years of kid gloves treatment from our media even begin to think it's okay to feel that way, let alone speak it out loud.

Where does one go from here?

Of course, now we have to ask...what happens when the next hurricane hits? It doesn't have to hit the Gulf Coast - what happens when a hurricane, even a minor one, hits Florida?

Paul Krugman has a great bit - not too partisan, but pulling no punches. A Can't Do Government. I think that describes things perfectly. It's heartbreaking incompetence. I never liked Bush. I thought he abandoned his post on 9-11. But that was nothing compared to this. At least it caught his attention. This one took several days to catch his attention.

Rachel Maddow is doing the Al Franken show today. Talking to a journalist who is in Iraq with the Louisiana National Guard. These are likely to be poor black people from New Orleans themselves. I can't imagine how they must feel - not only are they getting shot at in Iraq, not only do they have to make do with a lack of body armour and vehicular armour, not only are they in a quagmire of Bush's choosing...they also have to deal with the fact that back home their families may be dying or thirst in New Orleans, or getting robbed or raped by gangs, or may have drowned as their homes flooded...and all this because the government doesn't give a damn about the people. That's all it can be. They don't give a damn.

This is 'homeland security'. The cell towers failed, and they had no backup communication systems. This is supposed to be the best military in the world.

Bush said nobody anticipated the breech of the levees. In 2001 FEMA's top three disasters were a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in California, and a major hurricane flooding New Orleans. How the hell can this man lie like this? How the hell can anyone be that heartless? WTF? WTF, WTF, WTF. I am speechless.

Day 5. Who would have thought that there would be people at the Convention Center dying of thirst on Day 5? Looting, which started on Day 3, just reminds me of Baghdad after the fall, when the city was in chaos for weeks. Unlike the coup in Trinidad, things did not start right away. People started stealing food after a few days when they realised no-one was coming for them, and then other people started stealing everything else.

Bill from Portland, over at kos, has it right. While Condi shops for shoes, while Cheney is still on vacation, while... (fill it in here)...people die. Hunter's post is a must-read as well. That Fox News has turned on the Bush administration (with a few exceptions, like O'Lielly) is telling. And yet nothing is still being done.

Over at kos there are people talking about how ever Joe Scarborough is turning on the Bush adminstration. I noticed this morning that David Brooks was focussed on the fact that the victims were mainly poor and black. They say even Tucker Carlson is highly upset about the lack of action. But what does it really mean? It isn't going to get Bush impeached. People have low expectations of him, and even though he isn't even living up to those expectations, somehow people are happy with the way things are. We like it so, we free! You'da thought that was written about America in 2005, not Trinidad in 1981. Same thing though. People seem to be willing to follow "their party" into ruin.

I hope that some good comes from this - that people wake up and realise how incompetent the Bush regime is. But will they? And even if there is massive backlash against the Republicans next year, will it be enough to switch control of the House and Senate? And if it does, will it make a difference, or will it be "too little, too late"? I suppose for thousands of people in New Orleans that answer to that question is more than obvious - it's too little, too late after you have gone through what those people have gone through. How does such massive incompetence happen? Hard work.

Looking at footage of the looting I thought (and said) this is nothing, you should have seen the coup. Today I am no longer saying that. The coup was nothing. I can't believe the stories, of people dying on the side of the road waiting to be rescued, of people who think that rescue is coming but that no-one has any plans to rescue...

I suppose the job season is finally upon us. Monday brought a slew of ads to The Chronicle, several of which I think I am qualified for. But looking at job ads made me realise what my realistic job prospects are likely to be. My current 2/2 teaching isn't something I have much hope of maintaining - without the publications, I have no chance at an R1. There are two ads at liberal arts colleges that I paid serious attention to - one at a upper tier elite liberal arts college, and the other at a more middle of the road college. I'm paranoid enough not to name them, in the event that, by some strange means or other they were to somehow come across this posting.

So let's just call them School 1 and School 2. School 1 looks like a dream job - small liberal arts college with a huge biology faculty. People teach intro classes in whatever strikes their fancy. And research is required - in fact, undergraduate participation in real research appears to be a key part of their programme. I don't know what teaching loads are like, but I'm going to guess that they are 3-3. School 2 has a tiny biology faculty - maybe 5 people. Teaching loads are 3-4, 9-12 credit hours a semester, which one bonus hour for labs (i.e., a 3 hour lab is one credit hour for students, but the instructor gets to count it as 2 credit hours - which is, apparently, a lot better than many other universities). The idea of teaching somewhere where you don't have graduate students, where you have to run your own labs, is actualy somewhat appealing. And the truth is that a 4/4 could involve teaching the same class more than once, and running several lab streams - which appears to be what Bob is doing. School 2 lays out its teaching load at great lenghts, which makes it seem rather daunting, but that may be the point - to keep away non-serious candidates...I am reminded of the debate on the Chronicle fora when someone said that he didn't plan to interview Ivy Leaguers because they did not seem to be able to fathom the teaching load. Maybe School 2 is saying that up front to avoid having their time wasted by primadonnas. Who knows. Anyway, the worst thing to me of School 2 was the statement that, although faculty are expected to remain active in scholarly pursuits, this does not necessarily mean publication in scholarly journals...

The idea (or maybe ideal) of a small, close-knit community at a liberal arts college appeals to me. I don't know if it's realistic or not, but I could see myself as that kind of professor, the jack-of-all-trades generalist naturalist who can answer just about any question an undergrad brings. But then, you can be that at a big school too - look at both Pat and Pete - in very different ways, they meet the ideal. Who knows if I will get any job this year. But it's always fun to dream. I still hope that the ideal job will open up at UWI in a couple years, when Dookeran is Prime Minister and the crime situation is more in hand.

Which leads to another thought - what sort of a Prime Minister woudl Dookeran make, and would he really be the kind of person that Trinidad needs? I'm not asking, is he the kind of person the party needs (i.e., someone who can lead it to voctory), I'm not asking whether he would be better than Patrick Mugabe, because I think that's an obvious yes. I'm asking whether "Wins" is really the kind of person the country needs. That is, of course, a two-fold question - what kind of person is he really (of course, he went Naps, he must be a good person), and what sort of person does the country need right now. I'd still go back to Hudson-Philips, the tough law-and-order guy, but apart from no longer being active in politics, he's the same age as Bas. Well, there's always Gillian.

It doesn't get better. It just seems to get worse. Death and destruction - some towns in Mississippi were totally flattened. As you see the pictures you are reminded of nothing so much as the tsunami.

Katrina was a natural phenomenon. It seems likely that climate change led to warmer water in the Gulf of Mexico, but that is impossible to prove one way or the other. The destruction in Mississippi and Louisiana would have happened. But what happened in New Orleans did not have to happen. Atrios, kos and Majority Report have pointed out how the hurricane defenses were systematically underfunded, and how FEMA was gutted over the last several years. Bush is too busy with his vacation, too busy paying golf, to say anything in a timely manner. He can't be bothered to visit the affected areas. But will he show up for a rousing photo op in a few weeks as the city starts to dry out (or, more likely, in some small town in Mississippi, since that photo op will connect more with his base)? Pro-bab-ly.

Things get weirder and wierder. A 'renegade' bus makes it into Houston...loads of refugees fleeing New Orleans. Apparently those who were not in the Superdome in New Orleans were not supposed to be housed in the Astrodome in Houston. They are talking about the fact that there was no information about the buses, no information about the people on board. Granted, there are many far more important things for them to deal with at a time like that.

Destitute refugees fleeing natural disasters. It's the kind of thing that you have been hearing about for years. I didn't dismiss it as alarmist, I just put it aside as information that I could not use at this point in time. It was something you thought possible in the distant future when rising sea levels displace millions of people...or something like that.

It's really disturbing to see the aftermath of Katrina. With any disaster like this, you expect that once it passes things start getting better. With places like Biloxi, although the entire town is gone, at least you can sit and think, how do we fix this. With New Orleans though, it goes from bad to worse. I'm not talking about the looting, or the armed gangs roaming the streets. These are jut symptoms of the bigger problems. The really disturbing issues relate to the fact that they city continues to sink. It reminds me of building 'walls' and moats to protect sand castles from the rising tide. As the waves come closer you build walls, you dig ditches, and the waves stop before they hit your construction. But then comes a wave which overwhelms your construction, overwhelms your defenses, and no matter how much sand you pour into the breach, no matter how deep you dig the diversion pool, the wave still swamps you. New Orleans feels like that. Maybe once the 'tide has gone out' (the water level subsides) they can rebuild and pump the water out. But until then... I just don't know what they can do.

It hits home because I was there this summer, and because I now know someone living there.

Of course, I am blocking out death tolls and just looking at the physical damage. The damage to people's lives is too much too take in at this time.

Sure, everybody is writing about Katrina, but it's hard not to. Maybe I should be glad that I managed to stop in New Orleans and see the French Quarter. It's hard to imagine, the idea of New Orleans is the French Quarter. Just the idea of the potential damage to the city is mind boggling.

What will the human cost of this hurricane be? What will the environmental cost be? It's all the more real, having seen the Gulf Coast, it's all the more real knowing that Lisa lives there. I am assuming that she got out safely, but I honestly have no clue.

I went to bed assuming that whatever was to happen would have happened by the time I got up. I find it almost impossible to tear my eyes away from it. Things sound better - a Category 4 is better than a Category 5. The storm turned north (as they said it would). To me it looked worse, it looked like the storm had turned towards the city, but apparently this is an improvement, since it puts the city on the left side of the storm, getting its strongest winds off the land, not off the sea. They seem to think that the storm surge probably won't go over the levees...something, they said, which could have left the city under water for up to eight months.

I'm concernd about Sam too. I don't really know where he is in Mississippi, but I think he's far enough inland.

This semester is shaping up to be my heaviest teaching load yet. Teaching these two courses isn't the most difficut thing - I could do a mediocre job, recycle my Economic Botany lectures from last year...but if I did that I would be missing the point of this "postdoc".

The biggest challenge isn't improving the lecture material - that isn't terribly difficult, although it can be time consuming. The problem is "active learning". I have finally figured out what it is - something that had eluded me up until now. Now I just have to figure out how one does it.

I just realised why I am able to fix computer problems for people. Perhaps 90% of computer "problems" require only two things - patience, and the confidence that problems are generally tractable and logical. Computers may be strange creatures, but rarely are they truly malevolent.

Ok, so there is one more thing about which I want to blog. Hubbell's neutral model. It's interesting to see how it has become a lightning rod. My reaction to it was "cool". It seems like most other people reacted with "how can I disprove this?" Maybe that is my limitation as a scientist - maybe I am too willing to accept new ideas, instead of putting them through the ringer like I am supposed to...

Sure, the neutral theory bothered me. What do you mean, tropical trees are competitively neutral? Of course they aren't - any idiot can see that. But you need to look at the analogy with neutral models in genetics. Of course genes are not neutral - the point is that selection theory cannot explain a lot a what goes on in genetics. Rather than trying to explain everything through selection and adaptation, you need to partition variation into selective and neutral variation. Not only does it make it easier to tease apart the variation that matters, it also allows you do trace ancestry and relatedness, and come up with both tools to identify individuals and tools to trace the relatedness between plant Divisions. The idea that niche differentiation can explain the existence of thousands of tropical trees is pretty far-fetched. Even as simple things as light gradients in gaps are pretty hard to demonstrate. It isn't that trees are competitively neutral, it's that neutral models can explain a lot of the variation that exists. So let's refine our understanding of neutral vs. competitive forces, and make use of this information. Or not, if that's what you prefer.

Back in Oklahoma after a long trip. A long trip in which I (sadly) did none of the driving. While I have a lot to say about seeing Canada again, I would rather wait until I had the time to get into that.

I have such mixed feelings about getting this read. You write to get read, and I now have a few people who read this. But at the same time, I rarely do anything to publicise this. Everyone, it seems, is talking about their blogs - even Lindsay's grandmother has a blog now - but somehow I can't bring myself to speak up and say "me too". In part it's because I am not sure whether they know this exists or not, but there is also the "boasting" part. Linz or Carol or Molly write news, they write things that keep people informed about what's going on in their lives. I just ramble on about my thoughts - thought about what it means to blog. I should get over than and go on to write my thoughts about weightier matters - like what an idiot Patrick Mugabe is. But I don't.

So now I am on the cusp of a new semester. I have a whole pile of things to do - newsletter, preparations for two classes - and other things that I can't think of at this moment. But the thing that's really burning in my mind is the dry forest model I came up with. Pete's reaction was really cool - it was really the most interested he has ever been in anything I have shown him. I need to work on that, develop it. Pete seems to think it has the potential to be an Ecology paper. That would be amazing. But before I do that I need to (i) stop wasting time here, (ii) stop wasting time at Wikipedia, (iii) get the work done that I need to do for classes and teaching, and (iv) get my other manuscripts out. What I really need to do is to stop writing, stop this, now. Stop. Maybe in a few minutes...

On the road to Montreal. We started out on Wednesday after my dental appointment (can't bring myself to say the word "root canal") and made up up to St. Louis. Thusday too us all the way up Illinois, across a little bit of Indiana, and all the way through Michigan. Today and tomorrow we stay put (more or less) and then head off to Montreal.

I feel both nervous and excited to go to Montreal. It is with very mixed feelings that I head back into the landscape of my childhood. It will be changes far beyond recognition - that I know, without the slightest shadow of a doubt. But I want to go back and explore these places, I want to see them again, and I want to share that experience with Linz. I also want to see Montreal, I am very excited by the prospect of attending the conference, and I want to see people. In that regard I feel a little bad to drag Linz along - I think and I hope that she will enjoy the experience, but I don't know for certain.