perfidy

In an AP news dispatch from about an hour ago, as I type this, I expected to get the straight poop in a story entitled "Nearly 2 Million Flee Hurricane Rita".

Much of the article contained information I had already gotten from my neighbors and friends in town, or on the non-stop local news coverage of the impending storm. But it also contained nuggets like this:

"This is the worst planning I've ever seen," said Judie Anderson, who covered just 45 miles in 12 hours after setting out from her home in the Houston suburb of LaPorte. "They say we've learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina. Well, you couldn't prove it by me."

As one who looked at the prospects for evacuation 48 hours ago and decided the best answer was not to do so, for a variety of defensible reasons, I'd hope my response to Ms. Judie Anderson doesn't come across as too harsh.

Boiled down to its essence, it goes like this: "I'd be shocked, ma'am, if I could prove anything by you, other than that one needn't have an IQ over 60 in order to be given a driver's license in TX, or to be interviewed by the Associated Press. You've clearly either lost your mind, never driven in Houston, or are incapable of comprehending the implications of the number 2,000,000. Oh, and blow me, you stupid twat."

She and her fellow complainants, who seem to think that, during emergencies, the local superhighways simply expand like water balloons to accept all of the additional flow in a way that they're somehow not capable of doing at any other time in Houston (like, say, during "rush hour"), are representatives of a special breed. That breed? The cadre of mentally and otherwise challenged whining bastards who expect "the government", whomever the hell that is, to simply make all problems, no matter how nasty and intractable, disappear from view.

Houston's officialdom has so far covered itself with glory in the process of preparing the city for what could be a catastrophic event, and while I understand the frustration of those who expected magic pixie dust to be available to free them from the shackles of reality and spirit them to safety (and, by extension, to ensure that hotels were both available and reserved for their use, I'd guess), I don't share that frustration and I wish that such folk would keep the irrefutable proof of their own idiocy to themselves. It's funny, in a cartoonish sort of way, but it's about as helpful as the ability to burp the names of the items in the periodic table of elements. Cute though immature at the beginning, really tiresome at all points thereafter.

As the always-eloquent Velociman put it (sorry, Maps!):

...only the foolish, the impudent, the fucking dumbasses are left.

But he left out one class of folk, the realists like me (although I'm also impudent). There's only so much you can do, and leaving the available road and hotel space to those who indisputably needed to evacuate (those from Galveston, South Houston, and East Houston down by Galveston Bay and the Ship Channel) seemed and seems a reasonable and realistic choice.

And if Rita up and slams my part of town, that'll just be a lot of tough shit, but it won't change the fact that I believe I've made the only logical choice. It sure seems to beat the hell out of a 24 to 36 hour drive from Houston to Dallas or points north, and the fact that drive takes so long has less than nothing to do with some failure of planning on the part of some nanny governmental agency, local or otherwise.

Oh, and for one of the other complainants in the story:

"I've been screaming in the car," said Abbie Huckleby, who was trapped on Interstate 45 with her husband and two children as they tried to get from the Houston suburb of Katy to Dallas, about 250 miles away. "It's not working. If I would have known it was this bad, I would have stayed at home and rode out the storm at home."

I'd suggest she should have had a look at the tee-vee to learn that she wasn't the only one leaving town. I'd then have suggested getting to a library if need be and using a computer. There's at least one way from Katy to Dallas that doesn't involve more than 3 miles of highway, dear, and it only adds 50 miles to the trip. But I suppose that's "the government's fault", too.

Welcome to the physical world, ladies.

While I've still got electricity and a connection to the internets, I figured I'd pass along this weather related news-like information from a friend in Ohio:

When you see this on the way to work you might as well turn around and go back home because it is not going to be a good day!

God may not play dice, but that doesn't imply an impaired sense of humor, or lack of access to Photoshop.

[wik] Message from the Ministry of Future Perfidy: The image above is lost to time. As a minor consolation, here is a random image of an ominous cloud:

OK - on the bright side, New Orleans should be spared too much more of the-rain-they-shorely-don't-need. On the other hand, Rita looks like she's coming straight up the poop-shute of my adopted hometown.

On the bright side in a parallel universe, the original thinking was that Houston would be on the "dirty side" of the hurricane, subject perhaps to a few tornadoes, but is no longer projected to be so situated. On the fourth hand, it looks like we'll be spared that indignity because the eye of this projected category 5 'cane is slated to go right over through Houston. Day-yam.

This story, from the 9/21 issue of The Onion, entitled "Bill Introduced As Joke Signed Into Law" brings to mind several real-life actions on the part of our elected congress-morons, like McCain-Feingold and the recently passed Porkfest 2005.

And while the Onion story itself is well-conceived, well-crafted, and funny, I somehow couldn't bring myself to give it the belly laugh it probably deserved.

I find myself, to no avail, wishing our public discourse contained just a bit more critical thought, such as that expressed by Dr. Walter Williams in his latest op-ed on money, and the egregious wasting thereof.

Live science has a top ten possible US disasters list. Here it is, with some commentary.

10. Pacific Northwest Megathrust Earthquake The fault line up there by Seattle is apparently a lot like the one that caused the Christmas Tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

9. New York Hurricane Hurricanes very rarely get this far north. But when they do, it’s bad. 1938 was the last time one hit, and 600 people died. There’s a lot more people there, and given the unpredictability of hurricanes once they head north, warning times might be in hours.

8. Asteroid Impact Depending on where it hits, and how big the rock is, this could range from annoying to devastating. An asteroid like the one that created the meteor crater in Arizona could easily take out a city if it hit the wrong spot. Given the way that earth-crossing asteroids can sneak up on us out of the sun, like the red baron, there might be no warning whatsoever.

7. Los Angeles Tsunami Another goddamned tsunami. Imagine the big one, the earthquake we all know is coming, combined with the flooding of Katrina.

6. Yellowstone Supervolcano I don’t know why this is ranked six, seeing as if this one lights up, we are all done for. A super volcano once knocked humanity down to under a few thousand people. This one, at the very least, would gut the entire middle of the country.

5. Midwest Earthquake This one would also gut the middle of the country. If the New Madrid fault slips, all those non-earthquake resistant cities in the heartland will fall over. St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, Vicksburg… All gone. Plus, flooding as the Mississippi evades centuries of Army Corps of Engineer constructed restraints.

4. Heat Waves We all felt a bit of schadenfreude when the French were unable to cope with a heat wave, and thousands died. It could happen here, but even if we avoided that, a serious, long term drought would cost a shitload of money.

3. East Coast Tsunami This list posits an asteroid impact as the root cause of an East Coast Tsunami. But there is another possibility, a little more down to earth. There is a volcano on the Canary Islands that, should it rip, could drop twenty cubic miles of dirt into the Atlantic. Given the westward facing alignment of this slab, it’s like a shotgun aimed at the East Coast of the United States. Regular Tsunamis are limited in the scope of their destruction because an earthquake is only going to move so much – thirty feet in the case of the Christmas Tsunami, and that becomes an upper bound on the size of the resultant waves. But when you drop large amounts of stuff in the water, there’s no limit. If all that rock dropped in at once, you could have 150 foot waves from Savannah to Boston. Of course, it might not all drop at once.

2. Gulf Coast Tsunami I didn’t know about this one, but apparently only the north coast of the United States is safe from tsunamis. This would probably do a lot more lethal damage on the islands, but it’s not like it’d be a picnic on the mainland.

1. Total Destruction of Earth This takes you back to a list of ways the whole shebang could go up in flames. Makes any run of the mill, regional disaster seem a little small.

A few years ago I thought I was on the path to enlightenment. No kidding; it's true. I had just gotten out of grad school with an M.A. that I wasn't sure I'd ever use and was keeping body in soul together renovating apartments for a property-management firm while living in the houses I was fixing up. My food budget was $12 a week and all I had to my name while all my crap was in (free) storage was a bag with some clothes, a Purdy paintbrush, a yoga mat, a blanket, a tiny portable stereo and a dozen cds. I also had Light on Yoga.

Light On Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar is probably the most influential book on yoga of all time. Iyengar, whose personal devotion to the art helped him overcome severe childhood illnesses, wrote the book in an effort to systematize the ancient discipline in order to eliminate what he considered the confusing, obstructive, or simply pointless accoutrements that had built up over time. Framing yoga as a comprehensive road to enlightment and inner peace, Iyengar presented a rigorous and exacting course of study that focused on asana (yoga poses) and pranayama (breathing techniques) as the first steps on that journey.

Over the course of 500 pages, Light on Yoga presented more than 200 poses ranging from the simple (mountain pose or tadmasana, in which one simply stands perfectly erect and concentrates on the energy flowing between head and floor through one's feet) to the ludicrously acrobatic (Tiriang Mukhottanasana, in which one bends over backward from a standing position and grabs one's ankles - from the back - while touching the floor only with the soles of the feet) to the nearly impossible (corpse pose, or savasana, in which one simply lies on the floor with the mind perfectly still and yet perfectly alert). Each pose was described in short pithy phrases describing the alignment of the body, and the last 50 pages comprised a sample six-year course of study that, Iyengar claimed, would allow the dedicated student to master the contents of the book.

Like many aspiring yogis, I was drawn to Iyengar's no-nonsense approach to the art. But after several years of on-and-off study and eighteen months of intensive daily work, I found myself unable to progress beyond "Week 17." This was somewhat frustrating; Week 17 was highly physically demanding, and I found myself working ever harder at yoga (both poses and meditation) even as I put off the realization that I had no future plans, no prospects, and counted as my "domicile" a post office box in Amherst, Massachusetts. I eventually moved to a new city and a new job and let the change of circumstance be an excuse to let my yoga pratice wither. It turned out that I was not on the path to enlightenment. I was on the long road to an unheated basement apartment in Queens, New York. Much different.

Now, I understand that "Iyengar: the book" is different from "Iyengar: the class." In classes, Iyengar is famous for his energy and fierceness, even going so far as to strike students to (as he has it) stop them from making mistakes that could injure them. Certainly he has been successful- his strenuous and highly precise style of yoga is now taught around the world and he stands as possibly the world's foremost practitioner of the art. His more recent books (Light on Yoga was first published in 1966) find him introducing props such as blocks to help beginning students properly align their bodies while not stretching as far as advanced students, and expounding at greater length about the spiritual foundations of his art. His life's goal has been to help people achieve enlightenment by joining the mind to the body ("yoga" comes from the Sanskrit for "to yoke"), and the physical efforts are, in reality, secondary to the inner journey students undertake. In fact, the first section of Light on Yoga, the part without helpful pictures and such, is really more important to Iyengar's presentation than all the twisty acrobatics. That was something that, for all my serious aspirations and meditation, never sank in.

A former student of Iyengar explains the difference well. In the introduction to his book Yoga, The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness, Erich Schiffman writes,

"His methodology worked. Many people attempt to discredit him by saying his yoga is not spiritual. But here it was! Spiritual in the most practical, grounded, obvious way. And it was equally obvious from what he said to me that his intent all along was to impart the experience of yoga - not just put everyone through the paces, physically speaking. The whole point of this physical, hard work - and it was very physical and very demanding - was to get into a deep meditative state. . . .

It took me a while before I was able to describe what had happened, but as I look back, I can see that this is when yoga finally became mine. I "got" yoga....

In Iyengar's classes, for example, he would say "Move your little finger this way " or "Stretch the skin here" - and I would, and it always felt right.... But I had no idea where he was coming up with all this marvelous information, this detailed insight into how the poses worked. But when [a colleague] taught me to create a line of energy [e.g. down my arm], suddenly all the intricacies that Iyengar had been talking about began happening by themselves.

Although some of my trouble with yoga - why I "failed" - had to do with the fact that I was poor, broke, directionless, and pretty much an untogether cat, more had to do with my inability to read between the lines of Iyengar's pithy words to get at the unhinted intricacies below.

The new Light on Life is probably Iyengar's last book, as he is now by my count 87 years old (though he can still stand on his head for half an hour). It is a hybrid - part inspirational biography, part manual for living, and part philosophical text. In it, Iyengar goes into detail about the philosophical underpinnings of yoga and how students can use yoga to navigate the path to (possibly) eventual enlightenment.

Light on Life is divided into five sections, each corresponding to one of the yogic kosas, or bodies - Stability: The Physical Body, Vitality: The Energy Body, Clarity: The Mental Body, Wisdom: The Intellectual Body, and Bliss: The Divine Body. Iyengar also describes in detail the eight petals of yoga (a subject touched on briefly in the introduction to Light On Yoga); ethical disciplines (yama), internal ethical observances (niyama), poses (asana), breath control (pranayama), sensory control and withdrawal (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and blissful absorption (samadhi). If this all seems absurdly recondite, well, it does start that way.

But Iyengar is a deep thinker with a lifetime's experience to draw upon and over the course of the book explains the place for all these frankly bizarre concepts within the larger context of the yogi's search for samadhi. Even for someone like me (who is not a particularly spiritual person), Light on Yoga contains some important pearls of wisdom. While reading Iyengar's section on the need for detachment from worldly things, I understood for the first time grief as a selfish feeling - being sad for one's own loss, not for the departed, who are beyond caring.

In short, Light on Life presents, like Light on Yoga, a rigorous and demanding course of action for improving the body and mind of the practitioner. But where Light on Yoga was terse and pithy, Light on Life is circular and discursive, allowing Iyengar to dwell on topics he feels most important to the reader, such as the slippery nature of dharana, dhyana and samadhi.

Those who will get the most out of this book are aspiring yoga students who are prepared to accept the spiritual (or more properly, inner) aspects of yogic philosophy. Without that context, Iyengar's words are, for all their unpretentious charm, just another self-help guide on how to live a richer life. This is not necessarily a bad thing; some people find solace in Chicken Soup For the Soul, some in the Bible, and some in the Baghavad Gita. It all depends on what brand of wisdom your mind is ready to receive.

A notable difference between Iyengar and Chicken Soup for the Soul and Dr. Phil, however, is that Iyengar repeatedly reminds readers that self-improvement through yoga is difficult, indeed often seemingly impossible. When is the last time that the self-help guru of the week told someone honestly, "this is going to take a very long time, and will often suck a ton. But you're going to have to stick with this if you want any reward?" This is a sentiment more often reserved for drug-treatment programs or prison, but Iyengar readily applies it to the simple aim of wanting to live one's current life more completely. This is refreshing, and if the payoff is that at 87 years old you can smile and laugh, share wisdom with joy and humility, and stand on your head for 30 minutes, then there are probably a lot of people willing to try.

Iyengar's love for life is evident in every page, and the rich intellectual and spiritual rigor he brings to the book makes it a fitting companion, even an extended prelude, to Light On Yoga. Although much of the book is beyond me, probably forever, this is a required text for any serious student of yoga. And even if the deeper explorations of yogic spirituality don't resonate, there is a great deal here worth reading. If yogic spirituality does happen to be your path, then there is much here that will smooth the rocky path toward eventual enlightment. Not that you'll probably ever get there, but as Iyengar stresses time and again (in an affirmation of life worthy of Camus), it's not the getting there but the journey that counts.

This review also appears on blogcritics.org.

Quick: Is this Pat Robertson quotation parody or the real thing? It's so hard to tell these days.

“Pat Robertson on Sunday said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of expressing its anger at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its selection of Ellen Degeneres to host this year’s Emmy Awards. “By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath,” Robertson said on “The 700 Club” on Sunday. “Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?”

Robertson also noted that the last time Degeneres hosted the Emmys, in 2001, the September 11 terrorism attacks took place shortly before the ceremony.

“This is the second time in a row that God has invoked a disaster shortly before lesbian Ellen Degeneres hosted the Emmy Awards,” Robertson explained to his approximately one million viewers. “America is waiting for her to apologize for the death and destruction that her sexual deviance has brought onto this great nation.”

If you said "parody"... you're right! For once, Robertson did not say this shockingly stupid thing. If you said "the real thing," well... there's always next time, and with Patty R, there will always be a next time.

I think Ellen Degeneres should change her name to Lesbian Ellen Degeneres.

[wik] But let's also not forget that Robertson is not only a funny clown capering for our enjoyment. Robertson's "charity," Operation Blessing (given a beeeeg boost a few weeks back by FEMA) is also doing its part to actively advance the cause of evil in the world, funneling money to shady African diamond cartels. I can't wait for all that hurricane relief money to end up buying AKs for some diamond "merchants" in Sierra Leone.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin taped an interview with Fox News. Details of the interview can be found in the AP article "Russia Said Won't Resume Cold War Rivalry". The taped interview was broadcast Sunday, September 17 18.

Mr. Putin had comments on a variety of interesting issues in addition to the article's title subject, such as referral of Iran to the UN Security Council (no), hectoring of Russia regarding its adherence to Western-style democracy (no) and whether he'll amend the Russian constitution so that he can run again in 2008 (again, no).

But he also had an opinion to share on the exit of US-led troops from Iraq, and I found it interesting in its wording, if not its intent - those opposed to the military presence and action in Iraq, for whatever their reasons, seem all to be calling for a timetable for withdrawal, and Putin's no different. Well, almost no different - he actually emitted several nuggets of truth, though he might not have intended to do so:

Putin, whose government fiercely opposed the war to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, said the U.S.-led coalition's military presence in Iraq is fueling the insurgency and urged that a deadline be fixed for the withdrawal of foreign troops.

"In our opinion, the fact of their presence there pushes the armed opposition to perpetrate acts of violence," Putin said.

The Russian president acknowledged that fledgling Iraqi security forces need time before they can take over from U.S.-led forces but said a timetable for a pullout is essential to "make everybody move in the right direction."

"I believe it should be within just over a year, or within two years, something like that. It will all depend on the situation in that country," he said.

So, it seems he agrees with Rumsfeld, Bush, and the rest of the US administration - the troops should be withdrawn when the time is right. And I don't think "uh, whenever" is, strictly speaking, a timetable for withdrawal. But it sure seems like the correct answer.

Because, like the man said, "It will all depend on the situation in that country."

A directory of uavs. Cool.

NASA has released its bold plan to send mankind to the stars. Well, to send a few people to the moon sometime in the next century, anyway. When President Bush promised in 2004 to do in sixteen years what we did forty years ago in eight, I was underwhelmed. I am now subunderwhelmed. Check out a few groundbreaking details:

NASA has been working intensely since April on an exploration plan that entails building an 18-foot (5.5-meter) blunt body crew capsule and launchers built from major space shuttle components, including the main engines, solid rocket boosters and massive external fuel tanks.

Meaning that using components that in large measure we have already invented and already used, in 13 years we can be back on the moon. And as an added bonus, the crew capsule will be disposable!

NASA's plan, according to briefing charts obtained by Space.com, envisions beginning a sustained lunar exploration campaign in 2018 by landing four astronauts on the moon for a seven-day stay.

That will be somewhere around the 45th anniversary of the immediately previous seven day moon mission.

NASA's plan envisions being able to land four-person human crews anywhere on the moon's surface and to eventually use the system to transport crew members to and from a lunar outpost that it would consider building on the lunar south pole, according to the charts, because of the regions elevated quantities of hydrogen and possibly water ice.

So we’re considering building an actual outpost. Sometime around 2080, I imagine. By the time NASA gets around to building that, they might have to rent landing space from Branson’s Virgin Galactic Lunar Amusement Park.

One of NASA's reasons for going back to the moon is to demonstrate that astronauts can essentially "live off the land" by using lunar resources to produce potable water, fuel and other valuable commodities. Such capabilities are considered extremely important to human expeditions to Mars which, because of the distances involved, would be much longer missions entailing a minimum of 500 days spent on the planet's surface.

Hey that’s a great reason. Prove you can live off the land, using a hundred billion dollars worth of lowest-bidder equipment. That’ll show the Chinese.

NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle is expected to cost $5.5 billion to develop, according to government and industry sources, and the Crew Launch Vehicle another $4.5 billion. The heavy-lift launcher, which would be capable of lofting 125 metric tons of payload, is expected to cost more than $5 billion but less than $10 billion to develop, according to these sources.

$10 billion dollars. That’s not a lot of money. Of course, that’s just to develop the vehicles. Then we’ll actually have to buy them. Maybe one or two, so we can make one Lunar voyage per year and still have launch capacity to service the ISS and Hubble. I should think that by using pre-existing hardware, you’d be able to actually, you know, save money.

NASA would like to field the Crew Exploration Vehicle by 2011, or within a year of when it plans to fly the space shuttle for the last time.

Or put another way, no less than a year after Rutan wins the $50 million prize for first reusable private orbital vehicle

Development of the heavy lift launcher, lunar lander and Earth departure stage would begin in 2011.

By which time, all the manufacturing plants developing the shuttle components will be closed, and using those parts will no longer be possible, seeing as we’ll probably lose another shuttle sometime in the next six years.

By that time, according to NASA's charts, the space agency would expect to be spending $7 billion a year on its exploration efforts, a figure projected to grow to more than $15 billion a year by 2018, that date NASA has targeted for its first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.

$7 billion a year. Just imagine what smart people could do with that sort of cash.

How anyone could imagine that this is a sensible plan is beyond me. The engineers at NASA certainly know better. If NASA just used the comparatively honest and efficient defense procurement system, they could be back on the moon in a few years, especially given that they could use pre-tested shuttle components. Aargh.