Jimmy

People who know me well (or have read this blog in the past week) might know about my great love of the TV show 24, still other (and probably more) people will know that I’m a feminist, and some other people (again, anyone who’s read this blog probably) might know of my love of analyzing things to death.

So it is that tonight these three loves of mine come together as I post [in what might very well become a weekly feature on this blog] my thoughts on the latest episode of 24 (12pm-1pm, aired January 19th). Obviously, a very large SPOILER ALERT applies to the below discussion.

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You know it’s bad when the 12th most searched for term on Google right now is “frozen pipes what to do“.

It hit -15.8°F at 6:25am at my house last night with the windchill bottoming out near -28°F (that, of course, does not take into account how it feels when the wind gusts, which would be quite a bit colder), now it has rebounded to the balmy temperature of 10° above zero and tonight is supposed to be a good deal warmer than last night, so I think the worst is over, at least in Indiana.

Classes were, in fact, canceled today at HU. Power wasn’t restored until just minutes before 9am, when the first classes of the day normally start, so I was able to sleep in and get another 7 hours of sleep (on top of the 4 I had gotten through 8am) which was very, very nice. But this means that all my friends on campus had to spend the coldest night the area as seen in many years (edit: NWS says it hasn’t been this cold in 24 years) in unheated dorm rooms and/or crowded warming locations, neither of which had to be really fun. I hope they’re all OK.

Anyway. I should go see about some breakfast of something.

Cheers.

-j

Today’s Schlock Mercenary is a good analogy for how I feel on more days than I would like to admit. Kinda like today.

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So there’s this power outage. Some power poles snapped (Duke Energy says they don’t know way, but it seems to me that given the extremely cold temperatures the likes of which we haven’t seen in years, the power poles probably got very brittle and any moisture inside them froze in the -14° and snapped [at least that's probably what happened to one, the other three were probably pulled down by it], but who knows, maybe somebody hit them with a car) and plunged 2600 people in Huntington into the dark and cold, including the campus of my University (I live half a mile from campus and am literally 2 blocks from the power outage zone, words can not describe how glad I am that I still have power). Now, originally there was a rumor that it would be fixed by 1am, but it’s now 2am and Duke is still reporting 2,652 people in the dark, including Huntington University. So the big million dollar question of the night is: how soon will the power get back on, and will classes be canceled in the morning (it’s January-Term where we have only two class times every day: 9am-11am and 1pm-3pm, I’m in a 9am class…meeting in 6.7 hours)? Duke says they don’t know how long it’ll take to fix the power poles, and even if that’s the only issue causing the blackout since there are some outages nearby, as well, so it could be hours…or it could be in 10 minutes and the classrooms will have time to rewarm and nobody will ever know that we had no power (except those poor students in the dorms who are probably freezing too death right now).

Personally speaking, I think that since a lot of students probably didn’t have time to do their homework, sleep or really think about their morning (or afternoon) classes at all this evening/night (power’s been out since before 8pm), that classes should be canceled, but then, if they were, who would know? The e-mail server went down with everything else and we have no way of being told if classes are on or not (different Q: why does an organization of hundreds of people that hosts all it’s own web and e-mail servers not have a back-up generator for said servers?). At least we commuters don’t have any way of knowing…the on-campus students will know from their RAs and RDs. Of course, I’m willing to bet that with no power for 6+ hours and a temperature cold enough to melt brain tissue (I guess it just feels that way, but anyway…) some of the students in the dorms have gone to a local church that has opened their (much warmer) doors to any HU students who want to actually be warm tonight, and are therefore out of the loop in terms of being told about the morning class status.

In short: it’s all a big mess and I want to know if I should do my homework for the morning or just not, plus if I can sleep in in the morning.

Alas, I don’t think I’ll be getting answers to any of those questions within the next few hours. What a shame.

And they were just talking about installing an emergency student contact system using txting…seems like this is a good endorsement of that idea, plus the idea of having a back-up power supply on the networking equipment.

Hmm.

-j

Today is officially the coldest day since I got my weather station nearly 7 years ago. Currently it’s -13°F and dropping. When the novelty of the whole thing wears off this is really starting to annoy me. I enjoyed walking home in -1°F and sun this morning, but that is very different from -13° and no sun right now…not to mention the wind which produces a wind chill of less than -27°.

I really, really, really do not want to go to class tomorrow morning when it’s going to be even colder than this.

I love the Midwest’s thunderstorms. They’re next to none, but I’m really starting to hate winter here. I’ve lived here my entire life and only the last couple of years have I begun to really dislike a third (sometimes half) of the entire year’s weather. It may be time to leave this place.

Hmm.

-j

Right now it’s -4*F outside. That’s the coldest it’s been since February 2007.

But the real story is tonight, when it’s supposed to plummet to -16F. If that happens it will be the coldest temperature I’ve ever recorded since I got my weather station in March 2002. Brrr.

Cheers.

-j

From the wonderful folks at XKCD:

And yet geeks kinda run the world anyway. Scary, huh?

-j

So Joe the Plumber has landed himself a gig as a war reporter and is in Israel for 10 days “to cover Israel’s side of the” current massacre, sorry I mean “conflict”, in Gaza.

So far so good, aside from the part where he’s concerned that we poor Americans are getting cheated out of hearing the truth about this conflict that has killed nearly 1,000 Gazans and…13 Israelis, but that’s not my main point, my main point is that while in Israel on assignment as a war reporter he told a group of journalists, and I quote: “I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting,” and “You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, ‘well, look at this atrocity,’ well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.”

The irony of Joe landing a job as a war reporter and then telling the other reporters to go home is just too, too rich. The guy’s ego has no bounds, does it?

Before I end this post, I would just like to point out that while only 3 of the 13 dead Israelis have been civilians, fully one third (over 300) of the dead Gazans have been children. I don’t know exactly how many have been (adult) civilians, but the percentage of dead civilians in Gaza, to say nothing of the extremely lopsided Gazan-to-Israeli death ratio, is surely much higher than it is in Israel.

Glad to hear Joe’ll be bringing us all the important facts on those 3 dead Israeli civilians. I look forward to it with baited breath.

-j

Spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen 8am-noon of Day 7 of 24 (e.g. the first four episodes).

(Follow me after the jump for my thoughts.)
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The death toll has reached 913, with a 69:1 Gazan-to-Israeli ratio. An average of 57 people per day. That’s higher than the daily average of Iraqi deaths since we invaded Iraq nearly 6 years ago.

40 Gazans were killed on Sunday compared to 0 Israelis. That’s a daily ratio of…∞:0.

Anyone watch the 24 Season 7 premiere tonight? One of the season plot lines seemed oddly apt to the current crisis in Gaza. I noted that on the show they’re handling it a bit differently from how we’re handling this crisis.

All our government needs to do is stop enabling Israel. That needs too happen. Now.

Cheers.

-j

OK wait, is this supposed to make us forget about or forgive this? Because the former is common sense (don’t we give Israel enough aid as it is?) and the latter is a truly reprehensible act that boggles the mind.

BBC tells us that Israel has already massacred 820 Gazans over the past two weeks, including 235 children (hardly Hamas terrorists, no?), and Hamas has killed…13 Israelis.

Every country has “a right to defend itself” like the US House declared on Friday when they voted 390 to 5 in support of Israel’s current genocide in Gaza, but this has gone way beyond “defending themselves.” If Israel wanted to stop the Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel (a perfectly understandable desire) they could have spent a few minutes to consult with their intelligence services (or even those of their powerful ally and fellow aggressor: the United States) to find out where the Hamas rockets and/or leaders where located (or, failing at that relatively simple task, they could just go house-to-house in Gaza, they certainly have the power to control the territory and not let anybody out) and then send in some strike teams that will take the Hamas fighters out back and shoot them in the back of the head. It’s simpler, easier, less costly, takes less military personnel and most of all: saves the lives of at least 235 innocent children who have lost their lives in response to the deaths of 13 people.

But Israel knew that was a possibility and they didn’t do it. Why not? Could be they think this will send a better message to other terrorist groups contemplating attacks on them, but I think it has more to do with the act that they know they can get away with it without any major push-back from they allies…mainly the United States, and they were damn right. Rather than get any push-back, they got a blanket approval from the United States government both in actions (Iraq) and words (Friday’s congressional vote).

Well I have one thing to say to those 390 congresspeople who voted yes on Israel’s war of unthinkable aggression: at this point, each and every one of you is responsible for the deaths of 2.1 Gazans. That number will surely rise in the coming hours, days and possibly weeks. If the United States government stood up and spoke out against this type of violence in one of our own allies, and especially if we cut off funding for Israel, I would be very surprised if it wouldn’t give Israel at least a moment of pause, if not pushing them to completely quit the offensive actions against a trapped helpless people.

Democrats: remember how we were angry and steamed and began working to end the Iraq War posthaste when we found out it was a war based on lies and that we had no reason to be there because the rational for the war was flawed? Well, guess what: Israel had no rational to offer for their war on Gaza. They wanted the rocket fire to stop, fine, but there are better ways that they could do that as I outlined above (bloody fuck, you idiots: why do you need a 19-year-old college student to tell you these things for crying out loud?). But you know what? It’s another country’s business, and if we learned anything from our little Iraq adventure it’s not to meddle in other country’s business. So stop it: stop fucking enabling people who are doing exactly what we were so aghast at in Iraq once we found out it was an unjust war (some of us knew that from the state, but that’s water under the bridge…). So you know what? We’re anti-Iraq War right? Because it’s a mindless, needless bloodbath? Israel’s Gaza Incursion is a mindless, needless bloodbath. You’re hypocrites for voting in support of Israel on this matter. You need to reverse that vote and cut off all funding to Israel. Now.

Otherwise you’ve proved that you’re no better than the republicans we voted out in 2006 and 2008.

And Obama? Stop being mum on the first major international issue you’re going to face as president and STAND UP AGAINST IT. Otherwise the fact that Hillary voted for the Iraq War will look like a saintly gesture. I’m serious. Show some guts you’ve never shone before, show you can stand up to bullying countries. SHOW US THAT YOU’RE REALLY A WASHINGTON OUTSIDER by going against the unthinkable stance your party has taken on this issue of the murder of hundreds of children.

With little hope of a sudden change of heart in Washington,

-jimmy