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Thursday, July 28, 2005 |
Too Close to 100 for Comfort, and Far From Relief (washingtonpost.com). washingtonpost.com - Irene Karulis, 86, sat in her darkened, airless living room yesterday, trying to recall the maddening moment when her home in Northwest Washington lost electrical power for the second time in a matter of days. [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]
The United States is arguably the richest nation on the planet. It spends billions every year on military equipment, health benefits, and paper. And yet the District of Columbia as well as other jurisdictions cannot keep the power on to local residents during a mild heat wave. There was an op-ed piece in the Washington Post over the weekend that addressed just this issue. The infrastructure in the United States is crumbling. To the tune of needing more than a few billion dollars to fix. Some 50% of bridges are below standard or unsafe. As we all know, roads are barely drivable in many areas and cannot be repaired becasue of the high volume of traffic that flows over them daily, which in many cases cannot be rerouted for the duration of time need to invoke repairs. The electrical grid has already failed once in the Northeast in the last 5 years and experts predict is will fail again, possibly catastrophically to the point of either pulling down other portions of North America (not just the United States but the continent) or resulting in a crippled system that is not what it is today. How many people can function without a computer? What about comerce? Banking? Phone service?
This is not a trivial issue.
1:37:35 PM 
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Hundreds of Boy Scouts fall ill from heat at Jamboree. The Boy Scouts marched onto the field singing, plopping down in the grass to wait for President Bush. But hours later, the news ... [USATODAY.com Nation - Top Stories]
I was a Scout (Canadian, not US) and I cannot begin to think what these people are being taught. It is clear that someone remembered the old saw about putting your tent under something dangerous, but clearly the leaders did not. Now we have people passing out in the heat. Did they not get the forcast that everyone else in the region got? That there was a heat advisory up and you should limit your outdoor activity? And then to sit in a field while the President of the United States decided whether or not he was going to show up in the afternoon sun? Come on people, lets use a little sense. Or perhaps, after the ghost of Baden-Powell gets finished with the so called leaders of this debacle, we can begin to teach proper outdoor skills to the people in charge who clearly have never been out of an air conditioned office before.
12:55:28 PM
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Big-money folks in line to purchase Washington Nationals. Behind the scenes this summer, a fierce competition is under way among some well-connected political players. The prize at stake ... [USATODAY.com MLB NL - Top Stories]
I have to admit, the Nationals are playing one heck of a game. It is amazing what having a home stadium will do for you. Sure, there are a couple of new players as compared to a year ago when they were the Expos. Morale is better when you have more than a couple of fans cheering you on (and if you have ever been to Olympic Stadium in Montreal, it takes a few thousand fans to make is seem like you have anyone in the stadium).
They are in a bit of a pickle right now, with some key injuries, but the team will bounce back. What concerns me more is the politics behind the ownership struggle (what, you thought this was about baseball?). Tom Davis of Virginia seems to think that who owns a team (baseball in this case) and what political party they belong to is an issue. As a carrot, there is the ownership of the Nationals. As a stick, there is baseball's anti-trust exemption. This is not a game and certainly not one that any sports fan wants to ignore, unless of course, you want the govenment telling you who can and cannot own your local sports team.
8:35:30 AM
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© Copyright 2005 David Lane.
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