Stopping the power from going out should be our first priority, but it’s also smart to prepare for a “soft landing” when blackouts do happen. Here there should be two priorities: first, systems that fail gracefully rather than catastrophically; second, long-term backup power for critical systems.

via U.S. Woefully Unprepared for a Blackout Like India’s: Analysis – Popular Mechanics.

Meet Dentist in A Box, the dental emergency kit for the soldier in the field. For basic everyday dental emergencies, this Australian company has created a re-sealable plastic kit approximately the size of a CD (6.3 inches by 5.9 inches) that weighs about an ounce and a half.

via Whole Truth For Hole In Tooth? Meet The ‘Dentist In A Box’ For Soldiers | Fox News.

Pretty cool.

Or listen to Monica Burke, a 44-year-old emergency dispatcher from Seattle: “Our whole world was in chaos. We didn’t even know where we were except that we were in some weird time zone in Canada. I didn’t know when I was getting home, but these people basically put their lives on hold. I mean, their kids couldn’t go to school because we were using the schools as shelters.

via In unlikely place, the human face of 9/11 | 9news.com.

People are still good.

When a hurricane makes landfall, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency relies on a couple of metrics to assess its destructive power.First, there is the well-known Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. Then there is what he calls the “Waffle House Index.”Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.Waffle HouseThe mobile command center, above, went to Havelock, N.C., during Irene.”If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate has said. “Thats really bad. Thats where you go to work.”

via Waffle House Index Measures Hurricane Recovery – WSJ.com.

Yup.

Quake rocks Washington area, felt on East Coast – Yahoo! News.

That could be a problem. Not too much damage but the inspections will be a pain.

There was a 5.3 in Segundo, CO. but that doesn’t make the news. sigh.

“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again,” Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa.  “But over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck.”  Obama listed three events overseas — the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan, and the European debt crises — which set the economy back.

via Obama: I reversed recession until ‘bad luck’ hit | Campaign 2012. 

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

– Robert Heinlein

With pianists getting better and better, so many are so good that, paradoxically, I am less impressed by virtuosity.

via Yuja Wang and Kirill Gerstein Lead a New Piano Generation – NYTimes.com.

For an article from the NYT, I would have expected them to ask the obvious question. Is it because they are finding more talented students or is it just the 10,000 hour rule from Malcolm Gladwell?

Shouldn’t it be easy to find out how long they have played and if they actually love to play and have talent for it, or is it they are just good at it from playing all the time?

According to the CBO baseline spending (go here, page 18), which I understand is the baseline for the cuts of $2.4 trillion, the Federal government will spend $46.1 trillion over the next ten years. So we’re going to go from 46.1 trillion over the next ten years to a mere $43.7 trillion?

via Shame on you, Joe Nocera.

So that is going to make a huge difference, right? Right?

That works out to be a 5% cut. Cutting to the bone there aren’t we?

Sunday marked the 35th anniversary of one of Colorado’s most tragic incidents, The Big Thompson Flood. More than 140 people were washed away in a matter of hours and five bodies were never found.

via Community gathers to remember those lost in Big Thompson flood | 9news.com.

While Colorado is unlikely to ever get hit with a tsunami, flooding is still an issue.

Then, there’s what Grantham calls “the real bugbear” — soil. We don’t often hear predictions of markets in soil or wars fought over soil, but soil erosion caused by deforestation becomes a vicious circle, he writes. History is rich with examples of erosion, mainly due to plowing.

via FT Alphaville » Grantham on looming peak dirt.

You thought Peak Oil, and Peak Water were bad. Look out here comes Peak Dirt.

Really he’s talking about potassium and phosphorus. Which is an issue.

Or course if we had enough energy we could just extract them and a few other things from ocean water, but plentiful energy is bad.