Mindful that the Italian courts,
in the majesty of their wisdom, recently
sentenced several scientists to prison for having failed to predict an earthquake (a thing
which indeed is unpredictable, save here and there and in the most general
terms, with uncertainties on either side
measured
not in days,
but in decades), the World of Dr
Justice ®,
the world’s most
trusted source of
Reasonably Truthy Science Stuff ©, is not about to
make the same mistake.
Therefore:
Here is our Official Bulletin concerning the impending
Hurricane Sandy:
Everyone from Florida
to Canada should
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES !!!
Floridians! Abandon your vehicles
(since the interstate will be in gridlock) and proceed on foot. Don’t Look Back; do not stop till you reach Canada.
Canadians! Leave your hybrids in the carpark
(since they have a carbon footprint), and proceed on foot to Florida.
Texans! You unfortunately are a bit west of the epicenter; proceed to the scene of the action at
once (and take your guns).
While waiting for the fun to begin, grab yourself some
popcorn and pull up a cosy chair,
and savor our earlier alarmist storm-of-the-century-related
posts:
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
[Sunday -- 11 a.m. ]
FLASH UPDATE
In Europe, the mayhem has already begun!
The reach of this unprecedented weather-system spans the Atlantic !!
Les vents violents entraînent disparitions
et incidents
Un enfant de 12
ans et un véliplanchiste de 26 ans
sont portés disparus dans le sud du pays.
Flee your homes !!!
[Sunday -- 11:45 a.m]
EVEN FLASHIER UPDATE
And now it’s affecting the Pacific as well !
Emergency sirens sounded around
Hawaii late Saturday warning about
an oncoming tsunami, after a powerful earthquake struck off the coast of
Canada.
Will Hurrican Sandystein respect no limits ??
U R
doomed !!
[Sunday, 12:47 a.m.] FLASHIEST UPDATE OF ALL
Dateline NEWARK --
As in previous storms-of-the-century, city leaders are concerned about
the possibility of storm-related looting:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/08/newark_asks_east_ward_resident.html
Yet in an ironic development, even though the rain has yet to
fall, the looting has begun already, in a celebratory mood. “Why wait?” commented one
participant. “We’d get wet. Plus, later, all the best stuff will be
gone.”
At press-time, big-screen TVs were the most coveted items, with iPads and iPhones also doing a brisk business.
[Latest greatest update]
In Europe meanwhile, the situation grows worse and
worse. Here is just a sampling of
the panicked commentary from readers:
Arrêtez de faire peur aux gens. Du
temps de mes arrières grands-parents il y avait aussi des tempêtes . Mais
évidemment sans télé, ni radio, personne n'était au courant, sauf ceux qui
subissaient les intempéries et pour lesquelles ils n'en faisait pas une affaire
d'Etat et encore moins de la publicité pour se faire mousser et ramasser
l'argent des imbéciles.
For those of you whose French might be weak, our crack Linguistics Team is offering
the following official translations:
Mon dios, is storm of century 4 sure
! Just as like Nostradamus predicted !! Rather than watch them suffer
needlessly, I have just executed my entire family.
More at the top of the hour.
~
Meanwhile in America, Republicans have got their priorities
straight:
Sandy’s reach will extend as far as
450 miles from its core, which prompted at least one governor, Chris Christie
of New Jersey, to order evacuations of coastal areas and the state’s casinos.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/hurricane-sandy-continues-its-march-to-the-east-coast/2012/10/27/4f1a3d3e-204e-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_story.html?hpid=z2
(Schools and hospitals will pretty much have to fend for
themselves.)
[Update 3:05 p.m., 30 Oct 2012]
Big storms often bring out the best in neighbors and first-responders, but not in the media: neither in the pre-storm breathlessness, nor the post-storm stirring-the-ashes in search of human interest.
Just heard the mid-afternoon NPR news. With only five minutes to devote to all the happenings and doings around the planet, their featured segment consisted of a phone convo with a woman in Hoboken, who had not, herself, personally, experienced anything remarkable, nor witnessed anything of note (as she verified by briefly describing the scene from her apartment window), but who had seen some photographs (on the Internet or TV), which showed that certain streets of Hoboken were "literally" flooded.
Leave it to Romney, to take things just one level lower.
Today he held a campaign event. Not knocking him
at all for that -- just because NY & NJ got rained on, no reason for the rest of the world to put life on hold. He'd done business as usual, no beef from me. But what he did instead was:
(a) announce that the event was canceled
(b) go ahead and hold it anyway, only
(c) now in the eye-service, Potemkin-village guise of "storm relief".
Now, had he flitted off to Battery Park or Red Hook and played Man-of-the-People, that would be bad enough. But the event went on, as scheduled, in
Ohio: not for anything related to the storm, but because it's a swing state.
You can picture the scene, a few days from now, as unruffled New Yorkers, perfectly inured to Republican hostility ("FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD"), are once again dining in their favorite restaurants, when in rushes a worker from the Romney campaign, having finally made it out to the East Coast, brandishing a can of Cheeze-Whip or Macaroni-O soup. "It's from Governor Romney!"
If elected, Romney may or may not get around to abolishing FEMA, as he earlier hinted he would do. But quite likely he'll appoint a well-connected moron to head it up, as Dubya did. The way to inspire public contempt for government, is to make government contemptible.
