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Harden the Cell Towers! Love the Hams!

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 The Almost Total Loss of Communications  Was a Major Complication in the Response  to Helene in Western North Carolina LOOK OUT,  HERE COMES MILTON! - 60% to 80% of the Helene outages were caused by direct damage to the cell towers. - We know how to make them hurricane-proof. (Tougher structurally, backup power, backup network connections) - Right now the hardened towers are only in the areas threatened by hurricanes in "normal" times.  - Since America has become hugely dependent on cell phones for primary communications, we must invest in protecting cell service even in the most catastrophic situations. Especially in those times. - Catastrophes that can wipe out cell service go far beyond hurricanes.  Wildfires are a biggie. Earthquakes, or a major solar storm could do it. A nuclear explosion, even one in space, would zap the electronics. - Hardening against all these threats will seriously bump up our survivability score. Only government mandates will move the big cell pr
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Consumer Economy, Albuquerque. Endgame

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52" TV; Temperpedic (partial); "New" Stuff & So much more The East Mountain transfer station, one of three dropoffs in Bernalillo County Bernalillo Co. landfill, one of two All that stuff was once new. Shiney silver, red and blue. A meditation on mortality. For you who still deny reality.
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Well Now!

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Even a Blind Squirrel... It seemed obvious to me, So I posted: Scooter Duff's Theory of Cosmology This is the third update, and it's looking good! From NewScientist And from the journal Physical Review Letters GRANTED I missed a couple quantum chromodynamics points...Duh... but for a layguy, I'd say I bulls-eyed this sucker.  Check it out, cosmology fans, complete with updates. Just bragging.
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Faster Than a Speeding Drought

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FLASH DROUGHTS Droughts Are Usually Slowly Developing Catastrophes Sort of Slo-Mo Trainwrecks So slow, they are hard to "see" if you are in the middle of a developing one. At least that's the case in a typical drought. "Typical" is getting harder to come by in these times of Climate Change (CC) with all the "thousand year" events happening anually and "hundred year" events happening monthly. Still, it's surprising how fast a destructive drought can develop these days. Meteorologists call them "Flash Droughts" (FD) That's a scary addition to the list of bad weather events. Here's how they work. Heat Domes (HD) are large areas of high pressure (HP) that capture and compress hot air and park over some part of the country and just sit there getting hotter and hotter and.  Usually HP areas move along from west to east in our hemisphere, but CC has made the jet stream (JS) weird. CC is causing instability in the JS so that it
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First Kamala Endorsement I Saw After the Switcheroo

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 In stunning sequence this Sunday morning, I got this from Bob Fertig , then the news of Prez Biden's withdrawal, then word that he gave Kamala Harris his strongest endorsement: "The best decision I made" in selecting her for V.P. 10 reasons why our next President will be Kamala Harris 1. She’s ready to be President For 4 years, Kamala Harris has been preparing to become President if anything happened to Biden. She has helped shape important policies, worked closely with Biden’s top advisors, presided over the Senate, campaigned across the country, and met with leaders around the world. The transition from Biden to Harris would be seamless. 2. She’s ready to be the Nominee Harris is the only Democrat who can take over the Biden-Harris campaign, and all the money it has raised. 3. She’s ready to defeat Trump At age 59, Harris has the energy, experience, and debating skills to go head-to-head against Trump – and beat him by enough to prevent another insurrection. 4. She’ll
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The Ultimate Political Platform (UPDATED 7/21/2024)

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(I realize in the current Biden drama, policy isn't top of mind, but the search for Grand Strategies must not stop. To execute the idea below, big -- nay, huge -- changes must happen. We are in serious need of change. Read on...) UPDATE!   (I love saying that.) Yay, President Biden. Yay Veep Harris! Yay Democrats! Now you need a fresh super plank to overcome the blank stares when you point out what a fantastic job the Dems are doing. Coalesce all the Climate, Science, Health, Infrastructure, Economic and American Industry wins into a powerful umbrella platform. Give Kamala Harris a big new policy weapon... LIKE THIS ONE.  What Idea Will Appeal to the Most People? WE WILL OPTIMIZE THE WORKFORCE! THE WORKFORCE --  Definition:    All who work for wages -- salaries, commissions or hourly -- and for whom those wages are their primary source of income.   Not the billionaires; Not the "1%"; Not even the "5%" That leaves the 95%, us, thee and me. We are a varietous* bun
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Another A.I. Whizbanger

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  A two-paragraph AI summary of a four page draft. and a guess at the plot It was (sorta) spot on.  Working on the sequel to Lucas 2.0, I'm sweating out a chapter that moves several currents of the story simultaneously,  and I'm having a tough time of it. Purely for distraction (i.e. procrastination), I decided to put the current draft up for a little AI commentary; it might confirm I'm getting the points over I want to. I've read that's the way some writers are using AI. This little exercise was done with  Copilot , MS Bing's version of ChatGPT 4.  I uploaded the chapter and used this prompt: " This is a segment of a chapter in a sci-fi novel. Please give a two-paragraph summary and briefly take a crack at what the premise of the book might be." Speed reading's my thing. Co-Pilot read the chapter, thought about it long and hard, wrote the summary I requested, and did a considered speculation on what the rest of the book might be about. All that i
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