Mount What's-Its-Name

(More pictures available at The Boston Globe.)

Eyjafjallajökull. Legend has it that the erupting Icelandic volcano will only cease its wrath of lava, ash, lightning, and European flight delays when somebody pronounces its name correctly.

I wonder if Bobby Jindal still giggles at the thought of volcano monitoring?

Volcanoes!

I bet the ancient people of Pompeii wished they had a volcano warning system. Unfortunately, they lacked the technology and didn't understand the warning signs.

But 1700 years later, technological and scientific research was progressing. In 1839, King Ferdinand II agreed to the construction of the Vesuvius Observatory. It was celebrated as a place of research and observation of natural phenomena. Today, the observatory is still a center for Geophysics, Volcanology, Geodesy and Geochemistry studies.

Where are we today in the US? Do our politicians possess the same logic, forethought and self-interest? Paul Krugman sums up the current philosophy of the GOP as "snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. " Of course Krugman is referring to Bobby Jindal's speech earlier this week where he attempted to discredit the economic recovery package by mocking magnetic levitation trains and volcano monitoring...

A $140 million provision of the The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act goes to the United States Geological Survey for "repair, construction and restoration of facilities; equipment replacement and upgrades including stream gages, and seismic and volcano monitoring systems; national map activities; and other critical deferred maintenance and improvement projects." After all, the goal of the USGS is to reduce the vulnerability of the people and areas most at risk from natural hazards. And surely the employment of people for these projects will have the intended stimulative effect.

Jindal should know all about natural disasters, but he'd rather remain ignorant and play politics with people's lives. How is it that a king of yore was more enlightened than this guy?

Now Is The Time...

Hey, I thought American Idol would be on tonight? I turned on the TV and all I got was speeches. Well, I wasn't really in the mood, so I only half listened and watched. I watched the amusing game of simon-says going on with Pelosi trying to be the first to jump up and applaud...

But President Obama's speech was worthy of applause. He didn't present any new policy, but I have to say I felt a tiny bit more optimistic by the end. And despite all the devotion to bipartisanship, Obama stuck it to the Republicans:

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

I've recently learned that the looting of a company's wealth is called a "bust-out" con, and it accurately describes eight years of the Bush administration: "...fraudsters pretending to take an interest in running a business use a down payment to gain access to the company’s credit lines and assets, then max out all the credit lines, sell off assets at fire sale prices, then clear out just before the deposit check bounces, leaving a bankrupted company hollowed out by unpayable debt." I'm assuming that's against the law.

After Obama's speech, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal stepped out to give the Republican boilerplate response. Oh God. First of all, why the rebuttal speech? I guess it's automatically assumed that the other party will be opposed to everything the President says. But obviously, if you want the public to ever trust Republicans again, don't remind them about Hurricane Katrina! Don't go there Jindal! No! Anyway, my response to Jindal's response: "a star was not born tonight."