David Custis Kimball - blog
You: Why Dave; why now?
Me: Well, I've two talented kids; the younger mentioned my stopping with the lectures. Then enthusiastically asked, 'Dad, can I help you set up a blog?' Moments later, Me: 'OK, that's a great idea, thinkin' they might just read it someday.
me ---> 'Gaarr of Blog' <---
Goto oft comments on Art, Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), CommoNonsense, Dance, Dark Matter, Design, Etc., Environment, Eventspace, Fable, Food, Frogsense, Hazard Mitigation, Hegel, History, Horsense, Human Affairs, Humor, Law+Lawless, Mathematics, Medicine, Music, Nerd Stuff, Parenting, Physics, Psychophysics, Real Estate, Sailing, Science, Science Fiction, Swimming, Technology, Theology, UncommonSense, and Waldo, alphabetically.
Just use 'Search' for the topic of choice or Waldo, perhaps.
Matters of Import & Timely Expertise
repressing gossip and hate-speech.
An Unmapped Ponderocity:
To say: '"He is a man of truth," is to say nothing; to say: "He is a man of of," is to state an elementary truth of logic.'
Winston Davids, 1969 - Trinity College Valedictorian - 1970; known endeavor: actuarial contributions to The Donald; since has contacted me and sadly is quite ill. Ask prayers for recovery; thanks for his brilliance and music.
Wearing the Idea-logical FEMA cap
Environment, Design
Sorry no pictures, but this is kind of a soapbox plea. I’ve been in trouble before as I was defending the restoration of South Florida after Hurricane Andrew from 1994 until 1996. As a Hazard Mitigation Specialist, it was my bureaucratic job to analyze the destructive results caused by the Andrew (many referred to it as St. Andrew because the economy benefited by the massive influx of restorative funds).
Some of my least popular recommendations were:
1. Let a section of the botanical garden in Miami, that was destroyed by Andrew remain destroyed and show people how it would ‘naturally’ recover. Cost: $0
2. After a Dade County library was ravaged, and million$ were spent on restoring the books, I recommended an upgrade to the roof system: to replace a spot-welded metal deck with a screwed down metal deck. Cost: $.05 /sf. (The original destruction was caused by failure of a spot-welded specification.)
3. Virtual rain gauges replaced ‘Actual Rain Gauges’, meaning that amounts could be forecast better as storms arrived from over the Gulf of Mexico to land. In areas plagued by flooding, higher areas which would overburden their property with water absorbing materials (leaves, mulch) or even pools or small ponds would be subsidized by those who were flood-prone, insisted on short lawns and other stuff. Even expensive water retention underground, filter fabric surrounded gravel, retainage systems are useless when water levels get too high too quickly. Nothing but local surface percolating systems can mitigate the ‘paving of the suburbia’. Look at Nashville, TN. The manicured lawns didn’t help, did they, or the pesticides that kill all the microorganisms that actually use water … drink it to promote life. What a concept.
Well as we were winding down, 4 years after the storm. I wanted to project a pure Idea-logical mitigational and bilingual perspective on my entire contribution to hubristical endeavor of Hazard Mitigation. It turns out is true, somewhat vulgar, and humorously intended to be remembered for its ‘root strength’. Here goes: ’How is Hazard Mitigation like good sex? …. Well, you have to harden the Wurst first.’
To that point, unless you are fixing the ‘root cause’ of the damage, you are adding to the debris field of the next storm.
So why now, what now? The huge oil flow into the water column of the Gulf. It’s killing trillions of phytoplankton which supply O2 to the world. To mitigate this, if everyone would let their lawns grow higher, mow less often, forget trimming the shrubbery perhaps some fraction of the world’s loss of O2 would be recovered. That’s all, that’s it. I don’t think a hurricane or storm would even make a difference if a few bushes were grown out or bigger… and lawns longer. And if your gardener complains, let him plant some more things in big pots…. make mulch in big black bags… grow worms… don’t put out in full sun….
Do something to create life.
