FlaSoxxJim

I think BKs current ad agency is going for the 'creepy factor' for some off reason. Parsonally, I think the King in bed ad has got nothing on the classic BK 'underground' Subservient Chicken site. Inexplicably creepy, but I'm mezmerized by it.

I don't want to think anyone is pissing on the memory, but rather balking at the reality that something undoable was promised at the time by people who wouldn't actually be doing the sorting. The report says that forensic work is ongoing on the largest body fragments and those are to be returned to the families on identification. If I read it right, any unidentified remains would be put into a WTC memorial. As far as DNA work on ashes... if the remains are fully reduced then it can't be done. But certainly the remains from WTC include a lot of charred but incompletely reduced remains that DNA can be extracted and amplified from (at very great expense). I think the decision to use Fresh Kills as the dump site was regrettable, but I understand decisions had to be made rapidly. Had there been an opportunity to create a new site for WTC debris AND unidentified victim remains, then that could have served as a victim memorial site without having to worry about the century-old stink of Fresh Kills and how that might affect the family's acceptance of a dump site as a memorial (go figure). At the end of the day, I side with those of you that think the memory of the lives of these people is a lot more important that spending a half-billion dollars sorting ashes (then again, this is coming from a person who would like his remains used as chum rather than burnt to a crisp and all that energy-potential wasted so...). Maybe if WTC-tall flagpole-type memorials were erected over in Staten Island that could be seen from Ground Zero, it could serve as an effective monument to the remains without suggesting people need to go to Fresh Kills and walk around the dump to see it.

What the hell good is it going to do then?!?

I don't think it's plastic (though the model's face looks a bit discolored). It looks like that fine-meshed, mosquito netting-type stuff they make wedding veils out of. Not that it makes the "fashion" any less silly. Also, from where I'm sitting, there are a lot of women that need bags over their heads before the one oin that picture.. (I wonder if she'd like to spend a weekend in the Florida Keys... )

Hmmm... intriguing, but I don't think it would cut it. It has to be a land-based operation in order to qualify as southernmost sex in the US, I think. And a randy cetacean - though likely a willing partner - is going to have a hard time performing out of water. Thanks for looking out for me though. No, I think the only way to get The Sherrif's permisssion is if I promise that I and the surrogate will be really, really drunk after a night of barhopping on Duval Street. That should be OK then, right?

Hey, what could be more indepemdant than that? That's the spirit of Texas right there. I wanted very much to have sex at the southernmost point in the US landmark in Key West back during my youthful indiscretion. Sadly, it's probably not going to happen, as my wife has foresworn such irrational acts, and she gets a little annoyed if I suggest finding an, er, 'understudy' that might be a more willing participant. Go figure...

That is it exactly! Today begins the long, dark winter of our discontent. It's a necessary evil in some ways though, because I have a few months to get a lot of work done and make up for the slacking off I do during the baseball season.

Party like you mean it!

It's one of those seeming paradoxes, but yes, the water in the heart of a (now mythical) pristine Everglades would be very low in dissolved nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. The basic natural system would take sheet flow (overland, not channelized) natural stormwater that is relatively high in nutrients from the Kissemmee and Okeechobee drainage systems to the north. Then Marjorie Stineman Diouglas' archetypal "river of grass" would filter the nutrients out of that sheet flow so that the water entering the south Everglades was almost entirely stripped of nutrients. That very clean water flowed into Florida Bay, to the Keys, and ultimately past the Keys reef tract. Being naturally low in nutrients, this did not eutrophy (over fertilize) any of these low nutrient systems (the reefs being the quintessential oligotrophic system, in which tight nutrient cycling and symbiotic associations allow diversity to thrive despite (actually because of) the nutrient impoverished environment. The Everglades of today is managed hydrologically for agriculture and for human inhabitants and a lot of that classic natural filtering function is disrupted. Water that would be feeding the entire system is diverted to the sugar plantations and when that water leaves the farms it is very high in nutrients instead of very low. Furthermore, ditching to allieviate a lot of seasonal flooding of lowlying inhabited areas means instead of a slow trip to Florida Bay, the hypernutrified water flows much more rapidly an bypasses most of the natural clensing Everglades grasses in the process.

The mystery object was some manner of hypnosis device, and that is why most of us believe Kerry mopped the floor with Bush last Thursday. All of you who still think Bush did well that night obviously possess superior minds that are immune to such power of suggestion parlor tricks as these. [Damn, I can't find a font color any more green than that... ]

Yeah Kap, that tree you're talking about is the melaleuca I had noted (also called paper tree or punk tree, a native of DHABO's neck of the world and a very nice tree in it's rightful place. You're right, they were brought into Florida to help deain the swamps (originally by a freaky religious group called the Koreshians in the late 1800s - There is some biblical connection to David Koresh of Branch Dividian infamy but I don't recall it). And some clown in the 1930s broadcast the seeds all over the Everglades to help drain all that 'useless swampland.' We've been trying to undo that mistake ever since. As far as stormwater being "naturally polluted" - well it picks up all the nutrient and other wastes as it runs off the land into receiving bodies. The Everglades evolved under a low nutrient input regime, and so all that nutrient-laden water is a problem.

OK, here's a general answer to the question. One thing to remember is that even a whacked 4-hurricane season like this year is a natural event not unheard of on short-term adaptive evolutionary scales (1,000s to 10,000s of years), even if it has only happened rarely in recent human history. That being the case, there is no native Florida ecosystem that would not survive and recover from these major stochastic events - unless they were very small and rare systems and they took a direct hit the effectively knocked them out of existence (Florida relict dune scrub systems might be an example. 90% of this already rare ecosystem has been lost to development, so it is conceivable that the remaining fragments could be lost to a major stochastic event if all the fragments took direct hits). The real issues are that Florida's ecosystems are non-natural, stressed systems and our efforts to manage storm-induced floodwaters typically take these systems further away from a natural state in which the would be most resiliant to natural storm disturbance. And now that we all have hurricanes on the brain, it is almost certain we will try to make the state more 'hurricane-proof' from a human standpoint at the expense of the natural systems. A good analogy is the last 80 years of fire management (mis-management) in the US. Decades of fire suppression in forested areas that are not only naturally fire tolerant but actually fire dependent have been kept burn free because Smokey the Bear convinced everybody that all fires were bad. The result is that forest age structures have become greatly skewed, fuel levels have built up to disastrous levels, and now when we do get wildfires they are devastating because we have kept all the little mediating fires from thinning the forests etc. In response to tehse hurricanes, we will no doubt redouble efforts at beach stabilization. And in reality, beaches are supposed to be anything but stable of course. We will also redouble our efforts to ditch, drain, and control surface water flows, chanellizing the sheet-flow that the Everglades need to be healthy, and diverting way too much nutrient-laden freshwater into natrally oligotrophic (low input) systems. As for SS2K4's question about this possibly being a temporary bood to the Glades, freshwater volume is only part of the story. The water is also supposed to be almost nutrient-free, and stormwater runnoff is anything but. That is the heart of the problem with Big Sugar - they dump LOTS of water into the Everglades, but it is a couple orders of magnitude more nutrient-enrished than the system is designed to receive. So, bottom line, these storms - like fires, doughts and other stochastic environmental events - are nothing that the native Florida systems are not evolved to respond o and recover from. Some habitat pockets would be destroyed, others set back to earlier successional stages etc., but they would recover and, more importantly, it would help maintain the spatial and temporal mosaic of habittat patches of various ages and physical condition typical of healthy natural ecosystems. The real danger is that systems just barely hanging on and not entirely functional can get knocked for a loop. Especially in our modern, exotic-plagued state, invasive species like Brazilian pepper and melaleuca will move into impacted areas and get a foothold. And as mentioned, we'll probably respond to the hurricanes with still more overmanagement of natural systems for our comfort, and the systems will suffer. [/lecture]

I will give thisd some thought and respond tonight in some detail - IF my on-again, off-again power comes back on to let me do so (calling in from the road now). Short answer, any systems that are impacted by human water diversion (including the Everglades) are going to be really out of whack after the emergency floodgates are open. Also any naturally oligotrophic (designed for low nutrient input) systems are going to get a very large pulse of nutrient-rich effluent - this includes the Everglades as well.

Hmmm. Kinda makes all of Bush's debate references to Allawi's visit and words of support for the Administration a bit hollow, huh?

I read that part and thought for a second it was a quote from Star Jones' new husband talking about their wedding night...

I don't know what debate any of you were actually watching if you think the President did anything to help his cause tonight. In Bush's favor, I don't know what the hell that scary growth on John Edwards' face was during his carry-over commentary, but it could have sent some swing voters running to the other side...

Yeah, but when does a hybrid version come out??

Chris Berman used to call hime Joey "Alba" Cora - you know, like the tuna... Maybe that's the one? Not bad, but not one of Berman's best. I always liked Frank Tanana Daiquiri and Al 'Fruito' Levine though...

I should be sending Critic the doctor's bill, I laughed so much at his 'Dope Shingo' letter to the fans on the SOUTH SIYEEEED! :headbang You should be writing for The Onion.

Jeanne has knocked us down, but not out!!! We boarded up, hunkered down, consumed the approproate amount of alcohol (a seemingly primal requisite for facing down the forces of nature), and rode the storm out. We were toward the north edge of the hurricane force wind swath, and it was rocking for many hours. We lost power about 2 am, but the worst of the storm had passed through by about 5 am. We are still in the dark (I'm posting on my laptop from a coffee shop that just came back up, and getting a chance to listen to the Sox hopefully not get swept today). They say we will probably be down until friggin' Oct 12! :fyou So it's getting tough sleeping in 90 degree whether, but hopefully either a hotel room frees up or we can pick up a gas-powered generator soon (us and about 50,000 people are looking for them). Nuke, I never knew MREs were as good as they are! Not gourmet grub, but it does the job when there's not much else to eat. I had the menu #22 jambalaya yesterday. That instant heating chemical reaction is a wicked exothermic reaction - what is in the chemical packs? We had some relatively minor water damage to the house and the screened porch that took a preliminary drubbing from Francis is a bit more mangled now. All in all, we came through very well. several friends did not do as well, including some close friends (the wife is pregnant) who lost their roof and pretty much all the contents of their second floor, and the building is being condemned so they'll be living here and there with us and others for a while. My place of work took yet another beating. Both of these storms literally came onshore at the same place about 10 miles south of the campus, so it took the brunt of that strong northeast eyewall quadrant (Floridians have learned way too much about hurricanes this season). We Lost the biomedical research labs (fortunately not the really expensive equipent), and the education center that was pretty beat up by Frances is probably beyond saving. Most of us have not been allowed back on site, but I was told that my office's doors blew in so I'm not looking forward to seeing what the place looks like. Luckily we moved our CPUs and most of the valuable stuff into the hurricane bunker. Anyway, that's it in a nutshell. Lots of inconvenience for my family, and a whole lot worse for a lot more. Hopefully we can dig out at work, otherwise I might be job hunting soon. But all of your good thoughts mean a lot and I appreciate them. I'll toast you all when I'm eating an MRE by candlelight and having a beer tonight. Flaxx

Party like you mean it!

Thanks for the sentiments - I think we're good. Our big concern will be 9pm to 9am county curfew, because they don't sell beer during those hours (*gasp*)!!! I also hope the power stays on so I can see all of the last Sox homestand on Extra Innings.