09:16 – It was 57.2F (14C) when I took Colin out at 0630. It was still dark, and on the eastern horizon Venus was in close conjunction with a thin crescent Luna. I almost woke Barbara to come out and see it.
The violent “protests” in St. Louis continue, yet another symptom of a country that’s coming apart at the seams. If it hasn’t become obvious to everyone by now that cultural diversity is a very bad thing, it should have. Humans evolved to live in small groups, tribes, and shoehorning millions of us into urban agglomerations is a guaranteed way to spark tribal warfare between and among those many groups. I have nothing in common with the urban underclass, and they have nothing in common with me.
So long as those diverse groups were assimilated into the common white Anglo-Saxon culture that prevailed in this country until relatively recently, we could all get along. Now that we no longer have that common culture, we’re fragmenting into smaller groups that are increasingly at war. This doesn’t bode well. The first literal shots in these wars have already been fired, and it won’t take much for things to degenerate further.
Agreed.
And again, it’s mostly in the cities that we see this stuff going on, becoming the new “normal” here like the musloid terror attacks are in the UK and Europe. Peeps just shrug and sort of hope it doesn’t happen to them. But if you live in a city and travel in it or through it via your own vehicle or the subway or whatever, you can run smack into this stuff with little or no warning. Like those kids leaving the pop concert in Manchester or the poor people on the subway the other day.
The libtard zeitgeist prevailed in the West and now we have what we have and it’s not gonna be pretty when the Anglo-Saxons and Celts finally tire of being shit on and persecuted. I hate to pound away at this but it bears repeating: this is the third-largest country on the planet with half a billion to a billion firearms extant among its population, and among them, tens of millions of experienced and trained veterans, hunters, police, security people, etc. Not even counting the couple of million active-duty and Reserve and Guard troops. And there is a very strong strain of violence and rebellion among us here; all of this is, together, unprecedented in human history.
Cities and crowds and events are to be avoided, of course; my main worries now are financial and/or Grid shutdown, nationwide. Either, if lasting more than a week, will light things up nicely and we’ll have us a big ol’ bonfire.
A reminder,
From my FEMA summary:
IRMA- recovery continuing
“Current Situation
Recovery efforts continue across the Southeast, PR, & USVI
Impacts
• Fatalities: 47 (USVI: 5, PR: 3, FL: 34, GA: 5)
• Shelters: 64 open with a population of 3,809 (USVI, PR, FL, GA,
Seminole Tribe of Florida)
• Power: 776k customers without power (FL, GA, USVI, PR)
• Hospitals: 12 closed (USVI: 1, FL: 9, GA: 2)
• Schools
o PR: 38 schools remain closed
o FL: 49 schools closed
• Other
o 6 of 8 wastewater treatment plants in service in USVI
o 90% of the 50,000 structures in St Thomas & St. John damaged”
They have already stopped reporting for Harvey, but we still have people in shelters.
Note this manpower report:
National
IMATs*
(0 Teams)
East 1: Deployed
East 2: Deployed
West: Deployed
Regional
IMATs
(0-3 Teams)
Assigned: 13
Available: 0
PMC / NMC: 0
Deployed: 13
US&R
(33-65%)
Assigned: 28
Available: 11
PMC / NMC: 13
Deployed: 4
MERS
(< 33%)
Assigned: 36
Available: 4
NMC: 0
Deployed: 32
FCO
(<1 Type I)
Assigned: 37
Available: 3
PMC / NMC: 3
Deployed: 31
FDRC
Assigned: 13
Available: 3
PMC / NMC: 1
Deployed: 9
Resource Force
Strength Availab
Total Workforce 11,023 2,375 21
They are either out of people or very close to out in most categories. Won't take much more to max FEMA out….
n
So that’s how I figured it out on my own…https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2017/09/16/patriarchy-alert-standing-pee-gives-boys-unfair-advantage-physics/
I’m still standing by my guesstimate that there’s about a 3% chance annually of a widespread catastrophic event that snowballs into TEOTWAWKI. Some might take comfort in the inverse 0.97 probability that no such event will occur in any given year. I don’t, because 0.03/year becomes 0.26 over ten years and 0.46 over 20.
And my guesstimate may well be significantly off. If it’s only 0.01/year that drops the 10-year probability to 0.10 and the 20-year to 0.18. OTOH, if I’m wrong the other way and it’s actually 0.05/year, that takes the 10-year to 0.40 and the 20-year to 0.64. But even the lower estimate gives a scarily high probability for a TEOTWAWKI even within 10 years. So I prep.
The “protests” in St. Louis seem extremely well organized and funded. Something (or someone) is at work beyond the normal urban unrest.
Moving a second car cross country in 2010, I stayed at a hotel in Fairview Heights, outside St. Louis, not far from Mid-America Airport. Since then, at least two racially charged incidents which made national news have occurred at retail establishments within walking distance of the hotel cluster, and I don’t consider the location to be purely a coincidence.
Airport, hotel, and rental cars are readily available, and the only carrier servicing BLV is no-frills low profile Allegiant. — No luggage? No problem!
A local individual or group in that AO might be interested in that sort of intel; why not monitor the activity around there, see who’s coming and going, etc. Take down ID and plate info, listen to various types of radios, etc. Take pictures and vids and when correlated with the actual “unrest” later, upload them to the net.
A local individual or group in that AO might be interested in that sort of intel; why not monitor the activity around there, see who’s coming and going, etc. Take down ID and plate info, listen to various types of radios, etc. Take pictures and vids and when correlated with the actual “unrest” later, upload them to the net.
If I was in a position to do something about the situation, I’d put a microscope on that airport and airline, but I’m not a law enforcement type. The BLV’ passenger terminal was a failed pork barrel project until Allegiant moved in a few years ago, and I’m wondering, given the location, just who flies in and out of that place.
Yeah, I was gonna say, on a further edit:
Voice from the crowd: “Say, isn’t that a job for the police?”
Me: “Well, evidently the police are either not doing that gig, or, as often happens and I have had ample cause to know, street-level guys are doing it and it’s been ignored and blown off by the brass.”
It’d be nice to put faces and ID’s up on the net of the activist cadre leadership who run these events on the street, sorta like senior NCOs and butter-bars. Grab a couple of ’em and get some more intel on those commies up-channel. And I guess we all know that a lot of the channels stretch out across the Atlantic to Hungary, don’t we.
So that’s how I figured it out on my own…https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2017/09/16/patriarchy-alert-standing-pee-gives-boys-unfair-advantage-physics/
At my first grad program in Vantucky, we had two transmen MechE majors in the department who made a big fuss about bathroom access a few years before the current national ruckus. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t pass well enough to use the men’s room, but they wanted a separate facility where they could use their “Stand To Pee” male urination simulation devices without getting stares.
Maybe they were taking the Fluids class that semester and wanted to test the principles for themselves.
Looks like they are still downsizing their own ranks and not killing the Anglo-Saxons, Celts and Nordics.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Chicago-Records-500th-Homicide-for-2017-Report-445321293.html
Chicongo and Detroit are two of our failed cities.
I blame it on Adolph Trump and climatewarmchange.
Chicongo and Detroit are two of our failed cities.
Don’t forget St. Louis and Dallas. Houston is struggling to stay out of that bunch but the failed pension plans are the writing on the wall.
At my first grad program in Vantucky, we had two transmen MechE majors in the department who made a big fuss about bathroom access a few years before the current national ruckus. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t pass well enough to use the men’s room, but they wanted a separate facility where they could use their “Stand To Pee” male urination simulation devices without getting stares.
They could of acted like the rest of the guys and used the world as their urinal.
I am getting very tired of people claiming to be a gender that they are not.
“I am getting very tired of people claiming to be a gender that they are not.”
I am no longer happy with which I was born; consequently, I am going to trans.
But not gender, I will transethnic; from 25% Swedish to 25% Norwegian. (No surgery required.)
What I’ve never understood is all these new pronouns. The three we’ve always used have always been sufficient; he for males, she for females, and it for something that’s neither male nor female. This crap with xhe and so on makes no sense, when “it” perfectly fits those people who are neither nor.
I’ve been using “it” to refer to people for decades. Usually as a way to be insulting, on account of I didn’t have enough already.
Hey anyone can call themselves what they please. What others call them makes no difference. Trying to make laws that force others to use only the appropriate term is bovine manure. BTW references to me shall be HE or HIM, all caps.
Just to interject briefly; the commies and neo-Marxist assholes have always used language as a means of expediting the cultural change they wish to impose on us all. Been going on a long time.
And here we go again with our expanded Likud Party Alliance:
https://forwardobserver.com/2017/09/u-s-opens-first-military-base-on-israeli-soil/
Swell. Just swell. The Empire is tottering on its last legs at home but by Jeezum we’re gonna keep building new outposts on the Frontier. Sooner or later someone will take us up on it, too.
I am a ZIT. A person who has Zero Interest Totally to care about those worthless pronouns.
In other nooz, my new VA-purchased laptop arrived, courtesy of our tax dollars and a pooter shop down in Northborough, MA run by an Army vet.
It’s obviously a 1990s refurbished thing and it runs Windows XP on 2GB RAM. Kinda scratched up and dusty. Took forever to boot.
Just kidding: it’s an HP ProBook 450 G4 w/8GB RAM and running Winblows 10. With a 256GB SSD, etc., plus an HP OfficeJet 4650 printer. I’ll own the whole deal when I’m 50% through my MA. The ProBook goes for $818 on AMZ and the printer is at only $70 with its ink cartridges going for around $30, and they included half a dozen of those, too. Plus a decent case for the laptop. Not too shabby; a grand’s worth of new IT here this afternoon. Also came with Microslop Orifice 2016 which I have to install myself and the Kaspersky Antivirus installed already, which is problematic because I see our Feds are now banning that on Fed systems for fear of Russian mischief or something.
I haven’t done anything with it yet; I’m not connecting it to the net and I am looking at the best Linux distro to run on it after I yank the SSD and throw one of mine in there. After which I might install Crossover for Linux and run the MS$ Office on it just in case I need whatever for skool and so wife has a backup.
Anyone got a relatively new laptop out there and likes a particular Linux distro for it?
My preferred personal pronoun is Your Imperial Awesomeness. This is to be used as subject, object, and possessive, as well as any cases that have slipped Your Imperial Awesomeness mind.
We have decided that our royal personage shall be addressed as God and We shall have all the rights, powers, and perquisites that go with said title.
Back in the real world, I guess I better keep working.
“My preferred personal pronoun is Your Imperial Awesomeness.”
But you’re just a little guy, ain’tcha? How ’bout “Your Impness?” Cuts it down timewise for those of us short of time, i.e., with less time than you have, remaining above-ground.
Off shortly to beeyooteeful Johnson, VT, for another night of Counseling Theory, focusing on Freud, Erikson, et. al. plus our instructor’s many ‘tips from the trenches,’ which I find fascinating.
Dadgumit, I blinked when I drove through Edna, TX and missed the whole city!
Dadgumit, I blinked when I drove through Edna, TX and missed the whole city!
Ah, I see you took the longer scenic route. Good choice.
In the spirit of being as insulting as possible, just “Imp”.
+1 for “imp”.
AT&T seems to have a problem. Plus, yea! my ISP uses at&t. It’s been mostly down since Thursday afternoon. Maybe up half an hour yesterday (Sunday).
My phone is on Verizon. It just works.
But…. I’m on StraightTalk. My phone is locked down and I can’t tether. I get 8 GB of data, usually use 600 kB.
The phone identifies as an LGL62VL. How do I root it so I can tether? I’m not wanting to do a Wi-Fi hotspot. I want to connect with the USB cable to my desktop.
Edit: I like this phone, it’s just a year old. I don’t want to toss it into the trash.
Edit 2: yeah, white man’s burden and all. 🙂
OFD: I’ve got slightly different versions of Mint running on one of my desktop machines, and one an older laptop that I’ve inherited. Both seem stable and easy to deal with. I’ve just about given up on OpenSuse on the desktop, the continuing conflicts with the Nvidia card just isn’t worth it. And I’d run PC Decrapifier on that new box before I swapped out the hard drive.
And I have to agree with others here, and in spirit with Thomas Jefferson. The fact that SteveF self identifies as an artichoke neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, so I don’t care. I do, in the real world, have some sympathy for people who are so confused that they can’t pick a species & gender, that being a sure sign of some form of mental illness.
I’ve just learned to stay the hell away from the crazy. And since I’m not social, and never HAVE to spend time with anyone, even family gets shunned if they’re too nuts, I can avoid it most of the time.
VERY DIFFERENT from my days in the theatre and then Hollywood. Been there, saw that, no interest in bringing it back into my life.
n
That’s kinda awesome, actually. Your Imperial Awesomeness might use that when Your Imperial Awesomeness wish to further decrease the comprehensibility of Your Imperial Awesomeness conversations.
Anyone got a relatively new laptop out there and likes a particular Linux distro for it?
If Linux Mint doesn’t work correctly, try the latest version of Ubuntu. New new hardware will probably have to wait for the next March release of Mint.
My “No Windows None of the Time” laptop runs Mint and the latest Fedora with a shared home partition and swap. Each OS partition has its own personal account user name/home directory, but I assign a common UID (1000). I let Fedora admin the Grub to avoid problems.
The current caveat in Fedora is that you will probably want to turn off Wayland (X.org replacement) for now. The hardware and app support just isn’t 100% there yet.
I am getting very tired of people claiming to be a gender that they are not.
I don’t really care who wants to identify as what, but, as of late, a lot of people seem to want to make public spectacles of themselves.
@RBT I was wandering through all of the old files on Jerry’s site, and came across the oldest ‘mail’ page I could find :
Interesting to see your name crop up there; and there appears to be validation of Jerry’s claim of being an ‘original blog’. And was wondering about your first blog post – when was it?
Still not sure of the direction of Jerry’s site yet; waiting for guidance from his family. And no information on video from his memorial services.
Thanks for the laptop ideas; I’ll probably go with the latest stable Ubuntu. I’ve had just one too many hassles with Mint in the last couple of years.
And I figure I ought to be addressed as “Your Most Loathesome Gimpness.” I was once almost as big as Rob Gronkowski and now I’m just a shuffling old duffer with one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel. The cane won’t save me.
But the VA triage nurse got back to me this morning and they’ll see me Thursday after the vets group meeting. Probably another MRI and one last epidural shot to the lower spinal column; I sure hope three’s a charm. I’ve been a good do-bee and done everything else.
Class tonight was good; instructor in top form, and we learned some more neat Tips from the Trenches; fuck the theories. What counts is you and that poor fuck sitting in the room with you. Make it work.
And several of the womyn seemed to be back in their summer clothes and not looking too bad, either. Of course I’m old enough to be their dad, so there’s that. They probably find me amusing. No, make that loathesome.
Wife should be calling from the Mile-High City shortly.
They probably find me amusing.
It’s worse than that, Dave. They think you’re harmless.
Wife should be calling from the Mile-High City shortly.
Mile-High in more ways than one. [Bah duh dum]
Thanks. I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.
Still not sure of the direction of Jerry’s site yet; waiting for guidance from his family. And no information on video from his memorial services.
The Internet Archive people would probably be interested in hosting Dr. Pournelle’s site.
Stewart Chiefet gave them all of the “Computer Chronicles” episodes.
If Linux Mint doesn’t work correctly, try the latest version of Ubuntu.
At the beginning of the year I began using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on my dual-boot Linux/Win 7 machine almost exclusively. Still necessary to very occasionally revert to Win 7, but otherwise things have gone swimmingly.
I ain’t gonna go the dual- or triple-boot route; been there and done that bit years ago. I’ll simply yank the SSD and swap in a new one with Linux on it. After I’m through 50% of the VA program, the laptop and printer are mine, anyway. So probably a year from Xmas or even sooner.
“It’s worse than that, Dave. They think you’re harmless.”
Haha, no chit, amigo. That’s for sure, right now, anyway. Once the back is fixed, though….
…there are maybe three or four in there I wouldn’t mind bouncing…but of course I’m a superego moral sap and married so I won’t.
Lynn wrote:
“They could of acted like the rest of the guys and used the world as their urinal.”
They can do that right now. Never seen it done in person but reliable witnesses say it’s possible… 🙂
Something brewing in the tropics again? The gas station near the office in Belton was out of regular ($2.45/gal) this afternoon, but they had premium ($3.09/gal).
[snip] Something brewing in the tropics again? [snip]
Ladies & gentlemen, our next contestant is Maria. As of 11PM AST, 2017-09-18, she’s packing sustained winds of 160 mph, moving WNW at 9 mph, and is centered more or less right over the top of the island of Dominica. The National Hurricane Center’s current best is for it to make a turn towards the NNW by Saturday. In the meantime, Puerto Rico & Hispanola are going to get zapped.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/025945.shtml?cone#contents
Yup, round 2….
And supply lines are still messed up here at home.
Never a bad idea to be prepared, and that means enough gas to run your gennie thru the initial response time, or enough to double your bug out range.
n
Enough gas for vehicles, too; for the gennies, enough gas and/or propane for dual-fuel gennies, plus the usual assortment of propane stoves, etc. Water in the vehicles and LOTS of it, plus more gas cans filled. BOBs packed and ready to toss into the vehicles at minutes’ notice. Alternative routes mapped out, and tasks/checklists assigned to all able-bodied household members. Everyone has a job and they just need to focus on that one job, that one checklist.
Pile of homework to do the next couple of days while I spend hours and hours on the phone again with tax bullshit.
Wife is dead-tired out in Denver and I’m beat to shit here from fatigue and pain and legs just refusing to take orders anymore from diseased brain stem and badly faulty nervous system.
Pax vobiscum, et semper paratus, fratres…
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41316205
Farewell Toys ‘R Us?
Farewell Toys ‘R Us?
Strip mined by private equity, Bain Capital no less. The Progs had a point about Romney’s track record as a businessman in 2012.
Without the insane level of debt, the stores are in decent shape and profitable. At least around here, walking into a Toys ‘R Us is not like walking into K-Mart by any stretch.
Maybe Amazon will buy them. That would be the fastest way for Bezos to make new trouble for Walmart and Target. Christmas would be a bloodbath.
OTOH, one of the big problems for the toy retailers has been getting toys to sell, especially Nintendo products. Why dedicate a bunch of capital to being a middleman for the people mining “EBay gold”?
Game Stop might be next. The local store had a big section of surplus *Radio Shack* merchandise such as batteries and video cables just to fill shelves before Labor Day.
I’ve come to the conclusion that if someone believes they have a right to be referred to by a pronoun of their choosing, then I also have the right to refer to them by a pronoun of my choosing. I choose “schnee”. It’s the German word for snow, short for snowflake, and if schnee doesn’t like it, schnee can lump it.
Whew. I just finished writing President tRump’s speech at the UN. It was close, but here it is:
Ahem.
Get out of the US.
Thank you.
Nope, he gonna kow-tow to them. Either he’s playing everybody else for foolz or they be playin’ him fo’ a dam fool.
Trivia about “kow-tow”. It is (or was, before the Anglophones stole it) Chinese, “kou tou”, literally “knock head”.
Grrr…
Back in 2012 we bought land to build our retirement home on. I’ve mentioned this a couple of times. Most recently, we’ve been discussing specific plans with a contractor, intending to apply for a building permit in the next couple of weeks.
Well, let’s put all that into the past tense.
We now discover that the town where we have the land “cheated” on its zoning. So the Canton is fixing this, and our land actually cannot be built on. The zoning is being fixed retroactively; it is a figment of our imagination that it was ever zoned for residential use – it’s actually always been farm land. Which is a nasty little trick to deny us any compensation: if it was “never” zoned for building, then we’re just stupid for having bought it.
A little internet research shows that we have pretty much zero chance of getting anything out of this. It’s not the first time this has happened, and the law is written specifically to allow this kind of retroactive re-zoning. I’ll consult with an attorney anyway, but it looks grim. $60k and a dream down the tubes.
Anybody wanna buy some farm land?
Sell it for what you can and hire someone to kill the canton leadership.
“…Chinese, “kou tou”, literally “knock head”.”
As in knocking one’s head against the floor and groveling before a superior person, such as a local warlord or the great khan himself, amirite?
Caught one whopper from tRump’s speech, and I’m sure there are more. He said we didn’t try to impose our values on other countries after World War II. Okey-dokey, Donald; you must not have read the same history books I have, then.
@Mr. brad; that is really shitty. What a rotten trick to play on people who would have made a sizable financial contribution to that area. I had thought you were all set, and you must have thought that, too. Wow.
Anybody wanna buy some farm land?
That sucks, Mr. Brad. Politicians/bureaucrats wreak havoc everywhere in the World.
Let @brad’s experience serve as a wake-up call that no matter what the zoning laws and HOA “restrictions” say, the “idiot class” will do whatever is wrong to screw us DEPLORABLES, retroactively.
BOHICA
The Constitution is long dead so forget about your “Pursuit of Happiness”, or as in the original draft of the Constitution “Right to Personal Property”.
As long as there is any tax on personal property we are no better than serfs and slaves.
Yes, Mr. brad lives in Switzerland but the same kinda crap has been going on here, too, for a very long time, with “eminent domain” and “civil asset forfeiture.”
Citizens? Don’t make me laugh.
Anybody wanna buy some farm land?
You can sell it to one of the cell carriers for a tower. Zoning of “agricultural” carries fewer limitations about using the land for a transmitter installation.
I saw something similar happen in a neighborhood in FL which was platted for sale to speculators beyond the urban service boundaries. One person got impatient waiting for rezoning during the real estate bubble and sold out, ruining the value of the surrounding lots for as long as the tower remains.
Of course, you want to be that first person to approach the cell companies.
The weather liars….
“It comes as experts revealed Maria has developed a dangerous ‘pinhole eye’ producing a more compact center and intensifying its power. It’s still too soon to know whether it poses any threat to the mainland U.S.”
at this point with Irma and Harvey it was NON-STOP tv screeching about how we’re all gonna die, and now it’s “too soon?”
n
“Sell it for what you can and hire someone to kill the canton leadership.”
@SteveF: You taking contracts? Nah…still doesn’t get the land re-zoned.
Even though Swiss politicians and bureaucrats are better than most, they’re still members of the breed. Retroactive regulations are obviously unethical, but “ethics” and “politics” rarely belong in the same room together.
I think I’m going to have a whisky…or three…tonight…
I don’t blame ya, Mr. brad; if I thought two or three of those would even make a dent in what I’m dealing with here lately, I’d probably go for ’em myself. But they won’t.
I hope you can get that money back, and you may wanna tunnel through the sewage and water systems in Geneva because somebody has evidently been flushing tens of thousands of Euros down the toilets there.
I won’t say yes and I won’t say no, but I will say that I don’t fly commercial, so there’s no practical way for me to help you out.
Some years ago a twenty-ish young man said he was thinking of becoming a professional hit-man and wondered if I could get him started or give him any tips. He was influenced by movies and TV, where Mr Suave lives the high life and makes $50k or more per kill. (Probably more like $100k now, with inflation.) I face-palmed and attempted to bring something like reality into the discussion. I dug up a couple internet articles about “assassins” who’d been hired for $1000 and a case of beer to kill a boss or ex-husband, things like that. Even discounting that those guys had been caught, the fact that the client felt comfortable offering that amount suggests that the going rate is not going to be $50k. Then there was the difficulty of forensic science and cameras and credit card traces, and all that’s only been getting more pervasive and intrusive in the years since. Or look at the way “serial killer” has been defined down; it used to be someone who killed 10 or more, IIRC, but now it’s three or more … because so few serial killers get further than that before getting caught.
My talk may have done some good. He went into construction. Of course, maybe that was just his cover…
Whew. I just finished writing President tRump’s speech at the UN. It was close, but here it is:
Ahem.
Get out of the US.
Thank you.
I APPROVE !
Dadgumit, I blinked when I drove through Edna, TX and missed the whole city!
Ah, I see you took the longer scenic route. Good choice.
US 59 (soon to be I-69) from Sugar Land to Victoria goes right through the middle of Edna. Met my Dad to the Victoria Cinemark and bought his ticket (Senior Monday = $4.75 !!!) for his birthday. We saw “American Assassin”, around 4 out of 5 stars.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/american_assassin_2017/
Just because the movie (and book) are formulaic does not mean that they are not good. And it was good to see Michael Keaton in a major role again. I think that he was a good guy but, not sure. Now I can read the Vince Flynn book. And I look forward to Dylan O’Brien making more Vince Flynn books into movies.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 7.1 and was centered near the Puebla state town of Raboso.
My brother, who is summering in the mild mountain climate of Cholula near Puebla, just called to say he survived. He was at a stoplight when the quake hit and is now trying to get back to his apartment. He says electricty and water are out all over and many store fronts have collapsed into the road. He noted that college students were manning most intersections directing traffic. They jumped into help when police and emergency services are needed elsewhere. I can’t imagine American students doing this. He tells me he will evaluate the condition of his apartment but will likely have to relocate untill utilities can be restored. He has not witnessed any injuries but says the destruction must have caused many casualities. He was surprised that the cell sevice was still working and not overloaded. His daughter is still cleaning up in Houston after the flooding. Hurricanes & Earthquakes …. are we prepared?