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[Thomas Pain]

Rick James

Rick Warren

[Thomas Pain]

FYI  I found this page that has kind of a high-level overview of the situation in Haiti every day:

http://ochaonline.un.org/OCHAHome/WhereWeWork/Haiti/tabid/6412/language/en-US/Default.aspx

(via the situation reports on the right side of the page)

these reports use a lot of proprietary lingo.  Still, it's a good source of info, especially compared to say the mass media.

It would be cool to integrate the data into a 3D google earth map.

With inexpensive data gathering devices, such as cameras with geo-tagging, one could make a map that was very very rich in data, and it could be updated in quasi real-time, with data streams from thousands of different on-site sources.  Of course, as the scandal involving the doctors from Puerto Rico shows, privacy and ethics considerations would have to be taken into account.  If news media type standards could be enforced, then it could be a very valuable tool for communicating a true and interactive account of the situation to the lay public.

[miles]

My cousin is a doctor in the Air Force (owes a few years to them for footing the med school bill) and was recently deployed to Haiti. We've received a few updates and a couple of photos (nothing graphic, of course). Pretty sobering stuff.

[Thomas Pain]

yeah, right.  Like, you see pictures of some of the few people they managed to pull out of the rubble alive, and a lot of them were emaciated.

Meanwhile, over here in the U.S., we "struggle" with things like nicotine addiction and obesity.  Although to be fair, it's a lot harder to eat healthy in the U.S. when you're poor.  But man, poverty in the U.S. and poverty in Haiti are two different things.  Sure you will die a lot sooner in the U.S. if you are poor than if you are middle class or rich, but you still have a good chance of outliving people in Haiti. 

But I guess it's all the same thing no matter where you go - poverty and corruption and crime pretty much is the same social problem with the same root causes no matter where you go.

It's amazing really that there hasn't been more of a cohesive public backlash here in the U.S. against helping the people in Haiti than there has been.  Pretty much all I saw was Pat Robertson's idiocy which no one was really to eager to get behind.  Although, I don't watch TV and I don't listen to the mainstream idiots like Rush Limbaugh either, so who knows how they been spinnin' this, with their sous-entendues and so ons...   

[greenkoolayd]

there are lots of people on this planet who give up what little they have to be poor or homeless in this country.

[Thomas Pain]

I'd give up what I have in the U.S. to be poor and homeless in Norway.  They have some kick-ass health care over there.

[greenkoolayd]

On a Haiti side note...delivered a truck load of clothing to be sent over on a slow boat and distributed to the displaced this morning on my way to work.

more white guilt you needed to assuage, eh?

sike

[greenkoolayd]

More of a paternalistic 'help the poor brown people' thing.

I'ma go sit on the veranda, sip a minted drink and wipe my feet on the backside of the maid, now.

 

im proud to be an american, as well.

[greenkoolayd]

no such luck for po' white trash like me.  i should be shoveling about 2 feet of snow at this very moment.

[Arachno-capitalist]

no such luck for po' white trash like me.  i should be shoveling about 2 feet of snow at this very moment.

Snow melts, dude! Nature will shovel for you if you weren't so impatient!

(I had a neighbor who seriously thinks this way)

[jay-ell]

Snow melts, dude! Nature will shovel for you if you weren't so impatient!

(I had a neighbor who seriously thinks this way)

My whole fuck*ng STATE thinks this way.

[Choop]

at least your state doesn't see snow and think god is punishing them for allowing booze at restaurants on sunday and for gays existing. (mine)

[littlefallsmets]

Where I grew up, we saw snow and we thought:

"Oh yeah. THAT'S why the property values are so low."

[Drygioni]

I went into the train station with a girl this morning, and it was just your normal bleak Northern sky. When I left said station (without her) 5 minutes it was snowing. Extremely heavily. This was extremely strange but I guess it must be very important, some how. Nothing like movie-weather to possibly make certain things seem more than they really are.

Anyway. Snow.

Snow is a near-mythical substance back home, where we would only receive a couple of inches worth every few years. For that one day it settled I would literally go mental, flinging myself down slopes, engage in running snowball battles for hours and go all Calvin-and-Hobbes regarding snowmen.

Sheffield's a fair amount more snowy though, and the feeling I described above still remains, at times. When I'm out in the Peak District the sheer abundance of steep slopes, gullies etc. make the snow impossibly fun. The surface of Kinder Scout is best described as being like black Creme Brulee, so jumping around on it in the snow not only felt good but looked tasty.

Back in the city however the fun soon wears off. Sheffield's extremely hilly for a medium-sized English city and soon enough any minor incline becomes a death trap for your average student in their stupid Ugg boots or Converse trainers. Hence me breaking out the 6-point crampons and hiking boots to make it into an exam this year. Isn't crampon a funny word?

The sheer weirdness of Britain sometimes really comes through in the snow. Equal amounts of horror, joy, grumpiness, sheer bloody uselessness, sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.

Idiotic driving was everywhere, people just don't understand the seriousness of the conditions whilst at the same time a ridiculously exaggerated sense of disaster was propagated by the news channels desperate to create a climate of fear as usual. The nation that weathered the Blitz was at times was scarily weak-kneed in the face of half-frozen water, it's depressing that there is absolutely no space in the mind of the average British person that knows how to deal with weather like this even as it increasingly becomes a fact of life with the disappearance of the Gulf Stream.

[theinevitable]

it snowed here a few days ago, and I was not at all anticipating what a colossal pain in the ass cleaning ice off my car would be.

finally buying a real winter coat has helped a lot. it is nice to just have to put on a sweater and a coat, instead of many layers of sweaters and a scarf, hat, gloves, etc. when I was trying to pretend like I was fine in a peacoat.
I am a skinny dude. I do not have natural insulation like some people. It is a fact, and so I bought a real coat. Luckily I managed to find one that is really boring looking, all one color, no big logos, and was on a half-off sale. i love this thing.

I am one of those idiots slipping around and falling on my ass because I do not have real boots. My old ones wore out and I never got new ones... oh well.
my big nike hightops are doing OK, though... better than the converses I used to wear, those things had zero traction.