A Storm!

Rain, lightning, and thunder...oh my!

The first picture at right is a snapshot of our local NEXRAD weather radar. The lower right circle is a close-up of the area around our home, and you can see that it's raining. As of this post, we've accumulated 4 mm--that may not sound like much, but it's a whole bunch of rain for mid-October, and very, very welcome as we enter the high-risk part of our fire season.

Recall that the Cedar Fire occured at the end of October in 2003, and you can see why we worry about such things...

The middle picture shows the barometric pressure here for the past week; it's notable mostly for the precipitous drop that's recorded for the past (about) 30 hours. This is the classic sign of an impending storm. The rightmost picture is temperature (red line) and humidity (green line) over the past week. You can see that the storm's onset included a dramatic drop in temperatures and an equally dramatic rise in relative humidity. In particular you can see the sharp rise to nearly 100% humidity at the onset of the rain just a couple of hours ago.

The NOAA forecast has good chances of rain from now through Tuesday evening, and we are making offerings to whatever rain gods we can identify, in the hopes of helping the weather forecasters improve their accuracy...

Bravo, Iraq!

From all that I've been able to read so far, it appears that (a) the turnout in the Iraqi election was very high, (b) the Constitutional referendum is going to pass--easily, and (c) the terrorist attacks were much less numerous, and much less effective, than threatened by the Al-Qaeda leadership.

Bravo, Iraq! May the "Spirit of the Purple Finger" live on eternally!

What good news for this Sunday...

Dem Minnesotans

Sure are a peculiar lot...

Two Minnesotans walk into a pet shop in Dingle. They head to the bird section and Sven says to Hans, "Dat's dem." The owner comes over and asks if he can help them. "Yeah, we'll take four of dem dere little budgies in dat cage up dere," says Sven. The owner puts the budgies in a paper bag. Hans and Sven pay for the birds, leave the shop and get into Sven's pickup and drive to the top of the Conor Pass. At the Conor Pass, Sven looks down at the 1000 ft. drop and says, "Dis looks like a grand place." He takes two birds out of the bag, puts them on his shoulders and jumps off the cliff. Hans watches as Sven falls all the way to the bottom. Looking down at the remains of his best pal, Hans shakes his head and says "Dis budgie jumping is too dangerous for me."

Moments later Ole arrives up at Conor Pass. He's been to the pet shop, too and walks up to the edge of the cliff carrying another paper bag in one hand and a shotgun in the other. "Hi, Hans. Watch dis," Ole says. He takes a parrot from the bag and throws himself over the edge of the cliff. Hans watches as, half way down, Ole takes the shotgun and shoots the parrot. Ole continues to plummet down and down until he hits the bottom and breaks every bone in his body. Hans shakes his head and says, "And I'm never trying dat parrotshooting either."

Hans is just getting over the shock of losing two friends when Lars appears. He's also been to the pet shop and is carrying a paper bag out of which he pulls a chicken. Lars then grasps the chicken by the legs holds it over his head and hurls himself off the cliff and disappears down and down until he hits a rock and breaks his spine. Once more Hans shakes his head. "First der was Sven with his budgie jumping, den Ole parrotshooting--and now Lars is hengliding..."

Estonian Political Hopeful

Would you believe I know this woman?

Updated (below).

And my wife isn't too happy about that...

Natalja Tereping (click on the photo for a larger view) was an employee in the Tallinn offices of a company I used to work for (Stac, which then became Previo). She was our bookkeeper and office assistant there for years. An Estonian friend of mine sent me this picture of Natalja this morning along with the interesting news that she is running for a seat on the Tallinn city council, representing the Mustamäe area (if I'm reading the Estonian language web sites correctly). She's a member of the center-right "Res Publica" party, one of the dominant political parties in Estonia.

I have never had a discussion about politics with Natalja, so I don't know what has driven her to do this, or what positions she holds. The center-right platforms of her party are not too awfully far from my own more libertarian leanings, so most likely she and I could have a civil conversation on Tallinn's political situation, if I actually knew very much about it (I don't).

All that aside, can you think of a single female candidate for American political office (at any level) with the movie star/model attractiveness that Natalja has? Not one comes to my mind. It's hard to see how this could hurt Natalja's chances in the election, especially amongst the men...

Go, Natalja, go!

Update (10/17): My Estonian friend tells me that Natalja has received only seven votes (one of which was her own!), and has lost the election. How sad!

Seeds

Collected from our yard...

These seeds caught my eye as my wife and I took our morning walk with the dogs. I have no idea what the plant is.

The thing that caught my eye at first was the symmetry (more obvious on some of the seeds still on the plant) -- perfect four-pointed "stars" with "layers" of seeds. Upon closer examination I saw something more curious, though. Each seed has a tuft of fibers coming out of it, presumably to catch the breeze and disperse the seeds. The fibers for each seed are being pulled from two of the spoke structures -- this is what produces the symmetrical form that first caught my eye.

What an elaborate setup!

As usual, click on the picture for a larger view...

Terrorist Detection

A surefire method...

And a tip of the Jamulian hat to my mom for this contribution to excellence in homeland security...

U.N. Approval

An international symbol for marriage...

We're told that the United Nations has approved this new, official international symbol for marriage.

I don't think any married male will have any difficulty understanding this!

But will the married women understand?

I just asked my wife, and got a smack in the head as an answer. Oddly enough, I know how to interpret that: yes, she understood.

Barometric Oddities

Periodic atmospheric pressure variation...

At right you see a chart of the past week's barometric pressure at our home. There is a regular variation in the pressure that occurs twice a day (a diurnal cycle). The peak-to-peak variation is roughly 0.7 in/hg, or 2.2 millibars.

When I first saw this variation I thought it was some kind of heating effect on my instrument, or some other data artifact, and not a real pressure variation. However, the more I studied it, the stranger it looked. What, for instance, could account for the cycle being twice a day? So I did what I always do when faced with such a mystery: I googled.

It turns out that this diurnal pressure cycle is very well-known, and it's real. I've never seen it before because (a) the variation is quite small, and (b) until this past year I've never owned a sensitive enough recording barometer.

Although the diurnal cycle turns out to be very complex in nature, I can summarize what I discovered as follows:
--The large peaks (daily at around 10 AM PST) are mainly caused by solar heating of the atmosphere.
-- The lesser peak (daily at around 10 PM PST) are mainly caused by a solar tidal effect.
-- The solar tidal cycles (unexpectedly) dominate the lunar tidal cycles because of a resonance with a normal mode of atmospheric oscillation of approximately 12 hour period that closely matches the solar cycle, greatly amplifying it.

Because solar heating is the dominant underlying mechanism, there are some aspects of the atmospheric tides that are quite different than the oceanic tides:
-- The 10 AM peak is far larger at the equator than at higher latitudes.
-- Inland locations have greater 10 AM peaks than ocean locations (because there are greater heating effects on land masses).

There are also pressure variations with periods longer than a day. There is a pronounced annual cycle that relates to the seasonal change of temperature -- but its polarity varies by altitude. For locations below about 1300 feet in altitude have lower pressures in the summertime; locations above 1300 feet have higher pressures in the summertime (and, I suppose, right at 1300 feet there's no difference at all!). There are also several cycles --not well studied--that seem to be related to lunar cycles.

This turned out to be far more interesting, and complicated, than the instrumentation problem I suspected! You can read more about these phenomena here, here, here, and here.

Santa Anas Gone!

The chart at right shows the temperature (red line) and relative humidity (green line) at our home for the past week. You can see a three-day period with low relative humidity, starting just before midnight on the 4th and ending around 5 pm on the 7th. That's one signature of a Santa Ana condition; the other is the wind speed and direction. This time, for whatever reason, the winds never really picked up to high speeds, and only intermittently shifted direction.

Yesterday (the 8th) afternoon the humidity increased dramatically while the temperature decreased, and this morning it felt downright chilly this morning (to the heat-acclimated amongst us; you residents of northern climates can stop laughing now). A welcome break, indeed.

Unfortunately our one-week forecast says it will be hot again by the end of the coming week, well into the 90s...

Java Performance

IBM on the "Java urban legend" of poor performance:

Pop quiz: Which language boasts faster raw allocation performance, the Java language, or C/C++? The answer may surprise you — allocation in modern JVMs is far faster than the best performing malloc implementations. The common code path for new Object() in HotSpot 1.4.2 and later is approximately 10 machine instructions (data provided by Sun; see Resources), whereas the best performing malloc implementations in C require on average between 60 and 100 instructions per call. And allocation performance is not a trivial component of overall performance — benchmarks show that many real-world C and C++ programs, such as Perl and Ghostscript, spend 20 to 30 percent of their total execution time in malloc and free — far more than the allocation and garbage collection overhead of a healthy Java application.

The article also has a bunch of interesting links...

Killer Daddy

"What on earth is this?" was my first reaction to seeing this comic. It's horrible looking, and when you read the text, you discover it's propaganda of the crudest sort — like some of the awful anti-Semitic stuff that came out of Hitler's regime.

But this ... this comic is aimed at kids! And it's brought to you by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It's all the evils of fishing, and it is attempting to recruit children to defy their parents.

Just. Like. Hitler. And. Stalin.

A sample of the lovely rhetoric:

Until your daddy learns that it’s not “fun” to kill,keep your doggies and kitties away from him.He’s so hooked on killing defenseless animalsthat they could be next!

And this:

Imagine that a man dangles a piece of candy in front of you. You love candy so you reach for it. But, as you grab thecandy, a huge metal hook stabs through your hand and you’re ripped off the ground. You fight to get away, but it doesn’t do any good. You are caught, and there is nothing that you can do about it. You’d feel really scared, wouldn’t you?That would be an awful trick to play on someone, wouldn’t it? But guess what? Your daddy plays that same wicked trick on fish and fish get scared too!

Every time I read anything at all about this organization — including their own mailers that they send me — I come away with the impression of madness and diabolical evil. After reading this one, I want to take a shower. Can't you just see some PETA pervert cackling to himself (or herself — can't show a gender bias here!) as they pen the propaganda and paint the lurid comic? Can you imagine a ... normal ... person doing this?

As usual, click on the photo for a larger view...
A tip of the hat to Junkyard Blog.

Fire No Threat

The two fires that burned near us for the past few days are nearly out. As best we can tell, the danger is over.

Whew!

The Best

Last night, President Bush gave a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. The entire conservative blogosphere seems to be abuzz about it. Mostly they are lavishly praising it; a few say "gee, that's nice — but why didn't we hear this years ago?"

I was glued to my screen as I watched the video playback (both the transcript and the video are available at the White House web site). It was a riveting speech; well-written, well-delivered, and with a much-needed message about why we're fighting the war on terror (including in Iraq), and why we're winning it. I can't add much to what the rest of the blogosphere has already said. I will say this, though (agreeing with some other observers): it's the best speech I've ever seen President Bush make. Period. An example of the rhetoric:

Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence — the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, or the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers — and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.

On the contrary: They target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory.

Do read and view the whole thing.

Flat Tax

Today's Wall Street Journal has a commentary piece called "The World is Flat" ($) that endorses and encourages the notion of a flat tax for the U.S. It concludes:

Russia, for example, has reported that it now gets more tax revenues from the rich from its 13% flat tax than from its pre-existing Swiss cheese tax code with massive evasion and 50%-plus tax rates. Russia's revenues with the flat tax grew in real terms by 28% in 2001, 21% in 2002, and 31% in 2003, according to a recent analysis by the Hoover Institution. If the U.S. had that kind of revenue growth, our politicians would be wringing their hands over what to do with budget surpluses.

Last year the Internal Revenue code achieved a new Olympic record for complexity, with nine million words -- 12 times the length of the King James Bible. High tax rates and mindless tax complexity are an economic ball and chain. We hope President Bush's tax reform commission will cut through the class-warfare blather later this month and endorse a simple, broad-based, single-rate tax system.

As many of you know, I have made many visits to Estonia and Russia in the post-Soviet era. I've often noted the amazing sustained economic expansion in Estonia, which was the first country to implement a flat tax (Russia did so years later). Estonia, as the WSJ piece mentions, has already reduced their flat tax rate from 26% to 24%, and is planning to reduce it yet again to 20%. By any measure I'm aware of, the flat tax has been a resounding success in every country that has implemented it. When the flat tax is compared with the U.S. income tax system, the U.S. system comes away looking just plain silly. And yet somehow the U.S. does not seem to have nearly the political will it would take to switch to the flat tax; the pundits collective wisdom is that such a change borders on impossible.

Why is this? Well, most of the answers to this question that I have read focus on the vested interests that many groups and individuals have in our current tax code. For example, the solar energy credits are a boon to the solar energy industry, so their lobbyists support this particular piece of the tax code. There are thousands upon thousands of such specific benefits built into our tax code, and an interesting segment of the lobbyist population spends their time promoting them. Fair enough, but I suspect that's not the entire explanation. Also mentioned — and this resonates strongly with me — is the fact that our political system in many ways owes its incredible growth during the 20th century to the leverage politicians have because of our byzantine income tax. What better way to get your particular tweak to the tax code than to help elect your very own Congressman?

These factors have been enough, so far, to keep the flat tax movement from gaining much foothold in the U.S., despite the fact that poll after poll has shown overwhelming support by the electorate for a flat tax (see this Tax Foundation poll). Steve Forbes — perhaps the most visible proponent of the flat tax in the U.S. — was treated as if he were on the lunatic fringe of political thought, and an unserious contender, during his Presidential primary runs in 1996 and 2000. Is there no hope for us?

I am feeling optimistic that the flat tax will get a thorough hearing in the next election cycle (2008), though I can't explain exactly why. And I think there's even a reasonable chance that within the next few years enough political momentum can be generated to get a flat tax passed in the U.S. One interesting possibility in our federalist system is that a state could be the first to do so, and I think that's actually the most likely scenario. Success in a state would help spread flat tax fever in the U.S., much more so than any amount of European success, I'd wager. And I can easily imagine states like Idaho, Utah, or Wyoming jumping into the flat tax boat. Here's hoping!

CENTCOM

The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has a public web site, with news, photos, and commentary. I've added it to my daily reading list.

As an example (under "What extremists are saying"), here's a translation of a recent posting to the "al-Qa'ida Organization in America" web site:

"Designation of tasks and geographic division for the al-Qa'ida Organizations . . . Orders to destroy a nuclear reactor

I transmit to you what went on between me and brother Abu-Jandal, who is close to the al-Qa'ida leadership. The middleman said that the leadership agreed to the following geographic division:

-- al-Qa'ida Organization in the Middle East, Qa'idat al-Jihad led by Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi
--- al-Qa'ida Organization in Europe, Abu-Hafs al-Masri Brigades Organization led by Abu-Hamam
-- al-Qa'ida Organization in America led by Abu-Azzam al-Amriki [the American]

The tasks are designated as agreed upon, add to that, the fact that al-Qa'ida is adamant on attacking a nuclear reactor in America during the coming days. The task will be designated by the leader Abu-Azzam al-Amriki. Note that the FBI has published several photos of a wanted man under a variety of names. They said that he wanted to blow up a nuclear reactor. The last name published with that picture was Ja'far al-Tayyar. This was two years ago. After that, it was unknown whether that photo was delusive, or whether he was arrested, or killed, since we no longer heard from him or saw pictures of him. According to the information made available, the mission was assigned to the leader Abu-Azzam al-Amriki, may God grant him success. This is the information that we received. We present it to you just as we received it. We bear, with God's help, all [the consequences] that result from this."

The Islamic Renewal Organization is the website of the Saudi dissident group, formerly known as CDLR, based in the United Kingdom and headed by Muhammad al-Mas'ari.”

The photo at right is also from the CENTCOM site, and there is a nice collection of such photography there. As usual, click on the photo for a larger view...

Fire! (cont'd)

Well, there's good news and there's bad news on the fire front...

Yesterday the big concern was the "Border 50" fire, down near Tecate (about 12 miles from our home). The good news: that fire is partially contained, full containment is expected Sunday (10/9) evening, and the Santa Ana winds are gone so there's no force of nature trying to push the fire our way. Whew!

This morning we woke to hear news of a new fire, though — and this one is about half the distance from us as the Border 50 fire: just five or six miles away from our home. Yikes!

But looking carefully at the map (at right), we can see several things that bode well for us. Our home is in the green circle, and the red satellite thermal imaging data shows where the fire is. First of all, the new fire is east southeast of us — and the winds today (the Santa Anas are gone!) are from the northwest. This means that the winds will tend to blow the fire (and perhaps even more importantly, the embers) away from us. Then note the proximity of the lake (Barrett Lake): the firefighters will have no lack of water, either by pump or by air, because the lake is plenty big enough for the aircraft to refill from. Also, the area just west of the current fire was burned three years ago, so there's not much fuel there. And beyond all that, the areas between the fire and us are not remote; there are roads throughout except for the immediate area surrounding the two peaks (Gaskill Peak and Lawson Peak) there. So ... we're thinking that despite the relatively close proximity of this fire, our risk is fairly low. We hope. But we're not leaving our home deserted until this fire is out...

As usual, click on the photo for a larger view.

Fire! (cont'd)

Yesterday I wrote about a fire that started south of us, near Tecate. We were concerned at the time because of the prediction of Santa Ana winds, which could conceivably blow the fire our way.

On the map at right you can see where our home is (in the gren circle) and you can see where the fire is (the red and orange shapes). Where the fire burned yesterday or earlier, and is no longer burning, is shown in the black shaded areas. The photo is oriented normally (e.g., North is straight up), so you can see that the fire is burning toward the west, and not toward us. As I write these words, the winds at our house are from the northwest at 4 MPH, gusting to 10 MPH — almost the exact opposite of a Santa Ana, and exactly what we need to push that fire away from us. At the risk of jinxing us, I'll call that good news.

On the other hand, it's 90 degrees (F) and 3% relative humidity. It wouldn't take much for our part of the world to burn...

If you're curious about how I got this nice picture...it came from a website that is a cooperative project of NASA and the CDF, providing an online tool to create maps of past and current fires using all sorts of data, including the WF-HMS and MODIS satellite data used to generate the map you're looking at. The satellite data is updated four times a day; each of those circles represents a 1 km diameter "pixel" of thermal image data.

As usual, click on the photo for a larger view...

The Good China

Claudia Rosett has a new column up at the OpinionJournal, aptly titled The Good China. In it, she contrasts the United Nations — that bastion of incompetence — with Taiwan, using some observations of their relative organizational competencies:

... But as a symbol of the difference between the aging behemoth that is the U.N., and the lively democracy that is Taiwan, the contrast between the two renovation projects could hardly be more apt. While the U.N. reserves one of five permanent seats on its Security Council for the despotic "People's Republic" of China, plays along with the nuclear bomb program of the Islamic "Republic" of Iran and routinely clears its schedule to entertain the opinions of Fidel Castro's Cuba, the U.N. does not even offer Taiwan observer status, let alone a seat.

Taiwan, meanwhile, has been a world leader in embodying the ideals of the U.N.'s own charter--meant to promote peace, freedom and prosperity. Since the late 1980s, the Chinese government in Taipei has gone from martial law to free-wheeling elections, as the 23 million people on Taiwan have created China's first full democracy. In recent decades, they have also leapt from deep poverty to the ranks of the world's wealthier polities. The usual U.N. databases do not include Taiwan, but according to the CIA World Factbook, Taiwan's per capita income these days is about $25,000--which in U.N. rankings would place it in the neighborhood of such highly developed nations as Italy and New Zealand, with almost 20 times the per capita income of Red China.

Taiwan has achieved this despite being evicted from the U.N. in the 1970s, to be replaced by the communist government. For Taiwan, there has been no place at the perennial U.N. conferencing on "sustainable development." Taiwan was cut out of the U.N. picture years before the U.N. began its drumbeat for global taxation to support U.N. "millennium development goals." And lo! Taiwan has blossomed beyond the wildest dreams of the U.N. aidocrats who, bereft of the defunct Oil for Food program, now hope to lavish yet more attention, and earn themselves many more U.N. per diems, in Africa. It's enough to suggest the real secret of success might be to ignore the U.N....

Hah! Love that last sentence in my excerpt!

Go read the whole thing.

Fire!

The California Department of Forestry (CDF) fire-fighting planes are flying right over hour house on their missions to and from the Border 50 fire. I took this photo just a few minutes ago. As I write this, the CDF is reporting 0% containment, and not even an estimate for containment. Today is the first day of a projected two-to=three day Santa Ana wind condition, so even though this is some distance from our home (about 10 miles), we can't dismiss it.

Click on the photo for a larger view.

FEMA Anger

But perhaps not in the manner you're thinking. Check out this report from FEMA member Jodi Witte:

Dear Friends and Family,

I just got home from 15 days in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. I am tired, and I am emotional. But mostly I am angry. I am angry at the news - the TV stations, the newspapers - for what I view is a grosslymisrepresented placement of blame. For those of you who know me, you know I work for FEMA as an "intermittent employee" of a disaster response team. My team, called VMAT or Veterinary Medical Assistance Team, is partof the response branch of FEMA known as the National Disaster Medical System.

Let me tell you how "awful" FEMA's response was from someone who was there on the front lines working for FEMA.

President Bush declared a state of emergency prior to Katrina's landfall due to its strength and location. This is not normally done before a hurricane makes landfall. Damn good work by George W in my honest opinion. This opened the door for our federal teams to pre-deploy assets in nearby locations so that we were ready when Katrina did hit. I wascontacted by FEMA before the hurricane hit, asking for my availability and to place me on alert. Many teams were moved into the region including 2 VMAT teams. My team was mobilized immediately after landfall and I arrived in the area before New Orleans had completely filled with water,before we even realized how bad it was truly going to be. FEMA responded immediately and with unprecedented numbers of responders. There were DMAT teams inside the Super Dome before the levee broke. Never before had so many FEMA teams and personnel been sent into a disaster.

One thing you must understand, the DMAT, VMAT, and DMORT teams that make up the National Disaster Medical System are NOT "first responders". Our job is to supplement overwhelmed communities if needed. The initial responsibility lies with the state. If they become overwhelmed in the aftermath of a disaster where their local hospitals, medical, veterinaryand mortuary assets cannot handle the magnitude of the disaster, we come in and augment their resources. It takes 24 to 48 hours to mobilize the federal assets in normal circumstances. We come from every state in the US, leaving our jobs and families behind at the drop of a hat to helpwhere ever it is needed. Our cache of equipment and medical supplies must either be moved from our home base or from the federal warehouses in Maryland by truck or plane. This takes time. But we were there before Katrina hit and many more arrived immediately after even before knowing the full scope of this disaster.

So why is FEMA being blamed? I'm not exactly sure. I really am not. Yes, FEMA was overwhelmed. God sakes how could it not be? This hurricane has been the largest natural disaster the US has had on record. Nothing can compare. We train and train for almost anything. We try to be ready. But no one was ready for how bad this truly was. I am sure there were some bad decisions made high up, of that I cannot deny. It was a logistical nightmare to get the teams placed and the supplies sent in. Some stuff arrived too late. But, seeing how hard the FEMA employees worked to help the people and animals of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama it makesme angry and very, very sad to hear us put down so bad on TV and in the news.

One day, just a couple days after New Orleans was under water, I was stationed in the New Orleans airport. This is where I was the first week. The airport was where all the buses and helicopters that were rescuing people from the city brought them first. They came in the thousands to the airport and went through lines holding their last bit ofpossessions, which included a small amount of clothing or keepsakes and often times their pets. Yes, they got to bring their pets with them on the buses and helicopters. I know because I was there. I saw them. They came in and were triaged by FEMA medical personnel. Minor injuries or illnesses were treated with the utmost care and love by FEMA DMAT teams and then they took their place in line through concourse C to board planes to shelters where they could receive follow up medical treatment. The very ill weremoved into the D concourse area for more thorough medical care and support in a true MASH hospital set up right there inside the airport. I walked through this area frequently and watched as DMAT members held the critically and gravely ill peoples' hands, cared for them, helped them in so many ways trying to save their lives and to comfort those who could not be saved.

I walked through feces, urine, blood and vomit covering the floor of the airport. I watched custodians working tirelessly to clean up the floor even though it was soiled again as soon it was cleaned. People were handed water and food as soon as they arrived. Those who were well, movedthrough an endless line to concourse B to board both commercial and military planes going to shelters in other states. I walked the lines of concourse B, C, and D as did other members of my VMAT team to provide any needed veterinary care to the pets who were evacuated with theirfamilies. We cared for stray animals that arrived at the airport too. See, the coast guard and military helicopters were picking up stray animals if they had room when they would rescue people from the city. FEMA personnel did everything possible to comfort and care for the peopleof New Orleans. I know because I was one of them, and I did everything I could for them, and I saw with my own eyes what the others were also doing.

This is a photo on the FEMA website. What you don't see here is that this little dog is sitting below the hospital gurney of his master who was critically ill inside one of the DMAT MASH tents. I walked through this medical tent to check on the dog with a couple other members of my VMAT team. The nurse had given the dog a dish of water and was feeding himsome crackers. We promised the man we would bring back some food for his dog. He was very thankful as he laid there with IVs going. I returned a few minutes later with one other member of my team, bringing a Ziploc bag of dog food. When we arrived they were moving him to a different stretcher because he needed to be medivac'ed out on a helicopter formore intense medical care. The helicopter pilot told us he cannot take the dog unless its in a crate. I stepped up to talk to the very ill man. I asked him if he would let me care for his dog while he went to the hospital. He grabbed my hand and had tears in his eyes as he begged me to help him take his dog with him because it was all he had left in the world. There was nothing else. I looked into this man's eyes as he cried. He was a middle aged white man with cuts and scrapes all over him. His face was puffy and feverish with infection. I then looked at the DMAT nurse and the Coast Guard pilot. Both looked back at me with very graveexpressions and each asked me to please find a crate for the dog so he can go with the man. My teammate and I both knew right then that this man may not make it and we had to make sure he got to spend as much time as possible with his dog. There was no way we were going to make him leave his dogbehind. We took off running and found an empty crate. It was a bit too small for the dog, but would work temporarily. We returned and found the pilot waiting for us with the man. Once we got the dog in the crate and on the stretcher with the man, he again took my hand and thanked us as we cried together. He said "you have no idea what you have done for me and I will never forget it" Then he was wheeled away toward the waiting helicopter.

So, at the end of this day...a 29 hour shift that I spent at the airport, I arrived back at our bunk location - a building on the campus of LSU where we slept on the floor - and I got to see the news on one of the cable networks. I was absolutely outraged at the reports of the lack ofresponse by FEMA. I changed to another cable news network and saw the same thing there. What they don't mention when they talk about FEMA is the people that make up FEMA's response, working countless hours, pouring their very heart and soul into this response despite being slammed andcriticized all over the news.

I cried with sadness and anger at how we are viewed all over the world. I am a FEMA responder who cannot wear my FEMA badge in public in Louisiana because everyone thinks we are so terrible. Do they even yet mention how hard we have worked for the people and animals of Louisiana? No, maybethey never will.

Just yesterday the radio was criticizing the fact that FEMA had so many trucks filled with water and supplies that were just sitting somewhere and was costing $600 per day each to sit and wait. Does anyone realize this is the right thing to do? There is already a tremendous amount of water and supplies in the areas. The reason there are trucks waitingfull of more supplies and water is so they can move at a moments notice to where ever they are needed at any time. Would they rather have the extra supplies sitting in a warehouse where they would have to wait to secure trucks, then load the supplies and water, then move them out? Hell no. They complain about the lack of quick response by FEMA but yet don't get the whole concept that these supplies and water sitting in trucks ready to go is for quick response and now they criticize FEMA readiness without realizing it. The contradictions in the news is ridiculous.

Now 13 days after I first saw the news reporting how awful FEMA is, I still remain proud to be a member of FEMA, and I am proud of the work I did in New Orleans and I am proud to work for the federal government headed up by a strong and brave president. It was not easy, and things may not have gone perfectly, but we did and continue to do amazing workthere even if no one knows it because they will only look at what went wrong instead of so much that went right.

Jodi Witte

Veterinary Technician/Logistics Officer VMAT-1, Veterinary Medical Assistance Team
FEMA Response Branch US Department of Homeland Security

There are lots of hoaxes running around on the Internet, so before I posted this I did a little research on the web. It appears to me to be a legitimate story, written by a real person. In fact, here's some information about that person (Jodi Witte) that you might be interested in: Jodi Beck Witte is a veterinary technician and weapons of mass destruction specialist for a FEMA disaster response team and manages an animal health website. You can also email Jodi directly.