And now some Senators are really going to do something about it.

What are they planning? Why, they're just going to send you a check for $100.

Apparently this is kind of a take-off on horseshoes. The objective seems to be to throw a beanbag into a little hole on the opponent's platform. Throw, miss, repeat. For hours. They've even taken the time to paint the targets with the school logo.

(The question was: how lame can you get?)

I'm not going to get all piece-by-piece on this but just a couple points for now, starting with the title: HURRICANE KATRINA: A NATION STILL UNPREPARED

Revkin of course had full control over his words. But it seems obvious he had no control over the foot and a half of image plate that covered the entire top half of the Week In Review to support his article. The Times' layout editors decided that a 14-inch-long illustration was just the thing to drive the point home. The point it drove home for me was how clueless well-meaning people can be.

First item, from the NIMBY side of life: In case you haven't heard, some folks are trying to install a wind farm in Nantucket Sound while others are trying to stop it. Opponents have no legit objections other than the most important political objection: some very rich people with waterfront property don't want their viewshed to be gummed up with the sight of 415-foot-tall, 1MW turbines on the water. (Of course, viewshed is all relative, as the closest any turbine will be to land is 5.2 miles.)

But that kind of argument won't go over well with the media and others who might make hay on politicians killing the project, so the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound has come up with some better-sounding but ultimately absurd objections. You can read them throughout their webpage and they are too numerous to all pick apart, but here's just one.

The cream of the issue is Matthew Stannard's scenario-building exercise on repeating the 1906 quake exactly 100 years later (link). The article is a well-woven story line, filled with detail collecting the projections and wisdom of structural engineers, emergency managers and all the other workers involved with earthquakes in one way or another. It follows the quake from initial rupture to ten years out. It is mandatory reading for you Bay Area denizens but I think everybody else should read it too, to get a sense of the magnitude of the hazard here. Here's another chance: read it!

I'd been merrily blogging away about FEMA and its agency status (that it was independent, then got sucked into Dept. of Homeland Security after the WTC disaster) and how I thought that FEMA could only carry out its designated functions if it was an independent agency with cabinet-level access to POTUS. (Check the archives and this is the latest.)

But that was just my feeling, not something I had really discussed much with others in the natural hazards policy world. So either people in the same field think alike or all of us had come to the same conclusion independently, because yesterday at the policy lunch an interesting thing happened.

Newsom: ready for the big time

Governator: deer in headlights

Newsom gave an enthusiastic speech that addressed real issues and real problems, didn't look at a script once, seemed to actually believe what the hell he was talking about. Schwarzenegger read from a script that he didn't emotionally buy into, started with an unmistakable GW-style smirk that he couldn't shake and filled the speech with empty sounding I've done this's and my administration has done that's. That's not to say Schwarzenegger hasn't bought into emergency preparedness on a major scale -- I think he clearly has. It's just to say that as public speakers on a political stage, Newsom impressed me and Schwarzenegger didn't. I also caught clearly Newsom's ambitions for higher office, so we'll see if he can do it despite being very liberal. As a friend pointed out last night, nobody thought Senator Boxer could win her Senate seat either....

The slide had a big USGS logo on it and the fine print at the bottom said the numbers are from a report entitled "When the Big One Strikes Again - Estimated Losses Due to a Repeat of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake." From what I gathered at the opening slide show of today's plenary session, the analysis was done by Kircher & Associates.

From CQ yesterday:

"Our three branches of government have become like an unstable chair, a three-legged chair. The founders could not have envisioned how much money and special interests would corrupt the political process," Gravel said. "Giving us Americans legislative power will put forth a fourth leg on that stool and make it stable."

Pulling into Rockridge Station, the train presented itself full and I was lucky to get a seat. Do all these people have something to do in The City before five in the morning or are they headed in for my reasons? Across the transbay tube and out onto Market Street I realize the answer. Tens of thousands of people are filling Market and every side street, either pressing up toward Lotta's Fountain to see the Mayor and a phalanx of dignitaries speak accolades to long-dead generations and a very small knot of survivors, or patiently watching big screen monitors blocks away.

From where I sit (studying natural hazards policy and having worked closely on reauthorization of the earthquake hazards reduction bill), we have two very distinct hazards -- natural and unnatural -- that should be addressed with two distinct agencies.