Tampa’s vulnerability to Milton

The New Neo Posted on by

The mayor of Tampa was quite blunt about it:

[Mayor] Castor noted that many Floridians are already leaving the area. For those trying to stay home, she urged them to reconsider.

“They may have done that in others,” Castor said, referring to Floridians riding out previous storms. “There’s never been one like this.”

“Helene was a wake-up call. This is literally catastrophic, and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re going to die,” she continued.

Sometimes hurricanes are overhyped, which creates a “boy who cried wolf” mentality in residents. This time, though, the danger does seem very stark, and what happened with Helene will probably make people pay very serious attention.

Why is Tampa so vulnerable? The answer is rather simple:

The city is especially susceptible to hurricane damage due to its low-lying topography. …

While the city has survived other tropical storms over the years, Hurricane Milton, a category 5 storm which is set to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday, is concerning because Tampa is vulnerable to storm surges due to its shallow waters. Milton’s storm surge is forecasted to raise water levels by eight to 12 feet in Tampa Bay, if peak surge happens during the high tide. …

The last hurricane to directly impact Tampa Bay was the Tarpon Springs Hurricane of 1921. As a Category 3 storm, it caused eight deaths, an 11-foot surge and cost $10 million in damages (worth nearly $180 million today when accounting for inflation).

That seems a lot less serious than what is forecasted for Milton.

More here:

The heightened risk is partially a result of topography. The Gulf of Mexico coastline of Florida is shallow with a gentle, sloping shelf. The higher ocean floor acts as a barrier that retains the storm’s outflow of water, forcing the ocean to surge onto shore. That’s the opposite of Florida’s east coast, where the ocean floor drops suddenly a few miles from the coast.

“You can have the same storm, the same intensity, the same everything, but very different surges,” said Klotzbach.

A 2015 report from the Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm Karen Clark and Co. concluded that Tampa Bay is the most vulnerable place in the U.S. to storm surge flooding from a hurricane and stands to lose $175 billion in damage. …

“It’s a huge population. It’s very exposed, very inexperienced and that’s a losing proposition,” Emanuel, who has studied hurricanes for 40 years, said. “I always thought Tampa would be the city to worry about most.”

Considering everything, Tampa has been rather lucky in regard to hurricanes till now.

___

Kamala’s latest interviews

The New Neo Posted on by

60 Minutes scored an interview with Kamala Harris and put out clips to advertise it. One of them got so much negative attention that the fabulously creative and helpful folks at CBS decided to fix that by editing it out of the “complete” [sic] interview as shown:

It’s so interesting what one can do with editing. For friends, get rid of the worst parts. For enemies, truncated quotes that seem to be saying something the person didn’t actually say, plus editing out the good parts. And that’s, of course, in addition to softball questions for friends and “have you stopped beating your wife?” questions for enemies. I must say, however, that 60 Minutes interviewer Bill Whittaker was far better – less partisan, somewhat more challenging – than Harris’ previous interrogators.

Then there’s the fact that Harris did an interview with a podcaster whose program is named “Call Her Daddy.” It’s basically a show that’s popular with young women and discusses sex. Why on earth would Harris choose that particular venue for a long-form – 45-minutes long – interview? She was asked the question by the podcaster and gave some nonsense answer about being able to be “real” there, but the question remains, at least in my mind. Why spend time catering to a demographic that she already has sewn up? Harris has a limited amount of time to explain herself to the American people. Isn’t this a waste, and doesn’t it have the added risk of turning off a group that she needs: men? Or has she given up on that? Byron York says that it’s about turnout and the calculation is that this appearance will motivate greater turnout in her supporters. But I think just the name “Donald Trump” is the greatest motivator of all for them.

Today Harris appeared on The View, which has got to be one of the friendliest shows of all for her – and again, it’s a show watched mainly by women. And yet she managed to say something there that was quite stunning, considering how she’s tried until now to sell herself as an agent of change:

Indeed, Kamala has a “delicate dance” to perform – not dissing the administration too much while nevertheless distancing herself from it. But her attempts have proven that she has two left feet.

NOTE: I was wondering where the name “Call Her Daddy” came from. To me, dinosaur that I am, it conjures up the question “who’s your daddy?”, which I don’t ordinarily think of as a “female empowerment” question. It turns out it’s supposed to signify this: “The podcast name ‘Call Her Daddy’ reflects female empowerment, originating from a conversation where cohost Sofia Franklyn suggested women should be seen as powerful by calling them ‘daddy’ instead of men.”

That makes zero sense. Does it mean that to disempower men we should call them “mommy”? Doesn’t calling a woman “daddy” to indicate strength imply that real power resides in men and the trappings of men, including words that signify manhood?

How bad will Hurricane Milton be?

The New Neo Posted on by

The forecasts are dire indeed, and after what happened in North Carolina I hope people take them very seriously and evacuate:

Hurricane and storm surge warnings are now posted along Florida’s western Gulf Coast, where the storm poses threats of life-threatening storm surge, destructive winds and flooding rainfall by midweek.

“If Milton stays on its course this will be the most powerful hurricane to hit Tampa Bay in over 100 years. No one in the area has ever experienced a hurricane this strong before,” warned the National Weather Service in Tampa Bay. …

A hurricane warning is in effect along much of the western Gulf Coast of Florida from Bonita Beach northward to the mouth of the Suwannee River, including Tampa Bay. …

A storm surge warning stretches from Flamingo northward to the Suwannee River, including Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay. This means a life-threatening water rise from storm surge is possible in the area, generally within 36 hours. …

M?ilton more than doubled the criteria for rapid intensification, and the National Hurricane Center has called its intensification “explosive”. Its winds increased from 65 mph at 10 a.m. CDT on Sunday to 160 mph at 11 a.m. CDT Monday. That 95 mph wind increase in just over 24 hours is among the extreme bouts of rapid intensification ever observed in the Atlantic Basin.

Landfall is expected in Florida on Wednesday. Please stay safe, everyone.

10/7: Sad anniversary

The New Neo Posted on by

Looking back at 10/7, I recall that the news of just how bad it was came out slowly. First it was that maybe 20 Israelis had been killed. Then more, and then more and more and more, in a cascade of escalating horror.

The sadism on the part of the Gazans was perhaps the most shocking part of it, but it should not have been. We had had many indications of that before: the Ramallah lynching, for example. But the scale of that was small and this was huge.

And then there were the pro-Hamas demonstrations all around the Western world, particularly among students. But should that have been a surprise? After all, anyone who paid attention could see it had been building for decades. But still, the size of the group that had been won over by these sentiments, and the intensity and ferocity of the anti-Jew hatred they expressed, was stunning.

And the UN, and the anti-Israel press? Shouldn’t have been any sort of surprise either.

Well, as the poet Philip Larkin wrote of a different subject – pre-WWI Britain – “never such innocence again.” At least, not for those who’ve noticed; they won’t be shocked again by something of this nature. But the truth is that every generation must learn the same things over and over.

What are those things? That Jew-hatred is a poison that can take any number of forms, and does. That its psychological attractions are many, and that malign forces are dedicated to fostering it. That the internet, social media, the MSM, and academia are a big part of its ease of spread in the present day.

If you learn the history of the Nazis’ attempts to exterminate Jews – the Jews, as in the entire Jewish people – you’ll notice that the Nazis dedicated a great deal of time and effort towards that goal, and that they received a fair (although differing from country to country of Europe) amount of assistance from local Jew-haters in each country. And the Nazis were remarkably successful in their goal of making Europe Judenfrei; two-thirds of the Jews of Europe were murdered and many of the rest fled to other places.

One of those places was Israel, which did not yet exist as a country although Zionism did. But the goal of many Jews to make Israel a country predated WWII and the Holocaust by many many years. WWII underlined the need for a safe haven, because without a country the Jews were at the mercy of others. But of course, the existence of Israel has also given the Jew-haters of the world a convenient focus for their rage and target for their attacks, and they have taken full advantage of that.

That is one of the many reasons 10/7 was so shocking. It was a murderous pogrom within Israel itself, at the hands of its Arab neighbors some of whom had pretended to want peace (the Gazan workers Israel let in, for example) while preparing for a barbaric slaughter of Jews and anyone who happened to have the misfortune of being in Israel (Thai agricultural workers, for example). The IDF and Israeli leadership failed on 10/7 to live up to its end of the bargain, which was that no such things would be allowed to happen in Israel, except in small and sporadic ways. The enormity of the pogrom of 10/7 demonstrated, even to many peacenik leftists in Israel, that there was no partner for peace in those who have come to call themselves “Palestinians.”

I wish I had a solution but I don’t. I know that the election of the Harris/Walz ticket would make things worse, because beginning with Obama the Democrats have decided to cater more to Iran than ever before, and to try to block Israel from finishing the job. I know that the universities need reforming in this and so many other ways, but I also know that those who teach the attitudes that have led to Israel- and Jew-hatred being so widespread on campuses all over the Western world are deeply entrenched.

And then there are the hostages. How many are alive and how many dead? And for the living, how deep and horrific is their continuing suffering? It is almost unbearable to think of it. Should it be a surprise that the hostages are still being held? No, because their value to the Palestinians (and Iran) is huge.

The newer phase of the post-10/7 war, which features an increase in Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah (and even Iran at times), does’t bode well for the hostages’ release. But after the initial release of some of the women and children in the exchanges of last fall, I don’t think anything was good news for the hostages except the rescue of a fortunate few who’d been held in circumstances that made rescue possible although highly difficult. The more recent murder of the six hostages as Israeli forces were closing in is the sort of thing I expect for the future, unfortunately.

I see a long war ahead in the region. Next month’s election here will determine the role of the US in that war. But Israel will have to stand alone, if the US doesn’t stand with it. Most Israelis know they have no choice.

Plastic surgery regret

The New Neo Posted on by

You know how it is with YouTube. You look at one video on a certain subject, and after that – at least for a while – the algorithm floods you with similar videos, tempting you to watch. So I must have looked at a video about cosmetic surgery, and since then I’ve watched quite a few.

I find them fascinating. There are basically two kinds. Few people my age are featured, but there is a batch of youngsters – teens or early twenties – mostly having nose jobs, and a batch of what in the cosmetic surgery world passes for old (that is, forties and fifties and maybe just turning sixty) having face lifts.

For the most part, I tend to think they look better in their “befores,” especially the youngsters. And even the older face lift group has the disadvantage of having purposely harsh lighting and no makeup “before,” as well as lines drawn by the surgeon on their faces to highlight and seem to deepen whatever lines already exist. Even then, the “after” photos sometimes look good but sometimes look odd to me, as though their faces have been washed of all character.

The nose job group tends to feature a pretty young woman with a nose that is not at all grotesque or disfiguring, at least in my mind. It’s usually a nose that I think she would probably grow into and would seem distinguished and “interesting” as she gets a bit older, but she’ll never get the chance because she ends up with a retrousse-type nose that turns up at the tip and is quite narrow. Their faces often end up looking unbalanced and doll-like to me.

Here’s an example of the facelift sort, with the “before” featuring bad lighting, no makeup, and extra lines drawn, compared to the “after” with great lighting and tons of makeup, as well as smiles. I can get results like that in videos without a face lift, just by manipulating those things. I’m not saying the face lift did nothing for this woman. I just think she was probably quite attractive before if she’d had the right lighting and makeup, and in the “after” she looks artificial and a bit frozen and overly made up:

Here’s another face lift example, this time without the lines drawn. This is a much younger woman, and she looks great in the first photo even without makeup and with the harsh lighting.

Here’s an example of a nose job video in a young woman. I chose this one because it was the first short video that came up when I did a search at YouTube for “nose job” rather than because it has any special characteristics. It’s rather typical but some of the videos are even more extreme in the relative attractiveness of the “before” nose and what I consider the too-diminutive and slightly-unnatural look of the “after.” Then again, she seems very happy with the results:

There is also a whole genre of nose job and/or face lift disaster videos where something has gone wrong and a second or third or fourth surgery is required. These are sad, but fortunately the majority of cosmetic surgeries don’t end up this way.

But the stories that most fascinate me are ones where the person is unhappy with the results for different reasons. Usually, the person has gotten exactly what she (it’s usually a “she,” although quite a few men get cosmetic surgery too) wants. But there’s an unease, sometimes a dramatic one. The feeling is one of unexpected loss of identity: she doesn’t recognize her own face anymore.

The face is extremely central to our idea of ourselves. That’s why so many young women who are insecure find fault with features that are basically fine, although not like a model’s. But after having those features “fixed,” many young women (I don’t know what percentage) experience regret that can be quite intense even though their surgeries were successful in the objective sense.

They look in the mirror and don’t recognize the person they’re seeing. This can happen to many people at the beginning but they adjust quite nicely in a few days or weeks. But for some the feeling persists and persists. I’ve even seen videos where young women ask to have a little bump put back on their noses, or ask to have the tip turn down again. Revision surgery can be done but it’s riskier and usually requires grafts of cartilage from ear or rib.

Why is Kamala Harris keeping pace in a race that seems 50/50 at this point?

The New Neo Posted on by

After all, shouldn’t she be losing badly? She’s part of the Biden administration, and by most metrics they’ve done a lousy job compared to Trump’s track record. She doesn’t speak well, especially when unscripted. She has an off-putting personality to a lot of people. She doesn’t have viewpoint consistency and can’t explain her many flip-flops.

Nevertheless, the race is a toss-up. Here’s my list of the reasons why:

(1) The vast majority of people still vote party line, and the country is pretty evenly split in that regard. I’m not talking about party registration, which is a different matter because many many people who pretty much always vote party line nevertheless register as Independents.

(2) The MSM is a huge factor and shapes public perceptions for the Democrat.

(3) In line with #2 and the Democrats’ message for the last eight years, Trump has been so successfully demonized that a great great many people would vote for literally anyone who would run against him.

(4) Abortion is still a huge issue and Kamala is its champion. This attracts many people who are essentially one-issue voters.

(5) Identity politics, in which Kamala Harris is a twofer: female and black. And her exact percentage of blackness in the genetic sense is unimportant. She is black enough.

(6) Kamala Harris is also relatively young, and looks good for her age. Trump is getting pretty old now, even though he’s very mentally alert. His choice of a young whippersnapper like Vance is good in that regard, but there is still a big age gap between Trump and Harris.

(7) Harris represents herself as an agent of change, which seems ludicrous to me since she’s been vice president for almost four years. But I think there are voters who buy it. After all, she’s never been president before. Biden has, and Trump has. And although Obama beat her at becoming the first black president, she would be the first female president, which also represents something fresh and new to a lot of people.

John Kerry: the elites and free speech

The New Neo Posted on by

John Kerry’s not alone in putting down free speech, of course. He’s speaking for the elitist left the world over, who want to block free speech in the name of wanting to block “dangerous disinformation.”

The former Secretary of State took part in a World Economic Forum panel on Green Energy on Wednesday. Near the end of the panel, a member of the audience asked what can be done to push back against disinformation surrounding climate change online.

“You know there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc. But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,” Kerry said. …

He continued, “So what we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern, by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.” …

“The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing. It is part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It’s really hard to govern today. The referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn’t a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree. And people go and self-select where they go for their news, for their information. And then you get into a vicious cycle,” Kerry said.

Note the way Kerry puts it – the referees “have kind of been eviscerated.” By whom, Kerry? By nefarious forces? Or by their own demonstrated unreliability and bias, again and again and again? How many predictions have the climate change people made that have turned out to be wrong? Why have they sounded the alarm about climate change but have generally rejected nuclear power? And on and on and on. If they have “been eviscerated,” it is through a form of unintentional hari kari.

Elites generally tend to distrust free speech, for very obvious reasons. They are (as Sowell labeled them) the anointed, and therefore they know best about everything. So the temptation is always there to clamp down on those who disagree.

And sometimes what the elites are clamping down on really is disinformation, and sometimes it really is dangerous. I’m aware that this is a real dilemma. For example, on this blog, if I didn’t block trolls they actually would take over the entire comments section and drown out all the other voices. But although I write in a public venue, I’m not the public square in the sense that the internet as a whole is, or even that venues such as Twitter and Facebook are. With the latter sites, it’s easy to justify blocking bots and spam, but more difficult to justify blocking actual people who are posting ideas that seem bad on the face of it. How far does one go in doing that? Who gets to decide?

As that great mind Humpty Dumpty said in a slightly different contest, the question is who is to be master. Because, as COVID has so clearly underlined, the elites are often wrong – which doesn’t mean that all the people challenging them are any better at the science of it all. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But the elites have squandered most of the trust people once had in them, and they are not good faith arbiters.

The argument for free speech has always been that in the free marketplace of ideas, the truth will prevail. Obviously, that’s more of a hope than a given. But so far it seems like the cure offered by Kerry is worse than the disease.

[NOTE: Glenn Reynolds writes on whether scientific fraud should be criminalized.]

The dockworker strikers do an Emily Litella

The New Neo Posted on by

A crisis averted:

The theory is that a dockworkers’ strike would have been too damaging to the Democrats, so the problems have been patched up for now:

“Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume,” the ILA and USMX said in a joint statement Thursday evening.

The tentative agreement would increase workers’ wages by 62% over the life of the 6-year contract, sources familiar confirm to ABC News.

This represents a significant increase from the shipping industry group’s offer of a 50% wage increase earlier this week. The union had been pushing for a 77% pay hike over six years.

The tentative agreement would bring the hourly wage for a top dockworker to $63 per hour at the end of the new contract, up from $39 per hour under the expired contract.

The workers’ demands about automation on the job have been pushed to mid-January.

Biden praised them, as well he might.

As the workers’ wages go up, I assume the prices of the goods they unload will reflect that.

[NOTE: Here’s Ace on the same subject.]

Vance explains his now-famous side-eye

The New Neo Posted on by

You know that now-famous “look” Vance gave during his debate with Walz? The one that seemed to gaze at the viewer and say: “Can you believe this guy?

Well, Vance has now explained that what he really was doing was checking the timer.

Do you believe him?

He also said he looked at his wife when the debate was all over, to see her opinion of how it had gone:

“I looked at Usha’s face and I just knew, I was like, ‘Holy sh*t we must have done a very good job,’ because Usha doesn’t lie to me and her face especially doesn’t lie to me,” he said. “And I knew that minute that meant we had a very good debate.”

And this bit of debate wisdom:

He said he realized that his opponent Tim Walz appeared nervous and flustered but he resisted seizing the moment to gain more points.

“‘When your enemy is making a mistake, don’t interrupt him,’” he said, referring to what he called a “Sun Tzu” quote.

Here’s a colorful description of Walz during that debate, from James Howard Kunstler [hat tip: commenter “Hubert”]:

Tuesday night’s veep palaver could be the last time you see the frightened animal known as Tim Walz for the duration of the campaign. He’s famous for his wild body language — jumping around on stage, flapping his arms — but this time the action was all concentrated in his face. You saw his eyes bug out, dart left and right, as if something fierce was coming at him (it was), and more than a few times, his head jerked around sideways so hard you wondered if it might do a whole three-sixty. His mouth, a pain-inflected frown in repose, turned down so deeply it looked like he had sashweights hanging from the corners. Altogether, his face said more than the embarrassing mishmash of mangled English that came out of it.

Ouch.