Mark Hancock has some excellent photojournalism of hurricane Rita, and this excellent article on how to cover hurricanes.

Winning the Oil Endgame. More excellent stuff from Amory Lovins and pals. You can read it free online. From the abstract:

The route we suggest for the transition beyond oil will expand customer choice and wealth, and will be led by business for profit. [..] A $180-billion investment over the next decade will yield $130-billion annual savings by 2025; revitalize the automotive, truck, aviation, and hydrocarbon industries; [..]

The only problem here is that the automotive, truck, aviation, and hydrocarbon industries don’t want to be revitalized. That’s why the profit motive hasn’t worked thus far.

But that’s just me bickering.

Back in Seattle. Got here just fine.

I flew from Nashville to San Diego next to a huge latino man who spoke no English and couldn’t relax. He wasn’t nervous, just one of those people who can’t sit still for long. He would bounce his leg unconsciously. Usually while it was pressed up against mine, and while his elbow was poking me in the side.

The plane then went to San Jose and then to Seattle. A couple of near-misses; no collisions, though. No harm no foul, I guess. One was an F-16.

Leaving San Jose, the air traffic controllers had us making a big loop. Immediately after liftoff the plane banked sharply up and to the right, then back south for a while, and then banked north again, directly over the runway. By this time, we’d reached 10,000 feet, however. Just as the pilot finished the second bank, I was watching a plane land on the runway directly below, and at that moment the flight attendant came over the P.A. and said, “We’re now at 10,000 feet, so you can turn on your approved electronic devices.”

San Jose from 10,000 feet just after dusk is beautiful, by the way. The streetlights look like the veins of a leaf. I was thinking about how I’d take a picture of it… There’s really no way unless you’re in a commercial aircraft. The view from 10,000 feet above the San Jose runway is The Forbidden Picture.

Camera toss.

I shook hands with Asa Hutchinson today, in Hope, Arkansas of all places.

Dude’s running for governor of AR, so he was pressing the flesh at the Hope Western Sizzlin’.

I couldn’t connect his name with who he really was or what he’d done. If I had been able to, I’m sure I’d have had something more scandalous to say.

Over on mile23 I wrote up a little thing on L*a*b color in Photoshop. It’s one of those things you learn and then wonder how you ever got by doing stuff the old way.

In other news, I’m going to Tennessee tomorrow. My uncle is performing with his choral group, and my parents have been looking for an excuse to go visit him and the other relatives on that side of the world, and I’d like to see them, too. Ergo, we go.

At the moment, I’m tired and hungry. I’ve been craving sugar lately. The only dose which will cure the jonesin’ is a Snickers bar, which is a little too much. My diet here has been relatively high in protein, so maybe I’m getting some kind of Atkins-esque effect.

Word for the day: Beleagured.

Since I’ve been here, I read ‘Crimes Against Logic,’ which is a rant about logic and illogic in the public sphere. It’s supposed to innoculate people against sloppy thinking, but it ends up coming off as angry and pedantic. That’s the problem with logical rigor: You end up being a buzzkill by revealing the flaws in the work of others.

I got this book because it seemed to be just like the book project I’ve had on the back burner for quite a while. I was wondering how I could filter the pedantry of logic and rhetoric into something which seemed more homegrown and… well… compassionate. Maybe one day it’ll get written.

I’m also in the midst of reading another book: ‘Animals In Translation,’ by Temple Grandin. Grandin is kind of famous for having Asperger’s Syndrome and being autistic. But way beyond that, she’s an animal behaviorist, with a PhD and everything. ‘Animals In Translation’ is a lot of different things: It’s about animal behavior, it’s about autism, and it’s about animal intelligence, with comparison to the way autistic consciousness works. And other stuff, too. She makes bold statements, such as that some animals could be viewed as autistic savants, and then backs them up. She turns all kinds of preconceptions upside down, and if you’re me, you eat it up.

And what do you know!? Breszny’s got a new book out. I have to go find it.

It’s nice to see Xanga update their security, even a little bit. First they adopted the type-this-distorted-text technique for new accounts. There’s a cute name for this technique, but I can’t remember it and I’m too lazy to look it up.

And now they’re encrypting the I’m-alread-logged-in cookie. I remember someone hacked this a long, long time ago, and I thought the XangaNerds had solved the problem, but I guess I was wrong. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes NotForProphet to hack the new system.

Anyway. Sometimes I curse the darkness, but this time I’ll light a candle. Yay security!

Next up: https for all connections, so Xangans can ‘blog from work without being spied upon.

Honestly, I want to ‘blog something interesting, but all I can find to think about to say is how much Houston sucks, and that’s something of a foregone conclusion. I’m a little bit stuck here… I could go home at any time, but life here is an endless nostalgic distraction.

For instance: I went to a camera shop, and ended up in rush hour traffic. And then I would have been stuck behind a train crossing, so I went the other way, and suddenly remembered that I could go to Kubo’s for sushi, and lo, I did. But to get there I had to sit through more traffic, more really bad traffic. By the time I got there, I was in a surly mood, and the waitress looked at me as if I were a serial killer or something.

You see, Houstonians drive like it’s a race, and like the other cars aren’t being driven by human beings. You’d never cut in line at the movies or at the DMV, but if a Houstonian can get ahead by a single car length on the crowded freeway by cutting you off and causing you to hit your brakes, they’ll do it. In fact, hitting your brakes as if it’s an emergency is so commonplace around here that there’ll be no recourse when the emergency actually comes.

So driving here has a similar cumulative effect to getting slapped in the face repeatedly for no reason by people you don’t know. And yet, I know all the roads, I know all the places, and there’s a certain comfort in remembering Kubo’s and knowing how to get there.

Kubo’s is really good, by the way. In order to keep it cheap, I ordered appetizers: Wasabi shumai and the salmon sushi sampler, plus a couple saba (mackerel) pieces. Right now they’ve got Kobe beef on special, including a Kobe carpaccio. Traditional Japanese cuisine…