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Los Angeles, Shorter Showers, and Mindless Growth

LOS ANGELES residents have been asked to "shorten showers" and to otherwise save precious water. It takes a drought, the driest on record, to get some attention for nature's needs. Stop "throwing trash in toilets" we are told.

It is a little late for this message. Los Angeles has spread from San Diego to Santa Barbara and above; From Long Beach to Mount Baldy, Los Angeles has spread. In the 80's environmentalist called this megalopolis a "cancer." Drive from Los Angeles to San Bernardino, from Los Angeles to Ventura and the residential concrete sprawl will follow you. In the words of an environmentalist friend, "It doesn't matter where you go, Los Angeles will come and get you." He was right then (25 years ago), and he is right now.

What really hurts my environmentalist sentiments is that the growth reflects giant homes big enough to house a rifle platoon, each with its own dark, green, lush lawn. Beautifully manicured lawns cut by illegal immigrants on a weekly basis, and each lawn with its own set of automatic sprinklers, some working better than others, all wasting precious water, litter Southern California.

This "drought" is not new. It is part of living in Southern California. It happens that we have another additive, Global Warming, which may or may not have some affect here. What is new is the human environmental load on a finite area of semi-arid landscape.

< LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Los Angeles residents were urged on Wednesday to take shorter showers, reduce lawn sprinklers and stop throwing trash in toilets in a bid to cut water usage by 10 percent in the driest year on record. With downtown Los Angeles seeing a record low of 4 inches of rain since July 2006 -- less than a quarter of normal -- and with a hot, dry summer ahead, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the city needed "to change course and conserve water to steer clear of this perfect storm." It is the driest year since rainfall records began 130 years ago.>>

Cain and Able

This is Cain leading Able to Death.
Tap for a larger picture.

What we might suspect about this homicide is that there may not have been a cleanup: "the voice of [Abel's] blood is screaming to [God] from the ground."

Head lice tomorrow!

Wonderful!
Tomorrow I clean a "black and white" police vehicle that is "full of head lice."
This is truly a new one for me.

From police cars I have removed blood, both police blood and arrestee blood, and broken glass.

I have removed tons of fleas and hound dog hair from a search and rescue vehicle that spent a little too much time in the brush. Then there was the time I got to remove poison ivy from a police car. I'll write the remedy that I used another time -- too tired now. I can say this, there was only one way to test my cleaning, and that was to do the last half of cleaning in cut-off pants and a tee-shirt. I don't expect to test for the head lice!

At this writing, I have no idea about how I will clean tomorrow.
So it goes.
Eddie Evans

Hanta Virus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanta_virus

http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehsphl/factsheet/hanta.htm - Bleach

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hanta/hps/noframes/phys/technicalinfoindex.htm

Cleaning after a violent explosion - An Observation

The first thing to remember when cleaning after a violent explosion is to double the cleaning perimeter once it is established. Too often something turns up. The coroner's employees are going to miss matter, and they are not going to leave yellow sticky notes for everything that they remove. So count on cleaning and disinfecting way out there following a violent explosion.

Of course, the human remains and cleaning needs will depend upon the number of victims and their proximity to the explosion. Usually, at least one victim will be standing near-by the exploding object because they set if off, usually unknowingly.

If shrapnel is involved the debris field will have a more highly dispersed bio-load. Without shrapnel, say an exploding natural gas tank, expect the debris field to contain fewer cleaning areas, and larger object cleaning areas. If outdoors, expect insect life, especially ants.

Eddie Evans

Spelling Bee Champ

"My favorite things to do were math and music, and with the math I really like the way the numbers fit together," he said. "And with the music I like to let out ideas by composing notes - and the spelling is just a bunch of memorization." Tap for story.

California's new spelling champ is home schooled and headed for a math camp this summer. Math and music are his thing. He will learn one day that the two have some relationships in rhythms and patterns. Poetry too will fit with these two subject areas.

For a little more than 20 percent of us, spelling is a headache and it has nothing to do with memorization. It's in the wiring. Memorize all that we want and there will still be problems with certain words because of the vowels. Stephen Krashen is my source, from a lecture he gave in LA, Callifornia, 1995.

The "rules" of spelling help some of us, thank goodness.

It is important not to scold the learner for poor spelling. Spelling can be checked by dictionary or spell checker. Content is the key, not the form.

Eddie Evans