Cut your loses

Concerning the damage done from hurricane Katrina, I do you know much about insurance payouts, but if it possible I would take the money that I got from the damage in my home and move elsewhere. If some random law prohibited that, I would try to fake my death (hey now would be a good time, just tell you family that you died in the hurricane), and move some where else...Or...Lobby for the government to change the law.

I would look at the flood patterns and if you place was in the middle of all that I would ditch it for higher ground, like Colorado. Your property values, most likely, are not going to go up, so the most money you can get will be from you insurance company. If you property values are not going to go up, then you are sinking money into a bad investment. You will not be able to sell the house for what it is worth, so you could end up side down on you loan. Even if the insurance does not pay the full value of you house, the money could make a good down payment on a house somewhere else.

If I was a long term investor, I would offer people a low price for their "unimproved land\as is", and buy up as much land as possible. I am sure eventually people will forget this disaster, though it may take a generation.

cube

Wind power

You know if you had a mobile wind power station, you could have made a killing on the wind from Katrina.

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I thought that shorts would be a dumb idea

A while back I mentioned that I had found my next book and my new hero. John Twelve Hawks who wrote "The Traveler". I bought the book a few weeks back and I read it in about 4 days. I really did not have anything interesting to say about the book. I though the idea of the book was great. I thought one of the main characters of the book was a Jack Bauer\trained from birth ninja, which I really liked. Overall I found his writing a little choppy, like he was describing a real event, which after awhile I thought that added to the novel. Another thing I also discovered was the fact that this book was the fist in a series, which is kind of disappointed, because I do not know how to find out when the next book comes out. I was looking for an automatic update system at Amazon when I found this: How We Live Now, an Amazon Short by John Twelve Hawks (Author)

So I am going to force my girlfriend to buy it for me as her now that she is getting internet in her new apartment.

Overall I would say that his book also strengthened my interest in being prepared and learning how to be self sufficient, which has put me into a major preparedness kick.

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Basic Preparedness Philosophy - Planning to Plan

Select the events to plan for. Organize the events according to which is most likely. This requires a few things from you, an open and honest mind; and research. What you think might be the most likely event, might actually be fairly rare. During this phase it is good to have a second person whose judgment you trust, to question the order of events to prepare for. By including another person the list will be more useful and more accurate.

The list events to prepare for will vary from region to region, but in theory you neighbor should have close to the same list that you do. While your neighbor might have a different equipment and supply list, he will most likely be preparing for the same disturbances that you will be preparing for.

You can then classify the events in the preparedness spectrum (Personal disturbance, Local disturbance, National disturbance, Regional (multi-national) disturbance, and Global disturbance.)

During this phase is when you will want to take into account disasters that can happen near your local area, but not to your local area. For example, the recent evacuation of New Orleans. There are places that are six hours away and those hotels are filled with people. Keep in mind that disasters like hurricanes affect everyone in the region, not just the area being hit. While you might be hours away from New Orleans, you still could be affected in several different ways. Everyday supplies could be hard to find and even the criminals have to leave town when there is a mandatory evacuation.

Without a priority list and action items your attempts to prepare could be haphazard, contain blind spots, or even dangerous to those you love.

NOTE: The reason I suggest utility as the guiding principle for choosing which events
to plan is because most people have limited time and resources to prepare. Of course,
if you are one of the select few that has very few limitations, then by all means
prepare for the worst possible case (i.e. Nuke strikes and total societal meltdown).


NOTE: I also had written this before I read this. Though they say very close to what
I said, but they left out the important prevention step.

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Basic Preparedness Philosophy - Prevention

Basic Preparedness Philosophy - Prevention

In this post, I am going to outline my basic preparedness philosophy. This will be the guide which I am going to weigh all preparedness decisions against. Keep in mind this is only a first draft, I reserve the right to change or add to any part of the basic philosophy below.

Basic preparedness philosophy is made up of prevention, planning to plan (or risk assessment), planning, execution of plans, testing of plans, and upkeep of plans.

Prevention - "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of preparedness"

If you can prevent the disaster, you will never have to use the equipment, supplies, and plans that you have carefully crafted. I know this step seems like it takes out all the fun of preparing, but preparing is not fun. Preparing is a responsibility that you have to yourself and to you family.

For example, you can lessen the chance of your car breaking down if you follow regularly planned maintenance. You can prevent running out of gas, if you always fill up at a quarter of a tank. You can avoid becoming a crime victim, if you avoid crime ridden areas. In some cases, people can overcome health problems by choosing a healthy lifestyle. This will remove the need for pharmaceuticals, which would remove the possibility of a future shortage during a disturbance.

You can look both ways when you pull out into the street, and that could lessen the possibility of having to use your life insurance. You can have eye surgery which can remove your dependence on contacts or glasses. You can avoid nature disasters, by choosing a places to live that has a low frequency of certain natural disasters.

Different types of prevention are, but are not limited to, maintenance, prevention by avoidance, and fixing current problems. If thing are barely running now, they will fail under stress, which will most likely be the time you need it the most.

NOTE: Prevention does not remove the need to prepare, it just lessens the chance of you having to use your preparations.

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Weekend Videos

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A little self-examination

Some of you may have noticed that I tend to go though phases. I went though a phase there were I had lots of posts about guns, handguns to be exact. I went though the election phase and so on and so forth. I think now I will be moving into my next phase. I think that I am going to be reading and consequently writing about surviving the eventual downfall of society. For some reason I find it enjoyable to talk of such things.

As I was trying to collect my thoughts and organize the information I have read and am going to read, I realized that there are different levels of events to prepare for. Which I had a hard time trying to break up the categories, but I think that I have got a good rough draft to show to you. Keep in mind this is just a draft and things might change. I have a few more levels than this page does, but it is basically the same idea.

These are the basic kinds of events to prepare for: Personal disturbance, Local disturbance, National disturbance, Regional (multi-national) disturbance, and Global disturbance.

I hope to flesh out the categories, techniques, and certain ideas I have for dealing with these different levels as time goes on.

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Iraq Constitution

The standard conservative line is that it took America two tries and much longer than 6 months to put together a document that has lasted for 250 years. I agree and disagree with this point of view.

I agree that Iraq might have to tear something down and rebuild it. If you do something wrong in software or even social engineering, it is sometimes better to just start over instead of patching the system you have built poorly. If the constitution is not perfect then I would be okay with starting over, though I would not be okay with it not being perfect.

The second part of the argument I do not agree with fully. 250 years ago they did not have telephones, Internet, or any other grand constitutions to start from. They had several supporting documents, a couple revolutions, and some basic philosophy. The Iraqis have much more than that. There is a wealth of information on how to build a great and prosperous nation and it is getting better everyday.

The Iraqis are much further along in the constitution development life cycle than we were 250 years ago. They have many examples to choose from. Heck, if they need the help we can write one for them.

They also have the advantage of modern communications, although that advantage might be limited in a war zone like Iraq.

Thirdly, they are not riding in by horses, but by armored convoys that probably cover much more ground than the early horse and buggy covered.

Basically, since logistics and constitutional practices are much further along than they were 250 years ago, the Iraqis only have their selves to blame if they screw this thing up and have to redo it. I expect a lot more than what they are giving us.

To the Iraq people all I have to say is this: Americans fought and died for your freedom, maybe that does not mean anything to you, but to me it means quite a bit. Get you crap straight or we will let you fight it out amongst yourselves, because Americans really can be heartless bastards when we want. If you screw up the chance that we gave you, I could really careless what happens to you, your people, or you country.

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Big thank you

I want to give a shout out to Pat Robertson, who reminds us that crazy christians can still have a good idea every once and awhile.

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Interesting Unreported information

Sorry I am a little late on this one, but I have been quite busy. I recently read a first hand report of a person Camp Sheehan. Catfish goes into detail on things that he finds suspicious.

I will quickly list some of the things he mentioned.

"Everyone was very well behaved. No one was misbehaving. At the antiÂ’s check in table, there were clear instructions telling everyone to behave and to respect and appreciate everyoneÂ’s point of view even if you disagreed with it."

"The antiÂ’s were very well organized. This was a professional job. I base this on the fact that a good portion of my job is to organize large civic events and I can recognize good organization when I see it. And this event WAS organized. Contrary to what is reported on the news, this is not a spontaneous event."


Well it turns out the protesters have a good bit of help from others like minded rich folks.

"Ben and Jerry's founder pays for PR firm for mother of fallen son"

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I have an idea

This idea was spawned by reading The Survival Blog found via the Carnival of Cordite #27 via Say Uncle.

The writer of the Survival blog suggests having a retreat special prepared for a catastrophic situation. The idea makes sense. There are many pros to this approach. You can pick the location, which means that it can be picked based on certain specific criteria. Water sources, defensibility, climate, or any other sort of criteria could be used in finding your retreat. You can also prestock your retreat with the goods that you will need to live a long, fruitful, and happy existence in a post apocalyptic world.

The problem with this I that most people cannot afford an extra house you do not live in. That is also one reason why the writer suggests living there year round, just in case. (Personally, my girlfriends parents and my parents both live in excellent retreat locations, if they were prepared ahead of time.) He also mentions the option of trying to get our of town when disaster strikes, which in some situations would work just find and in others you will just be apart of the herd, and warns against it. Basically, if you are not already at your retreat, you cannot guarantee your arrival.

The problem is getting to your retreat through choked or even dangerous highways (Remember social order has broken down). If you run out of gas there may be none, you may run over homemade spike strips set out by bandits, you could be stopped by government roadblocks, or any number of things could happen.

Though what if you were able to raise you chances of getting to your retreat location drastically...

If you were able to do that, it would become much more feasible to live where ever you want and just leave town when disaster strikes. My idea would be to use a Ultralight to fly to your retreat location.

This has some pros. It bypasses the roads, which is where the city folks are going.

This also has some con's and many unknowns. You could be shot down, but with proper flying you might be able to limit you exposure to radar and ground based bullets, of course if you meet another enemy flying object you are dead.

It may also be dependent on weather. If a meteor strikes or volcano erupts, the weather could be severely disrupted.

You will also need a certain amount of clear space to get off the ground.

As far as unknowns go, how much weight can you carry, how far can you fly, can you fly at night with out running into anything. Over all I think the idea has potential, but it is one of those things you cannot test well due to freaking government interference.

NOTE: In a zombie invasion, I think an ultralight would work well. Weather would not be a concern. Zombies do not shoot back, at least at first. And you would not have to fly at night. The only problem would be finding enough space to take off with. Though, if you did a motorized landing, you would attract all zombies in the area.

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Inverted yeild curve

Take a look at that guys pics, very intresting.

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American Elephants

A recent BBC article reported that scientists are considering populating the US with cheetahs, lions, elephants, and camels. Buy more guns.

The honeymoon can only last so long

On Sandcastle's recent post, we received two spam comments. In retaliation against the spammers, I have turned on the "Word Verification" feature. I am sorry for in the inconvenience, but if one spammer has the script to comment on a blogspot blog, then that means more and more will get it also as the code gets older.

Again, I apologize.

thanks,
cube

Your money

Or maybe Bush's floundering War on Terrorism could repair a road or two. I couldn't find the current budget for the war in my quick two minute Google search, but I found this interesting, though dated, Washington Post article.

"With $166 billion spent or requested, Bush's war spending in 2003 and 2004 already exceeds the inflation-adjusted costs of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and the Persian Gulf War combined, according to a study by Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus. The Iraq war approaches the $191 billion inflation-adjusted cost of World War I."
by Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Sept. 9, 2003

The United Nations estimates that world hunger could be wiped out for around 13 billion US dollars a year. Unfortunately, it was more important for us to secure Iraq's oil fields for Exxon. Not to mention the paycheck that Halliburton made on this war.

Roberts thought Michael Jackson was a freak

Hell if he dislikes Michael Jackson, he can't be all that bad can he?

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GAS PRICES

These are clips from two recent BBC articles.
Oil cartel Opec is pumping a record 30 million barrels a day, and could boost that by another 1-1.5 million barrels if needed, its president has said.
Purnomo Yusgiantoro, also oil minister of Indonesia, said the organisation's 11 members were 2 million barrels above the current 28 million barrel quota.
But any further increase would have to wait until September, he said.
Oil prices broke new records overnight as Asian trade pushed a barrel of New York light, sweet crude to $44.77.

Exxon Mobil, the world's biggest oil company, has announced a threefold jump in profits, crediting a sharp rise in global crude oil prices
The company said pre-tax profits for the first three months of 2003 came in at $7.04bn (£4.4bn ; EUR6.3bn), up from $2.1bn dollars during the same period last year.
The result was Exxon's best ever over three months, beating its previous record of $5.2bn in the final quarter of 2001.
Shares in Exxon - which sells fuel under the Esso brand - were up 1.3% at $35.66 in early trade on Wall Street.

Now, which one do you think is causing gas prices to rise? Oil production can continue to rise, but relief at the pumps will not be seen as long as oil companies continue to rape us. Should we stop taxing gasoline and watch our roads fall apart, or should the government start to regulate the oil industry? I know that won't happen with Bush in office, but maybe we can hope for the future.

Obvious answers

Source:"Senate to hold gas prices hearing - The Senate Energy Committee will hold a hearing next month to determine reasons for U.S. gasoline prices, the panel said Friday.....Lawmakers admit there is no short-term fix to pain at the pump, but are nervous about political fall-out."

Actually there is a short term fix. Remove the federal gasoline tax. "The U.S. federal gasoline tax as of 2005 was 18.4 cents per U.S. gallon (4.86 ¢/L), and the gasoline taxes in the various states range from 10 cents to 33 cents, averaging about 22 cents per U.S. gallon (5.8 /L)."

According to my numbers it would save the US tax payers about 25,576,000,000 per year at the pump. Though the roads would not be funded, at the rate that gasoline is rising, they will not have to be, because no one will be driving on them.

BTW - that savings is real.

The CNN article mentions what a l cent rise in gas costs, I just took that number and multiplied it by 18.4, actually I just typed it into my windows calculator and it did the number crunching.

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Currently Listening to

You have to check out yahoo music. You can create your own radio station. You can pick a whole lot of artists and as the songs are played, you rate them. Yahoo learns which songs you like. It also uses the preferences of others to suggest new songs that you have never heard.

Here is my play list for the last few songs.

50 Cent - Just A Lil Bit
Eminem - Guilty Conscience
Johnny Cash - Everybody Loves A Nut
Edwin McCain - I'll Be
Mary J. Blige - Overjoyed
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Backwoods
Collective Soul -December
Louis Armstrong - A Kiss To Build A Dream On
U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Van Halen - Source Of Infection
Tonic -You Wanted More
Puddle Of Mudd - Blurry
Phil Collins -Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)
Don Henley -The Boys Of Summer
Ludacris -Pimpin' All Over The World

Variety is the spice of life, and I am liking it. There is a commercial about every ten min. You can pay money to get more stations, features, and no commercials, but the free version is fine with me.

cube

update: There are very few songs that I hate. I dislike a lot of songs, but very few songs that cause me to feel like shooting my radio. I just heard one of those songs on Yahoo radio, and told it to never play it again. FYI - the song was Bitch, by Meredith Brooks.

update: They have eddie glenn!!

update: I hit my monthly usage limit. I am not allowed to skip songs and I only get low quality sound. Before I could get the medium quality sound and skip songs.

Currently Reading

Right now my makeshift bookmark is buried in the pages of Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. Interesting stuff. He claims to have worked for a private company involved in a US conspiracy to saddle less developed nations with debt in order to gain political and military clout. The situation would start out with economists such as himself making exaggerated growth charts for a poor country. Loans would be made from the World Bank and the IMF based on the strengths of these predictions for infrastructure projects such as dams, roads, and power plants. The contracts for these projects would be rewarded to American firms such as KBR, Haliburton, and Bechtel. This would funnel most of the money back to the US, leaving the poor nation saddled with debt and at the mercy of the US. In and ideal situation, a commodity such as oil would be exported from the poor country. Half of the money would go to an American oil company extracting the oil, a quarter of the money would be used to pay the interest on the new debt, and 25% would be left for the country that had the oil to start out with. A large chunk of this would be pocketed by a president that was sympathetic to, and protected by, the US. Welcome to the Evil Empire.