I’ve got a lot on my plate now with work, the RCAC, the Parks board, and running the house while Kelly is away from work. It doesn’t leave me much time for blogging at the moment, thus the radio silence.
I’m hopeful I will come up for air by this weekend. Got a few posts pending but need the time to compose them.
Here’s a sobering look by a former federal officer at America’s failed drug policy and its disastrous effect on our neighbor south of the border.
Just a short while after the operation, the DEA’s intelligence chief — Anthony Placido stated: “Nobody left out there has the extensive contacts that Arturo had. He moved thousands of metric tons of drugs into the United States, including cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin,” Placido said. “In addition to that … he is responsible for much of the violence in Mexico. Arturo Beltran Leyva wasn’t a big fish. He was a whale.”
Though frustrating, I can’t help but brush off some of those comments. For starters, I’m in awe that he actually said there wasn’t anyone left out there with the extensive contacts that Arturo Beltran had. Secondly, I’m bewildered by the fact that marijuana is completely left out of the equation. Revenues from marijuana smuggling produce the majority of capital for Mexican drug trafficking organizations, and in the case of the Beltran Leyva Organization, I witnessed it firsthand. Yes, Arturo had plenty of contacts in the South American Andes, and for sure cocaine earned his organization boat loads of cash — but the coca plant played second fiddle to cannabis sativa as it nearly always does with the cartels in Mexico. Yet this DEA executive is reluctant to utter the “M” word, perhaps out of fear that mainstream America might soon wake up to the role that marijuana prohibition is having in the killing games being played out below the Rio Grande.
One of the biggest compliments anyone can pay me is to tell me “let me run this by you.” I’ve been hearing this more often from friends and colleagues and it never fails to humble me to hear that people value my opinion.
Remember how I said that John Carman, Raleigh’s Public Utilities Director, has been going around telling anyone who’ll listen that Raleigh’s water infrastructure is aging rapidly and will soon need major maintenance? The Raleigh Public Record looked at the report put out by the city’s Water Utility Transition Advisory Task Force (WUTAT):
Raleigh’s underground water infrastructure, mainly pipes in the ground, needs more than $7 billion in repairs, according to City Public Utilities Director John Carman. These are not immediate costs, he said, but now is when Raleigh should be planning to replace pipes that will age out during the coming decades.
Carman told the Record the current financial model for the system does not put away any money to pay for replacing pipes that have a lifespan of anywhere from 60 to 100 years.
“We have $500 million worth of pipe that was installed before World War II,” Carman said.
Kudos to the Raleigh Public Record for raising awareness about this issue.
Last week, I made my first trip to the Prime Outlets mall in probably ten years. The outlet mall, across I-40 from the RDU airport, was a very popular place to shop in its prime (pardon the pun). It was also an even more popular place for RTP workers to grab lunch as there were very few restaurants in RTP for the longest time. It was obvious from last week’s visit, though, that times have changed for the mall. I was shocked at how empty it was, with storefront after storefront dark. Fortunately for me, my clothing store was still around but few other stores were.
Still, I was struck by how clean and tidy the mall was, in spite of its lack of tenants. It was obviously being well kept. There was no decline in its care. I told Kelly later that night that if I had a few million lying around, I would buy that mall. We agreed that the Triangle was a good market for an outlet mall.
Turns out someone beat me to it, someone with plans to make it the Triangle’s Chinatown.
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I was happy to see today’s News and Observer editorial on the November mishap at Progress Energy’s Brunswick nuclear plant. This time the hand-tight bolts part made it into print, unlike the previous article by John Murawski which left that part out of the print edition for brevity’s sake, apparently.
I’ve got another blog post pending on this topic, based on the report that NRC released. I hope this incident is a reminder to Progress Energy that when one deals with nuclear energy, “close enough” isn’t good enough.
The Nov. 16 shutdown at Brunswick’s Unit 2 was caused by a coolant leak from a pressurized vessel that produces steam. Mildly radioactive water flowed out of the chamber rather than boiling inside. At one point, according to an N&O account, “the water was flowing out at a rate of over 10 gallons a minute, about 100 times more volume than would flow out under normal circumstances.”
As a result, according to the NRC, “instead of pressurizing the tensioning device to 13,000 psi, the team actually pressurized the device to 1,300 psi.” Later, Progress Energy personnel were “able to rotate 8 nuts by hand, 10 nuts by wrench with no agitation, 31 nuts by wrench and agitation, and 15 nuts by wrench with additional agitation,” the NRC said.
Got that? Those investigating the leak were able to turn some of the nuts on a reactor pressure vessel by hand. That’s not tight enough for a tire change.
Wow, what a day! It started off with a lazy start. After breakfast I spent time upgrading our home’s main Linux fileserver. This was followed by some family basketball practice.
After basketball practice, I headed over to attend the first anniversary celebration of the St. Monica Teen Center, a center where magic takes place in Southeast Raleigh. It was good to chat with folks there and to see how proud those kids are to have that center.
After the St. Monica party, I grabbed lunch before heading out the door for Travis’s basketball game. The Salvation Army was short on referees today so I was “volunteered” to referee the game (along with a coach from the other team). The teams played a good game and I had fun with it, too.
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Facebook filed for a $5 billion IPO today in what will likely be a wildly successful stock market debut.
I laughed when I recalled my post from five years ago in which I thought the idea of Facebook being worth $15 billion was crazy. That was before I got hooked on it, of course (along with about 800 million other people). Now $15 billion sounds like too little.
I’ve been astonished at the role Facebook has played in the recent revolutions around the world. It will be interesting to see how the company grows from here.
Google's driverless car
It made me realize how little the car has changed since it was first introduced. Oh, sure, plenty of progress has been made to the inside of the car, but what about the rest of what it takes to make a car go: the infrastructure? There are so many things we could be doing with cars but haven’t yet tried.
Why do we still build roads? All that impervious, land-hogging, surface, and only a fraction of it is useful to any vehicle. Well, the Romans did it, some might say, but thats because stones were all they had.
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Kelly and I are going out tonight to see Robert Earl Keen play at the Lincoln Theatre tonight. It will be a blast, I’m sure!
