the tweney review

Witness the awe-inspiring rides of Chunk 666.

Disaster survival tips from Andreas Ramos.

How to Recharge Your Cellphone with Common Batteries

1) Turn off your cellphone. Reserve battery power as much as possible. Turn down screen brightness, turn off vibrate, turn down sound.

2) To recharge a cellphone with ordinary batteries, cut the power supply cord near the charger. Strip the ends of the wire. Start with a 1.5v battery. If this isn’t enough to start the recharging display, add another 1.5v battery. If that’s not enough, add yet another 1.5v battery. If the cellphone requires 3v, two 1.5v batteries will work. If the phone requires 4.8v, three 1.5v batteries will work. Start low and add batteries.

3) If cellphone system is overloaded, use text messaging. Learn how to use text messaging (SMS). Add a friend’s email address to your cellphone’s contact list. Be sure it’s a friend who lives outside of your region.

How to Purify Water

1) If the water is cloudy, strain it. Take a tall plastic water bottle, cut off the bottom, invert to make a funnel, and stuff it tightly with clean cotton cloth, paper towels, etc. Strain the water over and over until it is clear.

2) Disinfect the water. Use regular, unscented Clorox liquid bleach. Four drops of Clorox in one quart of water. Use an eyedropper or a straw. Shake the water. Let it stand for 30 minutes. The water should have a slight chlorine odor. If not, add four more drops and wait another 30 minutes. Do not use crystal chlorine (for pools). This is poisonous.

3) Purify only enough water for 48 hours.

4) If you can boil the water, boil for at least one minute.

This removes bacteria and microorganisms from water. But it won’t remove chemicals. In floods (such as New Orleans), refineries and chemical plants were flooded and many chemicals were released into the water. If the water has a chemical smell (not the chlorine), don’t drink it.

One of the big problems in the New Orleans area right now–perhaps the biggest problem–is figuring out what needs doing, and how to do it. Even with accurate information, relief agencies like FEMA and the Red Cross are clearly having difficulty synthesizing that data, formulating a plan, and following through in an organized way.

One of computing pioneer Doug Engelbart’s causes has been making computers better able to help us deal with complicated situations like this. Here he is, speaking in 2002 about the computers and disaster relief:

One organization that we work with is the Global Disaster Information Network - or “GDIN” - which is, itself, a consortium of regional and local disaster response organizations. Organizations that respond to disasters are tremendous examples of organizations that must learn to adapt and use new information quickly. …

Computers and, in particular, the Internet, clearly play a key role in the efforts to coordinate such disaster response and to improve the ability to improve over the lifecycle of a disaster response effort. But what is striking, as GDIN grapples with these issues, is how difficult it is to harness all the wonderful capability of the systems that we have today in GDIN’s effort to improve its ability to improve disaster response. …

Make no mistake about it, GDIN and its member disaster response organizations find computers to be very useful - but it is even more striking how the capabilities offered by today’s personal productivity and publishing systems are mismatched to the needs of these organizations as they work to coordinate effective response flexibly and quickly.

In the absence of real tools for coordinated action, we fall back on bulletin boards. We can do better than that, people.

California’s State Senate passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriages yesterday. Opposing state Senator Tom McClintock objected, saying that “Marriage is the institution by which we propagate our species and inculcate our young.”

Hmm. Actually, sex is how we propagate our species, and education is how we inculcate our young. Methinks maybe Sen. McClintock needs more of at least one of those; he seems a bit unclear on the concept.

Like everyone, I feel shock, horror, and awful fascination as I watch the news stories and photos of the disaster in New Orleans and Mississippi. But the situation also makes me angry—incredibly angry—at the federal government, whose incompetence and obliviousness to the whole situation seems increasingly unbelievable.

It seems likely that there are more hurricanes and stronger ones thanks to global warming. That’s not really anyone’s fault but it should be a wakeup call that it’s time to do something to curb CO2 emissions. And yes, we have known about New Orleans’ vulnerability to flooding for almost 300 years (Google cache version here), yet no one has done anything about it except put up obviously underbuilt levees and canals and pumps. In fact, FEMA funds earmarked for levee reinforcement may have been diverted to Homeland Security—a sad irony. But what really gets me mad is the complete obliviousness of the federal government to the realities of the situation on the ground right now.

Yesterday afternoon Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff was saying “everything is under control” at the Superdome, at the very same time that the mayor of New Orleans was saying “SOS” and the news was showing pictures of dead bodies and angry people. Chertoff was interviewed on NPR last night and asked, repeatedly, when the 2,000 people at the New Orleans Convention Center could expect to receive food and water, or transportation out of there. He dodged and evaded the question repeatedly, and clearly had no idea that there were even any people at the Convention Center, or where it was located (12 blocks from the Superdome). His ignorance of the situation on the ground was astonishing (”you can’t fly helicopters in a hurricane” he says–but the hurricane has been over for almost a week!), and was exceeded only by his apparent efforts to protect his reputation and cover his ass. FEMA is clearly in over its head and has no idea how to handle the situation — and there’s an obvious lack of leadership in the disaster area.

Finally, where has the President been through all of this? He said almost nothing about the crisis until Wednesday, when he made a hastily-arranged flight over New Orleans. I think any previous president of the past 20 years would have flown down to the area long since, put on a windbreaker and a blue FEMA cap, and made numerous photo opportunities shaking people’s hands and hugging them. Not to mention maybe making an address to the nation and asking people to be calm and explaining what the government is doing. Instead, the President returns from New Orleans, meets with Alan Greenspan, and makes a statement (on Thursday) that “we view this storm as a temporary disruption that is being addressed by the government and by the private sector.” What unbelievable callousness. People are dying in their own feces, without water or food, and he is reassuring us about the economic impact? Give me a break.

What makes it even harder for me to believe is that this storm hit the South — a big stronghold of support for Bush — and that the wave of refugees will have a big impact on his home state of Texas. I understand why he snubs a hotbed of liberalism like San Francisco. But doesn’t he care what these people think?

I think these two pictures sum it all up.