Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Free for everybody... Outdoor films play at Huizenga Plaza in Ft. Lauderdale (on the SE corner of Andrews Ave. & Las Olas Blvd.) at 8pm the first Saturday of each month. Admission is free! Bring your own blanket and chairs. Buy snacks and drinks from a selected charity each month.

October 4, 8pm - Singing in the Rain... I'm considering going, if the weather is right.

last year - peace corps / Conan O'Brien dreams, palm art, peanut sauce.


More Follow-up on Ohio Explosion

Miamisburg, Ohio- About 2,000 residents evacuated from their homes were allowed to return yesterday, a day after a blast rocked a chemical plant.

"The danger has subsided," David Coffey, chairman of the Miami Township Board of Trustees, said during a news conference in front of the Isotec plant.

The residents were evacuated after the explosion, which occurred at 10:14 a.m. Sunday while firefighters were working with six employees at the Isotec plant to contain a nitric oxide leak, Miami Township fire Chief David Fulmer said. No one else was in the plant at the time.

Workers used liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen to cool chemicals at the site, said Miami Township police spokesman John DiPietro.

People living within a mile of the plant near this Dayton suburb were evacuated because firefighters feared a second explosion, Fulmer said.

DiPietro said preliminary data gathered Sunday night indicates a failure in a storage tank might have allowed the volatile nitric oxide gas to heat up and explode.

One worker was treated for a cut on the head.

http://www.marionstar.com/news/stories/20030923/localnews/315806.html

About 2,000 residents evacuated from their homes were allowed to return Monday, the day after an explosion rocked a chemical plant.

"The danger has subsided," David Coffey, chairman of the Miami Township Board of Trustees, said during a news conference held in front of the Isotec plant.

The residents were evacuated following the explosion, which occurred at 10:14 a.m. Sunday while firefighters were working with six employees at the Isotec plant to contain a nitric oxide leak, Miami Township fire Chief David Fulmer said. No one else was in the plant at the time.

Plant workers used liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen Monday to cool down chemicals at the site, said John DiPietro, spokesman for the Miami Township police department.

http://cms.firehouse.com/content/article/article.jsp?sectionId=46&id=19138

MIAMISBURG, Ohio (AP) -- An explosion at a chemical plant on Sunday injured a worker, blew off part of the plant roof and sent people scrambling for safety from falling debris.

The blast happened as firefighters and six employees at the Isotec plant worked to contain a nitric oxide leak. No one else was in the plant at the time.

About 2,000 people living within a mile of the plant in the Dayton suburb were evacuated as a precaution against a possible second explosion, Miami Township fire Chief David Fulmer said. Other chemicals were stored in the area where the explosion happened, including a large tank of carbon monoxide, he said.

Investigators had not determined the cause of the leak or the explosion, Fulmer said.

Fulmer said the plant was heavily damaged, and a witness said the explosion blew off part of the roof.

One worker was treated for a cut on the head, Fulmer said.

John DiPietro, spokesman for Miami Township police, was standing near the plant entrance when the explosion knocked him into a truck and the area was pelted with pieces of concrete and metal.

``I've never been this scared in my life,'' he said.

The plant is owned by Simga-Aldrich Corp. in St. Louis, which supplies chemicals to research laboratories. A spill of nitric oxide at the plant in 1998 forced an evacuation of a golf course and about 50 residents.



Thing that made me laugh long and loud.... (from 's journal)
"The reporters kept talking about all these people that were on the beach and going into the water! ... It’s not the time to take a dip in the ocean! So, the police were giving those people permanent markers and telling them to write their names and social security numbers on their bodies for easy identification."
Something strikes me as really horridly funny about a bunch of morticians sorting through dolt flotsam..."Ok.. we've got another idiot... Third Guy that's written Jenny 867-5309 in his friggin' arm. Use the pitchfork to load him on the truck."

In things that peeved me today, "Fly Me" apparently has a bad case of the nosies, too. I don't mind that she took and was looking through the procedures handbook that I'm writing up, what bothers me is that she took it without asking, and didn't bother to put it back where it belonged. I had to quest all over the place for the dang thing... burning my time, when all of the procedure in there don't have anything to do with her job. Sequencing databases, network settings and Ebay item copy has *nothing* to do with her training law enforcement on how to call us. I'm going to give her a polite talking to tomorrow, and see if I can't bypass her high sense of drama. If that doesn't work, well, there will be harsher penalties.

That 70's Show is cracking me up tonight. Red is great... He flings the word "dumbass" around with brilliance.

Florida judge issues DUI bumper stickers - Some state motorists convicted of drunken driving are being ordered to put bumper stickers on their cars that ask "How's my driving?'' followed by a toll-free telephone number and the statement "The judge wants to know!!!''

Escambia County Judge William White said he hopes the bumper stickers, which include an identification number for each driver, will reduce repeat offenses for driving under the influence of alcohol.

"We want to influence people to correct their behavior rather than just use this as sort of a monitoring system,'' White said.

White said he tried to use bumper stickers saying only "Convicted DUI'' in the past simply to shame violators. He hopes the call-in stickers will be a stronger deterrent.

In late August he began ordering motorists convicted of drunken driving to pay an annual fee of $50 to enroll in the monitoring system offered by the I Saw You Safety and Scholarship Foundation as a condition of probation.

The Pensacola-based foundation provides the same service to parents of teenage drivers, borrowing the idea from trucking companies that use similar stickers to monitor their drivers.

I See You plans to donate half of its enrollment fees to scholarships for victims of drunken drivers.

The program has been approved for the 1st Judicial Circuit, which covers four counties in the Florida Panhandle, and some other judges are beginning to use it, foundation spokesman David Richbourg said Monday. He said legislation also is being sought to make the program mandatory across the state, but critics have questioned the tactic.

"I see this as providing very little deterrent,'' Pensacola lawyer Richard Alvoid said. "Punishment should be enough rather than also shaming people.''

University of West Florida student David Blume agrees.

"It's like a scarlet letter,'' Blume said. "If you know you could go to jail from drunk driving, I don't see why a bumper sticker would be more of a deterrent.''

White said embarrassment "comes with the turf when you're committing crimes.''

Doug Meyers, an insurance adjuster from nearby Pace, said the shame is worth it if prevents traffic deaths.

"If people are embarrassed, they shouldn't drink and drive,'' Meyers said.



Roadside Signs - coolness.

Miami is holding a Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival October 11th and 12th. I want to go check that out, even though I'm not a big boat race guy, I would dig soaking up some of Miami's Chinese culture.. something a little different than the more Latin flair that's usually in that region.

Oh, man. They have a classic 12" "Yeti-Hunter" GI Joe. How cool is that? I wanted one akin to that as a kid. Hooray for the 40th Anniversary! I actually had the Joe with the yellow copter when I was in the hospital as a young kid, and that was great. Looks like I'm not the only fan.



BEST SHORT HEADLINE OF THE WEEK.

Monkeys, shown here eating popsicles, are aware of injustice according to a study from Emory University.(AFP/File/Mufty Munir)

*Monkeys, shown here eating popsicles, are aware of injustice.*


I will be repeating that to everyone I see, for who knows how long. Full article here

Monkeys, like humans, are acutely aware of injustice, which suggests that a sense of equality is an ancestral trait among primates, a study says.

In an unusual two-year experiment, animal behaviourists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, taught brown capuchin monkeys to receive tokens as a reward, and to barter them for food.

The monkeys were usually quite content to swap the tokens for cucumber, but if the researchers gave one of the monkeys a grape, a more eagerly-sought food, the other animals would become jealous.

Some of them refused to hand over their tokens. Others would still exchange their token for the cucumber, but scornfully decline to eat it.

If the monkey which got the grape had received the coveted fruit for not doing anything, its colleagues often became incensed.

"People judge fairness based both on the distribution of gains and on the possible alternatives to a given outcome," Brosnan and de Waal write in Thursday's issue of Nature, the British science weekly.

"Capuchin monkeys, too, seem to measure reward in relative terms, comparing their own rewards with those available, and their own efforts with those of others.

"They respond negatively to previously acceptable rewards if a partner gets a better deal."

The pleasure of reward and anger at unfair treatment are known factors behind the human social hierarchy and cooperation. This evidence suggests the same may be true among non-human primates, they say.





Points: 36.1 Adj: 0 Act: 0.0 Rem: -2.1
Bank: 32.5 Adj: 0
Bank Max: 35 Point: 0 Act: 0
Bank Method: Start on Monday
Vitamins: Yes

Breakfast: 5.0 points *BAD BAD BAD*
5.0: Almond joy
0.0: Soda; Low calorie; other than cola or pepper; w/aspartame

Lunch: 12.5 points
4.5: Broccoli Cheese Soup
4.0: Veggie Delite 6" Sub**
4.0: Veggie Delite 6" Sub**
0.0: Soda; Low calorie; other than cola or pepper; w/aspartame


Dinner: 13.0 points
3.1: Chik patties - morningstar
3.1: Chik patties - morningstar
3.1: Chik patties - morningstar
3.1: Chik patties - morningstar
0.1: Beans; snap; green; canned; no salt added; drained solids
0.5: Ketchup
0.0: Earl Grey Tea

Snack: 5.6 points
2.8: Cereals; QUAKER OAT CINNAMON LIFE
2.8: Cereals; QUAKER OAT CINNAMON LIFE