Another pretty big quake just hit here. Again, nothing fell over, but the building (I'm pulling an all-nighter at work) was swaying back and forth for a while, and I feel seasick.

FOLLOW-UP:
Ah, there it is. A 5.5'er.

A fairly strong earthquake just hit. Nothing fell over, but I could feel the building move, and the aftershocks just stopped a second ago. Details to follow.

FOLLOW-UP:
Bloomberg News reports:

April 11 (Bloomberg) -- A magnitude 5.1 earthquake shook central Japan around Tokyo at 5:46 p.m. local time, according to NHK television news. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries from the quake, which was centered near Miyakejima, an island south of the capital, NHK said.

Comments on This blog's a-rockin', February 3rd, 2006:

Tokyo Tom:
Japanese have tough earthquake codes for new buildings...

GaijinBiker:
Of course, TT, if you've followed the Aneha scandal at all, you know that those tough codes were completely ignored in several cases that we know of. There's no telling how many similarly unscrupulous builders never got caught...

The Japan Times, March 8th, 2006:

Five Sapporo condominium complexes have been confirmed to have been built with faked earthquake-resistance data, the land ministry said Tuesday, and the city is investigating 28 more buildings the architect who compiled the data has said are not sufficiently quake-proof.

...These are the first cases of falsification that do not involve architect Hidetsugu Aneha or Kimura Construction Co., involved in the construction of dozens of buildings with substandard quake-proofing nationwide, according to the ministry.

The suspected falsifications of earthquake resistance data I blogged about here involved buildings that, although not designed by Aneha, were built by Kimura Construction. This new case, however, suggests that the problem of faked data may extend far beyond any one person or company.

Comments on This blog's a-rockin', February 3rd, 2006:

Tokyo Tom:
Japanese have tough earthquake codes for new buildings...

GaijinBiker:
Of course, TT, if you've followed the Aneha scandal at all, you know that those tough codes were completely ignored in several cases that we know of. There's no telling how many similarly unscrupulous builders never got caught...

The Mainichi Shimbun, February 8th, 2006:

An architectural office in Fukuoka Prefecture has come under suspicion of falsifying structural data for three condominium blocks, the local government said Wednesday.

The Fukuoka Municipal Government is investigating three condominium blocks designed by architectural firm "Something," based in Dazaifu, Fukuoka Prefecture, on suspicion that the buildings' earthquake resistance data was falsified.

It is the first time that a party other than disgraced former architect Hidetsugu Aneha has come under suspicion for falsifying earthquake-resistance data.

We just had a long, low earthquake here that went on for what felt like a good, solid minute of queasy undulations. There have been a few small ones here and there recently, too.

I've heard that many small quakes are a good sign, because they release the stresses that otherwise would build up and eventually cause a really big one. I hope that's right.

NOTE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And thanks for linking, Prof. Reynolds.

United Press International reports on a story I first read in a hard copy of the Financial Times on the flight back from Thailand:

Up to about a third of the $590 million U.N. fund spent for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead.

The Financial Times says its two-month investigation showed the money appears to have been spent on administration, staff and related costs. The $590 million was part of the United Nation's $1.1 billion disaster flash appeal.

The newspaper also found several U.N. agencies continue to refuse to disclose details of their relief expenditure in spite of earlier pledges of transparency by senior officials.

The FT says that charities and relief organizations usually spend no more than 10% of donations on overhead. The U.N. tripled that.

No wonder it was so concerned that America and other nations might be "stingy" with donations — any less, and the refugees might not have received any aid at all.

You've probably heard by now that Pat Robertson is acting up again.

Having laid low for a while after he infamously suggested, back in August, that perhaps the U.S. should assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Robertson appears to have regained his old form. He recently had a few choice words for the Pennsylvania town of Dover, where voters last Tuesday rejected eight school board members who were trying to bring “intelligent design” into high school science classes.

Reuters reports:

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected him from your city,” Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, “The 700 Club.”

“And don’t wonder why he hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for his help because he might not be there,” he said.

Robertson's statetments are nonsensical for many reasons. Here's one: Who cares if we can turn to God for help after a disaster strikes? If we're on his good side, shouldn't he keep disasters from happening in the first place?

But what's striking about Robertson's rhetoric is how wishy-washy it actually is. He laces his speech with more hedges than an English garden. Problems might hit Dover, but then again, "I'm not saying they will". And if those possible problems do occur, God "might not be there." Then again, presumably, he might.

Come on, Pat. You can't just dabble in fire and brimstone, you have to go all the way. Let's hear it: The citizens of Dover are definitely doomed. God will not be there to help them.

The only reason why Robertson won't commit to these grim predictions of doom must be that deep down inside, he knows the world just doesn't work that way.

In a recent post, I asked whether Muslim zealots really believe their own ludicrous claims. In Pat Robertson's case, the answer is clear: He doesn't.

Hot on the heels of Sunday's earthquake, there was another big one in Tokyo at 8:50 this evening. I didn't feel a thing — perhaps because I was riding home from work at the time, not sitting in a building.

Pakistan was devastated by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake last week, and relief aid has been flowing into the country.

But (via LGF), Haaretz reports that Pakistan is refusing to accept assistance directly from Israel. If Israel wants to help — which it very much does — it will have to suffer the indignity of being forced to do so indirectly, through donations to the United Nations or the Red Cross:

Pakistan accepted Israel's offer of aid, albeit through a third party, on Saturday following the massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people one week ago.

Pakistan gave Jerusalem a list of items it needs, including tents, blankets, plastic sheets for protection against the rain and for collecting bodies, water-purification equipment and dry-food packages such as biscuits.

However, Pakistan also said that the aid would have to be channeled through the United Nations, the Red Cross or donated to a relief fund.

Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said since the two countries do not have diplomatic relations it could not receive aid directly from Israel.

"We have established the president's relief fund and everyone is free to contribute to it. If Israel was to contribute, that's fine, we would accept it," Aslam told The Associated Press.

Wow, that's mighty big of them. The sheer gall required to accept Israeli aid while simultaneously refusing to accept it directly is staggering. And it's interesting to note that while a lack of diplomatic relations supposedly prevents Pakistan from accepting Israel's help directly, it apparently doesn't stop it from handing Israel a wish list of "items it needs".

If Israel were a mean-spirited or easily-slighted nation, it would be fully justified in telling Pakistan to go right ahead and hand that list over to the United Nations or the Red Cross. But Israel isn't stooping to Pakistan's level. Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry, said it's committed to helping out:

"At the moment, everyone is talking about how we can help hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis in the area of destruction. There is a clear international effort to help Pakistan, and Israel wants to be part of that."

Haaretz reports that, amazingly, Israel is still planning to dispatch "teams and equipment" to the affected areas. It's hard to see how it can do that under Pakistan's current ban.

And Pakistan's unappreciative response to relief efforts isn't limited only to Israel. Via Alarming News, the Indo-Asian News Service reports:

Senior Pakistani officials on Friday again rejected a suggestion for joint relief operations with India in quake-hit areas along their frontier in Kashmir, terming it as "improper and wrong".

Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, chief minister of India's Jammu and Kashmir state, was among those who had suggested that rescue operations in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir could be more easily mounted from the other side of the Line of Control (LoC).

But Pakistan Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said here on Friday: "You should be well aware about the status of the LoC. Pakistan and India have fought wars over Kashmir in the past."

Pakistan and Indian-controlled portions of Kashmir were both hit by the quake, and obviously, a coordinated rescue and relief effort would be better than two separate ones hemmed in by an artificial political boundary. India realizes that. Pakistan, apparently, does not.

There isn't much upside to devastating natural disasters. But they do represent an opportunity for enemies to put aside their differences and work together. In Pakistan, that opportunity, like so many of its quake-hit buildings, lies in ruins.

We just got hit by what felt like a very, very large earthquake. I actually feel a bit nauseous from the shaking. It was relatively short, but powerful, and I actually got up and stood in the doorway just in case chunks of the house decided to fall on my head. Neighborhood dogs are barking. With experts warning that Tokyo is overdue for The Big One, this cannot be seen as anything but an ominous sign.

FOLLOW-UP:
The Associated Press reports that it was only a 5.1-magnitude quake. It sure felt worse that that. Maybe the epicenter was closer this time.

Lots of people donated money after Hurricane Katrina hit, but Hollywood screenwriter John Rogers, who blogs (very well, I might add) at Kung Fu Monkey, went one step further. He offered to match his readers' donations through the end of September.

He's posted the wrap-up on his site, and the largest donation he received came from:

liberal tech whiz Dave Slusher at Evil Genius Chronicles.

But coming in a close second was (drumroll please):

Gaijin Biker, at Riding Sun, a conservative American living in Japan.

John uses the contrast to demonstrate that some things transcend politics, and he's right. It's fun to point out when the other side is acting goofy (Lord knows I do it often enough), but we should always remember that people on the right and the left can and do work together when the stakes are high and the need is clear.

And, of course John also deserves big-time respect for matching everyone's donation. All together, his readers ponied up $7,588.82 for Katrina relief. He matched that out of his own pocket, rounding up the total amount raised to $15,200.

Truly, his kung fu is strong.

Recent American hurricanes have had girls' names like "Katrina" and "Rita", but Taiwanese typhoons are apparently more masculine. Via Fark, Reuters reports:

Typhoon Longwang headed for China after swirling through Taiwan on Sunday, injuring at least 34 people.

That merits one of these:


The name's actual Chinese meaning — "Dragon King" — is pretty impressive.

As for Japan, the big storms here get boring numbers. It's hard to get worked up about "Typhoon No. 14."

In this post, I noted that bike builder Confederate Motorcycles was based in New Orleans, and was hard hit by Hurricane Katrina. I jokingly suggested that I would take up a collection from my readers and buy one of their $60,000 Hellcat bikes as act of charity.

Well, as it turns out, Confederate is bouncing back pretty quickly. They've relocated to Shreveport, expect to resume production soon, and are looking to help out those less fortunate with a charitable donation of their own. And to do it, they're — yes, you guessed it — auctioning off one of their Hellcat motorcycles.

Better yet, the auction bike is a one-off custom version they're dubbing (in a bit of grim hurricane humor) the Category Five HellKat. As the Kneeslider, doing some original blog research (he spoke to a company representative), reports:

This beast will be based on the 2006 Hellcat with a lot of carbon fiber pieces, a 131 cubic inch turbocharged engine along with a number of very special visual design features to show the special nature of this bike. The HellKat will be auctioned off on eBay and the proceeds will be donated to hurricane relief.

...This bike will be the one and only Category Five HellKat produced. No others will be built under any circumstances. If you have the resources to bid on a bike like this, be sure to do so, it’s for a great cause and you’ll have a spectacular and unique bike if you win.

The Category Five HellKat should probably sell for well into the six figures. My previous offer still stands: Everybody flow me the cash, and I'll make a bid.

Via NRO's The Corner, the Idaho State Journal reports that the world's wackiest conspiracy theorist (and that's saying a lot) is quitting his job as a TV news weatherman to pursue his looney "research" full-time:

To the rest of the country, Scott Stevens is the Idaho weatherman who blames the Japanese Mafia for Hurricane Katrina. To folks in Pocatello, he's the face of the weather at KPVI News Channel 6.

The Pocatello native made his final Channel 6 forecast Thursday night, leaving a job he's held for nine years in order to pursue his weather theories on a full-time basis.

...Since Katrina, Stevens has been in newspapers across the country where he was quoted in an Associated Press story as saying the Yakuza Mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. He was a guest on Coast to Coast, a late night radio show that conducts call-in discussions on everything from bizarre weather patterns to alien abductions. On Wednesday, Stevens was interviewed by Fox News firebrand Bill O'Reilly.

Stevens said he received 30 requests to do radio interviews on Thursday alone.

Fouch said Stevens wanted to leave as quickly as possible because his "plate is full," and he needs to take advantage of the opportunities that exist now.

It's sad that someone would dedicate his life to promoting such a theory, but even more sad that so many other people are eager to hear him do so.

Via LGF, National Guardsman Jeremy Hall has photos taken during his post-Katrina deployment to New Orleans, including this one of a store owner's attempt to ward off looters:


Now that is an effective sign. I wouldn't go in there if you paid me.

FOLLOW-UP:
"A Big Dog, An Ugly Woman, Two Shotguns And A Claw Hammer" would make a great title for the next Guy Ritchie movie.

Some bloggers are touting a recent study published in Science magazine as evidence that global warming is increasing ocean surface temperatures and, hence, the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.

Here's Bitch PhD Bitch PhD's guest-blogging husband, Mr. B:

This research study shows a rise in the number of severe cyclone storms and associates it with global warming. Multiple studies confirm this. It is historical, not some climate projection for the future. This is happening now. This is not some hard to imagine, poles melting, waterworld problem that to some seems far in the future. This is current and ongoing disaster escalation due, quite possibly, to CO2 emissions primarily from coal and petroleum fuels' use. That is, it looks like global warming has, in the last three decades especially, resulted in an marked rise in hurricane type storms of category 4 and 5 worldwide.

Scary stuff. Except that's not what the study says. Here is its conclusion (Note: "SST" stands for "sea surface temperature"):

In summary, careful analysis of global hurricane data shows that, against a background of increasing SST, no global trend has yet emerged in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes. Only one region, the North Atlantic, shows a statistically significant increase, which commenced in 1995. However, a simple attribution of the increase in numbers of storms to a warming SST environment is not supported, because of the lack of a comparable correlation in other ocean basins where SST is also increasing.

...We conclude that global data indicate a 30-year trend toward more frequent and intense hurricanes...although attribution of the 30-year trends to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.

So, hurricanes might have something to do with global warming... or they might not. Not exactly a smoking gun.

Yet that's not stopping folks from jumping on the doomsday bandwagon. And it's not just bloggers who are misrepresenting the meaning of this research. Other people, who should really know better, are using it to fuel cheap political attacks. The Financial Times reports:

Hurricane Katrina offered “a taste” of the disasters, and the response to them, that the US could expect as a consequence of climate change, former vice president Al Gore said on Saturday.

He cited recent research that found warmer sea surface temperatures — a result of global warming — had strengthened hurricanes and major storms around the world. Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, where climate change was one of the key issues under discussion, he also criticised those politicians he said wanted to trim government too far, as weak government was incapable of responding adequately to emergencies.

Even if some other study did find the results that Gore and others are claiming, it's hardly a settled issue, as the Science study makes clear. Global warming may or may not cause more big hurricanes tomorrow. But Gore and others want more big government today.

FOLLOW-UP:
Mr. B responds.

As Hurricane Rita bears down on Texas, Joe Malchow issues a plea:

If the worst happens, could this one, please, not be political? By that I mean: if Rita hits coastal Texas and a white-majority area, and post-Katrina policies and sudden attention to NOAA warnings means the damage is significantly mitigated, can Democrats please not say, "See? Bush only cares about white people!" and can Republicans not say, "See? The federal government didn't do anything wrong in New Orleans!"

That'd be really nice.

Yes, yes it would.

Unfortunately, though, it looks like Bush is in a damned-if-he-does, damned-if-he-doesn't situation here: If the response to the storm is bungled, he will once again be blamed for leaving the country unprepared to cope with natural disasters. On the other hand, if it goes well, he will be accused of doing a good job only when white people's lives are on the line.

And no, the fact that plenty of white people suffered from the slow response to Katrina won't make a difference.

New York Newsday reports that Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish, particularly hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina, was also slow to receive any federal assistance afterwards:

From the elderly residents — at least 31 — who drowned in their nursing home to the hundreds stranded for days on a dock as the Mississippi lapped violently at the sides to the administrators of Chalmette Medical Center who flew away to safety and left 30 nurses abandoned on the roof surrounded by 10 feet of water, the people of St. Bernard Parish for much of the early, difficult days of the crisis were on their own without any state or federal assistance.

"We were surrounded by water and we was out of communications entirely," said Henry J. "Juniour" Rodriguez Jr., a jovial potbellied politico who's partial to snake skin belts, cowboy boots and a cane that he just might poke one with if they're not careful. "You want to talk about the cavalry riding to the rescue, the Canadian Mounties got here the second day. The feds, we didn't see those (S.O.B.'s) until the fifth or sixth day."

According to the most recent U.S. census data (via Wikipedia), St. Bernard Parish is 88.29% white.

By now, the left's mythology surrounding Hurricane Katrina is in place: Bush doomed the city to destruction by slashing funding for levee reinforcement projects, using the savings to finance his misadventure in Iraq. (Of course, the left doesn't blame Bush exclusively; somehow, Condoleeza Rice's shoe purchases also played a role.)

However, Will Franklin links to a bombshell of an article in the Washington Post, about federally-funded Army Corps of Engineers projects in Louisiana, that casts doubt upon this explanation. It notes:

In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.

Amazing. Bush's detractors are quick to claim that more federal money would have saved New Orleans, without considering what happened to the money Louisiana had already received.

Their criticisms remind me of a discussion I had with a liberal friend of mine before last year's presidential election. He was backing Kerry, he said, in part because Kerry would spend more on education. I asked him if he knew how much the U.S. already spends per student on public education. How did this level compare to spending in other countries? Might our current education budget already be sufficient, but ineffectively spent? He freely admitted he didn't know. But education was good, and more spending on it was better. Case closed.

There's no question that more money always comes in handy. But it's smart to make the most out of what you have. It appears that Louisiana's politicians did not.

FOLLOW-UP:
Will also has a different take on what is almost uniformly considered a lackluster Federal response to relief efforts.

When they're the ones bearing them. (Via Instapundit.)

Frankly, after seeing his attempt to operate a boat, I wouldn't trust him around dangerous weapons.