Thursday, May 24, 2007
One Night in Greensburg

Greensburg is a little town in Kiowa County, KS. Some Googling tells me it had about 1500 people in it. Back in my college days I used to drive through it three or four times a year on highway 54 as I made my way to and from Kansas City. It was a charming little town. Its main tourist attractions were the world's largest hand-dug well and a 1000-pound pallasite meteorite someone had dug up, God knows where.That wasin addition to its old turn-of-the-century stagecoach town atmosphere, with its one-screen movie theater and a soda fountain in the local drugstore.

I spent a night in a motel there when I was finally done with college and moved back home. This was about seven years ago. At the time, I was pulling an overloaded u-haul trailer with a Ford Taurus that already had about 150,000 miles on it. (The suspension never recovered.) I also had my dog and three cats inside too. The lady at the motel's desk said no problem, pets were welcome. I settled in my room, ordered a pizza, and went on my way the next day. I didn't expect to see Greensburg again, not unless I made another drive out west on vacation or something. I didn't expect that Greensburg's days were numbered.

On May 4, an EF5 tornado swept through the town, the first category 5 tornado in eight years. Ninety-five percent of the town was completely destroyed, and ten people died. Kiowa County was officially declared a disaster area.

Tornadoes are a fact of life in the Midwest. I've been through several myself. They'rea danger unique to our region that we've accepted, like earthquakes in California and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. This doesn't lessen the scope of the tragedy, but I hope it puts it in perspective. With the help aid relief and insurance, for the lucky insured, many of residents of Greensburg will start to rebuild, right where they are. Most of the ones who do leave the town probably won't leave the state. They're tough, prairie folk, who are happy where they are, and it will take more than a little tornado to break their spirits.

In the meantime though, they could certainly use some help getting back on their feet, so anyone who wants to swing by http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.htmland make a donation will earn the gratitude of a lot of Kansans.

Posted by Robert Williams 2007-05-24 22:36:11

Monday, May 14, 2007
Floods and Owls

A couple of weeks back I was walking my dog out in a patch of woods close to my apartment complex. I was lookingfor some morel mushrooms, which had justcome in season out here.We were walking along a path next toa creek when I saw a patch of fuzz move in the underbrush. Looking closer,I saw it was a baby owl. I thought it had fallen out of its nest, so I took the dog back to the apartment and came back with a pet carrier. I was thinking of taking it to a wildlife rescue center. By the time I got back, there was a second one next to the first. I happened to look up and see the owlets' parents perched in the trees above me. Since I knew the parents would care for their young even on the ground, I just let them be. In usual course of things, that would have been the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, a few days after this happened, a team of bulldozers and backhoes came in and tore the entire woods out. I found out later those woods were being zoned for development. I went back later and tried to find my little owls, but I neversaw a trace of them again.

From the title of this blog entry, you might wonder what this has to do with floods. That requires a little backstory.

Over the last week we've had some bad flooding going on the Midwest. Some people say it's the worst we've had since the big one in 1993. Some towns along the Missouri river have been completely inundated. People are losing their homes; truly losing everything, because homeowner's insurance doesn't cover flood damage.

What's causing all this flooding? Obviously we've had a lot of rain. But there are circumstances making things worse.

Even a child knows soil absorbs water, and concrete does not. Development is exploding along the riverfront, and urban sprawl is spreading wide all over the country. As more surfaces get paved, more runoff empties into the river, and the higher the water level rises. The little patch of woods I found my owlets in wouldn't have made a big difference by itself, but spread some concrete over several thousand square miles, which we have already done, and this is what you get. If we could convince cities to set aside some land to leave wild, it could at least make the springtime floods less severe, in addition to improving air quality and civic beauty. Yet another example of the benefits of leaving some places natural.

Posted by Robert Williams 2007-05-14 22:54:58

Wednesday, May 2, 2007
The New Planet

It's been a while since my last blog entry, just been busy, butwith the discovery of the newEarth-like planet I thought jot down some quick thoughts. I've blogged on new planets before, particularly Xena, whose name I love to this day. But this new one isn't part of the Solar System; it's orbiting around a star about 20 light-years away. The star is called Gliese 581, and the planet they just discovered around has been named Gliese 581 c. Catchy, eh?

The name comes from the Gliese Catalogue, which lists all known stars within 25 parsecs of the Sun. Since this star is the 581st entry, it is called Gliese 581. It's a red dwarf, a very common type of star, and the planet orbits it at just the right distance to keep its temperature between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius. So at that temperature it's possible it may have liquid water on it, and if it has liquid water, then maybe life as well.

That's certainly exciting. I personally have always been more interested in the possibility of life within our own Solar System, since it is extraterrestrial life we could see within my own lifetime. Jupiter's moon Europa is covered in ice, and there is a strong possibility that it has volcanic lava vents underneath the ice crust, which could make liquid water around the vents. Also a strong possibility of life.

But you need more than just water to create life. We don't really what you need exactly to create it, but we do know that if you take methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and water, and zap it with electricity, say, in the form of lightning, you get a lot of the organic compounds that are major constituents of living things, like amino acids. All those chemicals are pretty common in the Universe. They are very common on Jupiter. The major impediment to life on Jupiter is that it doesn't have a surface, it's basically all atmosphere, but this hasn't stopped people from imagining organisms evolving there. Carl Sagan once imagined Jupiter inhabited by gigantic living gasbags, rather like an extraterrestrial FOX News Channel.

A new planet with Earth-like temperatures is certainly exciting, but I'll celebrate when the first Martian explorers find microbes crawling around on the surface, or SETI detects a radio signal from space. But even then, would it still be a cause for celebration? The risk in searching for extraterrestrial life lies in how the world will react to what is found. There is always the possibility that what you find will shatter our most deeply-held beliefs.How that will change our civilizationremains to be seen, and I don't think we can know for sure until the big day finally comes.

Posted by Robert Williams 2007-05-02 01:52:29

Thursday, January 18, 2007
The Missouri Miracle

Everyone is now talking about the "Missouri Miracle," in which 15 year-old Shawn Horbeck was found after being abducted four years ago.

It's been all over the news and by now I'm sure almost everyone in the States is familiar with Shawn's story. For those who haven't, it all started when 13 year-old Ben Ownby disappeared after getting off a school bus near his Beaufort, Missouri home. A witness saw a white truck speeding away, and eventually police tracked it to the home of 41 year-old Mike Devlin in Kirkwood. There, they found Ben Ownby, apparently unharmed, along with Shawn Horbeck, who had been missing since 2002. Devlin had allegedly held Shawn captive for over four years.

It still isn't known what Shawn went through during his time with Devlin. What has been confirmed is that Shawn never went to school, was often alone in the apartment, and had access to a computer and a cell phone. Many people have asked a perfectly reasonable question: why didn't he call for help or run away?

Thankfully, now some experts are making their voices heard on how an abductor can influence tremendous mental control over a child. An abducted child has to depend upon his or her abductor for everything, a person of whom they live in fear. Intimidation and violence can makea kid too afraid to seek help.There is also the phenomenon of Stockholm Syndrome, in which prisoners begin to identify with their captors.

Personally, when I first heard of it I was reminded of the case of Steven Stayner. His story was portrayed in a TV movie some years back called "I Know My First Name Is Steven." Like Shawn, he was abducted when he was very young, seven years old, and held captive for seven years before he finally escaped. He suffered terrible sexual abuse at the hands of his captor, and finally made a break for it after the man kidnapped another little boy. Steven took the boy and ran to the police, rescuing him. The kid wasa hero. But afterwards, many people, including his own family, just asked him why he didn't try it sooner. Steven had a very difficult life after that, and died in a motorcyle crash in 1989, at age 24.

Hopefully things will turn out better for Shawn, and I think they will, judging by his vigilant and devoted parents, who quit their jobs to look fortheirsonfull time and set a up foundation for missing children after Shawn's disappearance.

As for Mike Devlin, well, lets be thankful some things have changed. In the 1980s, Steven Stayner's abductor received a prison sentence of, I think, seven years if I remember right. The same amount of time he held Steven Stayner captive. Now the laws are tougher.Lets hope Mike Devlin never again sees the light of day as a free man.

Posted by Robert Williams 2007-01-18 02:27:09

Monday, January 15, 2007
Ice Storm Blues

Currently the Midwest is blanketed in ice.

For the past three days, in fact, sleet has been falling , and the layer of ice on the ground is approaching three inches thick, at least where I am. My area isn't even getting the worst of it. St. Louishas seen 40,000 people without power, and the governor of Missouri has declared a state of emergency.

Going out to the grocery store or the gas station over the weekend, it was like I saw car accidents every half mile. Many of these involve vehicles with four-wheel drive, the drivers apparently unaware that it helps your ability to move, not your ability to stop. So they tailgate behind people moving slowly over the icy streets, inevitably someone has to hit their brakes, and kaboom. According to the news, 21 people have died so far. Pretty bad, but hardly the end of Western civilization that CNN makes it out to be.

The sleet is like this:afterI go out and scrape all the ice off my windshield in the morning, there are new littles drops of ice covering the glass by the time I get back in the car and start the engine.

Fortunately I still have power, my apartment has a woodburning fireplace, and being housebound is great for the writing process. Nevertheless, I wish spring would hurry up and get here.

Posted by Robert Williams 2007-01-15 01:11:51