The Wizard admits that he is belatedly trying to wrap his mind around the staggering news that President Bush is trying to browbeat Congress into approving a whopping $700 billion to bail out Wall Street.
With that in mind, I present to the public a Microsoft power point presentation that should help explain to the viewer in easy terms how Wall Street and the financial community at large got itself into the sub prime mortgage mess in the first place. Note that the power point presentation is about 2.5mb in size, ergo it will take a minute or so to download, depending upon your Internet connection. Follow the usual power point instructions to go through the presentation; press the ESC button to get out and the up and down arrows to go forward and backwards in the presentation.
I get a laugh every time I go through it and laughs are few and far between these days.
Enjoy!
Wizard
Well, well, well,
Here I am, sitting in my living room, 8 days after Hurricane Ike paid Houston and Galveston a visit, along with a heavy rain storm that happened the following Sunday morning. Westheimer is largely back to normal, though there are a few neighborhoods in the area without power. I tried making most of my regular commute towards work on this Sunday afternoon. I went into work on Friday, only to find that San Felipe inside the Loop is still blocked off. That left drivers having to traverse around the blocked off area to get to Kirby or other thoroughfares. I just got back from a run in Memorial Park that I took around noon and took San Felipe on my way back home. I found the street is still blocked off, but that the trees that had blocked the right of way had been cleared. Linemen were working from utility trucks to restore power. The Chronicle said on its September 22nd, 2008 front page that 54 percent of Centerpoint Energy customers and 71 percent of Entergy customers had their energy and power restored. Complaints have already mounted on the perceived slow pace of power restoration. Meanwhile, Mayor White's curfew of Houston, modified to be enforced between midnight and 6:00am, was supposed to end tonight but will be extended until further notice. The Wizard imagines the curfew will be lifted by the end of next week.
As is to be expected, the Monday morning quarterbacking about what to do, if anything, in the future with regards to hurricanes has already started. Council member Peter Brown, who never saw a regulation that he didn't like, once again trotted out the Urban Romanticism / Smart Growth playbook item of burying electrical power lines. Interestingly, the Houston Chronicle posted an editorial in the Sunday, September 21, 2008 paper largely rejecting this idea, citing studies from Oklahoma and Virginia that the cost of underground power burial would be between $3,500 - $16,000 per customer. The editorial mentioned that the cost per mile of underground burial was some 10 times those of overhead poles. Nonetheless, there are some cost effective ideas that could be pursued to alleviate the problem, such as passing some regulations or ordinances prohibiting the growth of vegetation or tree cover within a certain distance of power lines.
The same battles are going to erupt over development near the sea shore. Jim Blackburn was quoted saying:
We have to protect people from themselves and certainly from developers," said Jim Blackburn, an environmental attorney and coastal expert based in Houston. "Anyone who wants to buy on the West End of Galveston Island should be shown a picture of the Bolivar Peninsula after Ike.
But that all depends on whether you are the type of person who believes that people need to be protected from themselves, much less from real estate developers.
From a purely economic perspective, as opposed to a political perspective, issues such as having your seaside home wiped out by hurricanes, tsunamis, or other phenomena could be looked at with a similar lens to that of understanding whether we should pursue underground burial of power lines. Ask yourself what is the future discounted probability that a hurricane is going to damage your home or how long it will be before power will be restored? We had some shingles taken off the roofs of my condo complex, along with some damage to car ports, but otherwise I suffered no harm. Likewise, I have had two power outages in the past 2 years, a 36 hour outage from Hurricane Rita and a loss of power for 76 hours from Ike. Before that, we had brief power outages because of Tropical Storm Allison back in 2001. I have a generator already, ergo I am largely covered on the account of a loss of electrical power.
The point here is that the last time Houstonians suffered through an electrical outage of this length and magnitude was 25 years ago from Hurricane Alicia. So ask yourself, does suffering through an occasional power outage call for spending billions to retrofit Houston's 640 square miles of already developed territory and put up with the massive attendant disruptions of civic life? It's one thing to consider burying power lines in new areas that are under development right now when it is relatively cheap and easy to do so. It's another thing to rip up the sidewalks of a street like Westheimer in order to bury the power lines.
A friend of mine owns a house in Galveston that was about 15 feet from the shoreline. His house was some 15 feet up. I have yet to hear from him whether he joined the masses in checking to see whether his home made it through Ike. Nonetheless, it seems to me that if private insurance is willing to pick up the tab on rebuilding a house, and effectively asking the future discounting question I posed above, then I see no reason why someone should be prohibited from rebuilding. Likewise, I've seen people in other countries build their housing on rivers and lakes, knowing that they could lose their homes, but they take the risk anyway because that is how they live. One could build cheap housing with no insurance, taking the risk that the structure would be blown away in the event of a natural disaster. Then the onus would be on the homeowner, who would be faced with picking up the pieces and starting all over again.
It remains to be seen whether the the state will take any action, other than enforcing the Texas Open Beaches Act. No doubt that Ike will open some more wounds over that issue.
Sigh...
Wizard
This is a running blog entry on Hurricane Ike:
1) At 7:52pm September 12th, KHOU-TV channel 11 news reporter Jeremy Desel and another reporter staying at the San Luis Hotel reported that the power at the hotel just went down. The other reporter was more dramatic. From his fourth floor vantage, he said that all of Galveston lost power at once. All he could see was a single police car. The Galveston emergency management center is in Dickenson, ergo they are still operational.
2) Channel 11 news reports 150,000 people have lost power.
3) The Houston Chronicle reporter Eric Berger, "the Sci Guy", reports that Ike is to make landfall at midnight. The winds are starting to gust up in my courtyard.
4) Update 11:00pm. I am watching CNN. A reporter in La Porte says that there are no lights there, but I saw a refinery that is still lit up like the sky. I went outside and found that there were some people in the complex next door having drinks outside. It was a scene of festivities. I left after about 20 minutes. Debris is starting to fall off of trees along our street. I piled them up on the medians. I doubt that some of the palm trees that are planted are going to survive the night.
The rain is starting to come down.
5) 11:35pm. I am surfing the television channels right now, ergo of course I still have power. Texas Governor Rick Perry tells CNBC news that Ike could be a storm that causes $100 billion in damages. Pardon my French, but that is horseshit.
6) 12:35am. The winds have substantially increased. I am watching the Weather Channel. They are showing steady winds in Houston of 45+ miles per hour, with gusts of up to 70 miles per hour. The Weather Channel reporters stated that in Port Arthur, the Port Arthur Fire Department evacuated the town! So much for government to help you when you need it.
7) The Houston Chronicle interactive tracker says that as of 12:00am, Ike is 28.9 north, 94.5 west. Ike is 80 miles away from Houston. Movement is northwest at 12 mph. The storm is to past east of downtown.
8) We just lost power at 12:42am for about one minute, but just got it back.
9) I finally laid down and got some rest around 1:30am. I awoke at 4:45am and found the lights were out. Amazingly, the lights came back on at 6:00am. It is now 6:10am. The lights have gone out twice now since they first came back on. I have air conditioning and all other mod cons, including a working refrigerator.
If this holds for another 3 hours or so, the Wizard just might make it out of Ike with just a flesh wound.
Sunday, September 14: 6:00pm
I am now writing from the Big Evil Company's offices in downtown Houston. Downtown has underground power lines, ergo the lights do not go out here. No, the Wizard did not escape Ike's wrath. We have been without power since yesterday morning.
I received a call from a Big Evil Oil Company manager asking me to render an opinion on a power and cooling related issue. Since the manager could not relay all the facts to me, I decided to make the drive into downtown Houston. Westheimer was okay except for some blocked lanes from trees, but when I got to San Felipe road inside 610 Loop, I found the street was impassable at San Felipe and Larchmont due to fallen trees and power lines that completely blocked the road. I got out of the car to investigate how bad it was and when I got back to my car, I found a Channel 26 Fox News camera crew waiting by my car. They asked me for an interview, which I granted them. I told them this was my normal commute into work everyday and that I would have to find another way to get to work. I told them to let the authorities know that San Felipe was completely blocked and that some crews would be needed to clear the thoroughfare. Too bad probably 100 other streets had the exact same problem. The residents told me that a tornado may have touched down in River Oaks, causing the problem.
I then got onto 610 Loop and tried to get into downtown via Memorial Drive. I was able to snake my way through Memorial Park, through a bunch of debris, but when I got to Shepherd and Memorial, the entire area was under water and I could go no further. Buffalo Bayou was at the edge of reaching people's homes. I then circled up Westcott and then down Washington Avenue, going back down Durham to West Dallas to get into downtown. Along the way, I stopped to take more photos of Allen Parkway and Memorial. Buffalo Bayou was flooded all the way to the street level of Allen Parkway.
I took care of the work assessement, then wandered around downtown taking photographs of the skyscrapers. The Wedge tower had lots of windows broken out, as did the El Paso and Wells Fargo building. The Big Evil Oil Company office buildings were not too badly harmed, but the windows on the skywalks between the parking garages and the buildings were blown out. Water soaked the carpets. Inside the buildings themselves, there was some damage to floors and to common areas. Debris, paper, and insulation was strewn everywhere. Water puddles were on the floors and in the underground tunnel food courts. A window was busted out on several floors including one in the company cafeteria. The data center itself was fine.
As of this writing, some stores are open. The UPS situation has been generally taken care of. The Big Evil Oil Company offices will be closed Monday and Tuesday. I doubt power will be restored for another few days to my abode. Until then, we in Houston merely have to keep our heads up. Mercifully, Ike has brought cooler weather. Until last week it was still in the 90's during the day time. The forecast now it that it will be in the low 80's during the day with a breeze with lows in the 70's. If it weren't for that, my hometown would be unbearable.
Ciao for now.
Wizard
I write this as Hurricane Ike approaches the Houston Galveston area, and which should make landfall sometime in the dark hours tomorrow morning, September 13th, 2008. A Houston Chronicle interactive map shows that Ike is, as I write this, at 27.7 degrees north and 93.5 degrees west, making it some 180 miles away from Houston.
Ike is now projected to pass east of downtown Houston with winds over 100 miles per hour and with a massive storm surge. The Weather Channel now says that Surfside has knee deep water already. Sabine Pass has 36 mph winds, while Galveston now has winds of 41 - 50 mph. We have roughly 25 mph winds in Houston as of 5:20pm today.
I believe that Hurricane Ike will have many of the same effects that Hurricane Alicia had on Houston when she rolled through town 25 years ago. I was on the cusp of entering my last year of high school when Alicia hit. I stayed up all night, alone, in my parents' front room, listening to music via the family stereo through some headphones. Or, I did so until the power went out. I still stayed up and stared out at the darkness right next to the front windows, something in hindsight I would never do again. Sometimes I would see terrific bolts of lightning light up the entire sky. When those struck, I could sometimes see the branches of our trees in the front yard extend all the way to the ground. Those trees are not there anymore, having fallen victim to a curb and gutter improvement project that the City of Houston did when Helen Huey was district council member.
Alicia battered on all night that night, but my parents home suffered no damage of any kind, not to the roof or windows. The winds finally began to calm down around 6:00am that following Friday morning. My father awoke and the winds had quieted down enough to where I felt adventurous enough to walk outside into our back yard. There was a patio in the back yard, but when I opened the door I could see that there was debris everywhere. I was about to step out when my dad told me not to do that. That turned out to be some wise advice, as we subsequently discovered that we had a downed power line lying in the patio. Houston Lighting and Power employees came by later that day to deal with the downed line, but we did not get our power restored until 2 days later. That turned out to be a minor nightmare as this left us without air conditioning in Houston during August. That will be the one saving grace of Ike. The forecasts say that we will have temperature highs in the 80's next week and lows in the 60's and 70's. We will be spared having to sweat like pigs even if we lose power.
But I digress. I was allowed to go outside in the front yard in mid-morning. All of the residents in the neighborhood congregated together, it is rather amazing how natural disasters get people to do that. About one in five of the homes in my parents neighborhood suffered some form of damage, mostly trees that had fallen on roofs. Several people had garages that had been struck. People came out with chainsaws and started to chip away at clearing away some of those trees. Debris was everywhere.
My dad told me to start cleaning up the front yard the next day. It took over 30 trash bags in order hold all of the pine tree branches and needles that had fallen over the yard. I feel sad that I did not have a camera to record Alicia like I do now. I don't know whether businesses boarded up, like they have on Westheimer now.
But there are some things I do vividly remember about the aftermath of Alicia. People piled up their debris on the medians of many major collector and arterial streets, like Westview in Spring Branch or Richmond near Gessner. The City did not finish collecting it all until months afterwards.
Another vivid memory I have was looking at the front page of the papers the next day and seeing photos of shards of glass that had popped out of downtown skyscraper windows that were stuck vertically into the concrete! I now work downtown. When Rita struck in 2005, I warned fellow employees that this might happen again, but it will happen when Ike strikes tomorrow.
That winter, some friends of mine and I went out in the dead of a very cold December night on a trip to Galveston beach. We were young and absolutely nuts for doing that. It was freezing cold that night, but we were lubricated by lots of beer. We walked for hours and talked about what our futures would be like. One thing I couldn't help but notice was that the beach was entirely barren. It seemed that the sand dunes had been pushed back dozens of yards.
Things are starting to get interesting, but the real fireworks have yet to come. There is a construction crane down Westheimer that I am a bit concerned about, but otherwise the Wizard is up on the second floor. No flooding for me, but I am worried about the wind and the trees in our courtyard. All but one of my windows are boarded up, the one that isn't being too large to be covered by plywood. It's funny because when Alicia hit, nobody took off and left town. Since Katrina hit New Orleans three years ago, it seems that millions take off every time anything comes remotely close to town.
Otherwise, the Wizard is hunkered down with some supplies to last for maybe three days. The Big Evil Company Linux clusters are shutdown with no restart until Sunday. I'll check in on the kinfolk and some other friends in a while. It's time for Ike to let her rip.
Wizard
I'm still writing on the talk that Bill King gave HPRA some weeks ago. Meanwhile, I stumbled across this amazing set of photos of London at night.
Commentary: Many of these photos are of central London. You can tell this by viewing the street scape, all of which are of buildings that were constructed many generations ago. The buildings are almost uniformly 4-7 stories tall. Compare those areas of London to the row housing in suburban Acton Town. Sam Staley wrote an email recently where he described Manhattan as a walking urban area. Inner London, built before the age of the Underground, is the same.
My company's London offices can roughly be located on the far right hand side of photograph #11. They are across the Thames from the London Eye, which was visible in a westerly direction from my company's cafeteria.
Finally, another item I look for when seeing a City from above is how much lighting of the city can you see from the sky? This is a rough proxy for the relative affluence of an urban area. I've traveled to many countries and have seen cities all over the world when flying over them at night. In poor areas of the world, you will notice that when you fly over their cities that there is very little light that is visible from the sky. In contrast, in the economically wealthy areas of the world, you can clearly see considerable lighting from the sky and these photos of London are a brilliant example of this phenomena.
Wizard
