Fairfax rescue team to Iran
In addition to a planned 6 planes and 75 tons of supplies being sent by the U.S. government, the renowned Fairfax County, Virginia Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue team is on its way to Iran tonight, to help find survivors of the Bam earthquake. The task force has been involved in a great number of high-profile rescue missions, including Oklahoma City, the terrible Armenian earthquake of 1988, and the search for survivors at the Pentagon after 9/11.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that the Iranian government didn't waste the chance to give Israel the old poke in the eye:

Government spokesmen said that foreign aid workers would not need entry visas and that aid would be welcome from everywhere but Israel.

Allah knows what would happen if Israelis helped suffering Iranians. Still, there's been some progress in the last decade or so:

International rescue teams began arriving with sniffer dogs and detection equipment. One dog team dug out 20 survivors, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said.

The use of dogs, which are considered unclean by most Muslims, was a sticking point in rescue efforts in 1990, after the most deadly earthquake ever to strike Iran. It killed about 50,000 people.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:58:00 PM -- |  

 
Some assembly required
Up until 2am last night assembling a doll bed and the item to the right, two of the major hits of Maddie's Christmas this year.

She loved them; then she settled down to draw for two hours with the $2 drawing pad and $3 set of magic markers (water soluble, key point there). Whatever, the drawings were fueled by the fun; what an imagination! and a real style of her own. Wish I could show it off somehow; long, long arms, expressive cartoon faces. People don't overlap yet, so that the drawings look early medieval in a way. But motion is important: little wind-motion symbols behind a thrown ball, a "sproing" curlicue under a teeter totter going up. Looking at them now, the subject seems to often be recess group dynamics, transmuted sometimes into princess stories. I also think there's a wish to have long, long hair.

We had a nice Christmas eve with Grandma; she got a kick out of my brand new Homer Simpson talking beer bottle opener. This afternoon we had a nice dinner at her house with my New Jersey inlaws and their youngest daughter back from the West Coast. Tomorrow we'll see the Nutcracker at Warner Theater to wrap up the Christmas festivities.

It's a huge relief to experience all this with a job to look forward to. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:15:00 PM -- |  

 
Rural target + dirty bomb = dirty target?
From MSNBC:

Authorities raised the terrorist threat assessment over the weekend after new intelligence indicated that operatives of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network, possibly trained and licensed to fly passenger jets, may now be pilots for some foreign airlines, ideally positioning them to carry out suicide attacks, U.S. officials told NBC News on Monday. [...]

New intelligence indicates that al-Qaida remains intent on attacking large gatherings of people with chemical or biological weapons, official said. They said law enforcement agencies were looking closely at two rural locations — one in the East and the other in the Southwest — that were believed to be high on the terrorist target list.

Most troubling, the officials sad, were indications that al-Qaida may already possess a radiological weapon, or so-called "dirty bomb." They did not elaborate.

Alternatively, they don't have a dirty bomb -- they want to fly an airplane into one. That could explain the concern about rural targets, which would otherwise not have the large number of victims an urban target would. There may be radioactive or chemical dumps/sites that could harm or at least thoroughly scare a large number of people downwind if a plane full of gasoline or explosives flew into them.

Targets in the rural East and Southwest could describe Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, two nuclear research sites. Neither are terribly close to major urban centers, but they could be close enough to fairly big ones -- Knoxville, Albuquerque -- if the wind is blowing hard enough and the right way. But there are doubtless lots of other sites all over the U.S. that could multiply the impact of a suicide airplane crash, including ones close to the east and west coast urban centers.

Alternatively, of course, it's all just a false alarm; let's hope so. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:30:00 PM -- |  

 
Christmas suggestion
Operation Uplink helps American servicemen and women make phone calls back to the United States with free long-distance calling cards.

Consider giving some money; $7.50 pays for about 20 minutes, according to SBC, the corporate co-sponsor of the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) program. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:13:00 AM -- |