Rod Nordlund, Tmes correspondent in and around Afghanistan:

This is the only passable route for heavy truck traffic bringing NATO supplies in from the Central Asian republics to the north, as they now must come.

There are other roads, but they are often single-lane dirt tracks through even higher mountain passes, or they are frequently subject to ambushes by insurgents and bandits. So a tunnel built to handle 1,000 vehicles a day, and until the Pakistani boycott against NATO in November handling 2,000, now tries — and often fails — to let 10,000 vehicles through, alternating northbound and southbound truck traffic every other day.

See also BBC News – US cuts Pakistan aid over jailing of ‘Bin Laden doctor’

Encyclopedic and accessible information about all matters electrical, electronic, and wireless.

Town’s Effort To Link Fracking And Illness Falls Short : NPR.

How difficult would it be to turn smart phones into two-way radios operating in the Family Radio Service, FRS, bands? And would they work when the cell-phone towers fail?

FRS bands don’t require an FCC operating license.

Global Positioning Systems are very useful. However, North Korea’s recent jamming of the GPS system in South Korea, while not known to have caused fatalities, demonstrates in the first place, that we need to remember how to find our way without the GPS, particularly in a crisis.

And in addition, we should consider, perhaps combinations of failures, such as:

• GPS system outages – by government order or by sabotage, while other systems are functioning properly;
• GPS system outage accompanied by communications system problems (such as overload – too many people using phones during a crisis or perceived crisis);
• GPS failure + power failure + communications systems failure; widespread power failures by themselves will, of course, degrade or disable both GPS access and most communications technologies.

In other words, the GPS won’t work; there’s no way to call and get directions; mass transit is likely to be about; traffic lights may or may not work; obtaining a map via the Internet is likely to be impossible.

Our banner image was designed by the always-amazing, never-satisfied-with-her-own-work Randa Clay. Her work can also been seen and read at Solutions for WP, HomeSchool Hacks, and elsewhere.

Go back and select specific resources for Pop Log 

note cross-post from Discovery Strategist

Introduction to open-source GIS tools for journalists

Location is quickly becoming a core value of journalism and geographic literacy is on the rise. A look at geocoding tools.

Read more

Creating dot density maps with Chicago Tribune’s new open source toolkit

Chicago Tribune hacker Christopher Groskopf explains the tools and techniques behind the creation of dot density maps with U.S. census data.

Read more

via Resources | Data Driven Journalism.

Brian Lam at TheWireCutter.com, having done substantial research, suggests that this Phillips bulb may be the best currently available, and calculates a yearly cost of $1 to $2.50 per year, as opposed to $5/year for a conventional bulb. Of course, economies of scale and competition will bring prices down, but break-even on each bulb is probably no more than five years out – unless electricity prices spike. As we try to game out the post-Fukishima electricity supply, each market segment, or “wedge,” (think of a pie chart) will count. This is a problem which will be solved by massing a large number of small improvements.

We missed this, I think, the first time around, and we think it’s noting for its intrinsic value (an  unscheduled nuclear plant shutdown is, we think, newsworthy, and trends  should be noted).   Power failure forces nuclear plant to shut down in Illinois – New York Daily News  But it’s also worth noting that we found this AP piece on the website of the New York Daily News, and, at least during our visit to that page, Google Ads delivered the following message (without the raised bullets.  In FireFox only – put the same URL into

• Indian Pt. – Right for NY
• Learn About Why The Indian Point Energy Center Is Right For New York
• www.SafeSecureVital.org

Both links lead to “SafeSecureVital.com” – which is a site maintained by Entergy, operator of Indian Point.  Here’s where it gets interesting, we think. This is part of what Entergy says about safety:

The area approximately 10 miles around the Indian Point is called the Emergency Planning Zone. The federal government set the 10-mile radius as the area requiring emergency plans for protecting health and safety in radiological emergencies.

Emergency Planning Zone – Indianpoint Website (accessed 28 March, 2012)

There’s a map, which we reproduce. For the record, we did not crop this image in any way.

"Indian Point Protective Action Areas" (caption as in original)

Let’s examine the claims thus far. We’re not going ignore any evidence Entergy has offered on behalf of Indian Point – and in fact with respect to one element – how we’d replace that electricity, estimated by Entergy at 25% of the greater New York area (excluding suburbs in Connecticut and New Jersey, if we understand the grid correctly), estimated by others to be as high as one-third – – taking Indian Point out of the equation might be painful, might be a good thing in the long run, but – no matter how it’s done, it’s going to be a very big adjustment.

The “Emergency Planning” tab of the Indian Point website makes the affirmative statement:

The federal government set the 10-mile radius as the area requiring emergency plans for protecting health and safety in radiological emergencies.

Broken out, the implications are:

1. Assuming that the federal government is competent with respect to the risks attendant to nuclear power, the federal government has said to Entergy, “You are responsible for ten miles around your plant, which includes the populations of Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange Counties;” in other words, the company’s legal responsibility is limited to a ten-mile radius;
2. It seems safe to assume that Entergy doesn’t feel any moral obligation to take into account the safety of anyone outside the “Emergency Planning Zone,” because, it seems safe to assume, had it taken steps to widen its area of responsibility, Entergy might also want to reassure people both within and without the “Emergency Planning Zone” of its diligence in assessing and managing risk.  Since the safety of Indian Point does seem to be a matter of some public debate, it’s hard to imagine that Entergy wouldn’t want to take credit for taking safety seriously, for erring on the side of caution.

Here’s how Entergy describes its emergency preparedness;  our comments will be bold-faced and in red (depending on browser settings, of course) and within [square brackets].

Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange counties have Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) staffed with personnel [we’ll address budget, staff levels and training as we proceed] to assess the potential off-site effects of the incident. County EOCs dispatch [“dispatching” suggests that this system does not include a distributed network of radiation sensors]   field radiological monitoring teams that independently measure levels of radioactivity within the 10-mile EPZ. Personnel from the emergency planning organization in each county participate in a full-scale, federally evaluated exercise once every two years. This exercise is evaluated for FEMA for off-site responses, and by the NRC for Entergy’s on-site response. In alternate years, the counties participate in state-coordinated drills to maintain their preparedness and train new staff. [In other words, one major exercise per year, whose function is, at least in part, the training of new emergency staff. It would take a new staff member two years to have participated in one state-coordinated and one “fully-funded” federal exercise. No mention is made of surprise drills, or ongoing evaluations of security vulnerabilities].

County plans call for the activation of their EOCs when Entergy declares an Alert of higher incident classification at Indian Point. All four counties have provisions to be notified by Entergy as soon as any emergency classification is made at the site. Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange County emergency managers and county executives can activate their EOCs at any time they determine it is necessary.

Each county has emergency plans that can be implemented in the event of an emergency at the plant. One or more of the following protective actions may be taken for residents within the 10-miles EPZ:

• Evacuation – KI-potassium iodide administration – Everyone in specific Emergency Planning Zone is instructed to leave the area and, if they have a KO-potassium iodide, to ingest one dose (130mg tablet). Children under one year should be given a 65mg dose or on half of the adult tablet.
• Sheltering – everyone in a specific Emergency Planning Zone should stay indoors.

Though the Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved Indian Point’s emergency plan, Entergy will continue working with federal officials, the four surrounding counties and New York State to enhance the plan and make it a model of emergency preparedness for the entire nation. We will not waiver from our responsibility to protect public health and safety. [Note the use of the word “waiver,” which has to do with being relieved of a responsibility; rather than the word “waver,” which describes movement. “We will not waver” is, fairly, the equivalent of “we will give no ground.” Assuming that it’s a typographical error, descriptions of nuclear disaster preparations should be the last documents to be given half-hearted copy-editing.]

Annual Emergency Procedure Drills

Under Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements and supervision, the staff conduct several plant-wide drills each year to test their response.

“Evidence-Based;”  “Proof Integrated Communications”

The domain SafeSecureVital.com is registered to Proof Integrated Communications of 230 Park Avenue in New York City.  That is XXX miles from Indian Point. Proof is part of the  “Evidence-Based” public relations firm Burston-Marsteller, itself a subsidiary of Young & Rubicam.

Proof’s senior staff includes Dallas Lawrence, a George W. Bush administrator and onetime spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Washington D.C., May 3, 2010 – Proof Integrated Communications, an advertising, digital and integrated communications agency, today announced it has appointed Dallas Lawrence as Managing Director. Lawrence is well-known for his combination of social media and digital media expertise as well as his crisis management and corporate reputation experience. Lawrence will be based in Washington D.C. and report to Proof Integrated Communications Chief Executive Officer Jay Leveton. Most recently, he was Vice President and Global Practice Chair of Social and Digital Media at Levick Strategic Communications, a crisis communications and public relations firm based in Washington D.C.
“We are working hard to ensure we have a team of the strongest digital strategists available to counsel our clients,” said Leveton. “Dallas’ experience integrating social media, issue advocacy and crisis management will help us deepen our capabilities in these critical areas, which are increasingly determining the reputations and communications outcomes of corporations, associations and issue advocates today.”

Dallas Lawrence (@DallasLawrence) has more than 12 years of experience in international, public and private sector leadership developing winning integrated marketing and strategic communications strategies that protect reputations and build brand equity on blogs, websites, social networks and other online and traditional media forums. During his tenure at Levick, Lawrence guided digital strategies for many of the firm’s highest profile clients in the energy, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, consumer products, global financial and defense and aerospace industries.

Previously, he served as Vice President for Communications and New Media for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and served for more than five years as a trusted member of President Bush’s communications team as Director of the Office of Community Relations and Public Liaison for the Department of Defense under Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates. He also served as Spokesperson and Director of Regional Media Outreach for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.

Lawrence obtained his Bachelor’s in Political Science from the University of California, Berkley and his Master’s in Government from The John Hopkins University. He is a reserve public affairs officer in the United States Navy.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRISIS EXPERT DALLAS LAWRENCE JOINS BURSON-MARSTELLER’S PROOF AS MANAGING DIRECTOR, http://www.proofic.com/social-media-and-crisis-expert-dallas-lawrence-joins-burson-marsteller%E2%80%99s-proof-as-managing-director, accessed 28 March 2010.

xx

Management Watch Blog

GOP proposal would avoid DOD spending cuts. Guess how.

Details of the Republican plan to preserve DOD spending in the era of sequestration aren’t clear, but it looks like the workforce is once more on the table.

via Browse the Federal Daily Blogs — FederalDaily.com.

This morning’s report from Weekend Edition Saturday discusses, via discussion with a Paris-based of Doctors without Borders, makes clear that the Syrian military is now waiting in force at hospitals, assuming that people seeking medical attention may have been injured by government agents. In response. Doctors With Borders’ affiliates in Syria are trying as best they can to manage with improvised O.R.’s in living room, bedrooms and kitchens. Doctors without Border is trying to get supplies and equipment to this underground medical care network.

More information after NPR posts its transcripts and links.

Blasts Rock Aleppo as Dozens More Are Reported Killed in Syria – NYTimes.com – http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/world/middleeast/blasts-in-aleppo-syria-homs-violence-said-to-continue.html?_r=1&ref=world