Today the Supreme Court heard Schaffer v. Weast, No. 04-698. The rundown is that the parents of a special education student sued the school system in order to force them to pay for private school — despite the school system’s willingness to make exceptional accomodations for the student. At issue is who bears the burden of proof in disputes over “what is enough”: the school, or the parents who brought the case to trial.

Here is NPR’s bit on the matter (a bit brief) and the Washington Post’s take. I also spit out my own stream of consciousness about it.

Disclosure: my wife works for the school system in question, although not in special education.

Posted by Brian (Briandot)

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are having a baby. Doctors say it will be a freak. :)

Today’s South Bend Tribune has the Michiana version of the “Are we ready?” story, which seems to be an obligatory bit of post-Katrina journalism/sensationalism in every local media market in America these days. When I was in Phoenix last week, I saw an alarmist TV segment about how a breach in the Roosevelt Dam would flood the entire Phoenix Valley, including the downtown area — followed by the admission, almost as an afterthought, that there really isn’t any conceivable Phoenix-area weather phenomenon that could cause the dam to breach. (A large earthquake, maybe, but Phoenix isn’t really prone to large earthquakes. A terrorist attack, perhaps. I hope Al Qaeda wasn’t watching!)

I say “journalism/sensationalism” because there is certainly a good deal of legitimacy to such stories, and it’s important for people to consider these issues — I wish more people in New Orleans, especially the local government, had considered them more seriously before Katrina! — but sometimes the media can take things a bit far with the alarmist tone. Still, I’ll admit the bold headline “Are we ready?” on the front page, above the graphic of an “evacuation route” sign, prompted me to buy today’s Tribune, so I guess it’s working. :)

Anyway, along these lines, I found myself pondering the other day what Becky’s and my emergency evacuation contingency plan should be, in the event we are physically separated (I’m at work/school and she’s at home, or whatever) when suddenly there’s a cataclysmic event that makes it necessary to get out of South Bend, pronto, but that also cuts off the lines of communication, such that we can’t coordinate things remotely and decide what to do as events unfold.

My biggest challenge was imagining exactly what sort of cataclysm I was supposed to be planning for. In order to be worth worrying about for my purposes, the event in question would need to give us only a few hours of lead time to prepare. If it leaves less than that (e.g., a tornado), we can’t evacuate anyway, and if it leaves more than that (e.g., a massive super-storm of some kind), we don’t need the sort of contingency plan I’m talking about, because we can figure things out once the threat emerges. Also, the event in question needs to be capable of cutting off (or at least overwhelming) the lines of communication before the crucial evacuation period comes into play. And it needs to be the sort of thing where we’re leaving the area entirely, not just, say, fleeing a localized flash flood, because in that case there’s less need to coordinate our movements. (If I’m at work and Becky has to flee to Notre Dame Stadium or something, we can always hook up later. But if she has to flee to Buffalo, that’ll be a bit tougher.)

There are really only three kinds of non-coastal disasters I can think of which could potentially meet these criteria: earthquakes, nuclear accidents and terrorist attacks. An earthquake, of course, leaves you no advance lead time to prepare, but getting the hell out of Dodge in the aftermath may be very important because of fires, chemical leaks and the like. However, even an 8.5 earthquake on the New Madrid fault would produce only minor damage in South Bend: “Felt by all, many frightened. Some heavy furniture moved; a few instances of fallen plaster. Damage slight.” Not a pleasant walk in the park, but not a “get the hell out” scenario, either. So I’m not too worried about earthquakes.

That leaves nuclear accidents — say, a Chernobyl-style Michigan City* meltdown on a day with a stiff wind blowing from west to east — and terrorist attacks. Because a terrorist attack in the low-value target of South Bend seems exceedingly unlikely (unless you consider the USC passing game a terrorist organization), and because a biological attack (e.g., smallpox) is unlikely to cut off the lines of communication, I am thinking mostly of nuclear terrorism in a nearby city which could produce a radioactive cloud that we would need to quickly flee. Since this is, for all practical purposes, the same worry as my Michigan City Chernobyl* scenario, we can consolidate them into one scenario: the Brendan Loy Nuclear Nightmare.

*CORRECTION: The Michigan City power plant is coal-powered, NOT nuclear-powered! My apologies for the error! So I guess it’s a Berrien County Chernobyl, and a stiff wind blowing from northwest to southeast, that I should be worried about. (Map.)

So, what’s the contingency plan? We have no worries in terms of places to evacuate to: if we need to go east, we have friends and family in Buffalo and, if we need to go further than that, Connecticut; if we need to go south, we have family in Indianapolis and, if we need to go further than that, at least one friend in Atlanta; if we need to go west, we’ve got family in Chicago and Wisconsin, and hell, we can go visit David in Seattle if we really need to get away :); and if we need to go north, well, I’m sure we can find some friendly Michiganian or Canuck to take us in. :)

No, my question isn’t where do we go — once we’re together and in the car, we can get where we need to go, assuming the local authorities do what needs to be done to keep the roads moving (something that’s out of our control, obviously). My question is how do we find each other, if we’re separated when disaster strikes (which is, after all, the whole underlying premise of this exercise)? Suppose I’m at work and Becky’s at home with the car. My first impulse, if disaster were to strike, would be to leave work and get home the fastest way I can, whether that’s hitching a ride with someone, jumping on a bus, or simply walking. Becky’s first impulse, presumably, would be to drive downtown and get me. If we can’t communicate, these dueling impulses could be disastrous. I might make it home and find that she’s not there — because she’s across the street from my office. Or she could get stuck in evacuation traffic, and then I’d have no idea where she is.

Since lack of communication means that neither of us can be 100% certain where the other one is, I figured the best contingency plan is the simplest: wherever each of us is when we find out about the disaster, we immediately head home. We meet up there, and then we evacuate. Unless one of us is much further afield than usual, this should entail a delay of no more than an hour. (Where I work is about an hour’s walk from our apartment, I think.) I suggested this plan to Becky, and she agreed. Meeting up at home is a highly sensible idea anyway, since that’s where the animals are. Assuming the person at home is the one with the car, the delay in waiting for the other person to arrive should allow just enough time to load Robbie, Toby, Sasha and Butter into the Camry. :) I’m afraid we might have to leave the fish to their own devices, though…

Anyway, I wonder: does anyone else think about this sort of thing, or am I just a freak? :) I remember when Becky and I were at USC in the aftermath of 9/11, I was worried about a smallpox attack on Disneyland or some such place, and we agreed that if there was even the slightest hint of talk in the media about strange diseases in southern California, we would immediately jump in the car and book it to her parents’ place in Arizona — hopefully before the authorities would have time to quarantine the state! I never really thought about what we’d do if we were physically separated when the need to evacuate arose, though. I always assumed that I could just call her on my cell phone. I guess the Blackout of 2003 taught me that particular lesson.

I’ll tell you one thing. If Becky and I ever have to evacuate South Bend, and it is possible to get through via cell phone, I promise I will blog it. :)

George F. Will is not impressed with Harriet Miers:

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court’s role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president’s choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers’ confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent — a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer’s career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Bush ally Reginald Brown calls Will’s column “sloppy and unfair.” (Hat tip: Confirm Them.)

While Tropical Storm Tammy is getting all the headlines, a “spinoff” of now-dead Hurricane Stan might be the really big story. It might become the 20th named storm of the season, boldly going where no Atlantic tropical cyclone has gone before — all the way to the letter “V.” And it might have the potential to develop much more than Tammy will have time to.

Let me explain, because this is a bit complicated. The NHC has issued its final advisory on Stan, whose “large remnant circulation” is pushing out into the Pacific Ocean and is not expected at this time to redevelop into a Pacific cyclone, despite The Storm Track’s “out on a limb” prediction.

However, Dr. Jeff Masters notes that “a large area of thunderstorms broke off from Stan this morning, and has emerged into the Yucatan Channel.” That’s on the Atlantic side, not the Pacific side — in between Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula, several hundred miles south-southwest of Florida. You can see for yourself here. Dr. Masters continues:

Satellite imagery this morning has shown some improved organization of this feature, and with wind shear 10 knots over it, there is a chance of a tropical depression or tropical storm forming later today or tomorrow as the system tracks north-northeast towards western Florida. If this system were to be named, it would get the new name Vince, and not Stan, since the primary circulation of that storm pushed into the Pacific Ocean this morning.

Winds at the NOAA buoy 42056 at 20N 85W in the Yucatan Channel just switched from easterly to westerly at 11 am EDT today, suggesting that a closed circulation has already formed. Winds at this buoy were 25 mph gusting to 34 mph, and wind estimates from the latest QuikSCAT satellite pass were as high as 45 mph in this region. Regardless of whether or not this system develops into a tropical storm, southwest Florida can expect tropical storm conditions Thursday afternoon when this system comes ashore. The system will continue to the northeast and drench the areas already dumped on by Tropical Storm Tammy, and the entire East Coast needs to be concerned about serious flooding problems from this one-two punch.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Here’s a satellite image to clear things up:

I’m not sure what to make of that big blob of convection in between the “tropical disturbance unrelated to Stan” and the “remnants of Stan.” I think The Storm Track suspects it’s related to Stan, whereas NHC says the “large remnant circulation” of Stan is still “well inland” — in contrast to Dr. Masters’s statement that it’s already back over the water.

Like I said… confusing.

Of all the inconsequential things that Notre Dame and the law school and various student organizations send us mass e-mails about on a regular basis, you’d think someone would have bothered to mention the student ticket exchange dates for the USC and BYU games!?!

The USC ticket exchange was yesterday. I found this out today. It never occurred to me that it would be this week, because they’re typically the week before the game, not two weeks before… so I didn’t ask, and thus I wasn’t told. Great system.

FYI, the BYU ticket exchange is next Tuesday at 6:45 AM.

Argh.

Hurricane Katrina may have been a minimal Category 3, not a strong Category 4, when it made landfall — and it didn’t even produce sustained hurricane-force winds over all of Lake Pontchartrain, which nevertheless breached the New Orleans levees and flooded the city! Excerpt:

New, preliminary information, compiled by hurricane researchers, suggests the system struck southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29 with peak-sustained winds of 115 mph. That would have made it a Category 3 storm, still a major hurricane but a step down from the enormous destructive force of a Category 4.

Katrina might have further downgraded to a strong Category 1 system with 95-mph winds [as it moved due east of New Orleans]. …

In its original reports, the hurricane center reported Katrina struck near the town of Buras, about 55 miles south of New Orleans, with 145-mph winds and weakened to 125 mph when it was about 35 miles east of the city, all the while pounding the levees. …

Powell said the new data show that Katrina packed 95-mph winds over the east end of Lake Pontchartrain and about 65 mph over the west end, enough to cause the levees to fail.

Of course, that shouldn’t have been enough — not NEARLY enough — to cause the levees to fail. But then, we already knew that the wind-driven storm surge didn’t “overtop” the levees; rather, flawed levees doomed New Orleans:

Louisiana’s top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina’s storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city’s flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry.

The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city from a storm greater than a Category 3 hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the walls.

But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina’s surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals — and the flooding of most of New Orleans.

In the weeks since Katrina drowned this low-lying city, there has been an intense focus on the chaotic government response to the flood. But Ivor van Heerden, the Hurricane Center’s deputy director, said the real scandal of Katrina is the “catastrophic structural failure” of barriers that should have handled the hurricane with relative ease.

“We are absolutely convinced that those floodwalls were never overtopped,” said van Heerden, who also runs LSU’s Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes.

In an interview Tuesday, Corps spokesman Paul Johnston said the agency still believes that storm surges overtopped the concrete floodwalls near the lake, then undermined the earthen levees on which they were perched, setting the stage for the breaches that emptied the lake into the city.

Johnston said the Corps intends to launch an investigation to make sure it is correct about that scenario. But he emphasized that Katrina was a Category 4 hurricane when it smashed into the Gulf Coast, whereas Congress authorized the Corps to protect New Orleans against a storm only up to Category 3. “The event exceeded the design,” Johnston said.

The latest preliminary data would seem to punch a rather significant hole, as it were, in Johnston’s theory. But it was a crappy theory to begin with. Even if Katrina was a Category 4 at landfall, it was AT MOST a Category 3 by the time it drew parallel with New Orleans — and it didn’t make a direct hit on New Orleans, so the city itself experienced AT MOST Category 2, and more likely Category 1 or even strong tropical storm-force sustained winds.

Bah.

The article quoting Johnston was published on September 20, as Rita was threatening the coast, so it got overshadowed. I heard about it while waiting at O’Hare for my flight to Connecticut. So, that’s why I didn’t blog about it sooner. Sorry about that.

Regarding the new data on Katrina’s strength, The Storm Track adds: “This has far reaching implications for our understanding of storm surge. We know that the Gulf Coast saw huge storm surge, especially in Mississippi, and would not expect that size surge out of a Category 3 storm.” Indeed; Katrina produced higher storm surge than the Category 5 monster Camille. How is that possible? I hope we’ll eventually figure out the answer to that question.

Also confusing: wasn’t Katrina’s minimum central barometric pressure extremely low, even for a Category 4 storm? Wasn’t its pressure actually lower than Andrew’s at landfall? If so, how can that possibly jive with the idea of it being a mere Category 3?

Clearly, we have a lot to learn yet — about Katrina, and about hurricanes generally.

Happy Blogaversary, Pundit Guy!

And hey, that reminds me — yesterday was a half-blogaversary for me! This blog (once known as “My world,” then simply “BrendanLoy.com,” and now “The Irish Trojan’s Blog”) has been around since April 4, 2002 — three-and-a-half years, plus one day! Hooray! :)

(My first “real” post, with some substance, was 3 1/2 years ago tomorrow, on April 6, 2002.)

Yesterday was not pretty for the Red Sox. But hopefully the White Sox got all the offense out of their systems, and now the Red Sox can take over the series… :)

Elsewhere, the Yankees won (bah) and the Cardinals won.

Ten years and a day after the Florida panhandle was hit by Hurricane Opal — the 15th named storm in an Atlantic hurricane season that would ultimately produce 19, the most since 1933 — Tropical Storm Tammy has formed, the 19th named storm of 2005. That means 2005 is now tied with 1995 as the second-most-active Atlantic hurricane season in recorded history, with nearly two months left in the season.

If another tropical storm forms, it would be named Vince. That would be the furthest into the alphabet we’ve ever gotten in Atlantic storm-naming. (In 1933, when 21 storms formed, tropical cyclones were not named.)

If still another storm forms after Vince, it would be named Wilma. That would tie 1933’s record of 21 storms.

If yet another storm forms, it would be called Tropical Storm Alpha because — for the first time ever — the annual name list would be exhausted, and the National Hurricane Center would be forced to resort to using the Greek alphabet. (The letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are not used.) Tropical Storm Alpha would be the 22nd tropical cyclone of 2005, breaking the 72-year-old record.

1995’s Hurricane Tanya did not form until October 27. The Atlantic hurricane season continues until November 30, and tropical cyclones have occasionally formed as late as December.

Anyway… back to Tammy. She’s just off the east coast of Florida with 40 mph winds, and some strengthening is possible today. Tropical Storm Warnings are up from Cocoa Beach, Florida northward to South Santee River, South Carolina. Tammy’s exact track is uncertain, but she’s expected to be a “significant rainfall event” for the Southeast.

Despite being a relatively mild (compared to recent storms, anyway) Category 1 hurricane, Hurricane Stan has caused significant damage as it passes over Mexico and Central America. It has forced the closure of Veracruz, a major Mexican port, and left 59 people dead, largely from flooding and landslides. Thankfully it’s expected to quickly turn into a tropical depression and then disappear before it reaches the Pacific.

More here and here.

Brian (Briandot)

Guestblogger: David Kreutz

Moss gathers Stone’s support

Thank goodness God loves sinners: God swept away New Orleans for the obvious reason that it was a den of sin, but according to Franklin Graham (son and successor of Billy) it’s just part of His Grand Designs:

“There’s been satanic worship. There’s been sexual perversion,” Graham said Monday in an appearance at Liberty University. “God is going to use that storm to bring revival. God has a plan. God has a purpose.”

So Graham’s God is a Puritan (as mentioned before)?

Brian (Briandot)

Hurricane Stan has made landfall in Mexico.

Meanwhile, there’s a tropical disturbance over the Bahamas — current bringing rain to Florida — that could organize into something over the next couple of days… but Dr. Jeff Masters doubts it:

The disturbance currently has a weak surface circulation center just south of Andros Island. There is no cloud cover on the west side of the circulation center, and shearing winds blowing from the west are keeping all of the convection pushed over to the east side of the disturbance. Contrary to yesterday’s computer model projections of much reduced shear affecting the disturbance, the shear over the storm has almost doubled, to 20 - 30 knots. This shear is in part associated with strong upper-level outflow flowing northeastward out of Hurricane Stan. No development of any kind is possible while the shear remains this strong, and I believe that this system will not develop into a tropical depression at all. Instead, the disturbance will interact with an upper-level low pressure system forecast to develop in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, and become a large–and very wet–ordinary low pressure system. This may also turn into hybrid system called a subtropical storm–a system that is similar to a tropical storm, but has its main winds 100 miles or so away from the center. If this happens, the system will be named Subtropical Storm Tammy. Our skill in forecasting these types of hybrid systems is low.

The NHC still says that upper-level winds “are expected to become more favorable [for development] over the next day or two.”

Masters says, “Clouds from the tropical disturbance over the Bahamas extend southeastward to Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles Islands. The area of disturbed weather near Puerto Rico bears watching, as wind shear values here are 5 - 10 knots, the lowest of anywhere in this disturbance. “

…he’d make a damn fine blogger. Say what you will about his ideology, but the man’s got wit, and even a bit of snark. From R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992):

Burning a cross in someone’s front yard is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire.

Heh. (See also here.)