Several years ago my brother treated me to a jazz concert. I remember being incredibly disappointed in how bored I was (even fell asleep). He, being an aficionado, thoroughly enjoyed himself. In the discussion that followed, I realized two things. The first was that jazz is esoteric – you need to have an understanding of […]
Data is a fragile thing and poses a major Achilles heel to any business. Consequently, we're always looking for ways to better safeguard data. One idea that's been gaining considerable traction lately is cloud computing – the placing of processes and data onto the Internet. This means that a disaster at your site won't affect […]
Ever wonder what we're protecting with all our computer passwords? Now don't get me wrong – I'm all for reasonable protections. But sometimes we just don't think things through. Case in point – this morning's San Francisco Chronicle contained a short article about a failure of the Department of Emergency Service's computer system during a fire […]
Download Earthquakes and One-dimensional Planning April 2011
Here's one of those "gee, I never thought of that" problems that surface after a disaster. It seems that the Japanese police are having to deal with hundred of metal safes found in the debris after the recent tsunami. Apparently many Japanese keep cash in their home or business. Add to this money found in […]
The use of social media in disasters is a hot topic for emergency managers these days. I suspect that at the heart of this debate lies the fact that, while we see the potential, we really don't understand it. Judging from the websites I've seen, we certainly haven't grasped the concept that social media is […]
It's hard for the average citizen not to feel concern over the news coming out of Japan about harmful radiation. After all, a reading 100,000 times higher than normal background radiation, as was recently reported, has to be of concern, right? Actually, you can't really tell from the information available in the news stories. […]
In Bram Stoker's classic novel, Dracula, the vampire hunter Van Helsing gives specific instructions for how a vampire must be dealt with to prevent it from continually rising from the grave. I sometimes wish there was a similar ritual one could perform to remove bad information from the Internet. Case in point is the "Triangle […]
There's an article making the rounds on the Internet purported to be from an MIT scientist that offers a very lucid explanation of the crisis at the Japanese nuclear plants and why they do not pose a major hazard similar to the meltdown at Chernobyl. While I am no expert on nuclear reactors, my colleagues […]