Notes on a Sunday For the first time in ten years I picked a sporting event correctly: Marlins in six. Pitching, speed, defense, and the best catcher in baseball. That's what I said, and if Wells hadn't got hurt I'd probably have been wrong. BUT I DIDN'T HAVE THE BALLS TO BET IT.
The fire in SoCal at 3:30AM it was 85 degrees one block east of Beverly Hills and winds blowing around 50mph off the desert. If you were watching any of the FOX replays of the reporter standing 100 feet from the flames and seeing all the brush explode around him you appreciate how bad it is here. Like an unending tornado. Nowhere near where I live but close to an ex-wife. The TV assholes reporting this are full of shit as usual. We have not had a drought. We have had big rainfall and all the brush has grown, in fact far more brush than normal meaning there is too much fire fuel. We never have rain here before November. The brush is green, but dry because it is native. Like any plant stem, brush has segmented stems or little branches that are segmented. What happens is that the small amounts of liquid, or explosively flammable sap, heats to the flash point inside each stem segment and expands as it vaporizes. The heat is so strong that brush as far away as 100 feet will just "boil inside" and explode as you saw on FOX. Every clump of brush becomes a bomb. Very scary.
Baghdad Hotel attack Nobody knows if this was a desperate act by a dying band or the show of real force by the still remaining and perhaps growing opposition. They wanted to kill Wolfowitz and that you can put in the bank. All opinions could be right on this one.