When Seconds Count, The SWAT Team Arrives In Minutes -- December 10, 2015

EIA's energy cookie for the day:

Weather forecasts for the current winter season predict warmer temperatures in regions east of the Rocky Mountains compared with last year. Based on those predictions and higher inventory levels, EIA expects propane and heating oil prices to be lower this season. In contrast, during the winter of 2013-14 persistent cold temperatures in much of the country increased demand for these and other heating fuels, depleting inventories. --- EIA

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When Seconds Count

My wife, yesterday, was impressed with how fast the "SWAT" team arrived at the site of the infamous San Bernardino shooting. She said they got there within four minutes. Yup. You can count on the police to get there in minutes. When seconds count.

Family members of 14 dead and scores of injured, some seriously, probably thought SWAT did not arrive fast enough.

Next time you watch the last two minutes of an exciting championship NBA basketball game, note how long one second lasts. Then imagine someone breaking into your house, and then set your kitchen timer for four minutes to see how long four minutes last. And that's if the police get the 911 call and the police put you at the top of the list. Home burglaries are way down the list for police response. As long as the assailant is not an "active shooter," it is not a police priority.

Hey, here's an analogy. You've all seen the AED defibrillators in your local airport, and other public buildings. The move to put AEDs in airports started around 2004 when the Red Cross and others noted that a) the critical time for those suffering a "heart attack" was the first four minutes; b) that the local first responders had a "policy" to arrive on-scene within four minutes; and, c) the most common cause of death from a "heart attack" was ventricular fibrillation, the one and only thing an AED "treats." For their intended purpose, AEDs work.

Federal and state governments recognized that "four minutes" was a standard local first responders could not often meet, and even if theoretically they could meet that four-minute goal, in reality they did not. So to save the very, very rare heart attack victim that occurs in an airport, the federal and state governments mandated AEDs. And now you see them everywhere. I find it interesting what is mandated to save one life in a rare event that never gets any front page news when it occurs and what is not mandated to save large numbers of people in similarly rare events that always result in front page news.

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Civil War

I am enjoying Susan Cheever's American Bloomsburg: Louise May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work.

The title is almost longer than the book. The title is longer than some of the chapters which all run less than five pages. Most chapters run three pages. It is a very disjointed book. But it is delightful. I read it a couple of years ago; I did not enjoy it then. I am now outlining it and find it much more enjoyable. With chapters only three pages long, I can get a chapter "done" while waiting in line the US Post Office near our little hovel to mail Christmas gifts. [By the way, one quasi-government agency that I love is the US Post Office; I may not like certain parts of it, and I may talk critically of it often, but I have a very, very soft spot in my heart for the US Post Office. When one serves in combat zones overseas one starts to appreciate things we take for granted here in the states. By the way: if you think US Postal rates are high, compare them to UPS -- which I also appreciate.]

Wow, that was another typical MDW digression.

Although Cheever does not mention it, an interesting takeaway from the book is the role New England politics played in starting the Civil War. I guess everyone knew that but me. I'm not a huge Civil War fan, but every once in awhile I get caught up in it.

Anyone following the tea leaves knew by 1855, maybe 1854, that the Civil War was destined, the only question was when. The "when" was "set" by New Englanders, and probably "determined" in the Boston - New York City corridor, and perhaps Concord, MA, specifically, the site of the "sound heard around the world" about three-quarters of a century earlier. One can argue that political events in Concord, MA, between 1854 and 1860, were the tipping point that led to Fort Sumter. Interestingly, there were probably as many "mad" (as in "insane") men as sane men that set in motion that tipping point. It's scary to think that "insane" men may have had as much to do with starting the Civil War as to think what might have been.

I now understand a whole lot better: John Brown; Lawrence, KS, 1856; Pottawatomi Creek; Harper's Ferry, The Missouri Compromise; the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision. And the alarming "truth" about Abraham Lincoln. Abe isn't around to defend himself but he put in writing his thoughts on slavery. And Concord, MA, was in the center of all this. Something I did not see mentioned in the Spielberg movie, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln.

Crazy, Gnarls Barkley