"My favorite part of Dead Week is getting up early, drinking coffee, and looking ahead to the long stretch of nothingness that fills the day."

"The nothingness doesn’t have to be slothful; sometimes I leave the house and sometimes I don’t, but the point is that it doesn’t matter. If I don’t go outside, I don’t feel bad about it, and if I do, everybody else I encounter looks equally confused and at loose ends, frittering away these leftover days. It is the only time of year when the days feel slow to me, when the time outside of whatever tasks I have to do does not somehow vanish into further worry and busyness. It is the only time I don’t feel like I am perpetually late to my own life...."

Writes Helena Fitzgerald, in "All Hail Dead Week, the Best Week of the Year/The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is a time when nothing counts, and when nothing is quite real" (The Atlantic).

The author "is a writer based… in New York." I presume that means New York City, and not just because I know it is the convention in New York to say "New York" for New York City and to specify "New York State" if you mean to refer to the state. There's no other state where people add "State" to the state's name. Imagine if in Oklahoma, you said "Oklahoma State" to signal that you didn't mean Oklahoma City. Anyway, I know that means New York City because the people on the street have a distinct look of being off from work. If the author goes outside she's struck by everyone looking at loose ends. New York City is such a workplace.

Anyway, for me, out here in Madison, Wisconsin, every day is the equivalent of a day in Fitzgerald's "Dead Week."

"Perhaps nowhere is more vulnerable than Ocean Shores... the tsunami that could accompany a 9.0 rupture would wash over all of it. People could try driving out..."

"... but officials expect roads to be buckled and sunken, or covered in power lines, trees and debris. The expected subduction would cause the entire area to abruptly sink up to seven feet; the shaking could cause liquefaction of sandy soils before the tsunami reached shore. People could try running to high ground outside of town, but Ocean Shores sits on a six-mile-long peninsula. Those who live toward the southern end would be about eight miles away from high ground. Depending on their location, residents might have only 10 minutes after the shaking stopped before the wave started washing over them.... The best option may be to get on a rooftop or to climb a tree.... Dozens of other waterfront communities are also at risk.... To improve the chances of survival, officials in Washington State have proposed a network of 58 vertical evacuation structures along the outer coast and advised considering dozens of others. They could provide 22,000 people with an option for escape, although thousands of others would remain out of range. Each structure could cost about $3 million. Vertical evacuation structures have been embraced in Japan for years, in the form of platforms, towers and artificial berms..."

From "The Tsunami Could Kill Thousands. Can They Build An Escape? A major quake in the Pacific Northwest, expected sooner or later, will most likely create waves big enough to wipe out entire towns. Evacuation towers may be the only hope, if they ever get built" (NYT).

The coronavirus has been circulating undetected and has possibly infected scores of people over the past six weeks in Washington state..."

"... according to a genetic analysis of virus samples that has sobering implications for the entire country amid heightening anxiety about the likely spread of the disease. The researchers conducted genetic sequencing of two virus samples. One is from a patient who traveled from China to Snohomish County in mid-January and was the first person diagnosed with the disease in the United States. The other came from a recently diagnosed patient in the same county, a high school student with no travel-related or other known exposure to the coronavirus. The two samples look almost identical genetically, said Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who announced the results of the research on Twitter late Saturday night. 'This strongly suggests that there has been cryptic transmission in Washington State for the past 6 weeks,' Bedford wrote. 'I believe we’re facing an already substantial outbreak in Washington State that was not detected until now due to narrow case definition requiring direct travel to China.'... Bedford said it is possible but very unlikely that the genetic similarity of the two virus samples could be a coincidence and reflect two distinct introductions of the virus into Snohomish County by infected travelers, rather than sustained person-to-person spread within the community.... 'It is far from definitive,' [a CDC] official said. 'The particular strain found in these two samples is widespread in China and elsewhere. It’s possible that someone else introduced the virus into the community 'that we didn’t pick up,' the official said. But this research could be evidence that the highly contagious virus has eluded efforts to contain it through travel bans, quarantines and other interventions. The virus may have been spreading in parts of Washington state among people who didn’t realize they were infected by it — they may have thought they had a cold or the flu."

WaPo reports.

Insane government billboard: "We don’t need pot to have fun. We’re Hispanics… We’re cool by default."

That was done by the Washington State Department of Health. The AP reports that the Department is "apologizing after some people were offended."

Some people were offended?!!

It's patently bad. It's not something that happened to offend "some people" and is therefore the subject of an apology. The government should have known all along that the message was offensive.

But the advertising idea reminds me of something I've seen around here, an ad against drunk driving that says something like: real men drive sober. It's appealing to the pride of a particular group. I don't know about that "real men" ad. I find it offensive, but I don't think it's insane to think it would be okay.

But "We’re Hispanics… We’re cool by default" is a terrible thing for the government to be saying. Even though the billboard has a photograph of a bunch of smiling young people who are being made to look as if they are saying that, it is the government putting out an ethnic stereotype.

It's also stupid because it sends the implicit message: If you're not Hispanic and thus not automatically cool, you should use marijuana so you can be cool too. And also: Hispanic people seem like they're on marijuana even when they are not. Which ought to remind us of why the government calls the substance "marijuana" and not "cannabis":

Throughout the 19th century, news reports and medical journal articles almost always use the plant's formal name, cannabis. Numerous accounts say that "marijuana" came into popular usage in the U.S. in the early 20th century because anti-cannabis factions wanted to underscore the drug's "Mexican-ness." It was meant to play off of anti-immigrant sentiments.

A common version of the story of the criminalization of pot goes like this: Cannabis was outlawed because various powerful interests (some of which have economic motives to suppress hemp production) were able to craft it into a bogeyman in the popular imagination, by spreading tales of homicidal mania touched off by consumption of the dreaded Mexican "locoweed." Fear of brown people combined with fear of nightmare drugs used by brown people to produce a wave of public action against the "marijuana menace." That combo led to restrictions in state after state, ultimately resulting in federal prohibition....

"Exactly 50 years ago Thursday, in Alaska, the second largest earthquake in recorded history, magnitude 9.2, remade the Last Frontier State."

"What had been gravel beaches rose to become 30-foot cliffs. What had been forests at sea level were submerged, leaving only the ghostly silver tips that you can still see. In Anchorage, 42,000 people were left homeless."

From a column by Timothy Egan titled "A Mudslide, Foretold," which is mostly about the recent mudslide in the Stillaguamish Valley in Washington.

Efforts at legalizing marijuana beyond the medical use are undercutting the medical marijuana system.

The medical marijuana business was "all very folksy – and virtually unregulated, which the authorities say led to widespread abuses."

Now, under pressure from the federal government, [Washington] state is moving to bring that loosely regulated world, with its echoes of hippie culture, into the tightly controlled and licensed commercial system being created for recreational marijuana, which goes on sale this summer....

In Washington, some dispensaries might be well run, others poorly, but without oversight, state officials could not [tell] which was which. So a clean sweep – killing off the old system so that a new one could emerge – was seen as the only way forward, legislators say....

To many patients and providers...the proposed mandatory registry is not a good thing. Some patients, especially those receiving Social Security or other federal aid, have said they would refuse to sign up because that would be a legal admission of drug use that they said could jeopardize their benefits. Others have told lawmakers they fear, with hacking and leaks of government data in the news, a loss of private information.

There's always the freedom and privacy of going back to outlaw ways... an ironic consequence of greater legalization. Unless/until the federal criminalization ends, state-level "legalization" is going to be weird. I suppose getting to this weird condition is one way to create pressure on the feds.

I loathe this midway position, which creates an inequality that burdens those of us who are punctilious about avoiding committing any crimes. And wouldn't you think it's the people who feel excessive compulsion toward order who could most benefit from a recreational marijuana break? In fact, if you see it as an order disorder, we ought to qualify for a medical marijuana pass.

Also legal starting today in Washington...

... same-sex marrying.

"Does this mean you should flagrantly roll up a mega-spliff and light up in the middle of the street?"

"No."

If you’re smoking pot in public, officers will be giving helpful reminders to folks about the rules and regulations under I-502 (like not smoking pot in public). But the police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a Lord of the Rings marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to.

That's the Seattle Police Department, writing that, by the way. Don't you like police department humor?

AND: "I'm not sure where you're suppose to get it," King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg told CNN. "If you stumble across some on the street or it falls from the sky, then you can have it. Otherwise, you are part of a criminal chain of distribution."

The Washington State Liquor Control Board has until December 1, 2013, to establish clear guidelines for the regulation of marijuana sale and distribution. Until then, obtaining marijuana by any means remains illegal.

Also, marijuana possession is still illegal under federal law, but the government hasn't said what it intends to do about Initiative 502. The U.S. attorney's office released a statement yesterday reaffirming its position on the illegality of any action involving marijuana, stressing that federal properties such as military bases and national parks remain off-limits to Washington tokers.

The line between the risk-taking transgressors and timid rule-followers remains, even today. As I said, that's not fair. 

"Washington joins two other states that have passed ballot measures making same-sex marriage legal..."

CNN emails its projection.

After nearly two days of counting, the tally was 1,269,917 residents in favor of the measure and 1,146,439 opposed.

"He will bring happiness in a pipe/He'll ride away on his silver bike/And apart from that he'll be so kind/In consenting to blow your mind..."

"Fat Angel," by Donovan (who wrote it) or The Jefferson Airplane (live, with oil-based light show) and even Orange Alabaster Mushroom (a rare find?).

Fly Translove Airways... Gets you there on time... a lyric that sprang to mind as I was reading The Lavender Café, where Michael K said:

I'm hoping to get Chicagoboyz back to posts about airplanes. Politics is a dead subject. The lefties have made their bed. Now, find a job.

And john said:

I think there is some early celebration of the med pot voting results.

He wasn't referring to Michael K, but to... well, if you go over there and scroll — which I don't recommend — you'll see a few things, which, as I said, I don't recommend. It was enough to make wyo sis say "This thread is either above my head or beneath my contempt. If I understood it I could tell which for sure." And john returns us to the aviation theme:

Does anyone else here read FlightLevel390? The best aviation blog around, and the site just got pulled off. I thought Tuesday was a bummer, but this is worse....

Flying stuff. Written by a pilot for a major airline (USAir I think). Beautiful poetic writing, gripping (really) tales of flying coast to coast, with regular dips into the technical aspects of flight and airplanes.

That's when Chip Ahoy — our fat angel, though I'm sure he's not fat — comes in with his pancakes made of "17 B-52's of milk," which doesn't stop LoafingOaf from calling him a "little fucking internet douchebag pussy," which makes it painfully obvious that we are not aviators. We are on the internet.

We are flying at an altitude of 39,000 feet/Captain High at your service...

We are all little fucking internet douchebag pussies now. What are you going to do about it? Go to Colorado/Washington, where pot has magically become legal... except to the extent it's a federal crime? You don't need that "med" modifier anymore. And you don't need a note from your little fucking internet douchebag pussy doctor.

"Mitt Romney won Saturday’s nonbinding caucuses in Washington State, handing him a symbolic victory..."

"... in his quest for the Republican nomination as he heads into the critical 'Super Tuesday; contests just three days away."

They're doing sleepovers in the Washington State Capitol now.

And check it out: A Wisconsin fleebagger is guest-starring:

Among the lineup of about a dozen speakers Friday, the person who generated the most buzz and applause was Wisconsin state Sen. Spencer Coggs, one of 14 Democratic senators who attempted to block that state's controversial new law eliminating most union rights for public employees.

Coggs recounted his experience fleeing to Illinois with his 13 colleagues in an ultimately failed attempt to prevent a vote on the legislation. He said it was labor groups across the country who "had our backs."

Many in the crowd referred to recent events in Wisconsin as the worst-case scenario they were hoping to prevent by joining the protest.

Emulate us so as not to emulate us.

Even atheists should object to Freedom From Religion's sign that sneers religion only "hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

I said that back in December 2004 about the sign in the Wisconsin Capitol. Here's my old post and here's the picture I took of the sign:

An identical sign is causing a stir now in the state of Washington. Here's Bill O'Reilly getting steamed up about it.

Another December, another battle in the "War on Christmas." I think the sensible people don't want to fight about religion, but there are always extremists -- pro-religion and anti-religion -- who seek glory in the fighting. Tolerance and peace is the better path. Please take it.

"The sacred American principle that all ballots be counted in a free, fair, and transparent manner."

Huckabee cries "outrage" over the " the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses."