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Florida, United States
Bred, raised, educated and life long Floridian, and proud of it. E-mail at one(dot)legged(dot)old(dot)fat(dot)man(at)gmail(dot)com

Tuesday, August 31, 2010


Hurricane Earl

...POWERFUL HURRICANE EARL CONTINUES WITH 135 MPH WINDS...

11:00 AM AST Tue Aug 31
Location: 21.2°N 67.9°W
Max sustained: 135 mph
Moving: WNW at 14 mph
Min pressure: 939 mb

Tropical Storm Fiona

...FIONA CONTINUES WEST-NORTHWESTWARD NO CHANGE IN STRENGTH...

11:00 AM AST Tue Aug 31
Location: 15.9°N 55.3°W
Max sustained: 40 mph
Moving: WNW at 24 mph
Min pressure: 1006 mb

For additional information visit the National Hurricane Center website on the internet at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

RTS is experiencing delays on Route 5 due to Oaks Mall parking lot paving. Bus stops at Stein Mart, Belk (on 62nd) and Terwilliger Elementary may be temporarily closed. All connections at the Oaks Mall will continue. Also experiencing delays on Routes 75 & 20 due to construction at the Oaks Mall.

In observance of Labor Day, all RTS offices will be closed Monday, September 6, and there will be no RTS bus service. ADA paratransit service will not be running, including dialysis appointments.

RTS shattered its one day ridership record with 59,135 passengers on Wednesday, August 25 and thanks all patrons, Operators and staff.

The latest issue of Community Update newsletter is available. Click below to view the interactive PDF

Community Update Newsletter

www.alachuacounty.us

Click to view the Community Update Newsletter as an interactive PDF file.

In the Sunshine State on this day in 1872 Charles H. Pearce, minister of the African-Methodist Episcopal Church of Tallahassee, was nominated as a candidate for a third Florida Senate term by Governor Harrison Reed at the Leon County Republican Convention.

In 1906 Elizabeth Hutchinson Broward, eight child of Governor and Mrs. Napoleon Broward, became the first child born to a sitting governor in the State of Florida. She was born in the Brown House on Monroe Street in Tallahassee.

In 1912 The Socialist Party of Florida, meeting in convention in Ocala, nominated Thomas W. Cox as its candidate for governor

"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little. "





Today: Partly cloudy. A 20 % chance of showers in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 90s. East winds 10 to 15 mph.

Tonight: Partly cloudy in the evening then clearing. Lows in the lower 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph.

Forecast Details: stacked high pressure system is over the middle Atlantic area with a deep easterly flow over the County Warning Area. 00z JAX sounding had indicated 0-6 km mean flow at 100 degree near 16 knots. Satellite imagery shows an upper level low drifting southward over central Alabama helping to spread cirrus over the County Warning Area. At surface moisture convergence has resulted in a few light to moderate showers over coastal northeast Florida. Temperatures are in the middle 70s most areas, but near 80 at the coast where east winds are near 10 miles per hour. Meanwhile Cat 4 Hurricane Earl continues churning ~125 m north of Puerto Rico moving west-northwest.

The NHC forecast for Earl projects it moving west-northwest then northwest over the western Atlantic through Thursday. This will back deep layer wind field to northeast with even drier airmass pushing into the area. Precipitable waters today hovering just above 1 inch will drop below that through Thursday with only very isolated showers expected and temperatures near normal. Upper level low northwest of the County Warning Area will move southward and allow for drier conds aloft to develop by tonight.

For today an isolated shower or two expected near the northeast Florida coast with a threat of an isolated shower over inland northeast Florida by late morning and into the afternoon. Breezy easterly winds expected to develop over northeast Florida, especially coastal counties. Temperatures near normal around 88 to 93. Tonight skies expected to become mostly clear with light northeast low level winds. Enough decoupling possible well inland for some patchy fog. Fairly cool lows in a long while with middle 60s possible over inland southeast Georgia.

Today's Pollen Levels: 8.3 Medium High (on a scale to 12); Predominate Pollen: Ragweed, Grass and Chenopods.

Click for Gainesville, Florida Forecast

For additional information visit the National Weather Service in Jacksonville website on the internet at http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jax/

Monday, August 30, 2010

I remember when we kept them, and folks would go out in their boats on weekends to bruing them in. Times change...

Ever wonder how bad it must be for theese poor souls to take the risks of a 90 mile open water trip on a make shift raft to come to America? So much for give us your hungry, tired and poor....

The U.S. Coast Guard has returned to Cuba 25 migrants found floating off Florida shores.

The migrants were interdicted at sea in three separate incidents last week.


The Coast Guard says two migrants were spotted Friday floating on a plastic foam raft about 8 miles east of Islamorada. A Coast Guard plane spotted 19 Cuban migrants about 30 miles north of Mariel, Cuba, on Wednesday and directed a cutter to them. Also on Wednesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection plane spotted four migrants aboard a raft about 17 miles east of Sands Cut.

All the migrants received food, water, shelter and medical care aboard Coast Guard vessels.


Read more:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/30/1798566/25-cuban-migrants-floating-off.html#ixzz0y5uIr29n

In the Sunshine State on this day in 1565 From the Diary of Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, Chaplain to Pedro Menendez’s expedition to Florida...

Thursday, the 30th, we were given a time of head winds which made us throw out the anchor. We were with contrary winds for four days so that we could not navigate further. When these were lacking, calm came to us and stopped us. We were anchored all these days about a league and a half off shore. The Captiana was about a league ahead of us. We could not reach her because of the swift current. Our General [Menendez], seeing that neither the pilots nor the two French prisoners in our company knew how to reach port by the few land signs (because the coast is so low and level and lacking in signs), decided to put 50 arquebusiers on land. Some captains made many bonfires so that the Indians would come up to see what it was. They are so animal-like they did not care about it and no one came. When our people saw this, they went into the land; and four leagues from there they found a settlement of Indians by whom they were well received. The Indians gave them good food and embraced them and begged for what was brought. The soldiers were so generous that they gave them many things they carried and the Indians gave them two pieces of gold, although of low carat. It showed that they had some and were in the habit of giving it in exchange. The Frenchmen with us said they had been in communication with them for some time.” The Indians wished the Christians to remain there that night so they might feast them, but they did not accept because of the need of taking the good news to the General.”

Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, Laudonniere and Fort Caroline.

In 1778 an American privateer raided the plantation of Dr. Andrew Turnbull during the American Revolution.

In 1961 a resolution establishing Edison Junior College was approved by the Lee County (Fort Myers) Board of Public Instruction. Edison Junior College is now Edison Community College and a new university, Florida Gulf Coast University, has also been established in the county (1996).

"Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. "





Today: Partly cloudy. A 20 % chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs around 90. East winds 10 to 15 mph.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Lows around 70. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph.

Forecast Details: MSAS analysis is showing large area of high pressure over the Carolinas continues to build south towards the region. Drier air from the surface to 700 mb has resulted in an absence of shower activity. However easterly low level flow and moisture convergence along the coast may result in isolated showers near the coast early in the morning. Will keep previous 20% probability of precipitation going along the coast for Monday morning.

Deep layer moisture shifts west and south as high pressure surface and aloft builds into the area from the Carolinas. May see a few isolated showers near the coast in the late night/early morning due to the converging easterly flow and isolated storms inland  during the afternoon through Tuesday. Maximum temperatures near 90 inland and upper 80s coast. Fog tool indicating patchy late night fog mainly across inland southeast Georgia Monday. 

Today's Pollen Levels: 8.2 Medium High (on a scale to 12); Predominate Pollen: Ragweed, Grass and Chenopods.

Click for Gainesville, Florida Forecast

For additional information visit the National Weather Service in Jacksonville website on the internet at http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jax/

Sunday, August 29, 2010

I was baptised in my mothers church a high church “whiskeypalian” parish, my father admitts he wasn't muchof a church person having once belonged to a Unnitarian Congration mainly so he could play on the basketball team.

So when it came time for him to pick one of my God Fathers, he asked his Turkish neighbor a devote Islamic Mohamed Ziead to stand for me. Although we moved over a thousand miles away this man made a presence in my life until he passed and carried on his sworn duties to see I was raised a good Anglican Catholic for the most part. As did many of our Jewish friends.

So I have never understood the painting of any religion with a broad brush of hate...

Although I have seen a lot of people use religion as an excuse to justify there actions.

By MARGARET TALEV

McClatchy Newspapers

Nearly a decade after Sept. 11, less than a third of the country feels favorably toward Islam. Most Americans reflexively oppose an Islamic cultural center near ground zero, and the lower the Christian president's approval ratings, the higher the percentage of people who think he's Muslim.

Why?

Beyond the simplistic debate - are we patriots or bigots? - pollsters, historians and other experts say that the nation's collective instincts toward Islam have been shaped over decades by a patchwork of factors. These include demographic trends, psychology, terrorism events, U.S. foreign policy, domestic politics, media coverage and the Internet.

Estimates of U.S. Muslims range between 2.5 million and 7 million, or about 1 percent to 2 percent of the population. There's no official data on U.S. Muslims' geographic distribution, but mosques are concentrated in metropolitan areas.

Most Americans are Christian, and most don't have much direct exposure to Muslims. A quarter of Americans say they know "nothing at all" about Islam, the Pew Research Center found earlier this month, and of non-Muslims polled, 58 percent said they don't know any Muslims.

It's natural for people who don't know Muslims to draw strong stereotypes from Sept. 11 and feel them reinforced by recent scares such as the Fort Hood, Texas, shootings and the Times Square bomb plot, said Leonie Huddy, the president of the International Society for Political Psychology and a political scientist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

"One of the things we know about cross-relationships of any kind is they become more positive as people have more personal contact with each other," Huddy said.

A Gallup survey last year found that Americans who don't personally know any Muslims were twice as likely to acknowledge "a great deal" of anti-Muslim prejudice. Republicans and those without college educations tend to be less favorable toward Islam.

Muslims are "very much the new outsider," said John Esposito, the founding director of Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. "We've had Christian cults that have committed acts of violence; killings of abortion doctors. (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy) McVeigh. (However,) we have a gut context in which we place it. Muslims don't fit that profile."

So what shaped modern American impressions of Muslims?

Long before Sept. 11, other high-profile terrorist attacks inflamed the public imagination. Consider the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the 1988 mid-air bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which took 270 lives, and the rise of suicide bombers throughout the Middle East.

While most Muslims aren't terrorists, most terrorist attacks on U.S. targets or allies over the past 40 years were committed by aggressors who were Muslim or Middle Eastern. Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and a decade of U.S. wars in Muslim lands.

"There have been so many acts of terrorism connected to radical Muslims that it's not surprising Islam has a public relations problem," said John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel for the CIA of Iranian descent who's a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn.

While many hijackings, hostage-takings and killings of the 1970s and 1980s were by secular Palestinians, including those in Munich, Radsan and others said that most Americans don't make such distinctions.

In addition, many Americans' first impression of Islam came in the 1960s with the Nation of Islam's role in the black separatist movement. That framed their impression of Islam in the context of racial antagonism.

Moreover, during the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s, the U.S. concluded that Islam could be politically valuable to American interests. When the CIA funneled money and arms to the Mujahedeen, the theory was that "Muslim fervor was a good thing because we could use Islam against the Soviets," Radsan said. There was the notion of a common bond between Muslims and Americans versus the Soviets: " 'People who believe in God' against a 'godless empire.' " However, it also enhanced the stereotype of Muslims as extremists.

Beyond that, Muslim and Middle Eastern men tend to be portrayed negatively in popular culture. Some critics say that media coverage of Islam focuses too much on terrorism. Two extensions of that argument are that non-terrorism news doesn't often feature Muslims and that the news doesn't provide enough context about anti-American sentiment until a situation blows up.

"Most Americans up until the Iranian revolution did not experience Muslims," Esposito said.

Iran's 1979 revolution overthrew the Shah, whom Muslim revolutionaries denounced as a "U.S. puppet" installed by the CIA. There was little U.S. public understanding of the CIA's role in the 1953 overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian leader and the resultant widespread Iranian public anger toward the U.S.

"When we saw people shouting 'Death to America' ... we had no context to put that in," Esposito said.

U.S. political and cultural leaders also help shape public attitudes.

After Sept. 11, President George W. Bush took great pains to distinguish between Islam in general and terrorists who are Muslim. Initially, polls found the U.S. public made that distinction. A Pew survey soon after Sept. 11 asked whether Islam encourages violence more than other faiths, and Americans were twice as likely to say no than yes. Within a couple of years, however, that distinction was gone. Most Americans thought that Islam did encourage violence more.

"Events are filtered through the media and the reaction by others" as well as people's pre-existing views, said Alan Cooperman, of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Public leaders' reactions to the planned Islamic cultural center two blocks from the World Trade Center site offer the latest example.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama supported the project's developers' right to proceed, and Obama spoke out against religious discrimination. However, the president sent a mixed message when he said the next day that he wasn't commenting on the wisdom of the project's location - a neighborhood filled with bars, restaurants, a strip club and an off-track betting parlor.

The outspoken opposition of prominent Republicans - including Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin - connects the Sept. 11 attacks to Islam. The issue could become divisive in some elections this November.

The Internet and social networking applications have bypassed the traditional media filter and magnified the influence of fringe activists on public perceptions of Islam.

Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky, said conservative Christians long have been a source of anti-Islamic rhetoric, but more secular voices are now in the mix. Bagby cited Pam Geller, a blogger who's warned of "Islamization" of America and is a strident opponent of the New York Islamic cultural center. Bagby said that Americans' long-held suspicions of Muslims are "made more virulent by these groups."

Anti-Muslim feelings aren't likely to decline substantially until American attitudes improve toward the religion itself, said Dalia Mogahed, the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

Muslims are the most negatively viewed faith community in the country, Gallup found. However, Pew polling finds that Americans also think that Muslims face the most discrimination of any U.S. religious group, which could imply a sense of sympathy.

There are modest indications that Americans are becoming more familiar with Islam even if they don't think they are, and that this may continue as the U.S. Muslim population grows. For years, Pew has asked Americans whether they know Muslims' name for God and their equivalent of the Bible. The percentage of Americans familiar with Allah and the Quran was 33 percent in 2002, but 41 percent by last year. Still, Islam's favorability has declined.

Pew's Cooperman said that when polling is considered overall, "I just could not make a case that in general U.S. public opinion has either hardened or softened" toward Muslims.

Still, U.S. history offers some hope for positive change. Catholics and Jews once experienced severe discrimination that's ebbed with time. So have U.S. ethnic minorities persecuted during eras of war with their homelands - consider the internment of Japanese-Americans and the persecution of German-Americans in the 20th century.

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/08/29/2184496/why-so-many-americans-are-hostile.html#ixzz0y0bxzz11

by Anders Gyllenhaal

Miami Herald Executive Editor

This past year, staff writer Audra D.S. Burch has worked on breaking stories ranging from the earthquake in Haiti to the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. But in between these assignments, she's always in search of the complex, slow-moving stories far from the news spotlight.

The moment she heard about the tale of Rosewood, she knew she wanted to write about one of South Florida's best-known professors, Marvin Dunn, and his plans to explore a village that disappeared from central Florida in 1923.

``I love telling stories like these,'' she said. ``What I was trying to get at is this is really about the human condition -- our flaws and our triumphs.''

The Rosewood saga has a good measure of both. The history of the town, destroyed in a racial attack almost 90 years ago, was uncovered by the St. Petersburg Times in 1982 and then 60 Minutes shortly thereafter. The Legislature responded with reparations in the next decade, and the story was forgotten again.

But not by Marvin Dunn, who retired from FIU but has never slowed down.

His extraordinary plans include buying up land and literally digging into the earth to find out what happened. If he succeeds, a new chapter will be added to the Rosewood legacy. You'll want to spend time with this thoughtful, compelling story, which starts on today's front page.


Read more:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/29/1795764/historians-quest-for-rosewood.html#ixzz0y0ZXVArh

Dove World Outreach Center our local beacon of “Christian love and tolerance” and furniture store sure is milking this incident for all the publicity it can get. Like I've said before they may have the right to burn Muslim Holy books, but why ?

Reminds me a story my late father in law told me. At 17 a PFC he was in the first wave of Infantry that went ashore at Utah Beach on D-Day. He came out of that conflict with a Compat Infantry Badge, a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, but he didn't have to go at 17. Had he waited a year until he was 18 he would have just come out of training when the war ended. I asked him why he went so young, he said “because the Nazi burned books...”

From the Gainesville Sun

Gainesville Fire Rescue on Wednesday again denied Dove World Outreach Center’s permit that would allow the church to hold a Quran burning on its lawn on Sept. 11.

Last week, the department denied the permit request because, under the city’s fire prevention ordinance, open burning and outdoor burning are prohibited, said Gene Prince, the department’s interim chief.

This time, the request was denied because it didn’t include any new information.The request did not change,” Prince said Thursday. “They just wanted us to reconsider.”

On Wednesday, the department faxed and mailed a letter to the church’s senior pastor, Terry Jones, to let him know for the second time that the city wouldn’t allow the burning.

But the church, which has about 50 members, has indicated that even if it doesn’t have a permit, it will still burn the Muslim holy book.

It's sad that it falls on the shoulders of Fire/Rescue to uphold public decency and do the right thing.... Thank God for such people.

In the Sunshine State on this day in 1818 Spain severs diplomatic relations with the United States for failing to discipline General Andrew Jackson following his seizure and occupation of forts in Spanish Florida.

In 1899 the discovery and mining of phosphate near Juliette produced a tremendous population growth. Today city officials reported that the population has increased from 25 to more than 1200 in a single year.

"Shoulda, coulda, and woulda won't get it done."





Today: Mostly cloudy with chance of showers and isolated thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 80s. East winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50 %.

Tonight: Partly cloudy. Slight chance of showers and isolated thunderstorms in the evening. Patchy fog after midnight. Lows in the lower 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 20 %.

Hazardous Weather Outlook: Numerous showers and isolated thunderstorms are expected near the coast during the morning and inland during the afternoon. Locally heavy rainfall is possible along the coast this morning which may cause localized flooding. The storms may become strong inland during the afternoon and will be capable of frequent cloud to ground lightning and strong and gusty winds.

Forecast Details: MSAS analysis is showing an area of high pressure across the middle Atlantic slowly moving south. The gradient, including the coastal trough, is tightening and radar is indicating numerous convergent bands of showers offshore moving ashore the northeast Florida coast. These showers will likely produce brief periods of heavy rain and gusty winds and there will probably be locally heavy rainfall amounts near the coast due to training of cells. Aloft the southeast U.S. is dominated by the large sub tropical ridge. A short wave trough is slowly pushing east into the ridge and was helping produce a considerable amount of multi-layer cloudiness.

Surface high pressure will continue to build over the Atlantic Seaboard as upper high sinks south and pushes band of deepest atmospheric moisture south and southwest. As a result probability of precipitation will gradually decrease from the north during the next 48 hours. Due to continued northeast to east low-level flow highest probability of precipitation will be over Atlantic coastal areas during the late night and morning hours with much of the activity shifting inland during the afternoon. Best chances of thunder will be near the Gulf Stream at night and over land during the afternoon and early evening. Locally heavy rainfall is likely, especially in convergent bands near the Atlantic coast. Temperatures below normal today, especially near the coast due to cloudiness/percipitation. Temperatures will have a chance to rebound this afternoon across southeast Georgia as drier air and more sunshine moves in. Maximum temperatures will gradually warm thereafter as more sunshine returns to the area.

Today's Pollen Levels: 6.8 Medium (on a scale to 12); Predominate Pollen: Ragweed, Grass and Chenopods.

Click for Gainesville, Florida Forecast

For additional information visit the National Weather Service in Jacksonville website on the internet at http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jax/