Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Irma

Posted on September 6, 2017 by Michael Froomkin

UM put out this announcement this morning:

***STORM ALERT***

HURRICANE IRMA – ADVISORY 3

Wednesday, September 6, 9:00 a.m.

The University of Miami is closely monitoring Hurricane Irma, a major category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph, which is currently located approximately 1,200 miles east-southeast of Miami-Dade County. The potential for impacts to South Florida are increasing and plans are being rapidly implemented to ensure the safety of our University community and facilities. The earliest time South Florida would experience impacts is still Friday evening. This storm is a rapidly evolving situation, and changes may need to be made quickly regarding University operations. If this were to occur, these changes will be communicated via an ENN alert.

The University is strongly encouraging all UM students to rapidly implement evacuation plans and leave South Florida no later than the end of Thursday. Any on-campus students who do not evacuate may be required to relocate to an off-site University or government evacuation center that only serves as a refuge of last resort and has the most basic of accommodations.

All classes and student-related events on all campuses are cancelled today through Friday, September 8, as well as all weekend classes. At a minimum, students will be given 48 hours notice to return before classes will resume, and an exact date for the resumption of classes on the Coral Gables and Marine campuses has not been set.

The Coral Gables (excluding the Lennar Foundation Medical Center) and Marine campuses will close at the end of Wednesday, and remain closed at least through Sunday, September 10, except for those select essential personnel, as identified in units’ UReady Continuity Plan, with a role in campus preparation of critical functions. Residential housing and dining halls will remain open, but other facilities on the campuses—including the libraries, wellness center, and Student Center Complex—will be closed at that time.

An additional communication will be issued later today by the University of Miami Health System and Miller School of Medicine with more detailed information on changes to clinical, non-essential, and essential operations.

President Frenk declared a State of Emergency to emphasize the importance of response to this critical threat to life-safety and ensure all necessary University resources are being allocated to prepare for this storm. The University’s Emergency Operations Center has been activated to ensure a coordinated University response over the coming days.

Students living on campus have had mandatory floor meetings and received information from staff in their residential colleges; all students should communicate with their parents about their plans. Faculty and staff should make sure that their unit and personal emergency plans are in place.

Employees: The time card approval deadline was moved to today, Wednesday, September 6 at 3 p.m. Because of early approval, you will need to estimate any missed punches for tomorrow before approving the timecard. If you have any questions, please email the Payroll Office at etk.payroll@miami.edu.

The University community is urged to monitor UM Emergency Management social media accounts http://www.facebook.com/UMiamiENN and http://www.twitter.com/UMiamiENN for interim updates.

For additional information on how prepare for hurricanes, visit the UM Hurricane Preparedness website.

The UM Crisis Decision Team will meet again today, and another Storm Alert will be issued this afternoon.

You know they are serious when they move the time card approval deadline.  And here’s why:

Posted in Weather With a Name | Comments Off on Irma

Do I Have a Date With Irma?

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Michael Froomkin

Looks like Hurricane Irma might (but also might not) be coming to Miami next Friday or next weekend.

The thing about hurricanes is that, unlike most other natural disasters, you usually have a lot of warning before they hit–and of those warnings, a significant fraction turn out to be false alarms. (False alarms in the sense that the hurricane dies out, goes out to sea, or goes and hits someone else.) The National Hurricane Center does a great job of telling the public what we know, and don’t know, about strike probabilities. But even so, during most late summers and early Fall, we here in Miami usually have a number of hurricane alerts of varying degrees of alarm. Irma sounds like it would be a strong — maybe even very strong — hurricane by the time it makes landfall somewhere, but there are many variables, not least the possibility that it goes over Cuba. That would be very bad for Cuba, but could be good for Miami in that storms going over land tend to weaken while storms going over warm water tend to strengthen.

It used to be that storms (potentially) coming meant that I had to dig out the ugly, sharp-edged, metal hurricane shutters, and then decide when to put them up. Put them up too early and you can sit in the dark for days as happened once when a hurricane stalled just a little bit offshore and spent days deciding where to go. Wait too long and you end up putting them up in the rain as the advance bands of the storm start roiling the weather.

But that’s history: several years ago we did a big renovation, and as part of that we replaced all the windows with hurricane glass, which is terrific stuff. Allegedly you could throw a brick at one of the windows and it wouldn’t shatter, although I have not put it to the test. In any case, the glass changes the whole hurricane experience: instead of huddling in the dark wondering what is going on out there, you can see it. And when the power goes out, as it inevitably does since FP&L refuses to bury our power lines, you at least have natural light to live by during the day.

So now the question becomes whether/when to lay in some extra water and fill up some gas containers to be able to run the little generator (to keep stuff in the fridge from spoiling), and whether it makes any sense to buy any other hurricane supplies given we could surely live a few days off the cans of beans and soup and other canned stuff in our cupboards. There probably isn’t much reason to buy canned spam or other foods which we’d otherwise never eat, but it’s an effort to look at those photos and do nothing.

Posted in Global Warming, Miami | Comments Off on Do I Have a Date With Irma?

See You at We Robot 2018

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Michael Froomkin

We Robot 2018 will be held at Stanford Law School, April 12-14. Full details will appear on the We Robot 2018 conference webpage in due course.

I’m looking forward to it, especially since I had to miss the last one due to illness.

Posted in Robots, Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on See You at We Robot 2018

A Debt Ceiling Scenario

Posted on August 24, 2017 by Michael Froomkin

I’ve long believed that neither Paul Ryan nor Mitch McConnell were quite nuts enough to fail to extend the debt ceiling. It’s not even mainly that McConnell at least likely understands how terrible it would be for the US to default on its obligations. No, it’s that failing to pass a debt ceiling increase would be political suicide for Republicans. Their major claim (however undeserved) to the public’s trust — that Republicans are the party of fiscal probity — would be exploded for a generation or more.

So I’ve been confident that if push came to shove McConnell runs something through by unanimous consent, or some other means. And I’ve been almost as confident that when Ryan finds he cannot tame the crazies in his own party, he accepts Democratic votes to get a majority. So while the debt ceiling vote is easily the biggest domestic political issue on the near-term horizon, and even today there is no obvious road from there to there (not to mention precious few legislative days when Congress is actually in session), I wasn’t worrying about it all that much.

Indeed, both Sen. McConnell and now Speaker Ryan have promised to get a bill out of Congress.

But now there’s a new wrinkle: suppose Congress passes an eleventh-hour bill and Trump vetoes it?  He hasn’t said he would in so many words, but the signs are there in his fued with McConnell; there may be no geological formation known as Trump Peak, but Trump pique could be a giant crater.

After all, Trump has tweeted that he wants the budget to be tied to funding for the Gran Muralla, and wouldn’t mind a government shutdown if he doesn’t get it.  In terms of really dumb ideas, t’s not that far to the debt ceiling. And Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney originally argued that a US default was not such a big deal — although he’s now recanted and said he wants it raised too. 

If there’s a veto, and I think at this point there’s really nothing we can’t put past the guy, we don’t just need a majority in both houses, we need a super-majority — and maybe in a hurry. Are the votes there?

Image by DonkeyHotey, subject to CC BY 2.0 license.

Posted in Econ & Money, Trump | Comments Off on A Debt Ceiling Scenario

This Mystery Has Legs

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Michael Froomkin

I don’t know if I have ever linked to the National Review before, but this is at the very least high-quality tin-foil stuff, and may in fact raise some genuine questions: The Very Strange Indictment of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s IT Scammer.

Previously: Chew on This.

Posted in Politics: Tinfoil | Comments Off on This Mystery Has Legs

Life in South Florida (II)

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Michael Froomkin

I see this ad frequently in the Miami Herald too — oddly it’s often near the car ads; even stranger, the link takes you to an all-Spanish-language site.

Haven’t been tempted to try it, though.

Posted in Miami | Comments Off on Life in South Florida (II)