Category Archives: Security

Security

Golden Guardian Exercise

Leave a comment

Are you ready for the Golden Guardian Exercise Series?

Under the leadership of Governor Schwarzenegger and direction of his Office of Homeland Security, the nation’s largest state sponsored emergency exercise will take place November 13-18. Golden Guardian 2008 tests California’s capability to respond and recover during a major catastrophic earthquake. The Golden Guardian 2008 full scale exercise scenario focuses on a simulated, catastrophic 7.8 magnitude earthquake along the southern portion of the San Andreas Fault.

Maybe I’ll dress up as a Golden Guardian for Halloween this year, and then I can just reuse my suit in November. Hmmm, should I be a planner or a player? Player seems easier — just need a black garbage bag:

Or maybe I can find one of those fancy hats and a suit with golden cuff stripes:

Golden Guardian 2008 coincides with emergency preparedness drill on Nov. 13, the The Great Southern California ShakeOut, which uses the same scenario.

ShakeOut is a strange name. At least they didn’t call it the ShakeDown.

Ok, enough kidding around. This is serious business. The Governor’s Office of Homeland Security released a report in 2007 called Keeping California Safe that explains in detail the perceived risks and work to be done:

  • Expanding Federal, State and Regional Collaboration
  • Strengthening Information Sharing and Dissemination
  • Implementing the National Incident Management System
  • Enhancing Preparedness through Training and Exercises
  • Community Preparedness
  • Strengthening Interoperable Communications
  • Public Health Preparedness Planning
  • Strengthening Mass Prophylaxis and Medical Surge Capacity
  • Preparing for Pandemic Influenza
  • Critical Infrastructure – Foundation of California’s Economic Strength
  • Enhancing Maritime Security
  • Defending our Agriculture and Food System
  • Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosive (CBRNE) Detection
  • Assessing and Bolstering Response Capabilities
  • Strengthening the Management of Homeland Security and Public Health Grants
  • Federal Health and Human Services Grant Programs

Hardly any mention of cybersecurity at all. I suspect that will change in this year’s report.

Poetry, Security

New Slang

Leave a comment

by the Shins

Gold teeth and a curse for this town
were all in my mouth.
Only, I don’t know how
they got out, dear.

Turn me back into the pet
I was when we met.
I was happier then
with no mind-set.

And if you’d took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, I’d have jumped from my tree
And I’d a danced like the king of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would of fared well.

New slang when you notice the stripes,
the dirt in your fries.
Hope it’s right when you die,
old and bony.

Dawn breaks like a bull through the hall,
Never should have called
But my head’s to the wall and I’m lonely.

And if you’d took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, I’d have jumped from my tree
And I’d danced like the kind of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would of fared well.

God speed all the bakers at dawn
may they all cut their thumbs,
And bleed into their buns ’till they melt away.

I’m looking in on the good life I might be doomed never to find.
Without a trust or flaming fields am I too dumb to refine?
And if you’d took to me like
Well I’d danced like the queen of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would of fared well.

History, Poetry, Security

Siren

Leave a comment

The odd thing about this writing by Amy Gerstler in Bitter Angel: Poems is how scary it sounds to someone who has sailed across an ocean.

I have a fish’s tail, so I’m not qualified to love you.
But I do. Pale as an August sky, pale as flour milled
a thousand times, pale as the icebergs I have never seen,
and twice as numb–my skin is such a contrast to the rough
rocks I lie on, that from far away it looks like I’m a baby
riding a dinosaur. The turn of centuries or the turn
of a page means the same to me, little or nothing.
I have teeth in places you’d never suspect. Come. Kiss me
and die soon. I slap my tail in the shallows–which is to say
I appreciate nature. You see my sisters and me perched
on rocks and tiny island here and there for miles:
untangling our hair with our fingers, eating seaweed.

Late at night, with a bright moon over dark shimmery waters and a light enough breeze to just echo the “slap” of a tail meant to “appreciate nature”… you definitely can hear that Siren song. It’s both the worst and best kind of pretty.

As John F. Kennedy published in 1964…

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement.