From the New York Times….

Authority officials initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond breached, but on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep. The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the Authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

Authority officials offered little explanation for the discrepancy, telling reporters that the initial number was an estimate based on their information at the time. The aerial survey was done on Tuesday, but the results were not released until Thursday. Calls to an Authority spokesman on Friday morning were not immediately returned.

Residents were stunned by the new numbers. “That’s scary to know that they can be off by that much,” said Angela Spurgeon, whose yard is swamped with ash. “I don’t think it was intentional, but it upsets me to know that a number was given of what the pond could hold, and the number now is more than double of what the pond actually held.”

Gilbert Francis Jr., a spokesman for the Authority, said Wednesday that the pond had not exceeded its allowable capacity.

Look, the dam burst. That is a fact.

Thus, it seems that the pond had exceeded the its allowable capacity according to the laws of physics. Now maybe there is a piece of paper somewhere that says that the dam could hold more. But if so, that piece of paper was wrong.

Given that their are lots more of these dams all around the pressing question is why was that piece of paper wrong?

In this case though, I suspect that someone is lying. The clip below seems to suggest that they knew there where problems with the dam.

From Haaretz….

The defense establishment is currently preparing for a military move against Hamas targets in Gaza, after the Islamist group launched more than 70 rockets into Israel on Wednesday.

As an initial retaliatory measure, an Israel Air Force strike killed a Hamas gunman in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Israel’s response will go beyond the air raid, an Israeli official told Haaretz.

From the Stars and Stripes…..

As it turned out, they would make it across the wadi, but not easily. Most of the Afghan “jingle trucks,” named after their tinkling decorations, got stuck in the mud, some more than once. Some of the American vehicles got stuck trying to pull them out. The crossing took three hours.

The convoy finally reached its destination, Combat Outpost Kushmand in Paktika province, but only after a 17-hour day that covered just 20 miles.

Iraq was the bad war. Afghanistan is supposed to be the good war. But before it is all done, I think that Afghanistan is going to leave deeper scars on the American consciousness.

The supply situation is just so much worse in Afghanistan then it was in Iraq that I can’t help feeling that we are a heart beat away from a detachment being surround and killed. Or even worse, the supply lines for Pakistan getting cut and forcing the evacuation of most American troops.

From Danger Room…..

Soon after radar-guided anti-aircraft missiles became a threat, planners realized that the simplest way to stop them was to take out the radar. These radars make an easy target; in radio terms, they are equivalent to lighthouses, radiating brightly. So in 1958 the U.S. introduced the Shrike, an “Anti-Radiation Missile” that homed in on enemy radar and proved invaluable in the Vietnam War. The modern successor is the AGM-88 HARM High Speed Antiradiation missile, which has longer range and a speed of over mach 2. “No U.S. aircraft has ever been lost to surface-to-air missiles when HARM has been flying cover,” Mike Vigue, HARM Growth Manager at Raytheon, told me.

When ever you read articles like this, people act like it is a great weakness that HARM missiles can’t hit a radar set that has been turned off. But a radar set that has been turned off is not a threat. It is a lot cheaper to pay few planes armed with HARM missiles to fly cover then it is to make sure all of your planes are stealthy.

In a world of unlimited resources, naturally one would want all your planes to be stealthy. But in the real world, their are lot more pressing concerns.

From The Sentinel…..

Frustration over lingering power outages is turning to outrage in some New Hampshire communities, and police say they are concerned for the safety of line crews.

Unitil officials say that in some cases, residents have parked cars in front of utility trucks to keep them from leaving neighborhoods.

I find it hard to believe that there are enough residents of New Hampshire who can plausibly threaten the safety of an average line crew to be worth worrying about. I think the real police concern is that they not have to arrest a line crew for beating the snot out of somebody who deserves it.

I feel for the foremen though. Trying to keep the hot heads on your crew in line has to be a problem that they don’t need right about now. They are already working 16 hours or more a day from what I hear.

From the Telegraph….

The Government may increase the powers of debt collectors despite concerns that the industry is poorly controlled.

The new rules, allowable under legislation already passed by Parliament but not yet enacted, would give bailiffs the right to restrain or pin down householders.

Bailiffs are expecting a big increase in business over the next year as tens of thousands of Britons experience financial problems during the forthcoming recession.

From later on in the story….

The Government insists that any new powers would be overseen by an industry watchdog. Bailiffs would also be barred from searching people’s pockets or forcibly removing jewellery.

I find it ironic that a nation that has practically criminalize self defense will now allow private sector debt collectors to use force to seize collateral.

From the Belmont Club….

Beta News reports that 3 undersea cables carrying a huge amount of Internet traffic for the Middle East and South Asia were cut within 40 minutes of each other, resulting in large outages in several countries. The outage underscores the immense strategic value of fiber optic cables in the information age. It incidentally highlights the degree to which the economic system of the world is dependent on a hegemon simply for existence.

If this is just an accident, then the Middle East’s cables are awful accident prone. These lines were cut not to long ago with similar results.