Hurricane Dennis Coverage

HurricaneNow.com claims that they'll have live streaming coverage as Dennis moves ashore. Unencumbered by the issues of large satellite trucks and stuff, they plan to move up and down the coast to wherever the eye finally comes to shore. I'm kind of interested in how this will work especially when the area loses power (and presumably highspeed Net access.) They also have email alerts and RSS feeds for their updates.

I have to admit to being a bit of a hurricane watcher. Having only been in one (Fran) around 100 miles inland, I've never personally had the full shoreline experience. My main sadness (other than the fact that Dennis is targeting my favorite part of the Panhandle, an area already more than battered from last year) is that Anderson Cooper is probably in London or traveling back, and I'd imagine he won't be doing CNN's coverage tomorrow night. His live hurricane reporting rocks.

EDIT: CNN has a Hummer set up as "Hurricane One" with some sort of bubble hydraulic system set up to keep a satellite shot going through the worst of it. I'm seriously in love, even if it does seem to be quite buggy. Satellite shots out of the parking lot of the Pensacola mall aren't cutting it for me.

I'm kinda intrigued that CNN is billing themselves as the "Hurricane HQ" and is doing wall-to-wall coverage of nothing but Dennis. It's smart, in a way, because the other two networks' coverage, frankly, sucks. But you're competing with the Weather Channel, and if you're south of here, other markets are probably simulcasting stations on the coast (when I was in Atlanta during Labor Day, I spent a migrained afternoon in my hotel room watching a simulcast out of a Florida station of Frances.) So I'm interested in how the ratings on this come out.

I would like to point out to the news networks that if we're watching continuous coverage, like you would if you're affected by a hurricane, we can tell when you air one package two or three times.

Anderson Cooper's now in Pensacola! *acts very fangirlish for a moment*

Screw it, it looks like Dennis is going to target my very favorite part of Florida - Navarre Beach. That's where I spent a lovely spring break Way Back Then with my aunt (yeah, my vacations are usually pretty tame) and absoultely loved it. I hope the sand bars survive. This is actually very depressing.

More London Stuff

This will also be a collection post, updated throughout the day. Not so much the news this time but places to react, and to read reactions.

Here's a place where an LJer is collecting random quotes. From people involved in the bombings, to the mundane observations of life afterward (apparently the stores over there are sold out of chocolate cake), to Brits and others speaking out about what the attacks mean to them and their feelings toward the perps. Awesome stuff.

The BBC has one of their excellent reporters logs with an up-to-date look at what's going on. They also have a place for people to post their survivors accounts and how it's affected themselves.

We're Not Afraid. The pictures speak for themselves.

You can apparently send notes of condolence to the Queen through this site, but I'm personally not sure that she's the one who needs the most love given right now. No offense.

If anyone reading this is actually in the London area, there's a place to pledge to join a march of solidarity. You apparently need 100 people to sign to get a permit. 45 have done so as of now.

For the LJers - Today I'm A Londoner.

I'm on the hunt for a really good online condolence book for Americans to sign. If anyone finds one, lemme know.

London Explosions News Sources

Here's a combined feed of all major UK news sources.

Wikinews has a page for it, as well as Wikipedia.

KCRW World News is doing a live streaming feed of live BBC coverage.

Also, if you want to see an interesting combination of 'Net reaction, news and information, a little bit of speculation and people trying to find out news on their loved ones, here's a LiveJournal community devoted to what's happened, and a list of confirmed survivors.

Edit: You can't really call The Sun a reliable news source, but they have excellent pictures. Click here for their bombing story, and scroll down for a link to a slideshow of the devastation. The bus explosion pictures are particularly horrific.

I'm finding this quite interesting - Elonka, who is fairly well known for her expertise in cryptography (and who's a great blog read and a very nice person) is currently at the Manchester airport on her way to London, ultimately heading back to the U.S. tomorrow. She's pretty much liveblogging her experience during this, and it might be an interesting comparison post-9/11 reaction and security. Her blog might be one to watch today.

LBC 1152 AM is London's main talk-radio station. Here's a link to their print coverage of the London bombings. They also have a live-stream link to their station, which is doing live coverage.

If anyone knows enough Arabic to read it, here's the Al Quaeda letter on Der Spiegel. I couldn't read a word of it, but at least I know enough German to navigate the site. Dr. Seifert would be proud. EDIT: Here's the English translation.

Oh God, I spent the whole day looking at sources without turning to possibly the ultimate composite source for global news - Global Voices Online. Here's their London Bombing page, which has links to Flickr and Technorati feeds. DoWire has set up a "London Responds" wiki page, which has a lot of live blog coverage in several areas. And BoingBoing, as always, has a pretty comprehensive look at blogosphere coverage

I've tried to put what I could find different and useful on here since around 5 am this morning, when I woke up to the breaking news. There's no way to even begin to compile all the things I've seen and read today, and how much more I adore Brits (and I was already a wee bit obsessed.) "Stoic" is a word I've heard a lot today to describe the attitudes of Londoners. I prefer "strong". They got through the initial shock, realized that this is something that they've dealt with for thousands of years and will doubtless face again, and are showing that the best revenge is to live without fear. Whomever was truly behind this will find that this was possibly the most counter-productive move they could have made.

The best quote I've heard today was from British MP Simon Hughes at the end of Larry King Live, and it personified exactly how I feel they are dealing with what happened, how many Brits seem to feel about what has happened, and how we as a global society need to look at it to find a solution to the continued terrorism issue, even if it's not always a comfortable or easy thing to examine ourselves at the same time we examine our enemies:

You heard quite rightly that people have been very resilient. There was amazing calm really today. We've been there before. We'll come through. We're grateful for support. And very sincerely -- it actually does unite those of us who have suffered together.

There's always a bit of a tension that government wants to overreact in terms of legislative proposals. We're debating identity cards at them moment. People like me have always argued against them. We don't believe they're fundamentally what's needed. So there may be some arguments as to clamping down on the restrictions of the citizen.

But...the citizens could be anybody. And I hope that we remember the big battle is the battle against fundamentalism. And we have got to fight that on all continents. And get to the seeds and the roots of that. And it's the next generation who we have to wean away from fundamentalism in any faith and in every faith.

Live 8 goodness

For anyone's who's interested, here's a link to download the London Live 8 sets. I hope that these pop up for all the countries, because I HAVE to have the Pet Shop Boys' live version of "You Were On My Mind" from Tokyo NOW.

I have a lot to say on this, but I hurt my back earlier, so no computer. But for now, all I have to say is that the performances were incredible, and I take back what I said a few weeks back. It is possible to remake Live Aid and it not suck. I just hope they make a difference this time.

www.one.org