BobHarris.com - Upsidedownland revisited

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."

-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

Main

Upsidedownland revisited

Tag it now -

Wednesday, 21 September 2005

UPDATE: The answer is YES. He just did. See the additional update, below.

Genuinely curious now.

As Rita takes aim on the Texas gulf coast, will Bush soon declare an emergency in Austin, hundreds of miles inland?

I'll be watching the White House press release site to see. I'm still trying to understand this.

Incidentally, the emergency declaration for the Florida Keys -- identically worded to the pre-landfall Katrina declaration, effective August 26th -- was not for Tampa or Orlando, but for the area around the actual, um, Florida Keys. Go figure.

If you don't know what started this whole line of thought, click here.

And for the love of god, please read the whole thing before jumping to conclusions, sending angry letters, or pointing to August 29th documents. You'll save yourself a lot of time.

Finally, although I shouldn't have to say something so obvious: of course I am hoping the storm will dissipate. I wish no one ill and take no joy in asking this.

But this is a sincere question. Let's watch and see how they handle the declarations in a slightly less incomprehensible fashion this time.

UPDATE: Mere hours after I posted this, the White House declared the entire state of Texas part of the hurricane Rita emergency. The entire state.

Amarillo, almost 600 miles inland from the impending landfall -- farther inland than the southern tip of Illinois was from Katrina -- has now been declared as a federal hurricane emergency. Rural Dallam County is almost as far inland as Topeka freaking Kansas.

What the bloody hell is going on here?