Traffic jam / Career Fair, part 2 / Turning point in Basra, updated / Correction

Anguish is the impossibility to dominate the situation.

Traffic jam

As expected, evacuating 1.8 million people by private cars creates a huge traffic jam. Cars are moving so slow, that people resort in pushing their cars in order to save gas. Using busses would have done it already: take all school and other busses in the city. There must be thousands. Create a partition of the city, allocate busses. In each bus, especially school bus, allocate 20% of the seats for luggage. Limit the amount luggage allowed. Set up pick and and drop-off places. Drive buses shuttle-style between the places. Make sure there are no private cars on highways. In a pinch, use large truck for ferrying people too. This is how it is possible to evacuate a city. With private cars, no way. See also an article in NY times

Career Fair, part 2

MIT career fair takes place today. It is quite exciting, as I have never been to a career fair. I will report later. Here.
Well, nothing to report on. I talked to a few companies, and that was it. I have been to merrier fairs in my life, though. It seems, that companies, which can provide challenging and interesting enough jobs for me are really few and far between. I do not want to do trivial task, and I wanto to have a life: travelling 80% of the time is not for me (especially if I would have no say on whether to travel or not). So, I think I will just have to search and search. Maybe I will someday find a job which is suitable for me and for which I am suitable. As we know, given enough time, even rare events do occur....

Turning point in Basra, updated

According to an article in CNN, the local (elected, legitimate) officials in Basra have decided not to cooperate with the occupying forces before the occupiers apologies, turn in to the local law enforcement the two British undercover agents who shot an Iraqi policeman, and compensate for the broken prison. So, now the occupiers have lost the support of the elected, though local, government. No matter how one looks at this, this could be going better.
The situation in Basra is confusing. See e.g. Juan Cole's comments. It is not really clear what has happended before the Bristish agents were arrested.

Correction

Thanks to my always vigilant editor S, I reformulated my rant/comment on Americans and volume of speaking. See the new entry. I try to write better and more constructively in the future.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs from July to September 2005".