emergencyops's Blog

Having grown up in rural Kennedale all my life, I've come to enjoy the finer things in life. Great neighbors, livestock, peace and quiet, and a sense of patience and non-urgency.

However, there have recently been several subdivisions being built in my small city. Only a few words can describe them: tacky, oversized, and environmentally-destructive. Needless to say, you can assume that I dislike them. I don't understand how people can buy cookie-cutter 2-story homes that look so out of place in a development that's only 1/4 finished. The natural soil has been replaced with fill-dirt, natural water drainage altered, and measily little saplings planted on every other lot.

As the old addage goes: "The only thing permanent is change." I just wish it wasn't my hometown changing. The beautiful nighttime sky with thousands of stars has been reduced to an urban back-lit sky with only a few dozen stars visible; the dull roar of highway traffic in the background leaves a restless feeling inside me. The urban is invading the rural. Cookie-cutter houses are replacing pastures, with houses so close to each other you could almost shake your neighbors hand by both of you sticking your arms out of your respective kitchen windows. Acres and acres of full-size Oaks and Elms are plowed over. Developers "try" to validate the upland forest destruction by replacing those trees with saplings (which will take decades to reach full maturity). Whatever happened to the kind of development that occurred in the early-to-mid 19th century with one house per acre or two?

But somehow, through all that construction and nonsense, I am still able to find some peace and respite from the aweful concrete contraption known as urban sprawl. At least in Kennedale, the number of cars with country music blaring still outnumbers the cars with rap thumping.

Today's police chase was one of the most captivating ones I have ever witnessed on TV. It could partly be because it occurred not in Los Angeles, but in the heart of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Finishing up a workday in Arlington, we could hear the sirens and helicopters overhead.

2 car-jackings and one 18-wheeler commandeering later, the deranged man (speaking nothing but political rhetoric and alleged racial injustices) was finally stopped and his hostage freed. The dramatic conclusion in unincorporated western Fort Worth were caught on-film by FOX 4 and shown to the tens of thousands watching from their sofas.

What was the man thinking? Could he realistically change the world by committing multiple felonies and taking a hostage? No. While terroristic actions like his may be the first option for radicals in third-world countries ... this is America. There are ways to bring about change and there are ways to not. He chose the latter. He chose violence. Civil rights founders would roll in their graves.

Another set of bombings, but this time in the city formerly known as Bombay. As an emergency management major at UNT, I've done a lot of case studies on terrorism, and yet it never ceases to amaze me what a group of people with a perverted sense of reality can do.

At this point, the world has yet to really know which of two suspected groups is responsible for the multiple blasts that rocked Mumbai at rush hour. News reports speculate the Hindus were targeted by a group of Islamic terrorists who claims to have been wronged over the decades. They skew Islamic teachings in an attempt to justify their terrorist actions. It's a shame that as many as 100 lives have been taken...all in the name of revenge.