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NOVA: Storm That Drowned a City

Tuesday, November 22, 2005



November 22
"Experts and eyewitnesses reconstruct the devastating floods that Hurricane Katrina unleashed on New Orleans."




So at 7pm (here, anyway) NOVA will air, followed by Frontline at 8pm. It's making me wish i hadn't made plans to go watch The Empire Strikes Back tonight. I'll probably record the shows, but NOVA's site states that "The entire program will be available to watch online here the week of December 5." Frontline is also good about making entire shows available to watch online, so maybe that will be made available after it has aired, too. I hope so!

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FRONTLINE: The Storm

Monday, November 21, 2005



Coming Nov. 22, 2005
"In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, FRONTLINE [presents] a documentary special that investigates the political storm surrounding the devastation of America's Gulf Coast."

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Joseph St.

Friday, November 18, 2005



I've always been particularly drawn to Uptown New Orleans, especially since high school when i began spending a lot of time there. NOCCA was in the center of Uptown, McMain was on the outskirts, my then-girlfriend lived Uptown at Riverbend, I even lived with my brother for a while on Valmont St. one block off Magazine St. when i was 18-19. I spent much of my time at Audubon Park, riding my bike around the park and the surrounding neighborhoods. Every time we go to NOLA we make it a point to go to PJ's on Magazine and Octavia; the tables in the courtyard in back are one of my favorite places in the city to just go and sit.

When Katrina hit my Grandpa was in the hospital and he and my Grandma wound up being stuck in the city for nearly a week before one of my uncles from Texas managed to get into the city to pick them up. They own two houses in the city, the one in Gentilly that I've known all of my life, and the house that they lived in Uptown when my mom was a kid. They've been renting the house Uptown ever since the move to Gentilly, hoping that one day someone in the family would buy the house to "keep it in the family." (My mom's side of the family is very into the idea of passing things down and having family heirlooms.)

Since my Grandparents are now stuck in Texas without much hope of returning to New Orleans, they've been considering selling both of the NOLA houses. I've been thinking about the possibility of buying the house on Joseph St., knowing that there's probably so slight a possibility that it could happen, and that even if it did it could be a huge mistake. Or it could be a phenomenal opportunity. It begs the question, obviously, "What would you DO in New Orleans??" I'm not ready to abandon the career path i've chosen and the likelihood of finding similar work in New Orleans any time soon seems nearly impossible. Hell, it was practically impossible before. There's always the possibility of telecommuting and freelance/contract work, which really would be idealistic, but i've never considered myself much of an optimist. I'm more like on the realistic side of pessimism. (Cynicism?)

But then i look at where the house is, and i think about the proximity to Audubon Park and all of the places that I love, and i start to think that it could be worth it. The property value alone could potentially put the house out of my reach. I'd be jumping headlong into a city that could be continuing on a downward spiral just as easily as it could be a city intent on resurrection; it's just too early to tell which way it's going to turn. Are they going to fix the levees? Are they going to fix the schools, the crime, the poverty, the politics?

It's an old house with no central air or heat, but i could be in the warm shade of oak trees every day with my kids growing up in the house that my mom grew up in. The colder it gets here, the more that seems to be worth the risk.

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A new toy!

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

I got an unexpected package in the mail from my older brother yesterday:



A Halfpipe!

I don't know if he got it on ebay or a garage sale, most likely a garage sale, because there was a price sticker on it for $4. It even came with 4 little Tech Deck skateboards.

When i was a teenager we used to make "fingerboards" out of construction paper, glue, wheels from old Hot Wheels cars, and graphics we'd cut out of skateboard magazines (from the pages advertising mail order skateboards). The technique was to cut the shape of the board from like 7 layers of construction paper, glue them all together, then press the paper into the shape you wanted and let it set as the glue dried. They were novel, but really, they had nothing on Tech Decks; these things are like 90% accurate miniture skateboards. The only thing they're missing is ball bearings in the wheels.

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OTAY!

Monday, November 14, 2005

I was looking through some old files/folders today and came across an old icon set i did. The requirement was that the icons had to have transparent backgrounds and work on any background color. I was working pretty closely on the design with my friend andy with whom i would frequently exchange found images from images.google.com, so i created this one as a joke, to complement the "submit" and "approved" buttons, etc...

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NBA TV

Friday, November 11, 2005



NBA.com has video now, yay! High quality stuff, too. I don't have cable TV, the only reason i would get cable TV would be to watch basketball games, except that i'd then get sucked into the bottomless pit of cable. Besides, as much as I'd like to watch games every night, we don't like to have the TV on that much while the kids are awake. Kim and i don't watch much in the evening for that matter either. Bla bla bla.

BUT NOW... nba tv on nba.com broadcasts all of the highlights of the previous night's games as well as other content from nba tv and tnt, two shows of particular interest being NBA TV Daily and Inside the NBA. Who doesn't want to see Charles Barkley and Magic Johnson?



It's not like they're broadcasting games live or anything (yet?), but they've definately surpassed ESPN's Motion Video with its 30 second clips. Inside the NBA is a 30 minute show without commercials delivered in its entirety. That's not bad!

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Blue Ball (Rube Goldberg) Machine

Thursday, November 10, 2005



I love these things! Click the image to go to the animated version of this mind-numbing animated gif. Be forewarned, there is sound on the page too-- but it is entirely appropriate! I never was able to find the source of the blue balls, but i was able to find at least two machines that obliterate the balls. I take it back, this isn't mind-numbing, it's mental exercise.

I also found 5 cycles which are entirely self-contained:


This one,


and this one both seem to mostly be space filler.


This is the only one that seems to serve some purpose in the overall action. There are two blue balls that cycle around. When one comes around the left side, it knocks another ball down to the left to help it continue on its way, then cycles around and around to do it again. (The ball falling down the center tube is in a separate process.)


This one's kinda funny... that red lazer obliterates the ball, a peice of which flies into that yellow vat thing (directly above the skull & crossbones), which creates a new ball, which cycles around eventually back to the red lazer.


This machine just serves to make that little six-pronged conveyor part more confusing. That conveyor is a part of three different processes, one of which is this self-contained contraption.


If you remember, in the beginning of PeeWee's Big Adventure when he wakes up from the bike race dream, he sets off a Rube Goldberg Machine to make him breakfast and feed the dog. That is the relevance of the music on the Blue Ball Machine page.

It's like Honda's commercial The Cog, one of the coolest Rube Goldberg Machines ever.

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CNN.com - Revitalizing New Orleans

Monday, November 07, 2005

CNN.com asked readers how they would like to see New Orleans rebuilt.

"Here is a sampling of their responses, some of which have been edited:"

Build it all on pillars/columns. Raise the entire city structures to 25 feet above sea level. Construct an underground (underwater) subway system and an overhead monorail system. Make it a worldwide center for 21st century electronics and mechanics. Allow international [investors] and philanthropists to donate funds guaranteed by New Orleans reconstruction bonds. Include people-movers, conveyor belt-driven walkways. No roads within the city limits. Transportation to be by water taxis and ferries from the city's borders. Once city is rebuilt, tear down the levees allowing the waters to fill the "bowl." A modern Venice.
Steve Martinez, Houston, Texas
Steve is retarded. He's obviously read way too many bad science fiction novels. Why would they build anything underground in a city where the ground isn't solid enough to begin with. We can't even put our dead underground, much less a subway system. No roads at all! We're not just going to create a new city, we're going to create a new society! Better then this, how about we all just grow gills and fins and become intelligent aquatic life-forms for the 21st century and beyond!

Nobody in their right mind rebuilds a city on the coast below sea level. Find a place and rebuild it farther up the Mississippi somewhere. My tax dollars shouldn't have to go to rebuild the same city over and over again. Nature can reclaim that land and we can use it for a national park.
Pam, Burtonsville, Maryland
How many times have your tax dollars rebuilt New Orleans, Pam? Nature isn't just going to "reclaim the land" when the land has houses, roads, utility poles, sewers... an entire city built on top of it. It'd be like Chernobyl without the radiation, just a dead city.

I love the wonderful city of New Orleans. The history and beauty of the area is wonderful. I would like to see it rebuilt just as it was. The low-income areas should get assistance from the state, local and federal governments. I hope that we can put race and income levels aside and just rebuild the city I love as quickly as possible. I am ready to visit again!
Alison Williams, San Antonio, Texas
What trips me out about all of this is that there hasn't been a whole lot of talk about how do we help create an environment where the destitute can be less so. Instead it's "hey, let's respect the poor and give them their poverty-stricken neighborhoods back!" Like saying "let's build it even better!" carries any kind of social implications.

I would love to see a light rail system. I would love to see a brand new school board that is strictly run by either the state government or outside management. I believe that would lead to the return of Fortune 500 companies to New Orleans. I would like to see areas most affected by the flooding rebuilt. But, rebuilt in a fashion as the government subsidized housing near the new Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas. I would like more money to be invested into other enterprise besides hospitality. It makes up [more than] 80 percent of the workforce in NOLA. People need other marketable skills besides dish washing and parking cars.
Sallie DuPont, Washington, D.C.
The light rail might be hard to come by and may not really be suited for Nola. The closest we have to light rail is street cars, and they're not really the same thing. The schools definitely need to be overhauled and I don't really think that the state government can do it. This isn't the time for this argument, but vouchers aren't the answer either. We need ALL of the schools to be improved for ALL of the students.

New Orleans can never be rebuilt and be the way it was. Its historical beauty is lost forever. I am truly sorry that I never got a chance to visit New Orleans. Thank God for books that have pictures and tell the stories of that beautiful city.
Debbie Cooke, Ceres, California
Who are these people? Debbie has never been to New Orleans, why is she talking about it being "lost forever"? What's particularly annoying to me is that most people in the country have gotten their information about Nola from CNN, MSNBC, and other national media that simply aren't painting a very accurate picture. The French Quarter is still there, the Garden District is still there, the oak trees and spanish moss and the beauty are still there, but they need some help to get back to what they were. Mostly what's been destroyed are neighborhoods, homes, small businesses, corner stores, neighborhood restaurants, and the infrastructure that connects them all. It's like everything in Orlando being destroyed except the theme parks and the hotels. Where would the people who live in the city live? Where would they buy their groceries?

General Henry M. Robert had the right idea when asked to rebuild Galveston after the 1900 hurricane: Jack up the city and pump sand underneath it. It worked for Galveston, and there's no reason the same approach won't work in New Orleans.
Jay Maynard, Fairmont, Minnesota
Somehow I think that was probably easier 100 years ago. You can't just insert 20 feet of sand under an entire city all at once, and if you try to do it in sections, everything on the surface would break.

With much confusion about FEMA plan of action during the aftermath of Katrina, I think more should now be focused on how to get this city back up and running. For instance, what most former NO residents fear is that once NO is rebuilt, will it be affordable for the vast majority of low-income residents? This issue should definitely be addressed: Once NO is rebuilt, make sure it's affordable for the people that truly make up the city. Also another issue is rebuilding the city with a better strategy that reflects the weather and the region. So rebuild using the Army Corps of Engineers on hand, to make sure all of the infrastructures are secure and durable for severe weather.
Betty Booker, Birmingham, Alabama
How about we work to build a society that creates less low-income residents?

New Orleans should take advantage of its elevation in the rebuilding process to create a new city unique to America that captures the New Orleans Old World charm while securing its place for the future. ... I'm thinking Venetian: canals, gondolas, etc. Perhaps accomplished using the Dutch floating city technology.
Gary Moore, Dayton, Ohio
Let's take a vote, how many people think we need Venice in Louisiana?

I think that nothing should be allowed to be built below water level. To invest the amounts of money they are talking about and then to repeat the mistakes of the past is the worst type of waste and idiocy. All of the land below water level should be turned into wetland parks, or be used for some type of aquaculture.
Elizabeth Redington, Bellingham, Washington
I think that nothing should be built where it's freezing cold. I think that nothing should be built in a desert where not even plant-life can survive. I think that nothing should be built on a fault line. I think that nothing should be built where there are constant tornados. I think that nothing should be built on rivers' natural flood plains. I think that nothing should be built where there are annual, naturally occurring fires. I think that nothing should be built where there are mudslides. Let us all live in fertile valleys where the air is always warm and the sun always shines. Let us control our populations to avoid over-crowding our perfect cities and over-taxing our natural resources. Let us build healthy, self-sustaining societies. Let us sail to the New World and slaughter the Indians who are living this kind of life-style and take their lands for ourselves to decimate. Let us build a city at the mouth of this mighty river to protect our holdings and deal profitably in trade with the rest of the land and the world. Let us be destroyed by a natural disaster and contemplate what we're doing here in the first place.





It's not like the people of New Orleans don't want to see the city rebuilt smarter, but you have to take into account that the entire city is still there. Much of it is in ruins, but it's not gone. It comes down to it being a massive repair job, not a wholesale replacement of a city that disappeared one day after a storm. What New Orleans needs is to be protected from devastation, something that residents of the city have known for decades, but nothing was done about it. The state didn't want to pay for it, the country didn't want to pay for it, the senate didn't want to pay for it, the president didn't want to pay for it.

When you cry wolf for years and years, no one ever thinks destruction is really going to come. We all KNEW the city was a bowl. I remember when I was a kid and I heard the term "Crescent City" I used to think they were talking about the bowl-shape of the city, not the path of the river. That's how ingrained it was in our minds. "One day the levees could break, or the water could get SO HIGH that it would flood the entire city and everything would be destroyed." That's not hindsight, that's committed to memory from years of repetition.

Look, no one in Nola is surprised that this happened. We all knew it was possible, but we also knew that it was avoidable. To have idiots from across the country talking about how it's not worth it to rebuild, it's not a good place for a city, they need to know what they're talking about before they speak up. They don't want to spend their tax dollars to repair a city that is a major hub for the oil that they use daily, a city that serves as a major port for importing and exporting goods to and from all over the country, a city that everyone loves to come to to get drunk and stupid in the streets. (New Orleans isn't a city full of drunken idiots, it's a city that entertains you drunken idiots. We don't even like Bourbon Street; we hang out on Decatur St., Frenchman St., Uptown, Mid-City and Metairie...)

New Orleans is a city with more culture than most American cities know exists. It's a very unique place that is full of beauty and charm and things to do! It's a fun place to be, a relaxing place to be, but a difficult place to be. Nola's economy before the storm was terrible. It's not only that Nola has a lot of poor people, people who were too poor to get out... New Orleans itself is a poor city. It's too poor to get itself out of the mess that it is in. I honestly don't understand, with the industry that IS there, how there isn't enough money in circulation to help lift the city out of the quagmire that it has been in.




I'm sure there are lots of arguments about why things are the way they are-- capitalism keeping the rich rich and the poor poor, racism keeping the blacks in poverty, tourism keeping the money and resources all in the French Quarter, the service industry dominating the economy with low-paying jobs-- and who has the power to demand higher wages? It's frustrating to me to hear people talking about how it's not worth it to rebuild New Orleans, or to offer asinine suggestions like "make it a new Venice," when for so long I've seen Nola as a place that is in need of rejuvenation from every side. I can honestly say that I've thought of moving back to Nola every day since I left, but the thought of going back to a life of struggling to make ends meet, dealing with poverty-driven crime, failing schools, and low-paying jobs, was never appealing to me. After all this time I still consider New Orleans my home and it hurts to see it in the state that it's in. But as people return to New Orleans from all across the country to rebuild their homes and their lives, I hope that they have the courage to say "I'm not going to accept $7 an hour for a job that paid $10 in Texas." I hope they have the courage to say "I want a levee that is going to guarantee the safety of my home." And I hope all of you writing in to CNN take a minute to think "Just what are my tax dollars paying for?"

posted by j. Permanent Link 1 comments

jibbi '06 starts tonight!

Tuesday, November 01, 2005



The NBA season starts tonight. Yay! At least the Bucks have a team that should be worth watching this year after last year's flop. As a pleasant surprise, the first three games are all being televised locally, so I'll actually get to watch some basketball tonight.


[update] After the first 2 games, with the Bucks 2-0, I take it back Michael Redd, you're not over-rated. Having T.J. Ford back is going to make this season quite fun to watch. If only Bobby Simmons and Jamaal Magloire would start contributing now...

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where i grew up

I was looking at pictures on nola.com and came across this:



I recognized it immediately as a house around the block from my house as a kid. I used to walk across that metal fence pole as if it were a tightrope and swing around it like monkey bars. I've played in the bushes and trees of that backyard and on the double-porchswing hanging by the door.





This is 2681 Acacia St., my address was 2678. I once bought a Tie-Fighter at a garage sale at this house. When i was a kid, the people who lived here were older and had two grayhounds that were sometimes in the backyard. It was right acorss the street from my house.





This was on Prentiss Dr., which borders the school i went to as a kid.





This was also just around from my house. My poor old neighborhood.

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