Bulldoze New Orleans?

I ran across a link to the NPR story that ran in 2002 regarding the loss of the wetlands in southern Louisianna. The forth part of that story deals with the hurricane risk to New Orleans. The disaster management people in NOLA were planning for the effects of a Class V hurricane hitting the city and were anticipating casulties of upwards of 100,000.

It looks like we avoided the staggering loss numbers that were predicted, but it appears that the city is basically gone. In the article, the disaster management people were quoted as saying that if the levees around the city break, the city will be flooded and basically unlivable. It seems like that is what has happened. They went on to say that the best course of action might be to simply bulldoze the city and rebuild somewhere else. I don't know if that is doable or if people who have lived there would even agree to it, but it still is damage on a scale that we haven't seen here in the US.

In any case, my heart goes out to the people who will have to live with the effects of this storm long after the media crews have packed up their bags on gone on to the next big story.

Just a test

Sorry for the useless comment folks. Nothing new here. I've been having some problems with my site feed in Bloglines and I'm just publishing to make sure that everything is working correctly.

How to destroy the Earth

Still cleaning out old links.

Someone went to the effort of compiling a handbook for How to Destroy the Earth. Definately a fun read.

(Thanks to Larry Osterman for the original link)

Realistic jokes

Still cleaning out old links folks.

Over at Something Awful, they have a list of jokes with realistic punchlines. What does it say about me when I find them all hilarious? Here's a small sampling to get you started:

How do you drown a blonde?Hold her head underwater until she can no longer
breathe and stops struggling.

A duck walks into a bar...
Animal control is promptly called, the duck
is then taken to a near by park and released.

(Thanks to Mike Pope for the original link)

Star Wars Episode III Review

Still cleaning out links from the old blog.

Rory over at Neopoleon.com has a hilarious review of Star Wars Episode III. Don't hold back now Rory, tell us what you really thought of the movie!

Game controller family tree

I'm just cleaning up some links from another blog that I had. (Sort of. It was DOA, but still has a few interesting links. So I thought that I would move them over here.)

I'm facinated that someone took the time to put together a complete family tree of all the game controllers from the early consoles until now. It makes me remember the days when the complete set of controls for a game consisted of the eight directions you could move the joystick and the fire button. I don't want to go back to those days, but I do like the fact that the learning curve was so nice and shallow. As I get older, I can't seem to master the timing dependant 19 button combos required by some modern games.

(Thanks to Coding Horror for the original link)

Some people just don't get it

In one of the message boards that I semi-regularly(1) read (Joel on Software's Off-topic board), there was a message thread talking about the devastation in New Orleans from hurricane Katrina. And one of the posters jumped in and said that the National Guard in Louisianna wasn't responding fast enough because so many units had been deployed. He went on to criticize this and basically said that the NG units should have been left in place to be ready for this type of situation. Huh??

I find it hard to believe that some people are so against the war and Bush that they will complain when National Guard units are used to guard the nation instead of sitting around waiting for a natural disaster. I think that it is wonderful when the Guard can help out in these terrible situations, but I don't think that this is their primary purpose. Sometimes I just don't understand people.

(1) - I used to read the JOS off topic board fairly regularly. However, all of the sensible people have been driven away and the remainder is so rabidly anti-Bush that it is difficult to read sometimes. I enjoy getting alternate viewpoints, but in this case, it's just such blatant contrarianism that there is really nothing of value to get from it.

The windy state

I went to a family reunion in North Carolina the other day. It was up in the mountains and very pretty. I have to say that I really enjoy the scenery in NC. However, one thing about the state really bugs me.

The state motto on the North Carolina license plates says "First in flight". To some extent that is true. Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was the site of the Wright Brothers' first flight. However, the Wright Brothers weren't natives of North Carolina. They were natives of Ohio. And they did most of their design in Ohio. They came to North Carolina just because of the nice windy hills that the state offered. As a native of Ohio, I'm somewhat offended that they are trying to steal the idea that flight originated in their state. After all, Ohio has the motto "Birthplace of aviation". I think that is a lot closer to the truth. As a service to the state of North Carolina, I will offer up a suggestion, free of charge, that more closely captures the essence of the truth.

Ohio - "Birthplace of aviation"
North Carolina - "Windy hills"

From Giant Leaps to Baby Steps

Here's a letter from Gene Kranz to the NY Times. He is one of the original mission control guys from the early days of NASA. It has his comments about the most recent Space Shuttle flight and all the fuss about it not being 100% safe. He conclusion is that going to space is never going to be completely safe and that we just need to accept that and move on. Some things in life are risky and we just need to be willing to face the risk and get on with our lives.

From Giant Leaps to Baby Steps - New York Times (Registration required. Or just us BugMeNot. It's a lot easier.)

Back again

Okay, I went through a long stretch without posting anything. I'm still new to the whole blogging thing. I thought about posting often, but never actually made the final effort to write the post. I'll try to do better.