Research at Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center believe that faulty design or construction, and not storm surges caused the breaches in the 17th Street and London Avenue floodwalls. They note at the levees themselves held, but the breaches are more indicative of a “pressure point” failure than the levees being overtopped and their bases being weakened by the resulting water.
Category Archives: Aside
You’ve got to wonder about people who get Biology degrees from Bryan College. Then again, it must take a lot of academic rigor to be able to integrate creationism with what they learn in their cell biology classes without having their heads explode…
Passengers aboard the JetBlue flight that was forced to make an emergency landing watched news reports on their screens – An interesting look at how having live TV on the plane affected the passengers and some background on other similar instances.
The five stages of crisis management – The former CEO of General Electric explains how Katrina response followed well-worn methods of crisis, and why that is not necessarily a bad thing in the end.
The Yahoo!ification of Flickr has begun – Their funny, welcoming, and insanely easy sign-up page has been replaced by a Yahoo! Network monstrosity that collects demographic data, has evil terms of use, and tries to sign you up for various stupid Yahoo! services that you don’t want. This is not a good sign for the future of Flickr.
In case you missed the four days of John Roberts confirmation hearings, David Brooks provides a short…uh…”transcript” – Yeah, his column pretty much sums it up.
A screenshot of the new version of Microsoft Word – I didn’t realize it was possible to make that program more confusing. I have the sinking suspicion that those various panels appear and disappear based on the program’s whims. All I can say is, what’s wrong with these people?
The TV IV Wiki may prove to be an antidote to the downfall of TVTome – C|Net created TV.com and destroyed the depth and charm of TVTome. This time, people are going to do it right with a wiki format and a free license, so that no corporation can swoop up the copyright. One problem: they really should adobt the GNU Free Documentation License so that they can be compatible and share content with Wikipedia.
A laundry list of agencies gutted of experienced staff because of or in response to the Bush White House’s cronyism – When you value loyalty and compliance above expertise and knowledge, we all suffer. But, again, this is not something that we haven’t seen happening throughout the last five years. Rather, this is a clear and consistant pattern that the media ignores and the people remain ignorant of or refuse to acknowledge.
How Bush Blew It – Newsweek‘s fascinating and balances look at how government handled the storm. It is five pages, but still nowhere near in-depth, gives a lot of information but tries to avoid placing blame, and is an all-around interesting read, even if it is difficult to know how true it all is.
Pentagon releases new draft rules for the use of nuclear weapons – The short version: making it a lot easier and more likely that nukes will be used, specifically in the “war on terror,” and not as a deterrant. What an absolutely terribly awful, potentially disasterous idea. They sure picked a good time to release this. I can just see the spin: Katrina shows that we need to be ever vigilant to terrorists!
Focus on the Family tries to get Bat Boy: The Musical banned in a California school district, fails – Yay for the school board not caving to crazy religious rhetoric. Do these people even know anything about the show?
How to survive a free fall from 35,000 feet – Won’t you feel silly if you find yourself in that situation and haven’t read this!
Why is FEMA so gosh-darn incompetent? – “They’ve got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified,” said a Texas firefighter. “We’re sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven’t been contacted yet.”
FEMA’s incompetence disrupted dozens of relief efforts – They turned away boats, firefighters, water, food, and the Red Cross, stating that things needed to be managed through a central authority. Great, except that it took that central authority several additional days to figure out what it was doing.
Superdome is seething scene of last resort – The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.
Head of the New Orleans emergency operations described the relief effort as a national disgrace – There is a lot more of this to come. They’d better not get off like they did on 9/11 — people need to pay for this.