Help wanted

Let's say that someone was going to apply for a job at a university and one of the job qualifications was integrating Adobe Flash with teaching. I do not own Flash and have not worked with it. What would you do? Would you order it and learn it? Would you take a class? Would you hope that knowing Flash wasn't that vital of a qualification or would you go ahead and learn it? Or would you get it as part of a suite of Adobe programs and try to play with all of them? I already have a pretty good handle on PhotoShop even though I personally don't own a copy. Should I take this opportunity to invest in a suite of Adobe programs and learn them? By "I," I mean the person applying for the job which may or may not be me. Inquiring minds want to know.

Why does this worry me?

From nola.com:

A key function of those overlapping communications grids will be to monitor water levels, making sure they don't exceed the "safe" level established for each channel: a maximum 6 feet of surge at the 17th Street Canal, 4 feet at London and 8 feet at Orleans.

Depth is a critical consideration. Flow rate is another. When the gates are closed, the huge pumps nearer the city's heart must not outpace the smaller temporary pumps the corps is installing to move water from the canal mouths out into Lake Pontchartrain. The canal floodwalls might not tolerate the pressure of water churning for hours on end, engineers said. (emphasis mine)

Probably because I believe Matt McBride over the ACoE. What's Matt got to hide?

I Agree

with this article from Jim Hightower posted at the Topeka Capital-Journal. I hope the people who live in Kansas don't forget about New Orleans. I hope this article helps.

Bush blows smoke on New Orleans

By Jim Hightower

MinutemanMedia.org

Published Saturday, March 31, 2007

Poor New Orleans. Being devastated by Hurricane Katrina was awful enough, but it keeps getting hit again and again by that Big Windbag from the East, George W. Bush.

On March 1, he blew into town again with his entourage of political aides and the press corps for another photo op. This was the fourteenth time that the good people of the Crescent City have had to endure this guy trying to score political points on their backs!

This trip was an attempt to make up for the president's glaring failure even to mention New Orleans in his State of the Union speech. He was roundly condemned for such callous indifference to the struggling city, so a quick fly-in/fly-out was arranged as a political fix. Mr. Bush said he came "to tell the people here in the Gulf Coast that we still think about them in Washington."

How sweet. Meanwhile, 18 months after Katrina and his botched response to the horror of the flooding, the areas outside of the Bourbon Street tourist district remain in shambles. About 60 percent of the city's evacuated people still have not returned, thousands of families are living in FEMA trailers, the city's health care is in crisis, and more than half of the promised federal aid has not been disbursed.

Bush didn't deliver a single thing on this trip other than speeches. As in his other 13 visits, all he did was flap his lips, promising yet again that "There is money in the pipeline." Admitting that the money is not reaching those who desperately need it, he declared, "If it is stuck because of unnecessary bureaucracies, our responsibility at the federal, state, and local level is to unstick it."

Why, gosh, George, you're right. So stop blowing hot air and start unsticking! You're the president, after all — kick some butts, move some people in, do something. Otherwise, please stop coming to New Orleans.

Yeah. And he totally left out Nagin, Congress, and FEMA.

Synergy?

I have read Chuck Taggart's blog (Looka) with interest. I didn't know or put together that he is the one that compiled "Doctors, Professors, Kings, and Queens" Box Set (which I love) until I read his blog.... One of the things I find interesting is his knack for making a good drink. With that in mind, I went to the liquor store and spent 185 dollars on booze so I could make some of the concoctions he lists. After all, I am on Spring Break Part II. So tonight I have begun the drive. I have made an Arnaud's Sazerac (also inspired by Dirty Coast's new shirt) from their "cookbook." Absolutely perfect cocktail. Followed that with an Old Fashioned. Now that I am reading Looka, I should have bought the Lillet Blanc. Damnit. Maybe next week. I only have one question - where the hell do I get Peychaud's bitters in Pennsylvania/New Jersey?
In the meantime, I am listening to the Subdudes Primitive Streak album which I just got from lala.com. I love that service....

The Vision of Youth

John Reilly came back to New Orleans after being forced to leave his college as Katrina approached. He wrote an incredible article about the same things I experienced when I returned in October of 2005. And again in January of 2006. And again in March and and in May and in August, and every time I have come home since. The crux of the article to me is in its last three paragraphs:

There was and is no outrage that New Orleans was not a 'natural disaster,' but rather a disaster of planning, neglect and of failed budget appropriations for decades. Rather the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is a national disaster in which thousands and thousands of people for decades participated.

After Sept. 11, 2001 the media was willing to parade the turmoil of the crying wives and families of the firefighters and police officers who died in the towers because television ratings, we the collective, were responsive to these images. After Hurricane Katrina, stories about the brave people who risked their lives to save strangers in the first hours of the floodwaters were absent. In their place, images of violence, looting, exaggerated stories of crime and chaos ran rampant because the media understood perfectly what Americans would watch. None of us asked why we were only shown these gratuitous images.

In England during World War II, average citizens opened their homes to Polish people fleeing the Nazi invasion and invited them to stay for the duration of the war. Some people graciously put themselves out to help the people of New Orleans, but most did not; if only the people of New Orleans had been born a different color. A few dollars to the Red Cross or a keg party was 'charity.' It was easiest but totally incomplete to blame George Bush, Ray Nagin or the sacrificial lamb, Michael Brown of FEMA, because it's all of them and even more. The failure to deal justly with New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is a failure on the part of our country and its citizens, every last one of us. New Orleans isn't an isolated or distant problem; it's a symptom of everything that is wrong with our society. If you are looking for answers, or wondering about a way forward, you should start your search in a mirror.

John gets it. Succinctly and concisely. And others need to start getting it, too. Especially our president and the candidates who plan to take over in 2009.

My taxes

Pay for this:


Grrrr. I guess I better get my license and partake in what the state is offering.
How do you eat trout anyway?

Pray for us

Saints are to stay in New Orleans!! At least through 2010. Which sounds like a long time, but it's really only three years. Then what happens?