Thursday, December 25, 2008

Jeudi

Before the Levees Break:
A Plan to Save the Netherlands
~David Wolman
~"To understand risk, you must consider the value of what would be lost," says coastal engineer Marcel Stive , a pink-faced man of 57 years who heads the coastal engineering and water research centers at Delft University of Technology, just north of Rotterdam. The half of the country that is below sea level—including the area behind these dunes—generates about 65 percent of its GDP. That's nearly $450 billion a year.

"Let's be kinder to the corps, for safety's sake", UNO Engineering Professor's letter just wants us to like them --or fear them?
Editilla has a better idea: why don't we round them up,
and send the entire Corps of Engineers Command to Gitmo --with the other terrorists-- until they tell us who built our Failed Flood Control Structures.
Why don't we Get all Bush/Cheney Doctrine on their asses:
attack the terrorists before they can try to kill us again and torture them until they tell us who attacked us on 8/29/05.
And By The Way...has anyone asked the Times Picayune how complicit were they in the recent Corps violation of the Federal Code governing the Illegal use of government computers? Guess that is not the same thing as these Expensive Tax-Funded Public Relations Ads the Corps runs in the Times Picayune 24 hours/day 7 days/week on nola.com beside favorable coverage, Letters to the Editor and editorials
--like the one below from today's Letter to the Editor.
Are the Times Picayune and the Exquisite Corps working together to Reduce Risk, or Market Risk? Who'ya got in your Wallet?

Revisiting the Future of Ecotopia
~Scott Timberg
~Editilla T'n'T~Planetizen

Clean Water Act ‘decimated’
~Dick Kamp
~House leaders, Waxman and Oberstar, had written letters to EPA and the Corps to address evidence that EPA no longer was enforcing pollution laws in much of the country and that the Army Corps of Engineers was deliberately failing to protect the Los Angeles and Santa Cruz rivers under the Clean Water Act.
The Corps has a backlog of thousands of permits nationwide,
400 in the Los Angeles (Arizona-California region) alone.


Heavy Weather ~by Bruce Sterling
~In the 2020's, America has been through a revolution or two, it's still holding on, but barely functional. Technology continues to improve, promising solutions with the next breakthrough, yet society is failing and vast tracts of land have been become uninhabitable.
The weather systems,
in particular, are out of control. Lots of Big Weather Systems.
~Alejandro Unger, "Alex", is messed-up German-Mexican rich kid. He's always in search of a remedy, legal or not, for his allergies, his dismal health. He's a junkie for medication.
~Rescued, against his will, from the clinic at which he is undergoing a radical medical treatment, he is forced to join his opinionated and impassioned sister and her new-found friends, the Storm Troope. The Storm Troupe are hurricane-hunters.
They're scientists and adrenalin-freaks who live for the data and the excitement of the next storm. Led by brilliant but obsessed Jerry Mulcahey, they believe in, dream about and fear the imminent arrival of the mother of all hurricanes.
~Editilla Acapolkas~Yep, if you could put me in a church, before you nailed the doors shut and burned it down, the altar would hold the tao te ching, inside a building built of dharma surrounded by sprawling grounds of Secular Ecohumanism and ringed by a 4 dimensional, wave-like, seething perimiter of guerrilla cyberpunk rail-tail futurist hyper-level social view.

Harry Shearer Gets It Wrong
~We Could Be Famous

Save Mid-City; Save Charity Hospital; Save New Orleans
~Alobar Greywalker

Pioneer spirit in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward ~Peter H. King
~Robert Green's mother and granddaughter died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He created a memorial on his vacant lot to remember them. Photo: Kirk McKoy ~Los Angeles Times
~In the Katrina-ravaged neighborhood, where many homes were passed along by families across three or four generations, pluck and unity prove to be the cornerstones of rebuilding.

Hispanics changing the face of Nuevo Orleans, Immigrants,
many illegal, rebuild the city
~John Moreno Gonzalez
~"Life is hard here, harder than any place I've been in the U.S.," said Jose Campos, 37, who came here from El Salvador, by way of Florida. "It's a dangerous place, a bad place," he said, "pero cuando usted puede encontrar el trabajo, it' s todo el digno de él."

Contracts Point to Significant U.S. Commitment in Afghanistan
~Walter Pincus ~The indication of additional troop deployments in the works for next winter comes in three solicitations from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for military housing contracts. Each could cost up to $100 million, with two of the three scheduled for completion by late next year.

Md. files claim to recover voting machine expenses
~Laura Smitherman
~"Under basic contract law, this is money that should be paid by Diebold or its successor and not by the taxpayers,"
Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said in an interview.
"This is sort of the final chapter of the touch-screen machines that we've had issues with in Maryland since we've gotten them."

Sports Illustrated on the Vick dogs: Has the tide finally turned for pit bulls?~Christie Keith

Celebrating in the Oaks~Froggy

Kosher in New Orleans
~And, just in time for Chanukah, the rabbi Uri Topolosky accomplished that. Cafe du Monde was recently certified as officially kosher by the Louisiana Kashrut Committee.
Beignets made in all six establishments throughout the city and the make-it-at-home boxed mix sold nationwide are being made in accordance with the ancient dietary laws.


Susan Cowsill Featured on LCN-TV Concert Series
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