Jeudi

"Happy are they whom the Muses love."~Hesiod
~Parades Tonight~
Knights of Babylon Uptown 5:45 p.m.
Krewe of Muses Uptown 6:15 p.m.
Knights of Chaos Uptown 6:30 p.m.
Krewe of Thor Metairie 7:00 p.m.

Counting the ways
~The Chronicle of Leonard Lopp

Ladders in the news!
~Library Chronicles

Appeals court revives Katrina
insurance case
~Michael Kunzelman

Has the Cat Bond Market Seized Up? The (sub)Prime Answer is Affirmative ~slabbed

Louisiana Gov Jindal Might Be Stimulating A Political Revolution
~Stephen Sabludowsky, BBuzz

Feeling the love of having a city contract~Big Red Cotton
~An open letter to C. Ray Nagin
by Lloyd "The Love Doctor" Dennis
~Dear Mr. Mayor,
Let ice water flow through your veins.

Bond Commission OKs New Orleans hotel borrowing

Resilient Cities and Real Urbanism~Smart City

High speed rail service for the
Gulf coast? Think of the implications!~lacoastpost

~Editilla Gimplicatas~
I was implicating all over this with prejudice during that first week of the Federal Flood of '05 in NOLA.
Had we at the very least a High Speed line to BR (right by the frigging airport), evacuees could have had that option quick at hand. Alas, due to our uniquely American Fetish for Auto'Erotica of course, we have NOTHING across our country which can be considered a National Rail Transportation Network.
Still as it was, Amtrak did offer the city their own evacuating trains and cars etc --the efficacy of which, we now know, fell
lightly across our Mayor Baby Head's untroubled brow, sadly misunderestimated. And with each hurricane season's evacuations, I watch this idea grows in salience --while our sneering excuse for an idiot bastard son of a mayor shrinks from public scrutiny like saltpeter pickled peppers. The bastad. Anyway...

This idea of High Speed Rail Evacuation is a NO-Brainer.
But the idea of an entire National High Speed Transit System is a GO-Brain'er! This is a conversation that Editilla is just thrilla'd to see actualized by the Obama administration and I hope that it grows into a true national decision.

Note further the absence of a corridor: NOLA->Chicago, through Jackson/Memphis, all east of Mississippi River. There is a blank area right in the heart of the country. Getting across rivers is a deal maker or breaker for rail, so you would have another other line, west of the river, through BR to Dallas->St Louis->points beyond east or west. I mean, even a Biology Major with a minor in Exorcism (errah, I mean Christ's Dominion) can get this...right?

We MUST gain "Rail Hub Status" for New Orleans/BR.

But I am equally interested to know the lacoastpost's take on how these corridors line up on vanishing coastlines and rising sea levels. It would be great for these smart folks to give us an estimate of the coastline in Louisiana in, say, 20 years. It will take around 10 years to build most these rail lines (hoping we get an actual dedicated system.)
Especially with regard to any future Rail Infrastructure, we must establish early on a firm distinction between what is commonly known as Freight Rail (which if firmly entrenched, absolutely big business, gives not a nutria's ass for wetlands and sleeps any forking where that big gorilla'girl wants) and this new, upcoming National Rail Transit.
Of course this all means tons more projects and funding for the Exquisiste Corps of Engineers soooo perchance lacoastpost could run this by their buddy and recommendee for Assistant Sec for the Army Civil Works: Gerry "The ASCECORPS Titan" Galloway.
Sooo da'Question is: What Would Gerry... Do? WWGD?

ESRI Federal User Conference
~Surveying, Mapping and GIS
~Colonel Alex Dornstauder of the US Army Corps of Engineers gave a presentation on what USACE is doing relating to watersheds and water quality, using an approach of "3D decision space" and cross-agency "lenses". The approach utilized several different datasets and attributes with ModelBuilder to get a baseline assessment, which can then be utilized to in the target, with a collaborative vision to triage risk and prioritize investments to water quality.
~ESRI Website

Suspected Klan leader indicted in Lynch killing
~Benjamin Alexander-Bloch
~Editilla Rotellas~ Every the Irony Reaper, we hunt the pretty horses in valleys of the shadows, fear no weevil and tain't art witless. Metaphysics Eponymous is a Strange Loop when The Word becomes The Thing, as in this case of Semiotic Cannibalism henceforth known as: The Klan "Lynch" Murder.
Editilla just can't let it go!
I think of the way the sounds "Ow" became the word for "Pain", to mean directly: "stay away", and "Oy" kinda became the word for "Pain in the Butt", as in "what a..." and means indirectly "get outta heah!". Leave it to the Jews but Things are supposed to become Words --not the other way around-- or so we were told? Or first there was the word, the logos? I never really went in for any of that High Boo Plato's Cave Puppet Talk. That is until I first heard the word "Get'em!" and witnessed my first lynching of sorts in Pirate's Alley, when 4 klannish rednecks chased down a cute gay boy who happened to be a Navy Seal. Now we're talking Oy Vey! But I digress. Did the Klan... lynch Ms. Lynch?
I see it as that, and as more than simply American Psycho, or white-bred ubber-med meth-head pit stop guerrilla intellectual cafe' theater ...and more than Defranco's "milk-fed suburban blues". Yea & Verily I see it as well as if from the bottom of a well, standing in an unbroken circle of White Light caste by our first Black Attorney General's statement on National Race Cowardice. Right On Me Brutha! I mean it just doesn't get any better than this. Get Down Get Back Up Again! Black Man stands before a nation created of for and by White Peoples and drives a Spade into the heart of that self evident coward chickenshit hidding beneath its hood of ass'fucked symbolism.
Editilla paraphrases a tad here, but, what else can we call this? What did Eric Holder DO? Well, he made The Thing the thing for one thing... Did Holder Hold These Truths to be Self Evident? The man definitely manifests Buddha's 1st Noble Truth: Pain Is Real, and we (2nd NT) must Talk (3rd NT) to It (8 Fold Path) ...otherwise It gonna come home to roost on our hapless asses. What we have he'yah is a fail'ya to co'moonicate meeting justice on the wings of change. Sooo to what degree was the private Lynch Lynched? Edititilated minds want to know!

Serval Caught In New Orleans ~Cryptomundo

Sky God Calls For Papers
~Plowing the Sea
~The Society of Biblical Literature was founded in 1880 to foster biblical scholarship. "For the New Orleans Annual Meeting in November we are planning three sessions.
The first session will be co-chaired with the Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement consultation, under the title of “Cult Rituals and Meals in the Bible,” and seeks to explore the links between cult rituals and meals in the biblical world.
The second session is entitled “Ritual and Archaeology: Integrating Texts and Material Culture” and will focus upon the interaction between ritual and material culture as evidenced by archaeologists and textual scholars.
We encourage submissions that focus on methodological issues, dealing with the larger issue of text and material culture as well as more specific studies, concentrating on particular finds/texts.
We are also planning an open session inviting studies dealing with ritual in the biblical world in general."

New Orleans poet/performer
to visit Ithaca College

A Butter-Drenched Affair At Acadiana~Wonkette