Mardi Gras!!!

Special T'n'T~Jeff Lamb

Hey Now!
Where'Yat?

Care is all stuff:
—Puff! Puff:
To puff is enough:
—Puff! Puff!
More musky than snuff,
And warm is a puff:
—Puff! Puff!
Here we sit mid our puffs, Like old lords in their ruffs,
Snug as bears in their muffs:—Puff! Puff!
Then puff, puff, puff; For care is all stuff,
Puffed off in a puff:—Puff! Puff!
“Ay, puff away,” cried Babbalanja, “puff; puff, so we are born, and so die. Puff, puff, my volcanos: the great sun itself will yet go out in a snuff, and all Mardi smoke out its last wick.”
“Puffs enough,” said King Media, “Vee-Vee! haul down my flag. There, lie down before me, oh Gonfalon! and, subjects, hear, —when I die, lay this spear on my right, and this pipe on my left, its colors at half mast; so shall I be ambidexter,
and sleep between eloquent symbols.” ~for Ashley Morris


Parades Today!
Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club
Uptown 8:00 a.m.
Krewe of Rex
Uptown 10:00 am
Krewe of Elks Orleans
Uptown 11:30 a.m.
Krewe of Crescent City Uptown after Elks
Krewe of Argus Metairie 10:00 a.m.
Krewe of Jefferson Metairie after Argus
Krewe of Elks Jefferson Metairie after Jefferson
Lions Covington 10:00 a.m.
Krewe of Covington Covington, after Lions
Krewe of Grela Gretna 11:00 a.m.
Krewe of BES Gretna 12:00 p.m.


Krewe of Houmas
Houma 11:00 a.m.
Krewe of Kajuns
Houma follows Houmas


Krewe of Bonne Terre Montegut 4:00 p.m.
Krewe of Skunks Lacombe 1:00 p.m.
Krewe of Chahta-Ima Lacombe 1:00 p.m.

Follow Me, Chicken! I'm Full of Corn!!!
Suivez-moi, poulet! I'm complètement de maïs!!!

New Orleans urban unschooling:
Free to live and learn
~Laura Garbers

Corps of Engineers says their own risky levees no longer qualify for federal rehab funds
~Peter Eisler
~More than 100 levees in 16 states flunked maintenance inspections in the last two years and are so neglected that they could fail to stem a major flood, records from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers show.
The 114 levees received "unacceptable" maintenance ratings in corps inspections, meaning their deficiencies are so severe that it can be "reasonably foreseen" that they will not perform properly in a major flood, according to the records, which were requested by USA TODAY. As a result, the corps is advising state and local levee authorities that the levees no longer qualify for federal rehabilitation aid if damaged by flood waters.
~Editilla gonna screw this Camel tru'da needle!
{Jus'cause it's Mardi Gras doesn't mean we can't get into a little... "V" for "Visceratin"!}
Wake Up America and smell where we been steppin! As levees.org restlessly rollin'n'tollin'yaz, it ain't just about New Orleans!
NO SOUP fo'You, America! Take it to da'Exquisite Corps!
If they build it...they will come --like where, in our...?
OoooK'ville! Who built these levees? Don't answer that!
Assume the Position! Pay no Attention to that Man behind the Levee! Who the are these assholes? What a racket! Wata'racket!
What an Ugly Red Herring that Quacks like a Duck!

Name me ONE engineer who would sign a contract to take Financial Responsibility for the failure of any structure they did not design and/or build. That is simply not the way professional engineering works and the Corps knows this better than anyone. Engineers do not sign-off on the Risks of Failure on any structure that They Did Not Design. HA! Gimme a forkin'break for goddess sakes and find another gimp leg to stand on, Gerry Galloway!
Yet while the Corps still has yet to take responsibility for recent catastrophic failures, they would have We The People Swallow this future-markets storyline that failure is related to costs, and that both costs and failure are inherent in Civil Engineering. That is a fundamental untruth of unsound engineering, though obviously a bedrock Corps Principal of Design, as with the Federal Levees that failed this past summer all along the Mississippi River, or the systemic design flaws within their entire network of federally built and maintained infrastructure, or not to mention the entire flood protection system in name only which failed in New Orleans in 2005.
Again, pay no attention to the Corps Issues.
Should we trust this Gerald Galloway and his ASCECORPS?

The entire premise of this article rests on the latest Spin'Filtration by the Corps of Engineers, and dead flies in the face of legal precedence, and the Corps own design policy. I'm telling you this stuff is dealt by Public Relations Professionals.
Complete ubber'bullshit policy they attempt to pass as mandate:
"We build it. You have to maintain it to our engineering standard. When it fails (due to our substandard design?) then you, small town America, are up shit creek without a paddle and no flood insurance --ya'losers, silly citizens, stupid tax payers. HA!"
Can everyone do the levees.org thing and go after articles like this, comment on their biased boo'rah?

Corps of Engineers rates Dallas
Trinity River levees unacceptable~Rudolph Bush

Lawsuit challenges Missouri River water plan~David A. Lieb
~The Missouri lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against both the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the Missouri River's dams and navigation system. The lawsuit by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster contends the environmental assessment never considered alternatives to the water diversion project, nor how it would affect people in downstream states. It asserts that the Missouri River supplies water for about half of Missouri's 5.9 million residents while also supporting the state's shipping and agricultural industries.

Iowa Flood Victims:
Waiting For Answers
~While the city had mentioned possible buyouts for homeowners, Linda's family got tired of waiting. They started re-building - sinking their life savings into the effort.
But then, last December, the Army Corps of Engineers announced Linda's house is in a zone for construction of a new levee to be built sometime in the future. When exactly? No one knows.

Iowa Lawmakers push for faster results in flood planning
~PVTFloodResponse

More building in the flood plain? ~Karen Cohilas

Gore Pulls Slide of Disaster Trends~Andrew C. Revkan

Hold your oysters...

Mardi Gras 2009: NYC Survival Guide~NolaFunk NYC

As Mardi Gras Rages, City's Music Scene Struggles to Recover ~Rolling Stone

Lundi Gras

Zulu's 2009 Lundi Gras Festival

Downtown riverfront hosts arrivals of Rex and Zulu

9th WARD MARCHING BAND
Lundi-Gras night

~Parades Today!~
Krewe of Proteus Uptown 5:15 p.m.
Krewe of Orpheus Uptown 5:45 p.m.
Krewe of Zeus Metairie 6:30 p.m.
Krewe of Cleopatra Houma 6:30 p.m.

Inside the Superdome for Endymion ball~Lauren Wilbert

Ladders at Endymion
~Mosquito Coast

Hail Thoth!~The Huck Upchuck

Drunken Float Driver Arrested After Float Flips In Church Point

Small towns draw huge crowds
for Mardi Gras celebrations ~Shay Randle

The Challenge~First Draft

Plenty of Nothin' for New Orleans?~Harry Shearer

A New Orleans Intifada?
~Jordan Flaherty~A Grassroots Movement Rises in the Arab Neighborhoods of New Orleans???
~Editilla Casa'blinkas~At one time I sold Mardi Gras Beads Wholesale for an Iranian Jew down in the Marigny, after I had already worked for his Muslim friend, Ali, at the Cafe' down the street. Now THAT was an axis believe it, but nothing like riding delivery for the Turkish Mafia in the Quarters but you didn't hear that from me. Other than a rather worldly misunderestimation of Western Pay Scales I found them to be some of the coolest exotic people with whom I have ever worked.
But neither was even remotely Arab.
Soooo, buuuut ...where are these volatile "Arab neighborhoods"? These festering enclaves that this author would incite to jihad? Hmmmm? I would be willing to bet that he has coffee with that prick author of the Race War Chronicles.
Why can't these weirdo ax'grinders just leave us alone?

Models for Urban Planning
~Terrance Russell

Homeless radiothon is on air here today~Kat Bergeron

Crawfish crop weakened ~Advocate

Challenges of corn ethanol make
sugar more attractive
~Jeremy Alford

National Guard Gears Up for 2009 Hurricane Season
~Soldier of Fortune
~Notes from the NORAD blog.

Missouri River
~The Missouri River is a tributary of the Mississippi River, and the longest river in the United States of America.
The Missouri begins at the confluence of the Madison, Jefferson, and Gallatin rivers in Montana, and flows through its valley south and east into the Mississippi north of St. Louis, Missouri. At 2,540 miles in length, it drains about one-sixth of the North American continent.

Report warns of flooding risk
from lock failures in Illinois
~Jon Hilkevitch
<~Satellite image of the Illinois River watershed, which enters the Mississippi River just above the Missouri River at St. Louis.
Please click to enlarge.

Dirty Coast on CNN

The Mardi Gras Library:
Four New Orleans Cookbooks
~Lauren Salkeld

Mardi Gras Cream Cheese Pound Cake with Bourbon and Pecans

Be part of the Red Stick Intl. Animation Festival Review Jury

Lundi Gras, filled with Hot Picks
for music all over New Orleans
~Keith Spera

Dimanche

Parades Today!
Krewe of Okeanos
Uptown 11:00 a.m.
Krewe of Mid-City
Uptown 11:45 a.m.
Krewe of Thoth
Uptown 12:00 p.m.
Krewe of Bacchus
Uptown 5:15 p.m.
Corps de Napoleon
Metairie 5:30 p.m.
Grand Isle Independent Grand Isle 5:30 p.m.
Krewe of Tchefuncte Madisonville 2:00 p.m.
Terreanians Houma 12:30 p.m.
Krewe of TUT Houma following Terreanians
Krewe of Montegut Montegut 2:00 p.m.

Grade schooler turns wee into 'oui'~Emilie Bahr

Central Lockup draws a crowd ~Kathy Reckdahl



Louisiana Gubernatorial Sitcom ~Emptywheel
~"What the hell though, life must be a hoot in a state run by an exorcist named Piyush who changed his name to Bobby because he identified with a character on the Brady Bunch. Personally, I don't get it. He looks like Urkel to me."

Above: Republican child bride, Piyush "Urkle" Jindal (PUJ), cuts a pose while psyching hishoner'up some "Urkling" of a retart to our Smart Ass Sexy President's 1st State of the Union Mardi Gras.

Schwarzenegger To GOP Girlymen Give Me Your Unwanted Stimulus Money ~Sam Stein

Landrieu: Jindal wrong on funds
~Advocate
~City Business

TP Editorial: Safety above cost
~Regional levee officials fear that the Army Corps of Engineers is putting cost above effectiveness in planning 100-year storm protection, and if so, that's a dangerous, unacceptable trade-off.
~Editilla Yeah'wellas~Here is a trade-off for you.
The Times Picayune gets a $100/day Crack addiction...
in exchange for slack, late corps coverage, eyes wide shut.

“Dutch Dialogues”
~Today on Le Show Herolero Hary Shearer interviews
David Waggonner on these current states of water planning opportunities for New Orleans and Louisiana.

Aquaterra~The three day forum was a meeting of minds between the planners, engineers, contractors, financial professionals and government policy makers who deal with the challenges of complex risks in deltas and coasts.

Moving Water~Aguanomics

Water in the West~Torqopia

Marine business navigating toward future~Kathrine Schmidt

Hello, this is State Farm and we didn’t get a chance to completely screw this policyholder; so... ~slabbed

My, Look at the Time Flies!
~Girl in a Sandbox
~"Life in Baghdad, for a girl who's used to being very spoiled. This blog is about my adventures as I discover the cradle of civilization. I'm a very happily married public affairs (PR) officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I'm a government civilian - and I'm working in Iraq for a six-month deployment, as the chief of public affairs for the Gulf Region Division." ~DeDe
~Editilla Grrrillas~ Isn't DeDe jus'so PRECIOUS!
~The deaths are among the 18 under review by the Pentagon's inspector general. Some of the deaths have been blamed on improperly installed or maintained electrical equipment. In three cases, service members were shocked while showering.
Families also have sued KBR in federal court for wrongful death; the company is attempting to have the lawsuits dismissed.
The Corps of Engineers said KBR has earned $615 million on 30 similar contracts as the newest it awarded to the company and noted that KBR has not been banned or suspended from winning U.S. government contracts. The government can ban firms in cases of fraud, antitrust violations, bribery, tax evasion or for actions that reflect "a lack of business integrity or business honesty," according to federal rules.
"KBR has not been debarred, suspended, nor have they been proposed for debarment from government contracting,"
~Corps spokeswoman Joan Kibler said.

Offshore energy projects pile up

Sunday Funnies~Citizen K

In Pictures: Mardi Gras NYC parties @ Le Poisson Rouge and BB King's~NolaFunk NYC

Face The Music, Mo' Mardi Gras from Tawnee Lynne~Hey! Name dat'Parade!

Terence Blanchard Quintet: Live at the Village Vanguard ~all about Jazz

Samedi

~Editilla say slab me... SOM'BOOTY!!!

New Orleans Mardi Gras music
roll'n with Samedi Gras Festival
...and more ~Keith Spera
~Editilla Krewella'tellas~ Endymion was my first!
Tales of Sleep and Dreams however was not my first Mardi Gras. That would be the Police Strike of '79, when I waited tables at Pat O'Brians. Oh yeah, stories then'n'there, 80 blocks on a bottle of 20/20... and you didn't really have to worry about crime since the cops were all off on strike! Ha! The bastads!
But I cannot remember when I finally went to a parade. For years I would be working somewhere related to the whole show, often in the Quarters, and be all wrapped up in it... may have been a few years. I want to say it was '84. But honestly, I can't remember...
--so that proves I was there! HA!

[I would like to add here a thing on "remembering" New Orleans within her current battle of evolutionary tendency between Novelty and Habit. As real living metaphor, the city holds memory alive forever while constantly retelling the story.
But of course our Maid can hold'em dead as well while constantly retelling the story. Memories.
They can follow you down the street in New Orleans, or parade, or just sashay by... really. And they can talk to you too.
Hell, I've brought memories from someplace else to Mardi Gras where they just woke up and danced away! I believe that those memories decided to stay and are still there hidden somewhere.
Anyway... zombies are real.]

One non-problem non-remembering is that there is always sooooo much to remember about any of these parades, but especially with Endymion, The Storytellers. Another of course is da'poooo'dunk drunken do'h'revelry I don't know what to call. Loudly non-verbal jus'sayin... what I can say though happened back in the hotel room. (I HIGHLY recommend doing a room Especially if you live there)
There we were still drunk as Cooder Brown Downtown, trying to figure out how to use the phone, so we could have Mo'Booz delivered since I Had A Friend who was about to get off work from da'Verti Marte...hehehe... soooo we are going through our Endymion STUFF... bags and bags of it... laughing our asses off no lie. Lining up all the stuffed animals for the window parade mating train when Hello Boss, what have we here? Smoky the Bear Doll with Lipstick and Rouge? Little Guy got the whole thing going on too... Some'ting sweet and pink down low? Ranger hat, shovel, jeans and Wellington work boots just like my daddy used'ta wear --???--
We wonder if Smoky is also even, ahem, generically correct don't'cha know...sooo off wit'da clothes honey bear --and start wit'dem Funky Work Boots! That is when it hit me... the epiphany thingy... inside each boot (I kid you not) inside each boot were these little charm bracelet charms: in one was Mickey Mouse and in the other Miney Mouse! I mean, there are godzillians of riders in this parade and who knows how many others filling out the 2nd Line. Just One of Them put these little charms into these Smokey the Bear Boots! Even now, over 20 years later, I just can't get my mind around that pile of throws. Endymion is huge, just like our collective unconcious, old enough and long enough to have acquired legend and omen like crows in the Wake of Fortuna or the Funeral for W.B. Yates.

~Parades Today!~
Krewe of Iris
Uptown 11:00 a.m.
Krewe of Tucks
Uptown 12:00 p.m.
Krewe of Endymion
Mid-City 4:15 p.m.
Krewe of Isis
Metairie 6:30 p.m.
Krewe of NOMTOC Westbank 10:45 a.m.
Krewe of Bush Bush 9:00 a.m.
Krewe of Salt Bayou Slidell 2:00 p.m.
Krewe of Mardi Gras Houma 6:30 p.m.

What did you catch Friday night?

Chris Rose talks about Mardi Gras with Zulu's 'Mr. Big Stuff'
~The 48-year-old Metairie native is the former King of the Knights of Jayson (2006) and he rode in Endymion for 13 years. But now he is in for the ride of his life:
Rue is Mr. Big Stuff
for the 100th anniversary Zulu parade on Fat Tuesday.

Brazil Carnival

Jindal rejects $98 million in stimulus spending
~Jan Moller

Jindal plan raises questions
~Michelle Millhollon

Wet spots by new levee get look
~Paul Rioux ~DIXCLAIMER!

FEMA provides $46M to rebuild Plaquemines pump stations
~New Orleans City Business

Post-Katrina New Orleans, a poignant verbal snapshot ~lacoastpost

Corps plans spring pulse on Missouri

Shock Doctrine Contracting
with KBR & Our Exquisite Corps

Is the Army covering up KBR's poisoning of U.S. soldiers?
~Sue Sturgis, Facing South

Carver’s works taking flight
~Mary Perez
~His wood carvings salute the comeback spirit of the Coast after Hurricane Katrina, and now Marlin Miller will carve trees to honor the Tuskegee Airmen, kick off the national Keep America Beautiful rally and advance the Million Trees New York City.

Studio at Colton presents "Pimp My Ride" Upholstery Workshop
~March brings the launch of "Pimp My Ride" Upholstery Workshop, film screenings, meditation and wellness sessions, educational resources for youth and adults and continued ceramics and dance lessons.
~Special Editilla T'n'T to Laura for keeping us in tune wit'da Studio! They have totally Pimped Up there website so now it pops'n'drops, zips'n'tips, bumps'n'jumps...
--all that cool fast informative stuff! Way To Go Y'all!

Facing down fate, forging a destiny: The Hot 8's Terrell 'Burger' Batiste~Big Red Cotton

Vendredi

Fine, whites are racist
~Garland Robinette

Defending the Undefendable
~A Drug Called Tradition

Even If I Buy Your Defense,
You're Still Indefensible
~First Draft ~Hat T'n'T- WCBF

Obama: Government cannot forget lessons of Katrina
~"The residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who are helping rebuild are heroes who believe in their communities and they are succeeding despite the fact that they have not always received the support they deserve from the federal government," he said in a statement. "We must ensure that the failures of the past are never repeated."

Obama's custom-painted Zulu
coconut will be presented to him
-- sometime~Jonathan Tilove

~In his short tenure, a lot of important things have arrived at President Barack Obama's desk: daily intelligence briefings, daily economic briefings, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, the economic stimulus bill. But one thing has not: The Zulu Coconut.
~Editilla Krewellas~ We are talking Priorities here.

Carnival in full swing as Endymion campers brave cold night~Michael Luke

New Roads' Mardi Gras wrapped in history~Lisa Tramontana

Free urgent care clinic to open downtown for Carnival revelers

~Parades Tonight!~
Knights of Hermes
Uptown 6:00 p.m.
Le Krewe d'Etat
Uptown 6:00 p.m.
Krewe of Morpheus
Uptown 7:00 p.m.
Krewe of Selene Slidell 6:30 p.m.
The Original Krewe of Orpheus Mandeville 7:00 p.m.
Krewe of Aphrodite Houma 6:30 p.m.
~The black souls and dying hearts behind Corrosion present a morbid march through the French Quarter this Sunday.
Carnival of Space 91
~Next Big Future

Martinique cancels yearly carnival, cites unrest

Cancan dancers, Lord of Misrule
open Rio Carnival
~Stuart Grudgings
~Rio mayor tries to control chaotic Carnival city

Gozo Carnival kicks off
~Maltamedia.com

Local Levee Board Out-foxed by
Corps of Engineers AGAIN!
~Sheila Grissett
DIXCLAIMER! WARNING! BAT SIGNAL!
~Editilla Motellas~ We titled this lede.
Please follow the Bat Signal for the pics of today's Picayune- Corps IED (Infuckingcredibly Expensive Display) $40,000+!
Frankly, I now find it so nauseating to see these Flash Ads in the TP Corps Coverage Area that I am having increasing trouble posting them on this Ladder, hence the Dixclaimer page.
There you can see pics of these fraudulent, advertorial wastes of our Tax Payer Flood Funding.
I could place pages and pages of these ads there, already g'loomed from last half of last year --just a few months wort! But, usually you will find the "subject" du jour dixclaimed.
If you gotta have it then just fang back through our achieves starting around the middle of last years flood/hurricane season. But after a while of pasting this used paper, we worry that surely folks would begin to wonder if Editilla ain't just one shy of a full metal jacket ...like, maybe I got the whole six-pack but lack that little plastic thingy to hold it all together... one toke over da'line
...one stick short of a toothpick bridge ...whateva.

But these ads costs more than my annual salary.
These are not congressional mandated public service announcements. They really, actually serve no other purpose than to give a public impression that the Corps is alerting us to their plans, involving we the stakeholders. No. Dump Truck PR
announcements of meetings of foregone conclusions.
In Fact, these meetings serve to delay and distract public input until the Corps can slip in a new change of design at the last minute like these flood gates.
It is a fact that the Corps could have brought this up sooner.
It is a fact that the Times Picayune could have asked these questions much sooner! <--But they never do ask because they are getting paid buckets of Ad Money from the Corps? It is a fact that the Tom Jackson quoted in the article from the esteemed "Levee Board" made his career out of consulting engineer on Corps projects and is a past ASCE ho'dee'doh. Where the forking goddamn hell was our Vaunted Levee Board on this?
ASCECORPS. These are facts to stack alongside the other chips the Corps has shoveled onto the betting table of our future.
And all this delay time means water under the levees.
Let's Face It New Orleans, crime is bad. The mayor is bad.
The housing crisis is ubberbad. Da'Governorcist? Holy Badman!
The TP? Necrojournali$tically EmBadded Exquisite Corps.
It's bad ya'know... But, beneath all of that stanky badness
the Exquisite Corps' rises, grows baddest of them all.
Bad Bad Bad. This is no accident. Imagine if you will...
WWRSS? (What Would Rod Serling Say?)
Imagine you are riding the street car. It's packed to the gills and suddenly you feel something the size of a flood gate getting quietly shoved up your butt. You turn to see a NOPD officer grinning down (but you can't see their hands) and behind them the entire car is full of NOPD, only they are all wearing Red ASCECORPS Badges and holding nightsticks made from rolled up Times Picayune newspapers...
--and they are screaming at you,
"Hey! What ta'hell chou lookin'at, Punk?"

Inheriting Halliburton's Army
~Mother Jones

Textron to build Army 10 more armored police cruisers
Skynet
~Textron Marine & Land Systems,
a division of Textron Inc. has been awarded a $10.9 million contract.-AP

The Feds are Blogging
~Ellen Miller

Legislators want all stimulus funds~Michelle Millhollon

Expansion set for April
~Michael Newsom~Port of Gulfport officials said they expect to turn dirt in April on a massive restoration and expansion project, which they said would eventually create 6,500 direct jobs and generate billions in revenue.

Tulane Scientist Seeks to Unravel the Physics of Erosion Caused by Groundwater ~Kathryn Hobgood

Life Not All a Carnival for Rio's Drum Queens

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

Mercredi

Nagin axes contract review panel
~NO City Business

Job creation, retention benefit
from stimulus bill expected to be
lowest in 2nd District
~Bruce Alpert
~By the White House’s own projections, the stimulus is supposed to create or save about 8,000 jobs per congressional district.
DC gets 12,000 jobs, and some Nevada and Utah districts make out above average, but generally the projections are between 7,000 and 9,000 a district almost uniformly down the line.
But then there’s Louisiana’s 2nd District. New Orleans.
Projected job creation: 4,800. Easily 1,200 less than any
other district in the country. Glaringly bad in the optics.

New marching band for budding
musicians takes to the streets
this Carnival~Katy Reckdahl

Parades seek flambeau carriers ~Allan M. Johnson Jr.
~Flambeau torch~A portable, flambeau torch utilizing liquid propane gas, butane, or the like fuel in contrast to the fluid kerosene or "white gas" of traditional flambeau devices.
~Please click to enlarge-->
A backpack support (1)
for the user or operator holds the gas containment tank (6) and first regulator stage (10).
A torch frame (18-19/20-22) carrying a multiple number of burners (23a-d) is connected to the tank by means of a quick disconnect (12) hose (11) and an internal passageway formed by the hollow, closed ended, tubular members making up the torch frame. A hand manipulated, quick release, kill switch (14) is held down by the operator to allow the gas to continuously flow to the burners during use (see FIG. 3). Concentric cylindrical members (23 and 25 ) form combustion chambers (32) for the burners.

'Druids' first to test extended Uptown Mardi Gras parade route ~Keith I. Marszalek
~Krewe of Thor~RESCHEDULED: 2-19

The Travesty of the Commons
~Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans

That's One Long Bead!
~Children in an East Houma neighborhood strung together Mardi Gras beads they caught during parades to form one long bead.

New Orleans named one of five places in the world to visit before global warming messes it up

A View of the 56th IAEM Annual
Conference~Margaret R. O’Leary

Storm-resistant levee on tap for Grand Isle~Nikki Buskey

Mad scientists~James Gill

A more “intelligent design” for our coast?~lacoastpost
~"Too bad that south Louisiana wasn’t designed intelligently enough so that even the best efforts of the Corps of Engineers and the “drill here drill now” mentality of the state re 1970’s oil and gas production couldn’t have screwed it up."~Len Bahr

Geoscience-Related Investments in the Stimulus Package
~American Geological Institute
Editilla T'n'T~Arizona Geology Blog

European Space Agency hopes to clean up space junk
~Melissa Eddy
~Cosmic Debris: evolution in pictures
~Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are traveling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.
Note: The debris objects shown in the images are an artist's impression based on actual density data. However, the debris objects are shown at an exaggerated size to make them visible at the scale shown.

Film: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans
~Lauren R. Rice

Lives Defined by Hurricanes,
but Devoted to New Orleans
~Dwight Garner, NYT

“Stop thinking of New Orleans as the worst-organized city in the United States. Start thinking of it as the best-organized city in the Caribbean. New Orleans is a city-sized act of civil disobedience.” ~Dan Baum

~Criticism, H. L. Mencken said, is “prejudice made plausible.” That’s why, reading the first 50 pages of Dan Baum’s new book about Katrina and New Orleans, I tried to puzzle out exactly what I disliked about it. I wanted my eventual pan of “Nine Lives” to make fine distinctions, to be 99.4 percent airtight.
Silly me. Because at about Page 65, something very real clicks in “Nine Lives.” The small, stray, unobtrusive details that Mr. Baum has been planting along the way begin coming together and paying off, like a slot machine that’s begun to glow and vibrate.
By the final third of “Nine Lives,” as the water begins pouring into the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, I was weeping like an idiot in the coffee shop where I was reading.

Books in full flower: The spring reading list~Susan Larson

Banana fritters: a New Orleans breakfast classic

Morning 40 Federation call it quits~NolaFunk NYC

New Orleans guitarist Snooks Eaglin dies at 72
~Keith Spera

Mardi

Saints release Deuce!~WWL

Dog Gumbo~In The Wake of the Swollen Goat

Transparent New Orleans Nagin
~Jeff Crouere

Panel to hear Lynch Case of slain KKK recruit ~KNOE
~Editilla the Pun!~Shurly, Irony in the Dead Joke Lede is not lost on even white'bread ubber'med Stankyhead Klan Killers.

Our Mardi Gras-Ready Airport ~Ian McNulty

'Trump Tower' Project On Hold

"If I had a Hammer" woutn't be no more damn Inshooance Adjustamaters ~slabbed

Crawfish season starting slowly
~Bobbie J. Clark
David Cook, owner of the Crawfish Palace in Haughton and a few other places that sell crawfish, said it has been a slow season so far.
"We went through about 12,000 to 15,000 pounds this weekend," he said.
"That's about half what we normally do." Cook said the pond crawfish season should end in April, and basin crawfish will replace it until July. "I'm expecting a good basin season," he said. "If the basin doesn't come in, they'll just fish the ponds until July. "Regardless of where the crawfish come from, Cook expects the season to definitely pick up in the spring. "Nature beats us up early in the beginning, but it pays off in the end."
~Photo -WWL ~Video -Advocate

Landsat Sees Louisiana Wetland and Barrier Island Loss from Hurricane Gustav~T'n'T~Physorg.com

Local Media Shows NO shame Conflict of Interests blah'blah Committment to'da COSEFAs:
Corps' Sexy Expensive Flash Ads

DISCLAIMER! WARNING! BAT SIGNAL!

~Editilla Notellas~ We are currently experiencing geotechincal diffuculties with this new Corps Flood of dangerous IEDs (Infuckingcredibly Expensive Displays).
This egregious waste by the Corps of Engineers of our bankrupted nation's Bailout represents not only syndicated Gansta Blingin, but a clear and present conflict of interests and get'down Incestuous-Uncle-Sam-Daddy-Corps-On-Crack (IUSDCOC) embedding between this news media and the Exquisite Corps they are tasked to cover --in the latter's case, appx: $40,000 / package / year contract, 24 hrs/day-7 days/wk, all over the TP/Nola.com like scat on a bird cage floor.
Yeah shit happens, but if you wanna talk Trash Toilets you gotta call the Corps of Engineers and the TP Barnham School of Shameless Self Promotions.
To quote that savvy e*toddler, we speak here of "serious coin".
These are NOT simply little PSAs as required by law --but $100/day Advertisements.
~Tillustration T'nT->

Center for Biological Diversity: Statement on Mountaintop Removal Court Decision ~YubaNet

Lobbying for levee funding ~Julian J. Ramos

Obama plots huge railroad expansion ~David Rogers

New Orleans Cemetery - 1989