READER JIM MARTIN EMAILS ABOUT DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY:
I read your PM article, it's very good, and I recommended it to a friend in Virginia looking for a digicam to use in his work. What amateur-made documentaries and Katrina brought to mind is something I have been considering for a long time: documenting historic homes and buildings.
As inexpensive as digital images are and having the ability to archive them on DVD discs everyone should take the time to photograph, in detail, the histOric structures where they live. The huge damage Katrina wrought to the Gulf Coast is a hard lesson for the rest of the coutry. Most of the old antebellum mansions are totally erased and will never be recontsucted. It would have been nice to have had detailed photos of them for posterity in a safe place far from hurricanes.
There are hundreds of old buildings, some on the National Registry of Historic Sites, which need to be photographed from all angles: up close, inside and outside to show minute detail of construction methods. Molded ceiling plaster motifs come to mind. If any of these structures are damaged by fire or storms and enough remains for restoration, architects and builders will find photos taken as special projects by archivists a great advantage.
A weekend is all many would require, a great Fall project to get started. Go to the mountains and take photos of log cabins when the leaves have changed. Go to historic sites in your hometown, all of them, large and small. They aren't important until they are gone and it's too late.
LAPEER LIVING is photoblogging hurricane damage in Biloxi.
UPDATE: Major John Tammes -- InstaPundit's Afghanistan correspondent turned Belle Chase, Louisiana correspondent -- sends this photo and observation:
"I walked by a Louisiana National Guard signal unit and noticed their morale seemed to be OK. One of their NCOs invited me back to watch the LSU game but I had to politely decline..."
ANOTHER UPDATE: Tammes was too modest to send a link, but I see he's been posting pictures and reports to his own blog, too.
Admittedly, yes, it's a hard science conference, but when you have Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk, Michael West of Advanced Cell Technology and many others of equal note - such as Ellen Heber-Katz and Amit Patel - all coming to the same Cambridge conference on advancing a cure for aging, it is suprising to me that only the Guardian turned up to see what was going on.
The good gun-owning citizens of New Orleans and the surrounding areas ought to be thanked for helping to save some of their city after Mayor Nagin, incoherent and weeping, had fled to Baton Rouge. Yet instead these citizens are being victimized by a new round of home invasions and looting, these ones government-organized, for the purpose of firearms confiscation.
It's especially striking to see this at a time when New Orleans-area police have been abandoning their posts, engaging in looting, and trapping refugees in a flooding city at gunpoint. "Rely on the police to protect you" has never seemed like worse advice.
UPDATE: On the other hand, I might be persuaded to support efforts to disarm Sean Penn.
Tom Maguire, however, thinks that the Times is whitewashing the racial angle.
UPDATE: Two thoughts: Yes, this does sound like something out of Lucifer's Hammer. And, yes, maybe the reason the NYT isn't mentioning the race angle has something to do with this.
JOHN TIERNEY thinks a Katrina investigation might turn up some uncomfortable facts for the investigators:
Suppose, for instance, investigators try to find out who had the brilliant idea of putting the Federal Emergency Management Agency inside a new department with an organizational chart modeled on the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture and Food Economy. One Democrat, Hillary Clinton, did question whether FEMA would suffer, but the idea was originally championed by her colleagues, particularly Joe Lieberman.
Mr. Lieberman joined Mrs. Clinton this week in calling for a "re-examination" of FEMA's status, but he was against independence before he was for it. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he helped lead the charge to create the Department of Homeland Security.
Republicans first resisted, as the Democratic National Committee pointed out during the presidential campaign last year. Its radio advertisement declared: "John Kerry fought to establish the Department of Homeland Security. George Bush opposed it for almost a year after 9/11." . . .
A few outside skeptics may suggest letting this money be spent by mayors and governors in flood-prone areas who can lose their jobs if they earmark it for too many boondoggles and allow disasters to occur. But members of Congress would conclude that only they can be trusted to dispense the money. Of course, should there be another flood somewhere, they would be glad to investigate.
As I've said before, I don't think Congress should be spared.
THE PRESS WANTS TO SHOW BODIES from Katrina. It didn't want to show bodies, or jumpers, on 9/11, for fear that doing so would inflame the public.
I can only conclude that this time around, the press thinks it's a good thing to inflame the public. What could the difference be?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Driscoll thinks that CNN is displaying the same situational ethics about body counts that it showed while shoring up Saddam's position during the Eason Jordan days:
I wonder if next time Hugh Hewitt has someone high up at CNN on his show, he could ask them, "In light of your decision to show the bodies of Katrina victims, do you think it was a mistake for networks like yourself to hide the images of victims of Saddam Hussein or 9/11? Really? Well, why didn't you at least show the latter on its fourth anniversary?"
Which is tomorrow, incidentally.
Indeed.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Julian Sanchez is deliberately obtuse here, I think -- as should be especially obvious after reading Ed Driscoll's post.
MORE: For the benefit of those who are -- deliberately or involuntarily -- still obtuse, reader Martin Shoemaker spells it out:
I think the difference lies in what they think an inflamed public might do.
In the case of 9/11, the elites in the media (who are so much more worldly than us folks in the masses, ya know) feared that an inflamed public might start burning Muslims at the stake. After all, all those Christian redneck hicks in the red states are just one step away from barbarians. And maybe they might even, I dunno, start a war or something, when what we need is to make apologies at the UN for our racist, imperialist past.
In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the elites in the media hope that an
inflamed public might start burning Republican leaders at the stake. After all, the elites all know how easily the masses are manipulated. (What was that Gallup figure again? Only 13% blamed the President? Don't those masses understand that we're trying to manipulate them? I guess we'll just have to look for even MORE negative stories. Bodies! That's it: we need BODIES! Somebody dig up some bodies for us, right away!)
I hear a lot of folks in the media ask how this disaster is different from 9/11. I feel the answer is: the folks in the media. 9/11 happened to THEM: to their home town, and to people they knew. They saw it happen, and it was something too momentous and awful for business as usual. The time was too solemn for their usual agenda promotion and self promotion. It hit home, and they were shaken. They saw people, not stories and angles and opportunities.
But Hurricane Katrina? That only hit a bunch of poor black folks (in their racially divisive view -- it's like they can't even see the white victims) down in a rural southern reddish-purple state, far from their day-to-day lives. It's not like it happened to anyone they knew, anyone who mattered to them. So that left them free to look for stories and angles and opportunities. And thus, they can pursue their ideological and professional agendas full bore.
The story coverage is different, because in their hearts, the media don't care about black people.
And if anyone in the media think that's an unfair, outrageous statement, I'll apologize on a case by case basis: any of them who condemned Kanye West's remarks can have an apology. The rest of them can go to hell.
Ouch. I'm getting a lot of email like this, and I think the press -- despite its orgy of mutual congratulation -- will see its reputation and influence shrink again before this is over.
I'VE GOT A PIECE ON DIGITAL FILMMAKING in the October issue of Popular Mechanics. The web version has a lot of extras, including interviews with John Farrell and J.D. Johannes.
UPDATE: Roger Simon comments: "I have to admit to some ambivalence about the implied possible demise of the studio system."
September 09, 2005
NEW ORLEANS GUN CONFISCATION ILLEGAL: Dave Kopel has done some legal research and concludes:
I'll have an article on the New Orleans gun confiscation on Reason.com. But there's one part of the story that's too important to wait: the confiscation is plainly illegal. . . .
The particular Louisiana statute which allows emergency controls on firearms also clearly disallows the complete prohibition being imposed by the New Orleans chief of police.
I hope that some civil rights organization -- the NRA, say -- will help the injured parties bring suit.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than half the people in this country say the flooded areas of New Orleans lying below sea level should be abandoned and rebuilt on higher ground.
An AP-Ipsos poll found that 54 percent of Americans want the vast sections of New Orleans that were flooded by Hurricane Katrina moved to a safer location. About 80 percent of the city was flooded at the height of the disaster. The city, home to about 484,000 people, sits six feet below sea level on average.
The fate of the flood-prone areas of the city is an open question. The aid pricetag already runs tens of billions of dollars. In the days since the hurricane, House Speaker Dennis Hastert has questioned whether the worst-flooded areas should be rebuilt.
Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.
I have to say I agree with Rod Dreher, who writes:
This is a scandal, a real scandal. How is it possible that four years after 9/11, the president treats a federal agency vital to homeland security as a patronage prize? The main reason I've been a Bush supporter all along is I trusted him (note past tense) on national security -- which, in the age of mass terrorism, means homeland security too. Call me naive, but it's a real blow to learn that political hacks have been running FEMA, of all agencies of the federal government!
Yes. It's not that these guys have campaign ties -- it's that they don't seem to have anything else. What's sad is that if Bush were packing the NEH or NEA with people like that, there'd probably have been an outcry. It's true, of course, that FEMA's record has never been that great, and that the response time here is no worse than it was for Hurricane Andrew. But as Dreher notes, this is post-September 11 so that "no worse than before" is no accomplishment.
UPDATE: Going beyond FEMA, read this post on systemic problems with disaster preparedness:
1. The keystone cops response in New Orleans stems, in part, from a flawed model of how to train for disaster.
Training drills almost never prepare officials for the worst. New Orleans conducted disaster exercises in 2000 and 2004 for hurricanes, but these drills did not include the possibility of a levee failure. In Los Angeles, a major port security exercise, Determined Promise 2004, tested a new mobile radio patch unit that enables different emergency response agencies to talk to each other. Surprise surprise: the system worked well. Of course it did. When everyone knows disaster will begin at noon on Monday, they miraculously remember to bring the right radios and brush up on instructions about how to use them properly. Even worse, not only do many exercises avoid facing truly disastrous scenarios, they define success by how smoothly everything goes. This gives a false sense of comfort, or to use a technical term, it's STUPID. Instead, we need to drill into officials that the right measure of success is how much they learn. If things do not go wrong in a drill, then the exercise was not useful.
Read the whole thing. And note that both of these problems are far more unforgivable than miscues made in the teeth of a disaster like Katrina, because they're mistakes made when there's plenty of time to get things right.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein thinks Dreher and I are making mountains out of molehills: "I just want SOMEBODY to point out FEMA’s actual failures instead of using a disputed resume blemishes and a lot of showy handwringing to suggest Brown’s failures." And reader C.J. Burch emails: "Isn't the real question here whether FEMA as it is desgined could do any more than it has done? I'm not defending cronyism, but I'm still not convinced that FEMA could accomplish more given the monumental problems it faced at the state and local level. And for that matter, how different are these men's bona fides from previous FEMA heads? Shouldn't we know that as well?"
I'd be interested to hear that.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Merv Benson emails:
People forget that Katrina is not the first hurricane FEMA has worked under Brown. He handled all four of the hurricanes that hit Florida last year. Since Florida has a competent governor, there was no indication that he was inadequate to the task.
People are overblowing the response to terrorism fear. Al Qaeda can only fantasize about causing the damage Katrina did. What few comments they have made suggest they are somewhat envious of the power of nature. At this point al Qaeda has been reduced to back pack bombs outside of Iraq and in Iraq they are incapable of making a militarily significant attack. Perhaps they wish they had thought of blowing the New Orleans levee, but they are clearly having difficulty getting their troops into the US despite our border problems.
I hope he's right.
MORE: Coyote Blog: "After watching the relief effort over the last couple of days, I am more convinced than ever that part of the problem (but certainly not all of it) with the relief effort is the technocratic top-down 'stay-in-control' focus of its leadership. . . . Unfortunately, I fear that the lessons from this hurricane and its aftermath will be that we need more top-down rules and authority rather than less. It is the technocrats on the sidelines who are most appalled by the screw-ups, and will demand more of whatever next time."
OKAY, THE KATRINA RELIEF BLOGBURST is over, but -- given the wide array of bitching and fingerpointing that's going on -- I think I'll strike a constructive note and point to it one more time. Here's a list of places where you can help. And here's N.Z. Bear's roundup of participating blogs.
Also, this Katrina fundraising effort seems to have stalled a bit, so if you'd rather give through a lefty outfit, please consider donating there. As Skippy said: "this is not about red states v. blue states...this is not about left v. right...this is not about liberal v. conservative... the people in louisiana, mississippi and alabama are americans."
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Authorities said their systematic sweep of New Orleans to get voluntary evacuees out was nearly complete, and far fewer bodies than expected or feared were found during the operation.
Estimates of the death toll have ranged up to 10,000.
"I think there's some encouragement in what we've found in the initial sweeps that some of the catastrophic deaths that some people predicted may not have occurred," said Terry Ebbert, New Orleans homeland security chief.
MSNBC reports that Michael Brown is out. No link yet. [LATER: Here.]
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin: "While the president is getting rid of dead wood, can he do something about Norman Mineta now?"
POLICE TRAPPED THOUSANDS IN NEW ORLEANS: This report from UPI seems to confirm the item I linked earlier:
Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city. . . .
"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.
"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said. The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.
Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.
He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx.
"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people."
"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."
But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city.
An absolute disgrace. (Via Rogers Cadenhead). I renew my suggestion that the Civil Rights Division look into this, as there's some reason to think it was racially motivated.
UPDATE: This satellite photo shows the Crescent City Connection bridge as a "dry route to safety." (Compare with this map.) But it was a blocked dry route. So while the Red Cross was being kept out of New Orleans, refugees were being kept in.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's more on Chief Lawson. Meanwhile, reader Jim Chandler doubts there was racism involved: "Most of the police officers I've seen there are black, so where does the racial motivation come in?" The article suggests otherwise, but I don't know. I think DoJ should look into it, though.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's more on Chief Lawson. And here's an article that makes me wonder if he was worried about the fate of his video poker machines.
MORE: Bruce Rolston thinks that the New Orleans authorities are at fault.
The exceedingly important question before us is whether the President of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al Qaeda, an entity with which the United States is at war; who took up arms on behalf of that enemy and against our country in a foreign combat zone of that war; and who thereafter traveled to the United States for the avowed purpose of further prosecuting that war on American soil, against American citizens and targets.
We conclude that the President does possess such authority pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution enacted by Congress in the wake of the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001.
UPDATE: Mickey Kaus continues to blame federalism. "When things screw up, these days, we hold the president and the federal government responsible. It follows that the president and the federal government should have the power to stop things from screwing up." He makes a fairly strong case -- except that bureaucratic confusion and cross-purposes occur quite strongly even in unitary states with strong leaders at the top.
ANOTHER UPDATE: I've mentioned this in passing before, but The Daily Howler has a lengthy post (scroll down) about FEMA's history of taking days to respond: "Perhaps most surprisingly, in the first three days after Andrew, there was little outside help coming into South Florida, no federal cavalry riding over the hill. Local governments and charities were scrambling to do what they could."
So it was that the largest fraud ever recorded in history came about. Press reports often cite the overall size of Oil for Food at $60 billion, but Mr. Volcker's report makes clear that the real figure was in excess of $100 billion. From this, Saddam was able to derive $10.2 billion from illicit transactions. But the important point is that he was able to steer 10 times that sum toward his preferred clients in the service of his political aims. None of this happened by accident. . . .
As for the U.N., it proved its worth to Saddam as the one hall of mirrors in which such shenanigans could take place. Yet even now we are told that "at least" Oil for Food fed the Iraqi people when they were on the edge of starvation, and this is accounted a U.N. success. That is false. Oil for Food offered a lifeline of cash and influence to a regime that was starving its people. The program did not corrupt the U.N. so much as exploit its essential nature. Now Mr. Annan wants to use this report as an endorsement of his "reform" proposals. Only at the U.N. could he dare to think he could get away with this.
Hillary Clinton says FEMA was more effective when her husband was president. The victims of Hurricane Floyd might venture a different opinion, and it wasn't FEMA that kept supplies from the Superdome.
During a post-Katrina conference call with reporters, Sen. Clinton said, "Helping localities do what they needed to do to mitigate damage — that philosophy governed FEMA during the Clinton administration. It obviously was rejected by this administration."
Does that mean Clinton's FEMA was the model of government efficiency and effectiveness? Or was it closer to the DMV and post office? Just ask the tens of thousands of people left stranded up and down the Eastern Seaboard by Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
Read the whole thing, which suggests that today's problems aren't an aberration, but part of a pattern.
UPDATE: Reader Bill Furr offers perspective:
Regarding remarks by Sen Clinton and others both left and right: It's called a disaster because it overwhelms our ability to respond and to mitigate the disruption in communications, supplies, medical services, and everything else in daily life. If we could respond completely and immediately, the it would just be a minor inconvenience.
LEON KASS HAS STEPPED DOWN from the White House Bioethics Council, to be replaced by Edmund Pellegrino, who supports a ban on even privately supported embryonic stem cell research. Ron Bailey writes: "The bottom line: Pellegrino's appointment as chairman of the President's Bioethics Council will, if anything, increase that body's opposition to a lot [of] biotechnological progress."
KATRINA COVERAGE JUMPS THE SHARK: Entertainment Tonight has Richard Simmons blubbering in a sequined tanktop as he makes his "heartbreaking return to Bourbon Street."
Unless you're hired security for rich people. (More here).
UPDATE: Cam Edwards: "Talk about class warfare. If you're rich enough to hire someone to defend your property, you're okay. If you're not... you're SOL."
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A judge on Thursday ordered Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, to pay a $50,000 fine for illegally taking classified documents from the National Archives.
The punishment handed down by U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson exceeded the $10,000 fine recommended by government lawyers. Under the deal, Berger avoids prison time but he must surrender access to classified government materials for three years.
"The court finds the fine is inadequate because it doesn't reflect the seriousness of the offense," Robinson said, as a grim-faced Berger stood silently. . . .
The sentencing capped a bizarre sequence of events in which Berger admitted to sneaking classified documents out of the Archives in his suit, later destroying some of them in his office and then lying about it.
After initially saying it was an "honest mistake," Berger pleaded guilty in April to a misdemeanor of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, which contained information relating to terror threats in the United States during the 2000 millennium celebration.
MORE ON THE DIFFERENCE between the federal DHS, and the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security -- which seems to elude some journalists -- here.
BOBBY JINDAL notes that bureaucratic red tape can be deadly. Tim Worstall notes that this should come as no surprise.
UPDATE: Related thoughts from New Orleans native Thomas Lipscomb.
SPEAKING OF INVESTIGATIONS, The Mudville Gazette has been looking into the political background of the past week's events. I predict that many politicians, in both parties, will regret starting up the finger-pointing operations so soon.
American influence has helped to tip the balance of forces in the Middle East towards reform. The changes remain shallow for now—even in Egypt, which is holding its first contested presidential election this week—but democracy is no longer a pipe dream.
Read the whole thing.
A UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT SHAKEUP: King Banaian, who knows much more than me about this, thinks it's a good thing.
THIS REPORT is appalling, if true. Someone -- say from the Civil Rights office at the Justice Department -- should look into it.
UPDATE: Apparently -- see the comments -- there's reason to doubt its truthfulness. Hold your outrage for now.
GERALDO UPDATE: Howard Kurtz is back from vacation, and reports that, with regard to the Geraldo story that I excerpted yesterday: "Fox News says that's absolutely, positively not true."
WELL, THIS WILL HELP: A finger-pointing storm erupts in Congress. Congress, of course, is in no position to point fingers. While we're assigning responsibility, perhaps those who had committee assignments relating to the Katrina response should lose those assignments, and their seniority. . . .
Defund things we don't need to pay for things we do! That's so crazy it just might work!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Varifrank predicts an invasion of lawyers that will destroy existing political arrangements in Louisiana.
ACCORDING TO THE WASHINGTON POST, the problem with New Orleans flood-control wasn't insufficient money, but an excess of pork-barreling that diverted the money from where it was needed to where Louisiana politicians wanted it:
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon. . . .
Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, remembers holding a protest against the lock four years ago -- right where the levee broke Aug. 30. Now she's holed up with her family in a St. Louis hotel, and her neighborhood is underwater. "Our politicians never cared half as much about protecting us as they cared about pork," Dashiell said.
I think we should set up an independent commission to look at Congress's responsibility for this tragedy. Oh, and somebody send a copy of this story to Paul Krugman.
UPDATE: Nick Gillespie: "Let's hope the pols involved get investigated along with everyone else."
Maybe this idea will catch on. In the meantime, folks might want to start comparing what members of Congress are saying now with how they talked, and voted, before Katrina.
When their homes began to sink in Katrina's floodwaters, elders in the quarter here known as Uptown gathered their neighbors to seek refuge at the Samuel J. Green Charter School, the local toughs included.
But when the thugs started vandalizing the place - wielding guns and breaking into vending machines - Vance Anthion put them out, literally tossing them into the fetid waters. Anthion stayed awake at night after that, protecting the inhabitants of the school from looters or worse.
"They know me," he said. "If a man come up in here, we take care of him."
In the week after Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast, Anthion and others created a society that defied the local gangs, the National Guard and even the flood.
Inside the school, it was quiet, cool and clean. They converted a classroom into a dining room and, when a reporter arrived Monday, were serving a lunch of spicy red beans and rice. A table nearby overflowed with supplies: canned spaghetti, paper towels, water and Gatorade, salt, hot sauce, pepper. . . .
In the days after the storm, the Samuel J. Green school also served as their base for helping others in the neighborhood.
They waded through filthy water to bring elderly homebound neighbors bowls of soup, bread and drinks. They helped the old and the sick to the school rooftop, so the Coast Guard could pluck them to safety by helicopter - 18 people in all.
All the while, they listened to radio reports of the calamity at the Superdome and the Convention Center. They heard that evacuees were dying and left to rot. There were reports of looting, gunshots, rapes, and no food or water. "There was no way we were going down there, to be treated like that," said Sarge.
MY FOCUS ON KATRINA and Katrina Relief has led me to drop the ball on linking to various blog carnivals. Here's a make-up post for at least most of them:
Sorry it's just a bunch of links and no witty banter, but I'm pretty tired and a bit ill, so this is the best I can do this week. I'll try to do better next time.
Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta. . . .
The firefighters, several of whom are from Utah, were told to bring backpacks, sleeping bags, first-aid kits and Meals Ready to Eat. They were told to prepare for "austere conditions." Many of them came with awkward fire gear and expected to wade in floodwaters, sift through rubble and save lives.
"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."
This does sound like a bureaucracy that doesn't understand the urgency of the situation.
UPDATE: Of course, there seems to be a lot of dumb decisionmaking at all levels:
The Fox News Channel's Major Garrett was just on my show extending the story he had just reported on Brit Hume's show: The Red Cross is confirming to Garrett that it had prepositioned water, food, blankets and hygiene products for delivery to the Superdome and the Convention Center in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but were blocked from delivering those supplies by orders of the Louisiana state government, which did not want to attract people to the Superdome and/or Convention Center.
That's consistent with this report. Apparently, they wanted people hungry, thirsty, and anxious to leave.
Video of the Red Cross story here, from Ian Schwartz.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Readers who are telling me that it was the Department of Homeland Security that was behind blocking the Red Cross are confused. Here's the Red Cross statement:
Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.
That's the state DHS, not a federal agency. This is also made clear in the video linked above.
FRANK RUMMEL is blogging from the ongoing Cambridge conference on Scientifically Engineered Negligible Senescence.
SOME KATRINA LESSONS: We're going to see a plethora of commissions and inquiries (most about as useful and non-partisan as the 9/11 Commission), but here are a few lessons that seem solid enough to go with now:
1. Don't build your city below sea level: If you do, sooner or later it will flood. Better levees, pumps, etc. will put that day off, but not prevent it.
2. Order evacuations early: You hate to have false alarms, but as Brendan Loy noted earlier, even 48 hours in advance is really too late if you want to get everyone out.
3. Have -- and use -- a plan for evacuating people who can't get out on their own: New Orleans apparently had a plan, but didn't use it. All those flooded buses could have gotten people out. Except that there would have had to have been somewhere to take them, so:
4. Have an emergency relocation plan: Cities should have designated places, far enough away to be safe, but close enough to be accessible, to evacuate people to. Of course, this takes coordination, so:
Tusa said the police department’s citywide 800 MHz radio system functioned well during and immediately after the hurricane hit New Orleans, but since then natural gas service to the prime downtown transmitter site was disrupted and the generator was out. Transmitter sites for the police radio system “are also underwater with the rising water and [are] now disabled,” Tusa said.
Owners of the sites that housed police radio transmitters would not allow installation of liquefied petroleum gas tanks as a backup to piped gas, meaning generators did not have any fuel when the main lines were cut, Tusa said.
Radio repair technicians attempting to enter the city were turned away by the state police, even though they had letters from the city police authorizing their access, Tusa said.
This is absurd, and I'm pretty sure it's the major factor leading to the disintegration of the New Orleans Police Department. That sort of gear should be survivable -- and there should also be a backup plan for how to get messages back and forth if the radios go out anyway: Messengers, broadcasts on commercial radio, etc.
(There should be a separate post-disaster communications plan for survivors, too -- so that they can locate relatives and let people know they're alive).
Other crucial infrastructure should be hardened as much as possible, too. There's only so much you should do, but disaster survivability should be considered at every stage of design, procurement, and construction.
6. Stock supplies and prepare facilities: The Superdome didn't have adequate food, water, and toilet facilities, even though everybody knew it was going to be a shelter of last resort. The Convention Center was worse. All public buildings that might be used for refugees should be ready. We used to stock fallout shelters that way; we could do it again.
To those of us who live and work in the Greater Los Angeles area, earthquakes and other natural emergencies are a reality. In order to deal with this situation, emergency preparedness must become a way of life. In the event of a major earthquake or disaster, freeways and surface streets may be impassable and public services could be interrupted or taxed beyond their limits. Therefore, everyone must know how to provide for their own needs for an extended period of time, whether at work, home, or on the road.
That's just how it is. People need to be encouraged to do this. Whenever I say this, I get responses along the lines of "poor people can't afford to stockpile food." But here's a family survival kit for $50 and it's pretty good. Most poor people in America can afford food (that's why so many poor people are fat). They do have other problems that make preparation less likely, though (if you're the kind of person who thinks ahead and prepares for emergencies, you're much less likely to be poor to begin with) and local authorities have to be ready -- see the stockpile advice above.
8. Put somebody in charge: Politicians and bureaucrats thrive on diffusion of responsibility, because it helps them escape blame (as they're trying to do in the fingerpointing orgy that's going on now). Somebody needs to be clearly in charge. Right now it's mostly state governors, but this needs to be made inescapably plain, regardless of where it is. I don't agree with Mickey Kaus that we should ignore federalism and just put the President, or the FEMA Director, in charge and empower them to override state and local officials, but even that would be better than leaving no one in charge.
There's much more to be done on this topic, but it awaits clearer information on who dropped what balls when. However, it's worth noting that structural problems are always soluble when the people involved are willing to cooperate, and that no structure works well when it's staffed by idiots or people who don't take the problem seriously. Which raises another point:
9. Make people care: Actually, Katrina may have done this. Most people -- and politicians are worse, if anything -- have short time horizons. Disasters are things that just don't happen, until they do. Planning for them is ignored, or even looked down on, often by the very same people who are making after-the-fact criticisms that there wasn't enough planning. People usually get better after a big disaster, for a while. Beyond that, voters and pundits need to treat the subject with the importance it deserves instead of -- as is more typical -- treating it as the silly obsession of a few paranoid types.
I'm sure there's a lot more to be learned, but this is a start. If you think I've missed something important, send me an email.
UPDATE: Aaron Taylor emails: "I'd add: Err on the side of overwhelming law enforcement presence."
Yes, and show zero tolerance for truly lawless activity. The "broken windows" theory applies in spades, I think, when windows are already broken . . . .
And reader Deena Bevis emails:
Clear chains of command are definitely essential, but so is oversight/accountability. New Orleans didn't have any of that until it failed. We need a system that tells us if someone in that chain of command is failing to complete their responsibilities, and we need to know that BEFORE something happens.
Basically: States and the feds should grade each other on disaster preparedness, and those reports ought to be public.
I'm afraid log-rolling and backscratching might interfere, but it's a thought.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:
I read your post on lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina. I am a nuclear engineer working at a Midwest nuclear plant. We are required to have emergency plans. They are relatively detailed and many aspects are regulated. This includes communications, getting information to the public, recommendations to take shelter or evacuate, and coordination with federal, state, and local authorities. We are required to perform drills and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission grades us annually on one of them.
I'm not sure how well all of these steps would scale up to a large geographical area or the legality of grading states and localities on how well they execute their emergency plans. But people are acting as if this is an entirely new concept and it isn't. Why do we need another worthless commission to tell us what we already know and some of us already do.
Jim Hogue writes:
Maybe it's time to put that little Civil Defense logo (or something similar) back on AM/FM radios so people will know exactly where to tune in the event of an emergency?
And speaking of "In the event of an emergency" I haven't heard anything about the Emergency Alert System in relation to Katrina. Was it on? Did it work? Did it provide any useful information? I would think that a system that's been tested weekly since the 50's would have been pretty reliable.
Beats me. Emily Bennett has another communications question:
I find myself wondering if passenger cars equipped with OnStar could be used for communications in an emergency situation. OnStar constantly advertises its ability to get emergency personnel to its subscribers, and it seems to me that an ambitious FEMA or Homeland Security employee might begin talks with the OnStar folks to see if OnStar equipped vehicles could help manage evacuation traffic flows, provide communications to rescue personnel, and assist some of Bill Whittle's sheepdogs.
Probably not enough bandwidth and switching ability, but I could be wrong.
Reader Jay Johnson emails:
Having made it through the F4 tornado that blew through Jackson, TN in 2003 relatively unscathed, brought the importance of having an emergency kit such as that to light for the missus and me. We did go to our friendly, neigborhood "Everything's a Buck" store, and stocked up on things like cheap canned meals (beef stew, soup), dry foods, matches, water, batteries, cheap flashlights, copies of important papers, a change of clothes, a sealed container with purely emergency cash, some rudimentary tools (hammer, phillips and flat screwdriver, adjustable wrench, and a couple of pocket knives), and cheap first aid kits. It doesn't cost much, and an ounce of prevention is worth the extra peace of mind that comes from it.
Of course, nothing can completely prepare you for such an event, but everyone should do something to prepare for their short term survival in this spot.
Indeed. Reader Jeanne Jackson makes a point that seems trivial but isn't, in light of experience:
One important item you missed is providing evacuation plans for citizens with pets. One reason many people remained behind in New Orleans was that the emergency shelters barred pets, as did the buses, etc. for transporting evacuees. For many pet owners, especially childless and/or older people, pets are surrogate children. It is cruel, heartless, and unnecessary to insist, as a condition of rescue, that one's beloved dog or cat be abandoned to its fate. Were I to be told I must abandon my dogs in order to get out of a life-threatening situation, I, too, might choose to remain behind and take my chances.
I think you should leave the dog behind. But lots of people feel differently, and evacuation plans should recognize that.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Harvey Schneider has some excellent advice for individuals:
One of the things my family has done is designated a contact person in the event of a catastrophe. My entire family (Mother, 2 Brothers, 2 Sisters in law, sister, brother in law, 4 nephews and 2 nieces) lives in Orange County California. We have designated a family friend in Phoenix Arizona as the person for everybody to contact as soon as possible and to leave any messages regarding health or other vital matters. Also, in the event that the entire area is unlivable, we have agreed to meet at our friends house in Phoenix and make further plans from there.
Good point. Meanwhile, Jim McMahon writes:
I would add another player to your list of lessons learned - listen to the insurance companies.
They assess and manage risk for a living. Since insurance rates are based on risk of loss, the easiest scorecard available to judge how well any particular area is prepared is the cost of commercial and homeowners insurance.
For disaster mitigation purposes, I would suggest an expanded system similar to car crash test ratings, where the disaster risk of a community or neighborhood is scored based on the lessons you list, including:
The inherent environmental risk of the area (flood plains, forest fire fuel, earthquake susceptibility)
Preparedness of the local & state gov - budgets, experienced people, drills, publicity
Individual preparedness based on site inspections, nature & number of voluntary associations, etc.
The costs of maintaining and replacing infrastructure.
These ratings can then be used as promotional tools by highly rated areas, and as cattle prods during elections. I would expect that most of the components of these ratings are already compiled and ready to use, needing only the imprimatur of the Fed.
Then FEMA's job becomes one of ongoing improvement of ratings in high-risk areas. They can grant tax breaks for real estate developments and local policies that improve the risks, and restrict the use of highway funds to prevent the construction of the Foghorn Leghorn Memorial Bike Path, Library and Fan Cub until the essential infrastructures are at their target ratings.
I'm sure some wags & wastrels will have issues with this, but show me another low-government way to honestly rate how well the lessons have been learned.
Well, insurance companies do have money riding on the outcome, which encourages honesty.
Christopher Johnson has more thoughts:
I would only add that churches ought to be urged to stockpile both food and other emergency supplies for people who don't have or can't immediately access their own. Many churches are very strong buildings, they're in just about every neighborhood and people aren't afraid of them. I know that if I needed immediate help to get me through the next few days after losing everything I owned, I would much more likely to try a church for help than to take my chances with a government bureaucracy.
Good suggestion.
MORE: Reader Jeff Cook emails:
5. "Make critical infrastructure survivable: I think that one of the key failures was the collapse of the New Orleans Police Department's radio system."
No, sorry. The collapse was in incident command.
It is axiomatic (lesson #1) that the first thing to fail in ANY emergency is communication. The NOPD incident command training should have taught them this. There is no way to assure that radio communications will continue after winds and power outages. This is the kind of thinking that has Blanco and Nagin in their bunkers giving orders and then wondering why they weren't carried out instantly. No one was listening. My experience has been that even seasoned dispatchers, who may or may not have power and transmitting ability themselves, have a hard time keeping channels clear in an emergency. I've seen communication break down during DRILLS.
This is why you need AT LEAST 72 hours notice for evacuation and why the NOPD should have default posting positions and "runners' assigned in the event of communications failure. There is no fail-safe communications system and there never will be. If they harden this technology for floods and hurricanes, will they survive an EMP? a nuclear device? Well, dammit why not??!! Who throws the switch from natural gas to lpg? How long does lpg in the tank last? Who refuels them? Are the refuelers available during a hurricane? Is it in our response plan to throw the switch? Is the switch thrower a police employee or a private contractor? Do they know their responsibility? Is the switch thrower even still employed? Answers to these questions can never be known for any extended period, especially when elected officials try to be the incident commanders. What can be known is that communications fail. Always.
Plan, plan, plan, practice, review, plan, plan, plan, ad nauseum.
They also appear to have forgotten lesson #2. "It is always easier to scale back than to scale up once the emergency has begun."
I've heard the words "incident command" and "unified command" exactly once each in the mainstream media since the blame-laying began. That tells me that all the really knowledgeable people are too busy to comment right now, and haven't been interviewed yet.
Finally bear in mind that emergency response and incident command is very, very, very difficult even in the best circumstances, which never exist.
I'LL BE ON MICHAEL GRAHAM'S SHOW shortly, talking about Katrina. Click on the link to listen live.
VIA EMAIL, A BIZARRE CORRECTION FROM THE LEGAL TIMES:
CLARIFICATION: In the Aug. 29, 2005, issue, the “Inadmissible” item “Warning: This Case May Contain Conflicts” (Page 3) stated that George Mason law professor Ronald Rotunda “may have his own conflict of interest” in commenting on John Roberts Jr.’s involvement in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. That was not meant to suggest that Rotunda violated any specific legal ethics rule.
Likewise, I believe the Legal Times may be controlled by baby-eating space aliens. This is not, however, meant to suggest that the Legal Times is controlled by any specific baby-eating space aliens.
SOMETIMES I HAVE a strong urge to resign in disgust from the Amalgamated Federation of Pollsters, Pundits, Politicians and Pompous Pontificators. This is one of those times.
No sooner had Hurricane Katrina roared through Louisiana and adjacent states than every blockhead with a microphone or a word processor felt compelled to spout off about What It All Means — and, more important, Who Is to Blame. . . .
Ordinary people are sitting at home, transfixed by the spectacle unfolding on their television screens. Their hearts are breaking as they watch the horrifying spectacle of an entire city drowned. Many have already contributed what they can to the American Red Cross, to the Salvation Army, to the other armies of compassion, and only wish they could do more.
What must they think of the talking heads who treat this as if it were another bit of minor grist for the political mills? As if this were another story about some politician's war record or a nominee's nanny issues. The callowness now on display goes a long way toward explaining why politicians and the media are held in public esteem somewhere above child molesters and below bankers.
Sounds like he's channeling Foamy the Squirrel. But hey, when you're right, you're right, even when you're a talking cartoon squirrel.
UPDATE: Judging from the latest Gallup Poll Max and Foamy may be onto something.
Geraldo Rivera arrives in a Fox News truck. An elderly woman with blond hair grips his elbow. She's wearing thick dark glasses and a pink shirt. He carries her small white dog in his arms. He's wearing thigh-high waders unzipped to below his knees. We shake hands. "Her relative called one of our stations," Geraldo tells me, explaining how that call went to another station, and then another, and finally to him.
The woman had been stranded in her home for six days. Geraldo picked up the woman and her dog and brought them here. The woman looks frail on his arm, though not as bad perhaps as a lady collapsed on a chair nearby, unable to move. Or a woman in a wheelchair being lifted from the truck, carrying her prosthetic leg on her lap.
"That's the second time he brought her here," one of the doctors tells me, nodding toward Geraldo.
"What?"
"They did two takes. Geraldo made that poor woman walk from the Fox News van to the heliport twice. Both times carrying her dog."
"Are you serious?" I ask. He says he is.
Jeez.
MORE: On Geraldo, according to Howard Kurtz: "Fox News says that's absolutely, positively not true."
Three states have already passed new laws in response to the Kelo decision.
The statutes in Alabama and Texas sharply curtail eminent-domain condemnations for private development. "We don't like anybody messing with our dogs, our guns, our hunting rights or trying to take property from us," said state Sen. Jack Biddle, a sponsor of the Alabama law. Delaware's new statute permits condemnation but sets new procedural requirements for local governments.
Larry Morandi, an analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures, predicts a rush of new laws next winter, when 44 state legislatures will be back in session.
"Most if not all state legislatures will be dealing with eminent-domain laws next year," Morandi said. "The outcry has been so sharp that many states already have task forces or study committees at work on this issue this summer. Most of the proposed legislation is designed to restrict the kind of governmental action that the court upheld in Kelo ."
TELLING THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR? Austin Bay notices something interesting.
GETTING THE GULF BACK ON THE GRID: Xeni Jardin reports:
Hurricane Katrina wiped out communications systems throughout the Gulf states, and much of the impacted region remains cut off from voice and data service. But some connectivity is coming back from unexpected sources, thanks in part to tech industry volunteers who've teamed up with the Federal Communications Commission.
On Friday, the FCC held a conference call with wireless internet service providers and infrastructure experts to coordinate volunteer efforts for storm-ravaged areas. FCC staff asked organizers to help gather data from those offering to donate resources -- from satellites to power generators to spare parts -- to help reconnect the effected areas.
Very interesting.
UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett has more on the latest oil-for-food developments. Excerpt:
The problem here is that whatever the truth about the secretary-general’s family ties to U.N. business, he was responsible for a great deal more than simply that particular U.N. contract. Even after the many scandals broken so far, a full account of the U.N.’s management of Oil-for-Food — starting with Annan’s starring role as head of the organization — would be an eye-popping thriller, and probably the healthiest thing to hit the U.N. since its founding. Oil-for-Food was not a bookkeeping exercise. It involved oversight of Saddam Hussein, an oil-rich war-mongering tyrant who gamed every angle of one of the most corruption-prone relief programs ever devised. Out of more than $110 billion in oil sales and relief purchases supervised by the U.N., Saddam by some estimates grafted out anywhere from $10 to $17 billion. While the U.N. praised the program, Saddam used his ill-gotten money not only for palaces, but to rebuild despite U.N. sanctions his networks of secret bank accounts, illicit political payoffs and arms traffic — and squirreled away billions that congressional investigators say may be funding terrorism today.
She seems to expect a whitewash, though.
MICKEY KAUS: "The U.S. should take Fidel Castro up on his post-Katrina offer to send over 1,586 doctors from Cuba. It could be a PR victory--how many do you think will go back?"
I HAVEN'T PAID MUCH ATTENTION to the Air America scandals, but Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney have been working hard on the story. It looks like their effort has paid off.
UPDATE: A follow-up here: "In this case, smoking guns seem to abound."
September 06, 2005
THE FASHION DEATH PENALTY: "Perhaps a simple, 'you know, David Bernstein had that look twenty years ago,' will do."
BRUCE KESLER: "The mass media has begun its self-congratulations for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. The party may be premature."
UPDATE: No congratulations here. Or here. (WARNING: Talking squirrel at second link. SECOND WARNING: Squirrel makes more sense than Keith Olbermann or Anderson Cooper. And don't get me started on Geraldo.)
MORE: Or here! And don't forget here: "I blame the media. In this country nearly everybody has a TV set. 80% of poor people have TV sets. The private media are the principle means of the public dissemination of information. They didn’t get the word out."
I guess now we know why it's mostly self-congratulation . . . .
IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST ON GILLIGAN, Steve Hayward emails:
Never mind FUTURE scholars:
See Paul Cantor's fine book Gilligan Unbound which makes your exact point about mid-20th century Americanism.
I haven't read it, but it's self-evidently brilliant!
You know, the war, the news story that doesn't involve flooding, FEMA and blaming Bush for people who refused to comply with an evacuation order.
The guys saw on the news how the Dems were blaming Bush and it really ticked them off.
As usual, I think that eagerness to make Bush look bad has led some people to overplay their hand.
OUCH: "We never go after Maureen Dowd anymore, because there isn't any sport in it. Poor Paul Krugman is rapidly getting into the same category."
Jacob Sullum, on the other hand, is still blasting away at the barrelfish: "Paul Krugman offers the least plausible explanation I've seen so far for the federal government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina."
Likewise Radley Balko: " A government-planned Brasilia-like New New Orleans would be an atrocity. The Paul Krugmans -- or the Jonathan Alters -- simply can't win this debate."
YES, I'M BLOGGING ABOUT SOME OTHER STUFF, but don't think that gets you off the hook if you haven't donated to Katrina relief! Go here and give somebody some money. And if you've contributed, but haven't logged your contribution over at N.Z. Bear's place, and I'll bet that's most of you, well, go do it. (Bumped up on page). [LATER: Bumped up again.]
UPDATE: So far, this has raised about $865,000$900,000$970,000$1 million$1.1 million$1.2 million (about $185,000$200,000$260,000$282,000$319,000 $360,000 from InstaPundit readers) based on people's self reports. Let's see if we can get it into the seven-figure range before the blogburst ends at midnight. [LATER: Made it! But don't let that stop you!]
There are two kinds of people out there: Those who haven't donated yet and those who have donated, but haven't logged your contribution over at TTLB. If you haven't donated, how about it? There's a list of charities here, or if you just want to give where I gave without having to choose among the many choices you can go to the Salvation Army and donate there. (Just noticed that this is almost 1/8 what Amazon has raised, which is a pretty impressive achievement for the blogosphere).
If you haven't logged your contribution yet -- and I'm guessing that's a lot of you -- well, go do it.
How widespread is the corruption at the United Nations? The multibillion-dollar Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal was just the beginning.
Now the issue is becoming the scale of corruption in the U.N.'s normal operations — and which individuals and corporations are reaping the benefits of a network of bribery and conspiracy that investigators have just begun to uncover. So far, those identities are still a mystery — but perhaps not for much longer.
Last Friday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted the head of the U.N.'s own budget oversight committee, a Russian named Vladimir Kuznetsov, on charges of laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes paid by companies seeking contracts with the United Nations.
Kuznetsov, who has pleaded innocent, allegedly took a cut so openly that he had part of it deposited into the United Nations' own staff credit union in New York.
Kuznetsov's arrest is the latest twist in the scandal involving the U.N. procurement department, which was the longtime post of Alexander Yakovlev (search), another Russian U.N. official recently fingered by U.S. federal investigators.
According to Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders), Information supplied by Yahoo! helped Chinese journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison
The text of the verdict in the case of journalist Shi Tao – sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for “divulging state secrets abroad” – shows that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. provided China’s state security authorities with details that helped to identify and convict him. It reveals that the company provided the Chinese investigating organs with detailed information that apparently enabled them to link Shi’s personal e-mail account (on the Chinese Yahoo! service at yahoo.com.cn) and the specific message containing information treated as a “state secret” to the IP address of his computer. More details from RSF here.
Shi Tao was jailed because he e-mailed sensitive political information to be posted on dissident websites hosted outside China. His case is a cautionary tale to bloggers around the world: If you are publicizing information and views that your government doesn’t want exposed - even if you believe you have the right to do so under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - companies like Yahoo! will not shield you from your government.
Bob Denver, whose portrayal of goofy first mate Gilligan on the 1960s television show ''Gilligan's Island,'' made him an iconic figure to generations of TV viewers, has died, his agent confirmed Tuesday. He was 70. . . .
TV critics hooted at ''Gilligan's Island'' as gag-ridden corn. Audiences adored its far-out comedy. Writer-creator Sherwood Schwartz insisted that the show had social meaning along with the laughs: ''I knew that by assembling seven different people and forcing them to live together, the show would have great philosophical implications.''
Future scholars will regard the show as a profound critique, and celebration, of mid-20th Century America.
AS PEOPLE PONDER THE ROBERTS NOMINATION, it's worth noting that despite a fairly strong and consistent ideological core and a long term on the Court, Rehnquist's Chief Justiceship didn't, in the end, produce especially dramatic change.
HERE'S ANOTHER BLOG FUNDRAISING EFFORT FOR KATRINA: This one seems to center mostly around lefty blogs, but that doesn't matter. The money's all the same color, and it's all needed. If you haven't donated via my appeals, and would prefer to give through a lefty initiative, go there! (More background here, but for some reason people keep sending me the link above.)
DISASTER KITS: My earlier post on radios produced more emails with suggestions. Here's one, from reader John Jones:
One of the first things I would grab in an emergency is the water filter that I normally use for camping. A filter like this is small, and can easily produce enough potable water for a family for weeks. The only problem I would foresee in a major flood is the presence in the water of chemicals such as pesticides and oil that the filter cannot remove. Still, for filtering rain water or questionable water from a city water supply, a basic water filter could literally be a life saver. I prefer this one.
Yeah. Stored water's best, of course -- and you don't have to be rich to store water, all you need are old milk jugs and a few drops of bleach. You can also store bleach, and use it (in higher concentrations) to purify water, though it won't get rid of chemicals.
I don't think there's much of anything that would clean out the toxic sludge in New Orleans. This list of survival goods may be over the top, though.
UPDATE: Reader Stanley Tillinghast, MD emails:
The MSR Miniworks is a good filter but doesn't kill viruses.
