Entries from August 2005The Posts You Asked For

Looking through CNN’s coverage of Katrina’s aftermath, I came upon a map of the city with an ad from Western Union below. It read, “In emergency situations, trust Western Union to get money to loved ones quickly.” (Click to enlarge the image.)

Was Western Union being incredibly, pathetically tacky? Or were its ads just in the [...]

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“NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) — Louisiana evacuees should stay away for at least a week to avoid “a wilderness” without power or drinking water that will be infested with poisonous snakes and fire ants, state officials warned Monday.”
(A “lede” is journalist-speak for the first graf — paragraph, that is — of a story.)

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Best sites for late-breaking on-site info:
The best I’ve seen: The “Survival of New Orleans blog,” a blogger holed up with friends and supplies in a building somewhere.
The Times-Picayune Breaking News Weblog and Jon Donley’s blog on the site.
UPDATE: Thanks to Eric for these: The Web sites Katrina Check-In and the New Orleans Craig’s List [...]

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Levee breach near the Industrial Canal and Tennessee Street. Three to eight feet of water expected.
Why mention this? Because I typed “tennessee street, new orleans” into Google Earth and it zoomed in right to the location. Neat stuff.

(Click for larger.)

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The following, from the National Weather Service, is to me the defintion of “We’re not fucking around here”:

WWUS74 KLIX 281550
NPWLIX
URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005
…DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED…
.HURRICANE KATRINA…A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED
STRENGTH…RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.
MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE [...]

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“[T]he area from New Orleans to the Mississippi-Louisiana border is going to get a catastrophic blow.”
-and-
“I put the odds of New Orleans getting its levees breached and the city submerged at about 70%.”
That from Dr. Jeff Masters’s blog at the Weather Underground.

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With all the digital cameras, Webcams, and phone cams out there, combined with sites like Flickr and smugmug, I wonder if the destruction of New Orleans this week will be the first major disaster to be covered more by the rank and file than by professional jounnalists.
Not that all the networks won’t be there to [...]

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The unedited version of my column on riding the edge of the law (sort of)

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Circa 1966 (a very good year, if you ask me), comes this gem: The Exciting Game of Career Girls.
Young women get to choose from a long reasonable disturbingly short list of careers — from teacher to nurse! Yet among all the options, librarian is mysteriously absent.
(Thanks, Eric!)

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The unedited — read: more cutting — version of the column that appeared.

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I screwed up a bit of code in my Movable Type configuration, which caused the comments not to work properly for a day or so — you just got an error.
Dug into the code, saw the mistake, hopefully fixed it.
I doubt anything will go wrong n

ERROR UNDEFINED INVERSE PARTITION SPACE UNABLE TO REFLECT
CONSISTANT MEMORY ADDRESSES. [...]

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Diddy: dumb.

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They call it a cult for a reason.

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Note: This entry has been moved to the USA Today section.

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I think it’s common knowledge that men are better drivers than women. But we didn’t know quite how bad those durned females are.
A new study from some Saudi Arabian universities — their accuracy unquestionable — found that 50 percent of all traffic accidents are caused by women, despite the fact that they’re not allowed to [...]

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It’s my blog, so I can post it.

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Says the AP:
NCAA bans Indian mascots during postseason
The NCAA banned the use of American Indian mascots by sports teams during its postseason tournaments…
In other news, tickets are now on sale for the Washington Redskins annual kickoff luncheon.

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It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote an entry here about why Doom 3 sucked.
I was not alone, judging by the e-mail I got.
But today I stumbled upon “A Gamers’ Manifesto” that takes game makers to task for all the things I hated about Doom 3, plus a whole honkin’ lot more. Funny… [...]

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Scott Kleper has posted a wonderfully clear and well-written explanation of the current fight against copyright, and why media companies are users are going at it over the ability to listen to music and watch videos.
It’s a great, not-too-long way to understand why pirated music and movies are more popular than ever.

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I have no idea why you don’t see this kind of stuff anymore.
(Thanks to Banned Cartoons!)

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