Dujodu Blog

I was watching this on C-SPAN2 today and it was pretty interesting. They had a panel of hurricane Katrina evacuees talking about the conditions before and after the hurricane. All of them had horror stories about the evacuation and recovery, people herded by gunpoint to what they described as “concentration camps.” What really caught my attention though was the serious discussion that took place about the possibility that the levee was intentionally breached to minimize damage to the upper class areas of New Orleans. The panel cited “earwitness” reports that people heard explosions, as well as divers finding craters underwater at the foot of the levees where they were breached. The committee actually had a discussion about the possibility and agreed to investigate, the evacuees requested that it be done by an independent source and even offered to fund it but were turned down. Either way, there is apparently going to be an investigation. I don’t know if we’ll ever hear about it of if it will make any sort of national news, but I thought it was pretty amazing that they were taken seriously (or at least made to believe that they were). I’m not saying I believe that there was some massive conspiracy to breach the levees, I just thought it was interesting/disturbing. Apparently it’s fairly common practice to “guide” floods in this manner to minimize destruction though. In fact the tactic was used during the Mississippi river flood in 1927 in order to save New Orleans. 30 tons of dynamite were used to breach the levee at Caernarvon, Louisiana so that it wouldn’t flood New Orleans, which was owned by powerful banking families. Following the flood 13,000 African American refugees were detained and forced into labor at gunpoint as ships came to save white women and children. They were denied food, water, pay, and access to the city without tags to prove that they were working on the levee. Nearly 80 years later, not much has changed.

Don’t take my word for it though:

• PBS: Voices from the flood: Protecting the levee
• PBS: American Experience: Fatal Flood Timeline
• Book Review - Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and how it Changed America

The panel will continue next week, with questions for New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

I’ve finished writing an article for the macromedia developer center on creating commands for Fireworks. If anyone wants to check it out, you can view it at the fireworks developer center when it goes live tomorrow. It was pretty fun to write, and I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out! Hopefully I’ll have some more article / tutorial ideas so I can continue writing for them.

If there are any fireworks users that read this blog, you should sign this petition to get a Fireworks category on the Macromedia XML News Aggregator. Help get the word out about this great program! Senocular of Senocular.com started the petition, so be sure to check out his website for macromedia & Fireworks news and extensions.

If you are into Flash or Fireworks, you should take a trip over to www.fireworksguru.com/ and take a look at Alan Musselmans great Slideshow Album extension for Fireworks. It enables you to create picture albums in fireworks and export them along with an .xml file that can be loaded into flash (there are a couple templates included!). It’s really pretty neat, so go check it out now! Don’t forget to visit the forum.

I’m a little late on this one, but I’ve been thinking over a lot of stuff and I thought I’d rather post about it than just let it sit around in my head. The way the Federal and Local governments handled this situation is disgusting, and now Bush is out there trying to lead the commision to investigate what went right and what went wrong. Here are a few quotes.

George W. Bush

What I intend to do is lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong.

We still live in an unsettled world. We want to make sure we can respond properly if there is a WMD attack or another major storm.

Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people.

There are so many things wrong with these quotes that it is unbelievable. If someone was being suspected of committing a crime, I don’t think they would be allowed to “lead an investigation” to find out who commited said crime. I really don’t think Bush will be pointing any fingers in his general direction, he was after all unable to admit to any mistakes he had made during his post 9/11 presidency as of April 13th 2004 when he was asked to think of one:
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Two anonymous U.S. officials claim that Bush is planning on bypassing the Senate to appoint John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, possibly as early as Monday. The Senate is beginning its August recess this weekend, allowing Bush to slip him in with a “recess appointment.” The Senate Democrats are very strongly opposed to Bolton however, so much in fact that 35 of them and 1 Independent sent a letter to Bush on Friday asking him to choose someone else. “A recess appointment is not in the interest of the country. Mr. Bolton does not have the full confidence of the Senate. Sending him to the U.N. without the Senate’s approval would send a mixed message to friend and foe alike,” said Joseph Biden, D-Delaware.[1]

Recently, John Bolton claimed that he wasn’t questioned during any government investigation in the past five years. This was later found to be false.
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“The beauty of daylight-saving time is that it just makes everyone feel sunnier,” said Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, about the extension of daylight savings time included in the new energy bill passed by congress on Friday. The bill will extend daylight savings time by four weeks all together. It will begin three weeks earlier, on the second Sunday in March, and last one week longer, ending on the first Sunday in November. “Kids across the nation will soon rejoice,” said Fred Upton, R-Michigan, referring to the extra hour of daylight that kids will enjoy on Halloween.[1]

Surely the 1,724-page bill wasn’t created to let everyone enjoy an extra hour of sunlight for 4 extra weeks, or more accurately enjoy 4 extra weeks of a one hour shift in standard operating time. However, the daylight savings time shift is probably going to be the only thing you hear about the bill, because it’s the only thing that is going to effect the average American. “An energy bill wouldn’t change the price at the pump today. I know that and you know that,” said Bush during a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He went on to say “What I’m talking about is making sure that we leave our children and grandchildren a cleaner, healthier and more secure America … that is less dependent on sources of energy from overseas.”[2] But does this bill really help reduce our dependency on foreign oil? “As long as we’re consuming 21 million barrels (a day) and we’re only producing 8 million, we’re going to be importing oil,” said Joe Barton, R-Texas, author of much of the bill. [1]

The bill does call for more domestic onshore and offshore oil production, but it’s very short sited. The United States reached it’s peak oil production in the early 1970’s, as predicted in 1956 by Dr. M. King Hubbert of the United States Geological Survey (USGS). In April 2000 the USGS confirmed Hubbert’s research when they released the results of “the most thorough and methodologically modern assessment of world crude oil and natural gas resources ever attempted,” says the Energy Information Administration (EIA, http://www.eia.doe.gov/). Inspired by the USGS, the EIA decided to conduct the first Federal analysis of long term world oil supply since Dr. Hubbert’s in 1974. Like the USGS and Dr. Hubbert before them, the EIA reached the same conclusion regarding domestic oil production. A slide from their July 2000 presentation of their study shows this peak.[3]
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