hurricanes
it's nice to see that my old co-worker, mike, was able to face katrina with a sense of humour, even if he did get a shard of metal in his ass while mooning the hurricane. he is also running a blog which initially, became a place for people to post and start looking for loved ones, but is now also indundated with posters trying to drive traffic to their business sites. horrendous. there also hasn't been posts in about a day, so i'm going to be naive and assume that it is a power + infrastructure issue.it's quite the hurricane season - we are already up to the letter K, with letter L (tropical storm Lee) thankfully weakening in the atlantic. i remember when maybe we would get up to F by the end of the hurricane season, in september? given that i have a relatively short timeframe of experience, it might be premature to say this, but i feel that hurricane seasons have only been getting more intense and active. climate change, anyone?
with the discussion centered around the destruction, and rebuilding, of new orleans, i have to wonder whether it continues to make sense for society to continue to build on coastal hurricane areas - sure, it's good for the insurance industry, but i wonder how the economic impacts of these natural disasters can continue to be absorbed, especially by super vulnerable areas that are located below sea level. never mind that new orleans lost federal funding to beef up their levee system, to a war that is costing about $10,000 per second. that said - give money to the red cross - especially since they are helping those folks that were too poor to leave before katrina hit, and had no choice but to take their chances with the storm. and you wonder why the looting? these were desperate people before the hurricane ever arrived.
posted by thixotropic @ 11:29 PM
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