yeah.....well....my socks match today!

 

Hersh probably nailed her...

 

Agreed- Monday Morning QB's across the country and on this board (All of us) would be in an uproar... I know all about statistical references & probability. Failures of that same scenario is why sometimes you can't make a call out of your city without getting that "All circuits are busy now" recording on line. (Mother's Day, Christmas, etc..) It’s designed around a principle that at no one time will "X" number of people be on the phone, internet, etc at the same time. In what I do today- we call that STDN or Statistical Time Division Multiplexing...

The same principle is the basis for your argument here- difference being it involves financial expenditure against the probability of a catastrophic storm hitting the Gulf coast.. Your argument makes sense- as there is no way to plan for an Event that has never happened before-- but, Cat 5 storms have happened before: 1900, 1935, 1969, 2005- just to name a few~ about every 35 years...

Storms that make it to the Gulf are usually stronger than those that brush up against Florida and the eastern seaboard because the Gulf is warmer- thus enabling the storm's power to increase more rapidly than what one normally finds in the Atlantic- (Andrew, Hugo & Floyd being the exceptions; although Andrew was the only one that really brought it's full power to bear on the US from the Atlantic).

Every decision is second guessed (Do I really need a King-Ranch F-150?); or rationalized after the fact (Yeah, I've worked hard and I DZERVIT!!). Its alive today in the debate as to whether we keep flying the F-15's or do we upgrade to the F-22. Do we keep the OH-58's, or will we buy the RAH-66 Comanche... At a local government level it's do we really need a $200,000,000.00 bridge in Alaska- where the population is sparse; and the residents don't even want it... They are still getting it. Why replace the east span of the Oakland Bay Bridge with a design that fundamentally weaker than the bridge it's replacing (that a section collapsed during the Loma Prieta quake of 1989)... Cost/Benefit makes sense- until you are impacted by its exclusion...

Considering that no less than 3 Category 5 storms have hit the gulf coast in the previous 100 years, and probably as many- or more Category 4's- it just didn't make sense to give a major city anything less than the best when it comes to defending itself from what we know has happened- and will happen again. If not for the whole city- at least for the Lake Pontchartrain shoreline.. That's only 40-miles- a drop in the mileage bucket compared to the Levee that protects the Western border states from the Mississippi River.

I know Stats & Probability are here to stay; but- what we've seen here is a prime example of what happens when events exceed expectations...

 

The levees where you are at are meant to do something that the levees that failed are not, hold back a raging river during a 100 year flood. The levee that broke was along a canal. As a canal would probably not have strong flowing wayer, even during a flood, I would expect them to be different. When stateing that it is built for a cat 3 hurricane, I can only assume that it means to hold back a storm surge, not a long term (day or days) flow of water. Even with the levees, it was and still is idiotic to build below water level when it is not necessary or prudent. I can understand in the case of the Dutch, as they have no other choice to get more land. No matter how well you build, nature will find a way to tear it down eventually. As for your 100 yr levees, what are you going to do when you get that 200 yr or 1,000 yr flood? The one that could be due next week.

 

There's only one thing we could do??? Be @$$-OUT...


I told my Mom; at the first sign of seepage- get the heck outta dodge... Depending on where it woudl break- she'd have anywhere from 1-hour, to maybe 30 seconds to get outta dodge...

 

Can't argue with that... I'll never know why New Orleans is where it is- considering what could happen to it... I guess the proximity to Lake Pontchartrain & the Missisippi's access to the Gulf and the world made it's location a strategic benefit at the time, and it grew from there...

Historians have stated that were it not for the Civil War, New Orleans would have been the "New York City" of the south, being a gateway for ocean going ships coming from and going to many major mid-western states & cities~ not the least of which being Chicago & St. Louis.

Shallowness of the Mississippi in spots would have made that impossible in later years- without dredging....

Truth is, bad things can happen anywhere- there's nothing preventing a 9.0 richter scale earthquake from happening in the Atlantic- which would result in the destruction of many US , European and African cities and the risk of hundreds of thousands of deaths as far inland as 2-3 miles, just like the Tsunami of 12/26/2004.

October 1995- a quake of the coast of Japan had people thinking a Tsunami was headed towards the US- they said the wave was traveling at 550 MPH, but somehow disipated- unlike the one that was triggered last year- that didn't disipate at al, then again- that was a 9.0, which makes a 7.? quake look like a candy-*** by comparison...

 

Speaking of the tsunami from last year, how big was that wave?

 

Yeah, I am wondering when they will have one of those 200 yr hurricanes. The one they don't have a number for.
It never ceases to amaze me when scientists state they know all about the weather that can be produced on this planet. They have about 200yrs of recorded weather history. To say they know what is happening and what is normal or abnormal weather is idiotic. Considering the length of time the earth has been around, that's like saying you can meet someone for 2 seconds and know their life history. Everything they have done or will do.

 

The first wave I read was 6-12 feet tall (Depending on where you were- but, the second & thrid waves were supposedly 20-35 feet tall, arriving just as the first wave was returning, the second wave pushed harder & further inland, and the 3rd even moreso...

This similiar experience was reiterated by one of Oprah's friends, who survived the Tsunami- but lost his freind in the process.

Watching it on TV- it didn't look like something that would kill nearly 250,000 people- It just didn't look that violent- but- hundreds of tons of water moving at 35-40 MPH, obliterating everything in sight, is obviously a killer...
Discovery did a long special report on it- Ships at sea- that you'd expect to get effed up, would not have even felt the wave go by be cause of it's speed, and relatively low height in the ocean deep.. But, and it approaches land- the ave slow, and water stacks behind it- causing the water near land to retreat out into the ocean floor- then come crashing back in at 30-40 MPH. That's one heck of a decelleration (500 - 700 MPH, down to 40 MPH)

Imagine if the wave came in at 700 MPH...

They said coastal cities that have a deep, cliff-like floor would not be detrimentally effected by a tsunami; but if your city lies on land that gradually slopes off as it goes further into the ocean, that city would be erased...

 

Anybody who takes their gpa to the thousands decimal place must have some itty biddy thing making them feel inadequate. Don't be so hard on yourself, I'm sure you're more than adequate. jk

 

dont blame me





i did NOT vote for him




























did'nt vote for anyone in all reality

...zap!

 

LOL- No inadequacies here... I got pics if you'd like to see them!

My transcripts went out 3 or 4 3's... My gpa got the 3, and just kept repeating...

Were it not for Sociology, Accounting and Financial Accounting- all of which I got B's in- I'd have a 4.0; but- oh well- my sister has the 4.0 on lock- she's been a 4.0 student since kindergarten...

K - 12, Freshman, Sophmore, Junior and now in her Sr. year... She'd kicked my @$$, with regard to education, severely.... I got Magna *** Laude- but she'll be one of those Summa's... (I know it means nothing; unless you're one of the one's that get it... Then, it only means something during the ceremony...) Being PTK, PBK, 4.0, MCL, SCL, CL, Mensa, etc., is no predictor or guarantee of success...

I didn't think it meant much, I wasn't going to even go to my graduation- but my wife & mom kept urging me to go... As I crossed the stage the Dean called my name, and said Phi Beta Kappa, Magna *** Laude and the audience said "Ooooh" (Just as they did with all the honor students) I must admit- that felt pretty damn good!

The honors don't mean a whole lot, but- the plaques do look nice in my den though, and will hopefully make my son want to get some of his own to add to our wall!

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...ck=1&cset=true

 

The Welfare State Exposed
By Robert Tracinski

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there
make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in
food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary
shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For
journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary
people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and
rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send
thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy
insurgency. And journalists—myself included--did not expect that the story would not be
about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief
agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about
every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the
past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely
exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state. For the past few days, I have found the news
from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them
to behave in an emergency--indeed; they were not behaving as they have behaved in
other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that
this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a
Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together
to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve
problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to
relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care
of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main
traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve
as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the
spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a
Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires
are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are
repeatedly fired on. "The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National
Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

"'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets she said. They have
M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and
they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will."

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National
Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-
strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be
yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting,
armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have
arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives?
What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why
are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

 

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While
watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting
a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is
located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes,
one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they
were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They
have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of
life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit—
but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals—
and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative
and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the
incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government,
which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this
might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is
to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters-
-not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already
actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely
the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of
individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an
opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property?

They don't, because they don't own anything.

Do they worry about what is going to
happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living?
They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting?

But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is
the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans.
And that is the story that no one is reporting.