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 Wow. I just watched the 1961 Oscar-winning classic Judgment at Nuremberg. I am not surprised that I never watched it before moving to Germany because it has largely become a forgotten masterpiece. But, if nothing else, my time living in Germany has given me an appreciation for the oft-distorted American-centric view of Europe, and this bizarre fascination brought me to TiVo this fine film.
After this three-hour docu-drama was left unwatched for months, it became endangered as the oldest item left on my TiVo. So, my husband and I finally sat down this weekend to dedicate the time needed to "watch it and free up some space on the TiVo". But, oh, it was so much more than that.
The movie centers around an obscure retired American judge who is summoned to Nuremberg war trials to head a tribunal investigating German judges who were complicit with the Nazis. But what it accomplishes is much more than a painful trip down WWII memory lane. Instead, it explains in a very consumer-friendly manner how to avoid the slippery slope logical fallcy--especially when it comes to forcing permanent and deadly acts on others. I would hate to spoil the ending, because it is a nail-biter, but let me assure you that at the end of three hours watching this magnificently written, acted, filmed, and directed masterpiece, you will have a better understanding of how a whole country could "stand by" and let Hitler's madness be enacted. Indeed, you may even find some abstract concepts that can be applied in modern times.
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“The Pacific Ocean is cold. Really cold. All the time. Don't go in without a wetsuit unless you're a sea lion.” 
Carmel is about 90 miles from our house, and maybe a third of that is at highway speed. We took the scenic route, down through Santa Cruz and around Monterey Bay. We stopped off at lovely and quiet Moss Landing Beach [ view hybrid map ] for an hour or so. This beach was in the center of Monterey Bay, with Santa Cruz at the end of the arc to our north, and Monterey and Carmel jutting out at the opposite end. The gritty sand was hot, but the ocean breeze was absolutely perfect. We discovered something all the locals already knew: the Pacific Ocean is cold. Really cold. All the time. Don't go in without a wetsuit unless you're a sea lion. (More on that in my next post.) We hung out on the beach for an hour or so, called some folks back home to gloat, watched the brown pelicans skim the wavetops, and stared at the oversized surf splashing around before us. When it started to get hot, we moved on down Highway 1 to our final destination.
 Carmel-by-the-Sea is a charming little resort town just a hair south of Pebble Beach. [ View hybrid map. ] We drove around past the little cottages perched on the cliffs overlooking the quiet, sheltered beach, before finding a parking space near the cute downtown. There were some better-than-average shops, but the overall shopping experience was off the mark for me. Maybe if I were in the market for art, I would have been pleased with the dozens upon dozens of galleries. As it was, I rapidly grew disinterested in downtown, and the beach was calling.
 When we got to the beach, I was surprised that all the people there were regular people, families, just enjoying the scenery. Folks were walking their dogs, playing catch, and reading books. It wasn't a fashion show by any means, as few folks were even wearing bathing suits. Most, like us, were just wearing shorts and t-shirts or sundresses. It was charming. The beach itself was steep as it transitioned from the rocky cliff down to the ocean, where it tapered off somewhat, but the sand was extremely fine and pleasant to walk on. Down the beach from us, some brave young souls were surfing. Surprisingly, some were even good at it. Up the beach a bit was a grass-covered cliff, manicured to perfection, that I can only presume was one of the world-famous Pebble Beach golf courses right on the ocean. How nice.
 As the sun started its descent, we packed up our beach chairs and headed down the coast about 10 more miles. I'd heard of a restaurant called Rocky Point that is situated on a cliff and where every table has a stunning view of the ocean. They weren't lying. The view was amazing. The food wasn't too bad, either, and that's good, since it was on the pricey side. Still, it was the perfect way to end our first day at the beach in California.
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“We immediately turned to follow the ["Salvage Sale"] sign, only to be confronted with this beautiful home in a historic neighborhood. Strangely, the home was being gutted right before our eyes.” One of my favorite hobbies is fixing up my house. Hubby and I did that a lot when we lived in Atlanta, but not so much in German because we were renting. Now that we're back in our own home, the building bug has bitten us once again, and we couldn't be more excited about it.
This weekend, we were driving around Palo Alto, and noticed a sign that said "Salvage Sale". We immediately turned to follow the sign, only to be confronted with this beautiful home in a historic neighborhood. Strangely, the home was being gutted right before our eyes. We approached, greeted by a worker from a local salvage company, who explained that we entered at our own risk, but anything we saw was for sale. Anything.
We toured the 100+ year old home with inlaid hardwood flooring, arched doorways with custom redwood trim, built-in shelving units, antique ceiling fixtures, authentic windows with wavy glass... all you could possibly want in a beautiful historic home. But the tragic thing was, it was being torn down. Well, first torn apart, then torn down. What a shame. Heartbroken, I searched for a reason for all of this. I asked the salvage worker what the story was, and she didn't know, but said that the others who had toured the site were ready to lynch the owners for doing such a...crime? I thought surely it would be a crime, because almost every town has historic zoning commissions. I asked about that, and the worker said that Palo Alto used to have some pretty strict ones, but they got sued a year or so ago, and dropped all historic building codes. All of them. What a shame. |
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“If the agency waited for its employees to translate this (unusual) volume of documents, it would take years. But, if we learned nothing else from Memogate, we learned that there are massive numbers of people out there on the 'net who are willing to give their time and energy to the cause of investigative journalism.”
Well, imagine my surprise today to read that this concept has spread beyond machine computing. I read an article entitled U.S. Makes Seized Iraqi Documents Public that explained that the US intelligence directorate has abstracted the idea to document processing. You see, the government has millions of pages that need translation, but a limited number of people whose sole job is translating them. If the agency waited for its employees to translate this (unusual) volume of documents, it would take years. But, if we learned nothing else from Memogate, we learned that there are massive numbers of people out there on the 'net who are willing to give their time and energy to the cause of investigative journalism. The mainstream bloggers urged congress to make the documents available to the Internet community and see what would happen. The hope being that documents of interest would receive the most commentary, helping the government prioritize. Essentially, they want people with down time to donate a portion of that time to the massively time-intensive project of translating 1+ million documents--a project that the government can't (and shouldn't) hire enough people to perform in a timely manner. It's a human super-computer! And it's brilliant!
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| » News: The Sony Reader |
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How would you like to take 10 paperbacks with you on your beach vacation, but you don't want to carry a shoebox's worth of extra space? It sounds like a dream, but we've all heard the promise of eBooks, and the resulting technology was just an electronic version readable on your normal computer screen. Not exactly portable, unless you had a laptop, in which case it was impossible to read at the beach. The bright light made the screen too hard to read, plus who would dare risk their laptop at such a venue? And reading from the computer screen was too tiring to the eyes, anyway. The technology never seemed to live up to its promise.
“Well, if we believe [Sony's] hype, 'The digital book has come of age.'” 
List of features:
- Paper-like display
- Small and light
- Contains enough memory for at least 80 average-sized books
- ...available memory upgrades, plays music, displays graphics, and more!
Wired magazine's article on it says it went over well at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. It's scheduled to be available for $300-$400 this spring. According to Wired, Sony's plan for success with this product is based on integration with their online music sales store. A one-stop shop to get music AND books? Sign me up!
Feb. 6th, 2006 @ 07:04 pm
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| » Thoughts: For the Dogs... |
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“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-Mark Twain ” Today, I was forwarded one of those humor emails that we all get from our friends. Today, though, I read it because it was about dogs, and dogs are cute; meaning I hoped the email would also be cute. I wasn't terribly disappointed, but there were a couple of great quotes in there that I thought might be worth posting here. Here they are in my order of preference:
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
-Robert A. Heinlein
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-Mark Twain
If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then give him only two of them.
-Phil Pastoret
Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.
-Sigmund Freud
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
-Ben Williams
A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.
-Josh Billings
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
-Rita Rudner
Jan. 26th, 2006 @ 11:36 am
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| » News: Google Gets Video |
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“It seems that someone [Google] finally convinced the broadcasters that there's a huge demand for downloadable on-demand video of their TV shows.” I was wowed this week to hear about the new Google video services. It seems that someone finally convinced the broadcasters that there's a huge demand for downloadable on-demand video of their TV shows. For those who missed the broadcast, for those who spend more time in planes than in front of their television, or for those who have better quality laptop monitors than TV screens, for those outside the broadcast range. For whatever reason, people WANT this service. I certainly do.
For years now, this has only been available by peer-to-peer networks and other not-so-legitimate methods. I have always said that broadcast networks could make a mint by charging $1 or $2 per show if they would just make available some legal way to download the shows. Well, finally, Google has helped make that a reality. You can visit http://video.google.com/ and search for that episode of CSI you missed last week because your kid's ballgame ran late, or you can watch the basketball game from your hometown, or you can search for that video everyone's been talking about at work. Some of the premium content--like recent TV shows, copyrighted work, etc.--costs money, but not much--between $1 and $5 is what I've seen so far.
But there's lots of free stuff on there, too. Stuff like my favorite: Octopus Eats Shark. Check it out for yourself, and let me know what you think about the idea. Will it catch on? Do you think you'll use it?
Jan. 12th, 2006 @ 12:35 am
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| » Humor: Encounter with a Barrel |
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One of my favorite humor pieces is this increasingly tragic accident report. I have looked on the web for attribution, and the best I can surmise is that its original form is part of Gerard Hoffnung's 1959 speech to Oxford Union, entitled "Bricklayer's Lament". The original version isn't available to us here online, but I first heard it as this joke version, so I thought I'd share. The sentiment comes through loud and clear. You'll no doubt enjoy reading "Encounter with a Barrel":
Dear Sir,
I am writing in response to your request for additional information in block #3 of the accident reporting form. I put "trying to do the job alone" as the cause of my accident. You stated, in your letter, that I should explain more fully, and I trust the following details will be sufficient.
I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident I was working on the roof of a new six-story building. When I completed my work, I discovered that I had about 500 pounds of bricks left over. Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley, which fortunately, was attached to the side of the building, at the sixth floor.
Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to insure a slow descent of the 500 pounds of bricks. You will note in Block #11 of the accident reporting form that my weight is 135 pounds.
Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and didn't think to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rather rapid rate up the side of the building.
In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel that was now proceeding in a downward direction at an equally impressive rate of speed. This explains the fractured skull, minor abrasions and the broken collarbone, as listed in Section III of the accident reporting form.
Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley that I mentioned in paragraph #2 of this correspondence.
Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold tightly to the rope, in spite of the excruciating pain I was now beginning to experience.
At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Now devoid of the weight of the bricks the barrel now weighed approximately 50 pounds.
I refer you again to my weight in Block #11. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured
ankles, broken teeth, and the severe lacerations of my legs and lower body.
Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of broken bricks, and fortunately, only three vertebrae were cracked.
I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the pile of bricks in pain, unable to move and looking up at the empty barrel, six stories above me, I once again lost my presence of mind and I let go of the rope.
Jan. 10th, 2006 @ 05:08 pm
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| » Sites: Craig's List *** |
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“Craig's List is [...] more akin to an American-style garage sale or a European-style flea market, but that's what I love about it.” I've just gotten back from my first successful Craig's List buying adventure. Craig's List is sort of a listing of classified advertisements, but extremely real-time, as opposed to waiting for publication in a newspaper. It's like eBay, except that you list your "asking price" for items. Maybe it's more akin to an American-style garage sale or a European-style flea market, but that's what I love about it.
I've tried twice before, unsuccessfully, to get some furniture, but either the quality was too poor or the asking price was too high. I am pleased that it finally worked out this time.
Craig's List has several sections, not just furniture. Before we moved out here, we tried to find an apartment or rental house using the ads on Craig's List, but we didn't get a lot of responses. Most of them were cookie-cutter replies asking us to stop by on the weekend to look at the open house and submit applications. Since we were out of town--WAY out of town--we never were able to participate. Now that we live here, Craig's List is much more useful. It does still have the strong limitation that you have to be within driving distance of whatever you're transacting about, and you have to do a lot of work yourself (like pick up items). So, it's not quite like eBay because on eBay, you usually have the chance to have an item shipped to you.
All in all, I think Craig's List is a great resource. You could outfit an entire house or apartment with little to no money--which would have been incredibly useful to us when we moved to Germany. Or, you could liquidate everything you own much easier than we did when we left Germany. Oh, how I wish we'd had this resource while we were there! In the mean time, check out the Craig's List in your area, because there's a "local" version for nearly every city in the US and for many countries in the world!
Jan. 7th, 2006 @ 05:57 pm
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| » News: Bound for Glory, America In Color, 1939-1943 |
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“Bound for Glory[...] uncovers World War II era America in a way that has rarely, if ever, been seen before: an America in color pictures.” The Library of Congress has a new exhibition, Bound for Glory, America In Color, 1939-1943, that uncovers World War II era America in a way that has rarely, if ever, been seen before: an America in color pictures. This collection of photographs is amazing in how it depicts the people of our nation, especially in rural areas, in ways that really shed light on how they live, how they dress, and even how they celebrated. I have enjoyed this collection immensely, and I hope you will look through it to find out for yourself. Here are some of my favorites:
At the Vermont State Fair, 1941
Boys fishing in a bayou, Louisiana, 1940
Fourth of July Celebration, South Carolina, 1939
Woman working on a plane, Tennessee, 1943
Female railroad workers on break, Iowa, 1943
If you liked those, there are many, many more. Please view them at the Online Exhibition.
Jan. 6th, 2006 @ 10:13 pm
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| » News: Black Eyed in Biloxi |
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Fresh from the Gulf Coast, DanT's Gridblog has a report on the conditions in lands devastated by Hurricane Katrina four months ago.
“On the coast, folks consider it good luck to eat black-eyed peas for New Year's. [In 2006,] It looks like they're going to need all the good luck they can get.” The part that is truly mind blowing is the scope of the damage. It's not just a town or a city or a stretch of the coast that is damaged. It's the entire Mississippi gulf coast. Miles upon miles upon miles of homes and businesses are gone. Four months after the storm most of the coast still looks like the destruction happened last week. There is simply so much damage that it is not physically possible to get it cleaned up and reassembled in less than a few years. It will easily take the coast five years to reach a state of normality. It will probably take the local economy twice that long to recover.[...]
And yet, life goes on. What other choice is there, really? There was no public New Year's celebration this year. No big surprise. But in the grocery stores that were open, the front displays were stocked with black-eyed peas. (On the coast, folks consider it good luck to eat black-eyed peas for New Year's.) It looks like they're going to need all the good luck they can get. 2005 is over. Let's all hope that 2006 is a better year for everyone.
Jan. 3rd, 2006 @ 08:45 am
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| » News: "Gone With the Water" |
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To parody the title of perhaps the most famous of all Southern novels, Gone With the Wind, the National Geographic Magazine published an extremely relevant article entitled "Gone With the Water" in October 2004. The article described, with an eerie foresight, the worst natural disaster that hadn't yet hit the US:
Gone With the Water
By Joel K. Bourne, Jr.
It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. [...] Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. [...] more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.
The storm hit [...]
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are," Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. "Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it's going to make things much worse."
The chances of such a storm hitting New Orleans in any given year are slight, but the danger is growing. Climatologists predict that powerful storms may occur more frequently this century, while rising sea level from global warming is putting low-lying coasts at greater risk. "It's not if it will happen," says University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. "It's when."
Too bad nobody cared soon enough to do anything about it. That whole "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" aphorism was apparently lost on the local, state, and national protectors of the Gulf Coast, sadly.
Sep. 7th, 2005 @ 10:34 pm
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| » News: Catalogue of Katrina Consequences |
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Just thought I would catalogue some of the more interesting outcomes of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. Here's some headlines, op-eds, and the like:
- Tulane University Cancels Fall Semester
This message was published by the university president:
I was hopeful that recovery would soon progress. However, given the ongoing situation in the city, I am forced to make an extremely difficult decision: Tulane University cannot hold a fall semester on its campus.
It's urgent if you know ANYONE who is a displaced academic student from the catastrophe that they ACT NOW because some of the other universities have time limits that are fast approaching. HURRY!
- The Doomed Cities
National Review correspondent Michael Ledeen compares New Orleans to its European counterpart(s), in a nearly obituary-like manner.
As we mourn New Orleans, let us also celebrate it, as New Orleanians famously celebrate their own dead. [...] Death has always been omnipresent in the consciousness of the city; dancing in defiance of death was the city's trademark, and the spirited music that defined New Orleans for much of the world was played at the happiest occasions, and at the most famous funerals.
Read the whole thing. It's fabulous. Even more so if you've traveled Italy.
- Political Cartoons at Cox & Forkum
This really hit the spot.
- French City of Orleans Helps U.S. Namesake
What heartwarming news of Europeans--the French, no less--reaching out. I am so grateful to hear news like this. I was beginning to think no one cared.
The French city of Orleans is rallying to help its hurricane-hit American namesake.
The city south of Paris plans to donate money raised from ticket sales at local sports matches to help hurricane victims in New Orleans, a statement from City Hall said Friday.
Orleans and its university have also offered to take in 50 students from the University of New Orleans for the school year, the statement said. The mayor's office is working with U.S. authorities to find out what other aid it can provide.
 Does Color Matter?
DanT's GridBlog hits the nail on the head with this political cartoon:
I've been seeing some noise on the 'Net from people saying that they hope New Orleans rots in its watery grave because Louisianna was a red state in the last election. Uh... Excuse me? Anyway, that lovely sentiment inspired me to draw this little political cartoon.
Sep. 3rd, 2005 @ 05:59 pm
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| » News: Having Problems Trying to Solve the Problems |
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Here is an interesting email posted to the National Review regarding trying to get aid to those affected by Hurricane Katrina. For the benefit of those allergic to the NR, I've posted the relevant parts here:
“Nobody in their right mind is going to take loads of gasoline and fuel oil into a city controlled by unfriendly folks carrying automatic weapons.” I run a trade association of tank truck carriers trying to assist in the relief efforts by transporting food and potable water. I'm in regular contact with many of the companies, and here are some "on the ground" facts:
1) Large trucks (80,000 lbs. gross weight) almost always have to use the Interstates. For trucks attempting to come in from outside the area, most of those roads (approaching the disaster area) are either closed or have bridges out. The so-called secondary roads may be somewhat passable, but their bridges (over rivers and streams) are not built to sustain such loads. Simply stated, you can't get there from here.
2) Trucks domicled in those areas (because that's where the companies traditionally serve customers) are still underwater, thus the equipment is not accessible;
3) Nobody in their right mind is going to take loads of gasoline and fuel oil into a city controlled by unfriendly folks carrying automatic weapons. A tank truck loaded with 8,000 gallons of gasoline can produce a very impressive fire;
4) Those local trucking companies can't contact their drivers. There's no power, thus (even) cellular is unavailable, and many of the drivers homes (in places like Kenner, Slidel, Metarie, etc) have been destroyed and families dispersed. I have one member with about 120 drivers and mechanics in that immediate area. To date, management has been able to contact 12. Those in the National Guard have been mobilized and are not available to drive.
5) Pumps -- needed to load the vehicles -- don't work because there's no power;
He doesn't, of course, speculate as to how long it will be before these problems can be worked around. That's the frustrating part about this whole thing: Everyone can identify the problems, but who's coming up with the solutions?
Sep. 3rd, 2005 @ 11:42 am
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| » Thoughts: Katrina Culpability |
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Let's get one thing straight:
Girls don't get raped because their skirts were too short.
Hurricanes don't destroy based on politics.
The "She was asking for it" line is NEVER valid.
And anyone who says otherwise has obviously never been the victim of anything tragic before. Once you've lived through something like this, you won't be so quick to judge or to blame.
So either donate, volunteer, or get the frag out of the way.
Sep. 2nd, 2005 @ 03:32 pm
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| » News: German Media Bias Blows |
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The winds of Hurricane Katrina blew hard, but the German media's bias blows even harder. For this expat, the German reaction to the plight of Katrina victims smacks of more than irreverence, of more than political jests and power plays. It offends to my very core. How do they offend, you might ask? Here's a list, and I'll add to it as I encounter examples:
1. Portraying Americans as "getting what they deserve"
“At a moment when the dead on the Gulf Coast are still being counted, the German minister of the environment could think of nothing better to do than[...] to blame the US itself for the catastrophe.”
Quoted by one of the few American-friendly Spiegel Online correspondents, Claus Christian Malzahn:
Apparently the Americans had it coming: "The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina -- in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures -- can visit on his country." Who wrote this? None other than Jürgen Trittin, Germany's minister of the environment.
At a moment when the dead on the Gulf Coast are still being counted, the German minister of the environment could think of nothing better to do than -- in an essay published Tuesday in the center-left daily Frankfurter Rundschau -- to blame the US itself for the catastrophe. The piece is 493 words long, and not a single one of them is wasted to express any sort of sympathy for the victims of the storm. The worst of it is that Trittin isn't alone with his cold, malicious tenor. The coverage from much of the German media tends in the same direction: If Bush had only listened to Uncle Trittin and signed the Kyoto Protocol, then this never would have happened.
Bullshit. [...]
2. Portraying Americans gun-crazy wackos
Thanks for the nice folks at Davids Medienkritik for pointing this disgusting example of irresponsible journalism over at Stern.de:
"More of the same from the German media: America depicted as martial country of gun-totters whose first response to any problem is violence."
As far as I'm concerned, this is a blatant attempt to play into the Michael Moore crowd more than an attempt to show what's really going on in the US hurricane response. Dispicable.
3. Portraying Americans as thieves
Another ethnist and racist anti-American gem from Stern.de:
I know that some looting is going on, but that's not the majority of the cases. Most people are looking for food and supplies, and most stores are abandoned. People have to go in. It's only in some cases that criminals are trying to take advantage of the situation, but it's hardly portrayed that way in this picture.
4. Portraying the American military as occupying our own towns now
Well, it's been going on long enough in the German media--portraying the US presence in Iraq through only one lens, their interpretation of an unwanted occupation of Iraq. Now that the German people are primed for that interpretation, Stern couldn't resist showing US tanks rolling down Canal street in New Orleans. But it's more than that... I've seen variants of this picture in the US news as well. But the German article accompanying this photo has the unbelieveable headline of "New Orleans wird geplündert", or "New Orleans is being plundered". If you look at this photo with this headline, who are you to assume is doing the plundering? GRR!
Sep. 1st, 2005 @ 05:54 pm
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| » Thoughts: Katrina Keeps Countless Captives |
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Just in case you thought I was exaggerating, here's a post from a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. He and his nurse wife did not evacuate because she wanted to stay to take care of her cancer patients who could not be evacuated.
[Article via Instapundit:]
 "...the problem for New Orleans is that everybody who had their health, had money and had a car, they left. Okay, so we have probably 100,000 people trapped in the city right now, maybe 50,000 or 60,000 people in the Superdome who are there without electricity, without flushing toilets, without food, without water. And they are people who had to walk over there or take a bus, because they didn't have a car to get out.
 "There are people in nursing homes, there's people in these little hospitals all over the place. [...]
"And the hospitals are full. The hospitals are turning people away, because they don't have enough food and water to be able to take care of the people who are in the hospitals. [...]
 "So who's left behind in New Orleans right now, you are talking about tens of thousands of people who are left behind, and those are the sickest, the oldest, poorest, the youngest, the people with disabilities and the like, and the plan was that everybody should leave. Well, you can't leave if you're in a hospital. You can't leave if you're a nurse. You can't leave if you are a patient. You can't leave if you're in a nursing home. You can't leave if you don't have a car. All of these things. They didn't have - there was no plan for that.
"And so, we are talking about somewhere in the neighborhood, I think, of 100,000 people probably in the metropolitan New Orleans area that are still here. And the suggestions from local officials are, you know, in the suburban parish next to us, they announced on the radio -- we have one radio station, have no TV, have no cell phones. Nothing. The only calls we are able to get are the calls that come in. And the suggestion was that people should take a boat over toward the interstate, and then they would pick them up there.
"But, you know, these people don't have a car, people who live in an apartment with their mother, you know, people who are sick. That's why they couldn't leave. They don't have cars. They certainly don't have boats!
"And so, there's a huge humanitarian crisis going on here right now. [...]"
[emphasis added]
Sep. 1st, 2005 @ 04:53 pm
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| » Thoughts: Killer Katrina |
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 I find myself unable to keep from crying each time I hear, see, or read about what has happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It's the powerlessness of man in the face of nature that mortifies me. It's the inability to go to the scene and help that puts the lump in my throat. It's the full understanding of what it means and will mean to have the entirety of the Mississippi Delta evacuated for weeks if not months that starts me sobbing.
 Hurricane Katrina, like the tsunami in southeast Asia in December, was an unstoppable force of nature with the power to destroy manmade structures and to take the lives of those caught off guard. The world press makes light of Katrina's might because "it's a lesson to Americans" and "well, they saw it coming, didn't they?" Yes, weather forecasters knew there was a strong hurricane, but they did not anticipate where it would make landfall, that it would be so strong at landfall, and that the people living there had become so jaded that they didn't believe the warnings. Regular folk and leadership alike saw the hurricane hype as just another late-August attempt at ratings hike. By the time they realized Katrina was a devastating storm that would make landfall at the largest city in a 200-mile radius, it was too late to get everyone out in a coordinated effort. People with money and cars boarded up their manor houses and hit the highways in their SUVs, most definitely not carrying passengers at capacity, heading for their summer homes or to visit friends slightly north.
 What torments me is that those without money and without cars did what? When the Louisiana governor issued a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans (after the flooding, no less), how were these people supposed to get out of town? It's not possible (nor wise) to bike out in 20-foot flooding. Many of New Orleans' poor are stranded in their small 1-story houses, in the attic or on the roofs, waiting for someone with a helicoptor or boat to come by and bring them to safety. Anyone who has seen flooding or who has been in the South during August can appreciate the dire situation in New Orleans these people now face. There is no clean water to drink. Toilets are inaccessible, making the floodwater even more dangerously unclean. And it's hot. Extreme heat. And these people are sitting on their black tar-paper roofs with no shelter, no water, no food, and no relief. And no means of escape. My heart breaks for them.
 Initial reports are that many have drowned. The dead have not been counted yet, of course, because the waters are so high. It'll be a week or so at the earliest before bodies can begin to be counted. A week in sewage-like floodwaters sitting in the hot New Orleans sun. This is no way to die, and certainly no condition you'd want to find bodies in. The job of dealing with the dead will be disgusting, unsanitary, and repellant. I wonder who can be asked to perform these tasks. And who will recognize their strength of will and love of their neighbors to perform such tasks? And moreover, my heart bleeds for the family members who will be asked to identify corpses of their loved ones after the bodies have endured such...alterations.
 What else makes this situation unbearable is that, unlike the tsunami, for example, the hurricane causes weeks and weeks of damage. It only begins when the storm hits shore, but it continues inland pouring forth its gushing rain endlessly until it has crossed the country and washed out to sea again. In New Orleans' case, this is particularly devastating because Katrina has moved up the Mississippi River, and headed northeast over the Ohio River toward the Atlantic. Those of you familiar with North American geography will no doubt need no explanation, but for the others: The Ohio River is one of the largest rivers in the East, and it feeds into the Mississippi River, the largest river in North America. So, as the Ohio area receives the constant downpour of Katrina, the excess waters will fill the Ohio, flow into the Mississippi, which is already overflowing because of its own Katrina rainfall, and the water will exit, you might have guessed, through the Mississippi River Delta, otherwise known as New Orleans. It will be weeks before the flood waters will recede in New Orleans. This means weeks before people can even go in to survey the damage to their property and their neighborhoods. And more weeks before they can begin to clean up. And even more weeks before they can begin to rebuild.
 Finally, what makes this situation even more painful is that my family--well, my husband's family--is--was living in Biloxi, Mississippi, which reports that have reached us here in Germany say was completely destroyed. We have not yet been able to reach his family, but we fear the worst for the property and hope for the best for the people.
 As long as I have known my husband, he has spoken of the terror of Hurricaine Camille (1969). Camille was the most devastating thing to hit the Gulf Coast since anyone can remember. Sadly, according to the Governor of Mississippi, Katrina was even worse than Camille. And, as far as death tolls go, Katrina is estimated to have outdone the infamous San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, taking its place now as the most devastating natural disaster in American history. I feel so helpless from 5000 miles away. I can only give donations, but I urge any of you who are in the area to reach out, help those who need it. Shelter, a meal, the use of your phone to reach a loved one. And at the very least, your prayers.
Sep. 1st, 2005 @ 12:03 pm
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| » Thoughts: Nummus Antiquus |
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Oh, the joys of birthdays! Yes, it's that time again, a day early, actually, and today my darling husband bought me the perfect gift. It's a silver coin from the ancient Roman Empire. It's in an awesome collector's case, too! Here's a picture of it:
 
[Click images for close-ups.]
The inscriptions read:
Obverse: IMP GORDIANVS PIVS FELS AVG
(meaning: Emperor Gordianus Pius, the happy/lucky Augustus)
Reverse: LIBERALITAS AVG III
I am so delighted with it, that I just had to share! :)
UPDATE: As you can see, scans of my coin are now available! Click the images above for larger images.
Aug. 20th, 2005 @ 03:36 pm
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