Mini, Old San Juan

How cool is this: I took the above photo of a Mini outside of Nono's in Old San Juan and it's is now being used for the home page of the Atlanta Mini site. Thanks Jon!

Goovite?!

Now, I have to confess, I haven't used Goovite properly yet. I haven't run a heuristic analysis on it. Haven't conducted any usability testing on it. But I do have to say that just the fact that it's not smothered in advertising and other distractions like its predecessor and competition prompts me to give props to wunder[nicht so]kind Mark Hurst for his new online invite site.

Now, I know Mark's newsletter is Good Experience and his conference is Gel, but Goovite? Hoping to sell to someone, Mark? The interface is impeccably clean, simple, and usable - birds of a feather?

(BTW: for those who don't know who is: Mark is one of the smartest, most approachable of the cyberati out there.)

Update 09/14: Mark emails to say thanks for the link and "as for the name, 'goo' - i've been naming companies and products with 'goo' (or 'gel') in their names longer than any other company i can think of..." Sure, Mark, sure. ;)

Louisiana 1927

You've probably heard this song a few times by now--in the background of news stories, covered by Aaron Neville, I understand, for one of the benefits (hope they release an album). Not too late to post the lyrics here, I think. When he recorded it back in 1974, Randy Newman may never have guessed his hauntingly beautiful song, originally a sad look back, would also be a sobering glimpse into the future.

Lousiana 1927
Randy Newman

What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through cleard down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

CHORUS
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has
done
To this poor crackers land."

CHORUS

You can also watch the Shelter from the Storm benefit concert, which opens with Newman singing the song. It's followed by an extraordinary verion of "One," in which U2 is joined by Mary J. Blige. And here's a tender acoustic version of the song recorded by Jay Johnson. I picked up the LP version of Newman's original a couple of years ago at a record shop. Records come cheap these days, so it's great having a record player.

My thoughts remain with all the people down in Louisiana.

Remember

The 2004 memorial of the September 11 attacks from Wikipedia

Saving Chris's Smile

For those following my brother's ordeal: finally, some really good news.

Chilling

It only gets worse: Police from neighboring cities definitely prevented people from leaving New Orleans. Why?

"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged." ...

[According to an eyewitness account from a pair of San Francisco paramedics who tried to leave the city], As they made their way to the bridge in order to leave the city "armed Gretna sheriffs (sic) formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads."

Members of the group nonetheless approached the police lines, and "questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge ... They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.

I also heard this story described by someone who experienced it on This American Life yesterday. Police shot at a group of tourists trying to cross the bridge to leave New Orleans.

I agree with Kevin Drum: "Stuff like this makes me fear for the future of the human race."

We don't need attacks by foreign terrorists to destroy our society from the inside.

Swimming in Light

Last Wednesday night, mid-way through my vacation, I had the pleasure of kayaking and swimming in a bioluminescent bay in Vieques, Puerto Rico. It was a truly extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime experience.

After sunset, we drove to to Mosquito Bay (Puerto Mosquito), just east of the diminutive southern town of Esperanza on the island. We walked out into some very swampy muddy water, then got onto sit-on-top kayaks. We took off into the middle of the dark, muggy bay. We'd chosen a good night for what we were to experience, it turned out, since there was no moon above us, only the lights of a nearby village to the east.

As you get closer to the center of the bay, you suddenly begin to notice that your paddle seems to leave--is that just foam in the water? No, it seems to be light trailing from your paddle through the otherwise murky water. Then you look down at the water puddling in your kayak and suddenly it seems alive with twinkling light.

Once deep out into the bay (the water was still only about seven feet deep) we tied our kayaks to the guide's, then we all fell into the warm receptive water. Though it was dark, the water still felt like bathwater - something like 90 degrees or greater - and whenever you moved you left glowing trails in the water caused by the tens of thousands of excited dinoflagellates per gallon of water (as I recall, normally there are only a couple dozen per gallon). These tiny ancient creatures light up by combining two chemicals in much the same way that fireflies do, only they're many times smaller and you really wouldn't see them with the naked eye if they didn't glow.

They only glow six or seven times a night, so you swim around to excite them in different areas of the bay. If you raise your hands from the water, it looks like a stream of tiny stars is falling down your arms, blinking brightly, then flickering out. The water is so salty it makes floating easier, so if you lie on your back, you can look up and see the Milky Way while swaddled in this warm luminescent water. It feels like you could do this for hours.

Eventually, we all did clamber back onto our kayaks and we took the long way back to where we began by hugging the edge of the bay. The idea was to pass through an area where we'd see numerous flying fish, though that night I only saw a few and a others didn't see any at all.

It's said that when Columbus encountered the bay, he thought it possessed with spirits, so he had his men block of the bay by filling its mouth with rocks. Ironically, this only served to increase the effect as the dinoflagellates were then able to reproduce more freely, uninterrupted and in even warmer water.

A truly, truly lovely, peaceful experience. I only wish I'd gone with a friend instead of going alone, so I could've shared the experience.

Thanks to the gregarious folks at Blue Caribe Kayaking in Vieques for organizing this incredible nocturnal adventure.

Jon Stewart, Professor of Journalism

Another guy who's out there getting it done (in his own way), Jon Stewart receives this credit from New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen:

In Katrina, CNN "learned from Jon Stewart how to use simple juxtaposition to make a point. Clip of a federal official explaining how no one anticipated the strength of the storm. Clip from the Weather Channel proving plenty of people did."

Yep, sounds like typical Daily Show material to me. Question is, why is it these journos have to take their cues from Comedy Central anyway? What are our journalism schools doing? Training their graduates in Network Hair Combing 101 and Selecting Khakis for Overseas Assignments?

(Via the ever-irrevent Bartcop whose 20th-century era site *still* lacks permalinks.)

Another One For the WTF Column

Some folks are still insisting that the federal government responded to Katrina in a timely and appropriate manner, but to add yet another entry to the WTF column, check this out: Canadian search-and-rescue team arrived in Louisiana *five days* before the U.S. military did.

(Via Andy Sullivan.)

Al Gore: Out There Getting It Done

Did you hear the story about Gore chartering a private jet, flying to New orleans and personally assisting in the evacuation of 140 people?

No?

That's because he refused to take credit for it. Oh, for a thousand more politicians with that sort of integrity.

Man, I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to November 2000 and stuff a few Florida ballot boxes.

Update: Saheli directs us to this TPM Cafe account of the story and this NYT article mentions the flight in passing.

Some Loot, Others Forage

As the usual, The Onion proves brilliantly incisive, even during a time of national tragedy. From White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters:

Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing African­Americans "looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses."

(Via Andy Sullivan.)

Communicate to Combat Hate

Extraordinary. I actually find myself agreeing with Karen Hughes:

As a communicator, first of all, you have to communicate your message through mediums to which people listen. So I think that we clearly need to be more effective about how we communicate on Al Jazeera.

What do you know. The administration is actually buying into the idea that communicating with folks you disagree with might somehow be beneficial.

The superlative documentary Control Room shows how the United States could have benefited greatly from knowing how to work with (which is not the same as saying "aligning with") instead of constantly vilifying Al Jazeera (as Rumsfeld in particular is so adept at doing). In subsequent interviews on NPR, I remember one of that documentary's main characters Lt. Josh Rushing confirmed that the military could've used Al Jazeera much more effectively, and that he himself was sent to Iraq with little more knowledge of the place than what he learned in Iraq for Dummies on the flight over. His role was to be Central Commands military liaison to Al-Jazeera.

As Rushing told NPR

The fodder that feeds the fires of 9/11 is the Arab perspective. There's no greater shaper that we have access to than Al-Jazeera. It's too important to ignore.

Glad someone's finally listening.

(Via Kevin Drum and Abu Aardvark.)

ID ≠ Science

In case anyone missed this: Bush's own science advisor concedes that Intelligent Design is bunk or "not a scientific concept" in his own words.

Pity Bush doesn't understand this himself.

Evolution is not "just" a theory. A theory is a big deal: theories can be subjected to obervable, repeatable testing. ID cannot. Therefore, ID ain't even a theory. But the fact that evolution qualifies as a theory (buttressed by facts) is incredibly significant and its importance shouldn't be undermined because some wish to surrepticiously mix religion into science.

Look at it this way and the whole topic is really the stuff of Science 101. To agree to consider ID as science is to breech the scientific method. Clear and simple.

Cronyism Kills

That headline seem a bit harsh? Time will tell, I guess, but every detail coming out about FEMA Director Michael Brown only seems to confirm it. His apparent failures at the International Arabian Horse Association. His comprehensive lack of qualifications to handle disaster relief. His confession that FEMA apparently didn't know about thousands of people languishing at the New Orleans Convention center, though the rest of us watching telly did. His getting hired in the first place by his former-college roommate/boss.

Believe it or not, Brown's direct reports may be less qualified than he is. Basically, Bush appointed an unqualified buddy to head FEMA, who replaced himself with another unqualified buddy (Brown), who works with a couple of similarly unqualified Bush campaign strategists, who all run FEMA together. Comforting, huh?

Here's a novel idea: how about hiring a few folks to work at the top of FEMA who have some disaster-recovery experience squirreled away somewhere in their résumés?

Folks have called upon President Bush to fire a litany of different people over the course of his administration. None, however, so far as I can tell, come with fewer qualifications or have stood so crippled before a greater catastrophe. Time for Brown to go--if he hasn't been quietly fired or demoted already. Even the NRO's Rich Lowry is decrying Brown's incompetence.

Another thought: if FEMA is riddled with this sort of cronyism, what of our other civil servants nestled within the Office of Homeland Security? Shudder to think.

Small government conservatives are always griping that government should be downsized, limited to protecting the people, paving the roads, etc. Now's their chance to put their money where their mouth is. They all need to join in a bi-partisan chorus to demand that these agencies be repopulated with qualified individuals. As Jerry Doyle, a Las Vegas talk show host just said on the Beeb's World Today, "When governments don't do what governments are supposed to do, people die." So what good is any government that's riddled with unqualified cronies? Those sort of hiring practices have brought down some mighty big companies. What could they do to the country? Compound a natural tragedy into a greater disaster, adding another jagged scar to the national psyche, perhaps equal in magnitude to that of 9/11? Seems to be where we're headed.

The suffering of the poor. The survival of the richest. The self-congratulatory cronies slapping each other on the back. What rich material for Dickens were he here to rail against it all.

Some other items I've come across:

>As usual Pat Robertson flaunts his tin ear. So does Barbara Bush. (She reminds me of Prince Philip and his famous, remarkably out-of-touch utterances, some of which are nonethless admittedly hilarious in a Basil Fawlty oh-my-god-I-can't believe-he-just-said-that sort of way.)
>Another loopy preacher blames Katrina on America's decadence: gay marriage, sex with horses, etc.
>Extraordinary video of Fox's Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith shouting down a typically arrogant, remote and cold-hearted Sean Hannity. Rivera begins weeping and holds up a baby in a plea to avoid partisanship. It's pure Rivera theater on the one hand; on the other, he seems entirely genuine.
>Crooks and Liars also has this unprecedented and compelling five-minute rant/editorial by Keith Olbermann from MSNBC.
>On a more positive note, here's a great NYT article on how London, Amsterdam and Venice have re-architected their cities, using high-tech devices to combat flooding.

Adios, Puerto Rico

I'm back from lovely Puerto Rico, the Island of Enchantment, with lots of pictures to share. I'll post some more to Flickr, once I settle back in. The wonderful mural above was simply painted onto a garage door along one of the uppermost streets of Old San Juan. I thought it'd make a pretty cool postcard.