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September 30, 2005

Arnie Wields the Veto Pen

Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill today to allow gay marriage in California. I applaud him for doing so, even though I am in favor of gay marriage. This goes back to the same issues that the San Francisco mayor faced last year. It's about the rule of law.

Schwarzenegger said he would leave the issue of same-sex marriage to the courts and voters, who approved a ballot measure five years ago defining marriage as between a man and woman.

"I do not believe the legislature can reverse an initiative approved by the people of California," he said in a written statement. "This bill simply adds confusion to a constitutional issue. If the ban of same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, this bill is not necessary. If the ban is constitutional, this bill is ineffective."

This was simple political opportunism by the Democratic legislature, and IMO did no favors to the cause of gay marriage. If they had been serious about it, they would have been organizing an initiative vote to repeal California's existing constitutional ban.

Meanwhile, I'm gearing up to vote no on Texas' proposed constitutional ban in November.

Politics by Dan | Permalink | Comments (3)

Friday 5: Bad Boys... whatcha gonna do?

This week's question comes from me:

Ever play Monopoly? Remember the "Jet out of jail free" cards? You've just been handed five of them, enabling you to commit five crimes and get away scot-free, without the world ever knowing it was you who did them. How will you spend your crime spree, on the mere petty or the felonious? For those of us who feel constrained more by ethics than law, allow yourself to set the ethics aside for the moment and just be bad.

Wow, I must have been in an odd mood when I posed that questions. I must have been channeling for my alter-ego, the Evil Overlord. Alas, I don't think my "crime spree" is going to hold up to his expectations.

  1. Cut in line: I figure one of those cards is good for a full weekend of cutting in line. Movie tickets, grocery checkouts, roller coasters... all mine. But the best of all would be cutting in line in traffic. Drive to the very end of the lane being closed off and cut in to the main traffic right at the front. People have been doing it to me for years, so if I'm getting a day free of ethics, then it's my fucking turn!

  2. Genocide: All those plants I'm allergic to, those bugs that give me nasty bites, that spider that sent me to the hospital... all gone, wiped out in a selective biologic catastrophe. Endangered Species Act be damned.

  3. Nudity: I'll be sponsoring the "Tour the Capitol Building Naked" event this coming Thursday.

  4. Touch the museum exhibit: Actually, I'm applying this one retroactively. Long ago, before it was encased in plastic, before I was old enough to know better, and before I would have been labeled a security risk as a result, I leaned over the velvet rope and touched the Apollo XI command capsule. What made it even cooler was that I was also too young to understand about lunar modules and expendable components, etc., so I thought I was touching something that had actually landed on the moon and returned.

  5. Privacy laws/ethics: You (or some object you own) are placed somewhere that I can see, so I'm taking a picture whether I have your permission or not. Photons want to be free!

Attention Police: Other Friday Felons can be found here.

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Stunning nebula

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is particularly good today.

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Re-release of The Shining

I don't know if you've heard, but they're doing a re-release of Stephen King's The Shining. From the looks of the preview, they've taken a slightly new direction this time.

Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 27, 2005

Closer than I wanted to get

I spent the evening with a most unpleasant little film, Closer. I think it originally attracted me just from the headliners (Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Natalie Portman), and it kept my interest mostly because I wasn't sure how to pronounce it. That is, is it "closer" (a decreased distance) or "clozer" (one who finalizes or closes a business deal)? While they never made it explicit, it was "closer", and I got closer to these characters than I wanted. This is a good film to watch to convince yourself to dump an asshole, though you'll want a shower afterwards.

The film centers on four characters: Dan (Jude Law), Alice (Natalie Portman), Larry (Clive Owens), and Anna (Julia Roberts). In fact, the others characters in the film are trivialities, typically limited to single lines.

Dan is the debatable protagonist in the film in that we focus more on him than the others, but not by much. There's also various attempts to make him the sympathetic character, but he's not someone you'd want to date. He starts off in an uneven relationship with Alice where he holds most of the power, and then he has an on-and-off affair with Anna. Eventually, he unceremoniously dumps Alice, and then goes back to her when things don't work out. He lies and cheats with only a meandering sense of guilt, i.e. "oh, yeah, I'm a bad person for doing this...", and yet he can't forgive anyone who would do the same to him.

Anna is a bit less garbage but not much. She starts in with Dan when she knows he's living with Alice, and she keeps this up while dating Larry. She even marries Larry while secretly sleeping with Dan, and eventually, she leaves Larry to be with him. And then, of course, Dan shows off his tarnished character, so she goes back to Larry.

Larry carries less of the blame for all of this in that he just fell in love with Anna only to be dumped and then reclaimed by her. However, he's an incredibly spiteful man who seems to to be at his best when intentionally inflicting emotional pain on others. He had even tried to sleep with Alice to have revenge on Dan, and even after she refused, he told Dan that he had, in fact, done so, just because he knew it would mess up their relationship. "I was going to lie to you about it," he said, "but I hate you too much for that courtesy."

Alice is the closest thing we get to an innocent party. An ex-stripper/waitress, she serves as the source material for Dan's failed novel, and she gives Dan up for Anna without a fight. Then going back to stripping, she refuses to be Larry's "revenge fuck". She even takes Dan back and prepares to wisk him away on a surprise vacation, but then she grows tired of his endless needling about what had happened with Larry that she lies and says that she did have sex with him. It all goes to hell at that point, and she smartly walks away, leaving Dan behind. But then, in the final irony, we discover that she's been lying to everyone for years about who she really is, even using an assumed name the entire time.

About the only redeeming thing in all this was Natalie Portman's performance. She plays a character much closer to Matilda (Leon/The Professional) than Padme (Lucas' self-love trilogy), enough to most assuredly break her out of any damsel-in-distress typecasting. Plus, she looks damn fine in a thong.

Overall: one flaming bag of dog-shit.

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September 26, 2005

Economic literacy

I ran across this interesting article on economic literacy. It's a blog-conversation between two economics professors, focusing mostly on what economic literacy means and why there is so little of it in the general population as well as some ideas for changing that.

A little out-take:

I break economic literacy into two components -- factual and conceptual. Alas, most well-educated Americans are illiterate in both areas. First, the facts. Whenever I teach a seminar on basic economics, I always survey the audience: What proportion of the American labor force earns the minimum wage or less and what is the standard of living of the average American today relative to 100 years ago?

Even among highly-educated groups such as journalists or congressional staffers, the median answer is depressingly similar -- they think 20% of the American work force earns the minimum wage or less. In fact, the actual number is something less than 3%. Usually a non-trivial portion of each group thinks that our material well-being is lower today than 100 years ago. Their median answer is that we are 50% better off than we were 100 years ago. In fact, the average American is at least five and maybe 30 times better off than we were in the good old days. There's a dramatic range because it's hard to value the opportunity to listen to your iPod while recovering from open heart surgery. But 50% is a very bad answer.

Conceptual literacy means mastering the economic way of thinking -- understanding tradeoffs, market forces, and the full effects of a proposed public policy. What is the essence of the economic way of thinking? A good starting point is Frederic Bastiat's idea that what is seen, the direct effect of a policy, is often just the beginning of its impact. Equally or more important is what is not seen. The world would be a better place if people understood that the intention of a policy (no price gouging after a hurricane, for example) does not capture the full effect on our well-being.

For the record, I had guessed 6% minimum wage and five times gain in standard of living. Also, the links from the article (a few ported over in my quote) are quite interesting reading on their own. The minimum wage link, for example, goes to the authoritative source: the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. It points out a few not-so-suprising things (about half of minimum-wage earners are under 25) and some surprising things (whites are 50% more likely to earn minimum-wage than blacks or hispanics).

Hat tip to Jane Galt at Asymmetrical Information for the link.

Politics by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)

September 24, 2005

Porn star vs. Pop star

Here's an interesting little quiz: Porn Star vs. Pop Star. You're presented with a series of body shots (faces obscured) and have to determine if it's a porn star or a pop star. I don't know what's scarier, that this is actually a reasonable challenge in our world, or that I got 10 out 10.

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September 22, 2005

Hurricane travelling

Some of you already knew this, but I didn't mention it here. I've been out west all week visiting the California offices. If you've been trying to reach me by my traditional email, I haven't been able to access it.

Originally, I was planning on flying back Saturday afternoon/evening, but from the news, I might be coming into an Austin experiening hurricane category 1 winds of 70 mph. Uh... no thanks. So, I'm betting on a plane being faster than a hurricane and flying in Friday afternoon around 3:30.

I have a lot of family in friends in the Houston area. If you're being told to evacuate, then get the hell out of there. If you're not, well, at least stock up on supplies. I know my place is already signed up to take in a certain number of relatives, but I don't know how many or when they're getting there. If you're heading up and needing a place to stay, we might have room, but I don't know. MAW is coordinating all of that. You can reach her via juliarandolph over at LJ.

And speaking of Rita, MAW has been getting the itch for a margarita with every headline, so as soon as I get home, I'm going get my wife all lickered up... er... I mean liquored up... no, wait... I'm just going to stop now.

Family by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 16, 2005

Friday 5: It's the end of the world as we know it...

This week's question comes from Gord:

During my last trip back to North America, I was somewhat surprised about how this whole fuss about terrorism has come to be one of the focal points for North American anxieties of instability and insecurity. Me, I'm not convinced. I wonder if you could enlighten me as to what are your top five picks for the title of "the biggest threats to our future".

In no particular order:

Now, a few things that I'm not worried about as the "biggest threats to our future":

Other Friday Fivers can be found dodging the falling sky here.

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September 15, 2005

New Orleans opportunity

Now, just to be clear, I'm not completely down on New Orleans, its culture, or its residents. I've visited there and had a blast. But I'm pretty sure the culture will rebound. Here's a bit of an article in today's Austin American Statesman:

NEW ORLEANS — Saint Jones just needs lights and women. Then, he says, he could make a killing.

Jones is the manager of Big Daddy's, home of the bottomless/topless table dancers, famous for the swinging legs — mannequin limbs clad in fishnet stockings that kick suggestively out the front window of the Bourbon Street strip club. The sign promises the "prettiest girls in the South" and the luxury of washing the dancer of your choice.

Hurricane Katrina ran off all of Jones' performers. Now, with a city filled with thousands of men, most of them military and civilian workers, Jones sees opportunity. Dancers could make $500 a night easy, he says.

"This is a bigger convention than any convention we've ever had," he says.

There's a client base and assurances of restored electricity within days. But Jones isn't sure how to get 30 to 40 lissome and lovely ladies into the city.
...
Saint Jones is hoping the uniqueness of New Orleans — including its penchant for sin — will not wither. On Wednesday, Jones learned his club was talked about on national TV.

He darts out onto the balcony above Big Daddy's and calls down to friend Terry Fredricks. "Hey, Terry, you know we made the 'Tonight Show?' "

Fredricks' eyes light up.

Jay Leno, Jones says, joked about washing dancers. "The water's kind of dirty," he quoted the comedian, "so they might give you a moist towelette to wash her down with."

"See," he says later, "everyone knows the swinging legs."

Hmmm, now that sounds like some good clean fun. ;)

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Louisiana/New Orleans corruption... so what?

Marvin pointed me towards an article on the poor economic planning of New Orleans and how that left many of its citizens less able to cope with Katrina.

But it also contained the following:

That the governments of New Orleans and Louisiana... are corrupt and ineffective is of course widely recognized.

I've seen this mentioned many other places, and it's always stated so blandly. "Everyone knows that Louisiana and New Orleans have corrupt governments," just like we would say, "Everyone knows that Texas has hot summers." Not only was this not a secret, but it was not really seen as that big of a deal.

Shouldn't we be taking a closer look at this? I'm only marginally interested in how this corruption affected the Katrina reaction (in short, badly). Rather, what I'm really interested in is how the local residents and we as a nation would let such openly acknowledged corruption fester for so long. I mean, this wasn't just partisan rankling that this or that President should be in jail for policy or perjury. No, this was "Hey, the governor just appointed a mobster to the state gaming commission," and "Speeding tickets are $100, though a discount of 50% is available if paid to the officer directly... wink, wink."

And we all shrugged and said, "Well, yeah, but it's the Big Easy."

Why?

In other parts of the country, we're indicting government officials and their friends all the time. And this is for relatively small stuff like campaign finance minutia and tax irregularities. Yes, those are still illegal, but they fall short of things like bribery and obsruction of justice. Hell, in some areas, this kind of political scalp-hunting is replacing football as the main spectator sport. But not Louisiana. Again, why?

I don't really have the answer, but I will say this. I would hope that when a state or local government becomes incapable of policing its own corruption, the next level up would step in and take action. In this case, that would mean the federal government. The problem is that federalism (a good thing, in general) makes is hard for the federal government to come in and enforce state laws, and that's where the bulk of criminal law lies. But maybe in all of this post-Katrina political upheaval taking us all over the landscape from Presidential vacations to the war in Iraq, there might be a little mindshare for giving federal law enforcement the leeway to clean up corrupt state and local governments.

Politics by Dan | Permalink | Comments (3)

September 13, 2005

No, honey, what I meant was...

beaver.jpg

(Not apropos of anything... just that I hadn't posted any silliness lately.)

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September 11, 2005

Katrina fundraiser

This guys is going to send a buck to the Red Cross for every comment he gets this week. Go ahead and leave a comment. It's for two good causes: Katrina relief and exponential math education.

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September 10, 2005

European Myths about Katrina

Just referring you to an interesting rant over at Asymmetric Information busting some European smugness over how they never would have suffered the Katrina after-affects that we did.

One snippet:

The area that was devastated by the hurricane is approximately the size of Great Britain. Tell me again how the EU would have gotten everything under control in a matter of hours had 90% of England, Scotland, and Wales been flattened by an Atlantic storm that also knocked out electricity to Ireland and France.

and

Of course, Europeans have no way of knowing how they'd do in such a disaster, because they have no storms like Katrina, no earthquakes like Northridge, no rivers like the Mississippi . . . but somehow that doesn't seem to stop some of them from being sure that the ability of their police to stop 40 or so football yobs from rioting translates perfectly into an ability to handle the displacement of 500,000 people when even the police have no water, food, gas for their cars or power for their radios.

It's not great political/economic analysis, but it's a good rant.

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September 09, 2005

Fewer Katrina Dead than Feared?

FYI, I just got this off the Reuters feed:

In New Orleans, hopes rose that the number of dead might not be as high as initially predicted. Rescuers were only now beginning a methodical house-by-house search of the city for victims' bodies.

Thousands had been feared trapped in the poor, mainly black blue-collar neighborhoods, where many did not have the means to evacuate ahead of the August 29 storm, when most better-off residents fled.

"There's some encouragement in the initial sweeps. ... The numbers (of dead) so far are relatively minor as compared with the dire predictions of 10,000," Col. Terry Ebbert, director of Homeland Security for the city of New Orleans said at a news conference with other city officials.

They're not giving a number for this lower estimate, but I still think this qualifies as good news. In some corners, I'd been hearing estimates as high as 35,000.

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Friday 5: Dating in the Parallel Universe

Today’s question comes from Gord:

Please tell us about five people you liked, or who liked you, but with whom you never became involved. Explain why not.

I'm guessing Gord's never been married, because a lot of those end with "because I was married", but I'll try to go with the more interesting ones here.

  1. Her name was Anne-Marie, a fine Scottish lass with lusciously long brown hair. We met via school, back when I was still taking classes, and we had a rocky almost-relationship over the course of several years. I think the biggest road block was that I wasn’t really in touch with my emotions back then, and I guess I had a hard time expressing my feelings. I always thought she would have been receptive, but I never really gave her the chance. Eventually, we grew apart and moved on to other things, but I don’t think I really ended in it in my own mind until I was thirteen.

  2. Her name was Jalene, and we met in class my sophomore year of high school. We were very good friends over the next four years, confiding just about everything in one another. In the end, it was just bad timing. When she was available, I was hunting after someone else (a friend of hers, actually), and when I wasn’t, she was dating someone else again. Oddly enough, the last I heard of her was about ten years after I’d last seen her, and apparently she was seriously dating a guy who had been a very good friend of mine back when she and I were also good friends. But it was just two different circles of friendship that did not intersect at all.

  3. Her name was Judy. A good number of you will remember Judy, and a good number of you also liked Judy. It was almost a feeding frenzy of Judy. In retrospect, I feel a little badly for her, because as a freshman in college, it was probably a little too much for her to deal with, especially the fallout. She was going to end up disappointing and hurting all but one, and she had to come to grips with that. All in all, I got off very light in the heartache department, but mostly because I chose not to get into the frenzy.

  4. Her name was Jolee. She worked for me, not as a direct report, but I was on the board of directors, and she was an employee. She was smart, beautiful, funny, and overwhelmingly competent. I used to think of her like a “fire and forget” missile, in that you could direct her at a problem and that was the last time you needed to think about that problem. It never went anywhere for a long list of reasons, including but not limited to: I was married; she wasn’t attracted to me; she was in a long-term relationship; there was that whole “don’t date in the workplace” thing; and… we probably didn’t really have that many common interests. But she’s still high on my list of people to get stuck in a foxhole with.

  5. Her name was Claudia. She was an actress, and a model, and totally hot. I wasn’t so sure about getting into that whole bisexual BDSM scene, but I’d hoped to broaden my horizons. In the end, it was the little things that doomed our relationship, stuff like she had no idea who I was, or the fact that I’d never even met her, or maybe that there were ten thousand other fan-boys (and fan-girls) ahead of me in line, not even counting the ones who’d already been issued their restraining orders. But if we could have just gotten past that stuff, I think it could have worked.

Some others that weren't listed here include some of MAW's friends, lots of ladies at work, some astonishingly attractive cousins, ... oh yeah, and then there was my stalker, but that's another story.

Other Friday Fiver's can be found perusing the Parallel Universe Personal's here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (3)

Interesting Katrina reading

I've been doing a bit of research into some of the Katrina stories, looking for some quote of Bush saying "Well, it's just black people -- let them drown." No luck on that so far.

But I did find more information on the Louisiana governor preventing both the Red Cross and FEMA from getting into New Orleans to do their jobs. Read the transcript, though I should warn you that it's FOX news. Many in the tinfoil-hat brigade consider the network to be a PR arm of the White House, but unless they're totally making up facts here, it paints a very bad picture of the Louisiana governor's judgement.

Some key exerpts below the fold.

Garrett: ... And FEMA, at least initially, in the minds of some, did not respond enough.

Hume: The words seamless don't exactly spring to mind. But look, they are down there, The Red Cross, for example, is there.

Garrett: Standing by, ready.

Hume: Standing by, ready. Why didn't FEMA send The Red Cross into New Orleans when we had all of the people there on that bridge overpass and elsewhere. Why not?

Garrett: First of all, no jurisdiction. FEMA works with The Red Cross, The Salvation Army and other organizations but it has no control to order them to go one place or the other. Secondarily, The Red Cross was ready. I got off the phone with one of their officials. They had a vanguard of trucks with water, food, hygiene equipment, all sorts of things ready to go where? To the Superdome and convention center. Why weren't they there? The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security told them they could not go.

Hume: This is isn't the Louisiana branch of the federal Homeland Security? This is --

Garrett: The state's own agency devoted to the state's homeland security. They told them you cannot go there. Why? The Red Cross tells me that state agency in Louisiana said, look, we do not want to create a magnet for more people to come to the Superdome or convention center, we want to get them out. So at the same time local officials were screaming where is the food, where is the water? The Red Cross was standing by ready, the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security said you can't go.

The Red Cross backs this up with their FAQ:

  • Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
  • The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

Back to the transcript, when discussing why FEMA didn't step in earlier to take control of everything:

Garrett: [The governor] had a choice, as I am told. She could have taken up the offer from FEMA to federalize all of the activities in Louisiana, meaning that FEMA would be in control of everything. Not only law enforcement, but everything else. She declined to give them that authority. So essentially FEMA was trapped between two bureaucracies. One the Department Of Homeland Security where many of its decisions have to be reviewed and in some cases approved, and a recalcitrant state bureaucracy that wasn't going to give them the authority they needed to make things happen, among them, the National Guard.

So, FEMA didn't do enough. Going back to my earlier questions, was FEMA allowed to do more? Apparently not.

Let me know if you run across that quote of Bush offering to only rescue the white folks, ok?

[Note: for those of you unable to discern sarcasm, that last bit was sarcasm. Yes, things were handled poorly, and yes, most residents of New Orleans are black, but if you have not yet learned that correlation does not equal causation, then you shouldn't be out there claiming to make a logical argument. Furthermore, I'm not trying lay 100% of the blame on Lousisiana and New Orleans officials, but after sitting by for a week watching the President be slandered as a murdering racist, I thought I should speak up a bit.]

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September 08, 2005

Katrina questions

While many of my fellow bloggers have been on a week-long tear of how Bush purposefully destroyed the city of New Orleans because he purportedly hates blacks (Note: someone had better warn Condi Rice!), I've remained silent. However, I do have a few questions about the handling of this emergency:

  1. Was the New Orleans evacuation plan followed? The city of New Orleans had an evacuation plan. It was even posted on their website. It was supposed to be able to get everyone out, including those without transportation. Did they just not use it, or did someone in the city screw up in its implementation?

  2. When was the Louisiana National Guard called up, and what were its orders? Specifically, I'd like to know if the Louisiana governor ordered the national guard to assist in the New Orleans evacuation, and if so, when? We may not get an answer on that anytime soon. I've heard unconfirmed reports that the governor has issued a gag order to the Louisiana Guard not to answer press questions on that subject. Sooner or later, though, some of them are going to get asked under oath, and we'll find out.

  3. Why did the strengthened levees fail? While we've all been endlessly badgered about how "Bush cut the levee funding!!!", it seems that many of the levees had already had the scheduled work completed. At least one of the levees that failed had already had this work done. Why did it still fail? I think I already know the answer to this, and the answer is that the improved levees were designed to hold up to a Category 3 hurricane, not a strong Category 4, bordering on Category 5.

  4. Given that Category 4 and Category 5 hurricanes occur every one to two years in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, why was this 15-year levee project only designed for Category 3 hurricanes? Was this a serious effort to protect the city, or just a Congressional pork project to send money back to the home district? It would seem that this money was largely a waste, given that it failed. How much more would have it cost to improve the levees to withstand a Category 5 hurricane? Was this even seriously debated?

  5. Why weren’t the local government buses used to evacuate those who could not get out on their own? I’ve read that the city and school buses could have held 15,000 per trip. I noticed that one lane of the seaward-bound side of the highways was being reserved for emergency vehicles heading out during the evacuation, i.e. they were driving on the wrong side of the highway since hardly anyone was driving back in. Those buses could have been granted the status of those emergency vehicles and made multiple trips out to Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and Houston. In the two days warning they had, how many trips could they have made this way? How many stranded people could they have gotten out? 30,000? 60,000? Why were most of the buses left in place instead? They sat in New Orleans parking lots, many flooded, even as the mayor called on the national private buslines (Greyhound/etc.) to come help with the post-flooding evacuation.

  6. As I understand it, Bush declared a federal state of emergency before the hurricane hit. This put a lot of resources at the disposal of local and state officials whose job it is to coordinate the efforts. What requests did they make? What, if any, requests went unfulfilled?

  7. Where was the Red Cross in all of this? This is an organization with an excellent history of being quick to the scene of the disaster, both domestically (think of Florida hurricanes and Mississippi flooding) and internationally. Why were they so slow to get supplies into the city of New Orleans this time? Why was there so little food and water at the Superdome and the convention center? I’ve heard unconfirmed reports that the Red Cross had trucks upon trucks ready to roll in with food and water, but that the Louisiana governor’s office ordered that they not be allowed into the city since the governor didn’t want to turn those sites into attractive havens that would keep people from leaving the city. The governor’s office is silent, but this report came second hand from the Red Cross.

  8. For those clamoring at the notion that the feds should have seen the poor local coordination coming and just federalized the operation at the first sign of Katrina’s strength and rolled in with troops and martial law, was it legal for the federal agencies, FEMA in particular, to have usurped local control? Could they have done more earlier without breaking the law?

  9. And finally, where is Rudy Giuliani? I don’t literally mean Rudy, but where is the local figure rising up to be the The Man? (Withhold the sexism complaints. You know exactly what I mean by this.) Yes, New Orleans got hit far worse than New York, but all I’m hearing is “Bush didn’t help us enough.” Within days, the feds had unleashed a huge some of money, money that is apparently being spent at the heady clip of $1 billion per day. I don’t see a local official stepping up to the plate to be in charge and make sure things happen.

I’d like some of those answers, and we all should. But then, it’s much easier to cast the blame on someone you already hate.

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September 05, 2005

Orfunner

I'm back from my weekend at Orfunner. It was a much more laid back event than Flipside and in some ways more enjoyable, though much less of a spectacle. I took more pictures this time, but I'm not sure how well they turned out yet.

Very, very tired.

More later.

Oh, and my Mid-life Crisis Countdown is now under two years. Woohoo!

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September 01, 2005

Calendar Girl (September)

Here's a render I prepared in advance for today, and so far it's been well received over at my Renderosity gallery. It's the second in a series of "Calendar Girls", and if it works out, I might try to put together enough to make an actual calendar out of them.

Alas, it is not work-safe.

sept_thumb.jpg
(click for full image)

I also have it in 1600x1200 if anyone's interested.

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