Fish Fear Me

By The Numbers

• 3
• 2,785
• $761.69

I bet you know what they mean.

Five Years On

My friend Rob is looking back to when he and his wife rode out Katrina from their home about 50 miles north of New Orleans. He has a series of posts over at his blog, the last one from yesterday ending with the ominous(to me at least):

We expect services to be restored before we run out of anything. They always are.

I went to bed that Monday night five years ago thinking that New Orleans had managed to dodge the bullet. In reality, the city was flooding and a desperate effort was already underway to rescue people.  It wasn't until Tuesday morning that that ugly truth became known to me.

Within a few days the word got out that Rob and family were all okay. The scenes from New Orleans proper were far less encouraging. The next week gave us enormous courage and effort to rescue people, and shameful displays of hysteria from much of the media and shameful political attacks as people were still being cut out of the attics and plucked off of rooftops.

The effects of those vile accusations linger today. To the extent that some people are indifferent to the fate of New Orleans, I think a significant amount of that is due to the accusations of racism and sabotage that were leveled in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. Some people on the receiving end of that demagoguery have now turned away from New Orleans out of disgust. I can't say I blame them. In fact, if I didn't know Rob I might be among them.

Here are two posts that may debunk a few myths for you:

Debunking the Myths of Hurricane Katrina: Special Report

Inside (and outside) the Superdome: What went right

An editorial from a couple of weeks ago over at Nola.com says that a majority of people in New Orleans are upbeat about the recovery after five years. I hope that's true. I also hope that the politics didn't completely obscure the lessons to be learned from one of the largest natural disasters in US history. I'm less sure about that last one.

Things That Make You Go "Huh", cont.

I'm pretty sure that this has vaulted to #1 on the list of Reasons You Never Assume Anything:

GRIFFIN: Is there any music that you particularly like? Are you a classical music guy? Are you a pop, are you a Taylor Swift guy?

PETRAEUS: No, no. I’m an Enya guy. I don’t know if Enya’s still –

Nope, I definitely didn't see that one coming.

Charles Johnson Nails It

Man, that Charles Johnson is one smart cookie. Look how dead on he was with this prediction:

I’m sure this has absolutely nothing to do with the non-stop anti-Muslim hate speech pouring out of Fox News, right wing websites, talk radio and shrieking harpy Pamela Geller: Drunken man urinates on mosque floor.

None other than fellow traveler Josh Marshall provides the confirmation:

Later Update: NYPD now confirming to TPM that they are not treating this as a bias case. 

Awesome, Charles. Totally awesome.

...

What's that? Your sarcasm meter is off the scale? You think Johnson was being sarcastic.

Nah, that can't be. Charles Johnson would never do something as nasty and vile as casually hurling baseless accusations against someone. Never, ever, not in a million years.

What's that? Your sarcasm meter is going crazy again?

You know, you should get that thing checked.

Stupid, Crazy, or Brilliant?

I don't know what to make of this:

Nelson dreams, and big. "The Marquette itself will be 180 condos on a 600 foot by 108 foot vessel; it'll be 4 barges," he explained. The Marquette he's floating is a floating city that would dock at ports in the cities of the Upper Midwest in June, July, and August. Residents will live in cities on the waterways around the gulf coast from December through March. They'll stay in places like St. Louis and Memphis and Louisville in between.

I'm skeptical about the engineering and the practical comfort factor of living on and getting to and from such a contraption and where it happens to be any given week. That said though, I kind of love the idea. I've thought about doing a Mississippi riverboat vacation and to have a riverboat condo, well that would be that cool times about 100. Assuming I had the money and lifestyle to enable that.

Yeah, there goes that "Poof!" noise again.

I wish the guy well and hope it works out. You never know what options you might have a few years down the road, and if the engineering proves solid and the bugs shake out well a few years down the road, who knows?

Coming Tuesday

The niece and nephew arrive from New York tomorrow. Tuesday will be State Fair Day, and that means(cue the theme from Jaws):

Food on a stick!

Big Fat Bacon on a stick is a nobrainer, but some of the more exotic ones that I may have to hunt down include teriyaki ostrich on a stick, camel on a stick, and, huh, porcupine meatballs on a stick? Is it just me or does that last one sound a bit road-killish?

I think I'll try to stick with proteins this year and avoid the sweets. I've put on 22 lbs. since I quit smoking and I've promised myself that I'm not going to go over 180, which gives me three more pounds to work with. Exercise has kept me reasonably toned, but that's it. Besides, my doctor is likely to freak on me as it is, even though 180 is probably a good and healthy weight for me. That's going to be my story and I'm sticking to it.

After Much Study...

...and careful consideration, I've become highly annoyed with pretty much everyone involved in the CordobaHousePark51mosquecommunitycenter issue.

That is all.

Good Grief

You know the recession is getting bad when even the moon shrinks:

NASA scientists studying images sent back to Earth from a spacecraft orbiting the moon have found curving lines of small cliffs on the surface that they say were thrust up as the moon's sizzling hot interior cooled and shrank the surface over the past billion years.

"This is the first evidence that the moon has been shrinking, and may still be shrinking," Michael Wargo, NASA's chief lunar scientist, said during a press briefing Thursday. But it's not enough shrinkage to notice from Earth.

I blame George Bush.

Say It Ain't So

Google's Eric Schmidt provides the creep out line of the day:

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Even creepier is the notion that he may be right.

From The Dept. Of I'd Tell You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You

This is pretty forehead smack-worthy:

For a book that I am writing, I am interested in meeting/interviewing people who cache weapons. To get a sense of who I am and where I come from, look at www.danbaum.com, and also see the August issue of Harper's magazine, where I wrote a piece about concealed carry. If you're interested in talking to me, please email [email protected]. Thank you.

Via Instapundit, who adds:

If you’re hiding them, why would you talk about it? Especially to someone from Harper’s?

Yeah, that's an "Indeed" if I've ever seen one. Check out some of the replies at the first link. There are at least a half a dozen guffaws on the first page alone.

My friends, when I write about highly intelligent idiots, aka vast swathes of our current intellectual elites, think of folks like Mr. Baum.