← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · JoseyWales
Thread ID: 20420 | Posts: 24 | Started: 2005-09-27
2005-09-27 00:14 | User Profile
Just before the hurricane rita hit, the news was reporting that much of the city had been pumped dry. when rita hit, it flooded again and the pumping has to start all over again. weather experts are commenting that we have entered a new period of hurricane activity that may last for a decade or more. sounds expensive to me...
2005-09-27 01:50 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]Just before the hurricane rita hit, the news was reporting that much of the city had been pumped dry. when rita hit, it flooded again and the pumping has to start all over again. weather experts are commenting that we have entered a new period of hurricane activity that may last for a decade or more. sounds expensive to me...[/QUOTE]
Perhaps you should invent proper engineers.
I understand they do not like it.
They want to be writers, actors, journalists, psychologists, artists, astronaunts and play guitars - and so on.
Mentzer
2005-09-27 02:05 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Mentzer]Perhaps you should invent proper engineers.
I understand they do not like it.
They want to be writers, actors, journalists, psychologists, artists, astronaunts and [B]play guitars[/B] - and so on.
Mentzer[/QUOTE]Hey, why shouldn't they want to play guitar? Then they can become the Prez, a-pickin and a-grinnin while the Big Easy washes in gators. :biggrin:
2005-09-27 02:08 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]Just before the hurricane rita hit, the news was reporting that much of the city had been pumped dry. when rita hit, it flooded again and the pumping has to start all over again. weather experts are commenting that we have entered a new period of hurricane activity that may last for a decade or more. sounds expensive to me...[/QUOTE]Yeah, I just saw something on the weather channel, they say there's a article in USA Today about it.
Part of the problem is that the gov't keeps encouraging people to build in flood plains. And rebuild.
Of course, if you don't rebuild N.O.., you're going to have to resettle those guys somewhere else.:afro:
NIMBY (Not in my backyard!)
Actually I think what they should really do is just put those people on houseboats in Lake Pontchatran, like they do in China. Then if they start rioting again, we could just tow em all out to sea, (or somewhere else:lol:)
2005-09-27 06:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]Just before the hurricane rita hit, the news was reporting that much of the city had been pumped dry. when rita hit, it flooded again and the pumping has to start all over again. weather experts are commenting that we have entered a new period of hurricane activity that may last for a decade or more. sounds expensive to me...[/QUOTE]
Don't worry. With good, conservative leaders like President Bush, no amount of money is too much to throw at a city to help people live below sea-level along the path of hurricanes. Isn't this what conservative values are all about, dumping great sums of money down the toilet to encourage people to live irrepsonsibly?
2005-09-28 01:25 | User Profile
You're a little mixed up Hacker. You're talking about the hallmark of liberalism, spend on every stupid thing you can lie about and let the taxpayers pay for it, making the assumption of course the people are all too dumb to figure it out anyway. And by the way, Bush ain't no Conservative. He's turning out to be a big zero.
2005-09-28 01:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=DakotaBlue]And by the way, Bush ain't no Conservative. He's turning out to be a big zero.[/QUOTE] Yeh. And we're just now finding this out. :rolleyes:
In the 2000 campaign, the Boy King promised to spend more money on edumacation and agriculture. That's when he lost my vote.
2005-09-28 01:51 | User Profile
I really don't like saying this but the kind of profligate spending that's going to go on to help rebuild New Orleans has its origins in the millions maybe billions paid out to the families of 9-11 victims. It was a dangerous precedent and one that won't easily be stopped. Like social security, once the spigot is opened no politican will have the guts to denounce it.
So how much is enough? And when should the federal govt. help and when shouldn't it? What exactly is the federal govt. expected to do in the event of a disaster, natural or otherwise. We'd better start thinking clearly about this because this won't be the last such decision we're faced with and we seem to have a president who is willing to give away the farm just so his reputation will be salvaged.
2005-09-28 02:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=DakotaBlue]So how much is enough?.[/QUOTE] With any eye to the 2006 election, the theme from the Republicans is "compassionate conservatism" means using OPM to solve New Orleans and Louisiana's two centuries of sustaining Francophone, third world status.
So, since incumbency is seen by many in office as entitlement, there is no such thing as enough, there is only more.
Please pardon me while I vomit.
AE
2005-09-28 09:00 | User Profile
Here's something I don't understand about this - what is the technical reason that the pumps failed?
I understand that they stopped when the electricity went out, but surely they had several layers of fallback generators ready to rock and roll, no?
I mean, was the problem that there was no failsafe energy supply to run those pumps?
Also, I hate to admit it but Metzer is right. The Dutch built half their country under sea level, but they contructed unbelievable walls to keep the place dry. We can do the same. It's really a national disgrace that one of our greatest and oldest cities is protected by nothing more than a big mound of dirt.
2005-09-28 09:56 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] Also, I hate to admit it but Metzer is right. The Dutch built half their country under sea level, but they contructed unbelievable walls to keep the place dry. We can do the same. It's really a national disgrace that one of our greatest and oldest cities is protected by nothing more than a big mound of dirt.[/QUOTE]
Ive seen an interesting documentary on those storm barricades the Dutch built. Pretty impressive. However, i think the bigger disgrace is that this city was inhabited by hordes of africans, so much so they outnumbered the whites.
2005-09-28 10:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Here's something I don't understand about this - what is the technical reason that the pumps failed?
I understand that they stopped when the electricity went out, but surely they had several layers of fallback generators ready to rock and roll, no?
I mean, was the problem that there was no failsafe energy supply to run those pumps? Electrical pumps don't run very well when they're submerged in water Walter. I guess its one of those highly technical engineering things, even though I assume you know not to use your electrical hair dryer in the bathtub.
Also, I hate to admit it but Metzer is right. The Dutch built half their country under sea level, but they contructed unbelievable walls to keep the place dry. We can do the same. It's really a national disgrace that one of our greatest and oldest cities is protected by nothing more than a big mound of dirt.[/QUOTE]That was them, this was us.
Isn't the ability to maintain ones dikes considered one of the great marks of distinguishing between civilizations? Remember Bismarcks famour remark "Europe could be greatly advanced just by exchanging the Dutch and the Irish. The Dutch with their energy (pre-socialist) would make Ireland prosperous, while the Irish lassitude would let the dikes fail and drown themselves. :lol:
(Hope Yannis isn't Irish :biggrin: )
Seriously I can see you point, but the real thing is that New Orleans is one of our greatest and oldest cities. That's a pretty bad slam on the rest of our cities.
How could you justify spending too much on dikes to protect the likes of what we saw on TV. I can just see some two engineers looking over Lake Pontchatran.
"You know, this place really needs bigger and better dikes"
"Naw, this city just needs bigger and better gators. Preferably ones that resemble watermelons. :afro:
:biggrin: "
2005-09-28 12:56 | User Profile
Okie: the point is that if those pumps were indeed the last resort when the levies failed, one would suppose that the possiblity of them being submerged would have been planned for, and appropriate measures taken to ensure that they would remain operational.
My intution tells me that this is where the Katrina tire hits the Negro road.
It's interesting nobody's talking about it.
And NOLA is a great city, at least it used to be. I don't know why you'd want to dis NOLA. It would be paradise, sans Homo Africanus of course.
2005-09-28 13:17 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Here's something I don't understand about this - what is the technical reason that the pumps failed?[/QUOTE]
The pumps would periodically (not always) fail after heavy rains...let alone hurricanes. I can recall seeing flooded streets after an hour's worth of hard rain at times. Problems arise when you get a whole lot of water in a short period of time. Five inches of rain, accumulating over the course of an entire day, would not be a problem; five inches in five hours would be a catastrophe. That's how it is.
[QUOTE]The Dutch built half their country under sea level, but they contructed unbelievable walls to keep the place dry. We can do the same. It's really a national disgrace that one of our greatest and oldest cities is protected by nothing more than a big mound of dirt.[/QUOTE]
Stick Holland in the Gulf of Mexico and then you can test your theory. The Dutch don't live in a hurricane zone, Louisiana does.
Putting heavy concentrations of population in certain areas is rolling the dice anyway. Katrina actually [I]should've [/I] hit about 5-10 years ago, as [I]once every 30 years[/I] seems to be the timetable for disastrous storms in the Gulf.
You think Katrina was bad....and expensive... [I]wait [/I] until THE earthquake hits California. Okie will exhaust both his glee [I]and [/I] his supply of smilies when that happens; and Mentzer will emerge from the Schwarzwald with his direst sing-song jeremiads to date, mocking us for our queer-boy hippie guitar playing astronauts.
2005-09-28 13:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]
Stick Holland in the Gulf of Mexico and then you can test your theory. The Dutch don't live in a hurricane zone, Louisiana does. [/QUOTE]
Thats a good point. Even after protecting from the storm surge, the wind from a cat 5 hurricane is still catastrophic. Those things make tornados look like a dust storm.
2005-09-28 15:29 | User Profile
Getting back to the money and inhabitants issue for a minute...
Why should the nation even consider rebuidling NewO when the city is purportedly sinking an inch a year? I don't think there's an engineering solution that can fully protect this city just as nothing can really be done to stop Venice from sinking and flooding.
And what about the people. NewO has a predominantly black population and the systemic, generational criminal behavior that has put the crime rate right up there at the top of big city crime, is now being exposed for all the country to see. Are we now supposed to rebuild those sections so that the same people can reclaim their apartments and laissez les bontemps roullez again. What kind of idiocy would pour more money into nurturing a drug sustained population, jazz or no jazz, and ask the rest of us to pay for it. This really turns out to be some kind of sick reward system. Come back to newer, better living quarters and we'll even throw in a car and TV and anything else you claim you lost. Holy crap. Are we a sick, stupid country or what?
2005-09-28 17:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]Thats a good point. Even after protecting from the storm surge, the wind from a cat 5 hurricane is still catastrophic. Those things make tornados look like a dust storm.[/QUOTE]
Well, the thing is that while Holland may not face hurricanes, there is a local phenomenon there that causes humongous tidal surges once every few decades. It has to do with an unusual convergence of weather events that causes the water at one end of the English Channel to be a LOT higher than the water at the other end. I think Holland and England got creamed with one of those about 40 (?) years ago. Those huge metal structures the Dutch built (and they really are mind boggling) were, if memory serves, constructed to prevent a repeat of that tragedy.
So, we've all got our problems, it's just that the Dutch seem to have dealt with them more effectively.
As to the pumps, Ragman's point seems to bolster the whole notion that something was very amiss locally. If they knew they had problems with these pumps keeping up even after a routine heavy rain, WTF were they expecting to happen with a CAT-5 hurricane?
My intution tells me that there's a significant negroidal incompetence issue here someplace that nobody wants to talk about.
2005-09-28 18:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE]My intution tells me that there's a significant negroidal incompetence issue here someplace that nobody wants to talk about.[/QUOTE]
Not really; although there's plenty of black municipal corruption and incompetence in Nola proper, it's more than matched by a prevailing, ingrained culture of statewide political incompetence that's just part of the landscape of the Deep South.
Most of the problem is that the city's shaped like a goddam bowl, with the white folks and creoles mostly located along the rim, and the blacks living at the bottom of that bowl.
But another, not-wholly-unrelated part of the problem is that, I think, people are more aware than ever that - what with endless nanny-state programs, millions and millions of unwanted mestizos, twice that many jobs being eliminated and/or outsourced, and the costs involved in waging both vanity wars abroad and implementing our new [I]trust no one[/I] security measures at home - our economy is being stretched to the breaking point. That safety net that's dispelled potential panic in the past - that sense of [I]this too shall pass[/I] - is no longer there for a lot of us, and being quietly replaced by a foreboding sense of [U]chickens coming home to roost[/U]. I can't think of any other point in our history where a sizable percentage of the public, faced with rebuilding a major American city after disaster of some kind, was so tempted to simply blow it off altogether after a few nervous bead-shuffles on the abacus. (Particularly after four years of a foreign policy whose only accomplishment has been to create if not mass-produce terrorists, and provide them all with a single, clear and unmistakable target to wear as a feather in their caps. And wouldn't it be nice if we could rebuild the Gulf and present [I]Israel [/I] with the bill for a change?)
2005-09-28 19:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE]And wouldn't it be nice if we could rebuild the Gulf and present Israel with the bill for a change?)[/QUOTE]
Ah, now you've gone and done it. Israel, the sacred cow, not meant for sacrifice. Nobody, but nobody is calling for the cessation of billions to Israel to help nola. They'll tax us to death before ever laying a glove on that sh*tty little country.
2005-09-28 19:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] I think Holland and England got creamed with one of those about 40 (?) years ago. [/QUOTE] 1953. The Dutch lost some 1800 people.
[url="http://library.thinkquest.org/19846/data/en/disaster/ramp.htm"]http://library.thinkquest.org/19846/data/en/disaster/ramp.htm[/url]
AE
2005-09-28 19:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Well, the thing is that while Holland may not face hurricanes, there is a local phenomenon there that causes humongous tidal surges once every few decades. It has to do with an unusual convergence of weather events that causes the water at one end of the English Channel to be a LOT higher than the water at the other end. I think Holland and England got creamed with one of those about 40 (?) years ago. Those huge metal structures the Dutch built (and they really are mind boggling) were, if memory serves, constructed to prevent a repeat of that tragedy.
So, we've all got our problems, it's just that the Dutch seem to have dealt with them more effectively. Perfectly correct. The event your talking about causes tidal surges at least equivalent to a direct hit with a category 5 hurricane, and over a broader area. New Orleans of course wasn't knockd out by a direct hit by a cat 5, just a glancing blow from a cat 3.
As to the pumps, Ragman's point seems to bolster the whole notion that something was very amiss locally. If they knew they had problems with these pumps keeping up even after a routine heavy rain, WTF were they expecting to happen with a CAT-5 hurricane?
My intution tells me that there's a significant negroidal incompetence issue here someplace that nobody wants to talk about.[/QUOTE]Can't purely blame it on negroids, I don't think they even try to run the whole thing. But if you look at the level of redundancy and safety built into the whole levee system, like the pump situation you discuss, the amount of care I think is tiny compared with what the Dutch or English put into the situation.
In Naw Oileans they don't worry to much about the big one obviously. It just "let the good times roll". Or what was the other famous French line "[I]apres moi, le deluge[/I]".
2005-09-29 07:36 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]I can't think of any other point in our history where a sizable percentage of the public, faced with rebuilding a major American city after disaster of some kind, was so tempted to simply blow it off altogether after a few nervous bead-shuffles on the abacus.[/QUOTE] That's a REALLY important observation.
The mere fact that many people - including many with real power - wouldn't mind seeing NOLA sink into the Gulf of Mexico says a great deal about our feelings of national solidarity, or lack thereof.
2005-09-29 23:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]That's a REALLY important observation.
The mere fact that many people - including many with real power - wouldn't mind seeing NOLA sink into the Gulf of Mexico says a great deal about our feelings of national solidarity, or lack thereof.[/QUOTE] Louisiana has been the Third World nation of the US for a long time, sadly. I don't see a valid reason to break the bank to unscrew it all at once. It took a few centuries to reach its depths of dysfunction, it is reasonable for a patient and measured approach to any "reconsctruction, part deux" to do any lasting good.
AE
2005-10-09 02:06 | User Profile
[QUOTE] You're a little mixed up Hacker.[/QUOTE] What part of the thick-as-molassess-in-January sarcasm did you not get? You appear to be the one who's mixed up.
I'm now beginning to see why people insert those annoying and seemingly gratuitous