Ten minutes, and I need an addendum already...
I forgot to mention my thoughts on Dennis Hastert.
I don't normally agree with Denny much, but he made a comment a little while ago about how possibly, maybe, kinda, we should consider abandoning New Orleans.
...and the overwhelming political backlash made him issue a statement within hours "clarifying" that he in no way was implying that New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt completely. Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is silly.
Los Angeles is surrounded by a ring of mountains that keep all the smog in a nice layer above the city. Centuries ago, Indians noted that the smoke from their campfires when they visited there didn't quite dissipate, and they learned to avoid the whole area. It seemed silly to them that white folks actually wanted to live there.
On the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, the volcano made famous by burying three entire Roman cities, Pompeii, Stabiae, and Herculaneum beneath lava and ash, the city of San Sebastiano now stands, population 2.3 million. The volcano erupted violently in 1944, and earthquakes have occurred in recent years so powerful that they raised the entire harbor district of San Sebastiano six to eight feet, making people have to build ladders to get down to their former dockside boats. When asked what would happen if the volcano erupted as it did in 79 AD, the Mayor of San Sebastiano replied (paraphrasing), "We are Italian. We will endure."
New Orleans has been described as "a Sisyphean, 300-year death match between engineers and the elements." It is less habitable a place than Los Angeles, but more habitable than San Sebastiano. However, given that the latter is a ticking fucking bomb upon which 2.3 million complete idiots sit, that doesn't say much. Thus, I think the idea that maybe, just maybe, a place where the flood waters are kept at bay only by constant struggle and catastrophic disaster is one bad storm away isn't a place we want to spend hundred of billions of dollars to rebuild. Maybe it's time to at least consider stopping hitting our head against the rocks.
And that we are such stubborn fools that we attack people for even suggesting such a thing says something quite sad about us. Maybe there most of the people of New Orleans will want to go back, and maybe they will show some determined grit to rebuild in the face of another certain disaster down the road. But maybe many won't, and it's not a bad idea for there to be a debate over whether my tax dollars will be spent to fund someone else's crusade against sense.
I don't normally agree with Denny much, but he made a comment a little while ago about how possibly, maybe, kinda, we should consider abandoning New Orleans.
...and the overwhelming political backlash made him issue a statement within hours "clarifying" that he in no way was implying that New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt completely. Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is silly.
Los Angeles is surrounded by a ring of mountains that keep all the smog in a nice layer above the city. Centuries ago, Indians noted that the smoke from their campfires when they visited there didn't quite dissipate, and they learned to avoid the whole area. It seemed silly to them that white folks actually wanted to live there.
On the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, the volcano made famous by burying three entire Roman cities, Pompeii, Stabiae, and Herculaneum beneath lava and ash, the city of San Sebastiano now stands, population 2.3 million. The volcano erupted violently in 1944, and earthquakes have occurred in recent years so powerful that they raised the entire harbor district of San Sebastiano six to eight feet, making people have to build ladders to get down to their former dockside boats. When asked what would happen if the volcano erupted as it did in 79 AD, the Mayor of San Sebastiano replied (paraphrasing), "We are Italian. We will endure."
New Orleans has been described as "a Sisyphean, 300-year death match between engineers and the elements." It is less habitable a place than Los Angeles, but more habitable than San Sebastiano. However, given that the latter is a ticking fucking bomb upon which 2.3 million complete idiots sit, that doesn't say much. Thus, I think the idea that maybe, just maybe, a place where the flood waters are kept at bay only by constant struggle and catastrophic disaster is one bad storm away isn't a place we want to spend hundred of billions of dollars to rebuild. Maybe it's time to at least consider stopping hitting our head against the rocks.
And that we are such stubborn fools that we attack people for even suggesting such a thing says something quite sad about us. Maybe there most of the people of New Orleans will want to go back, and maybe they will show some determined grit to rebuild in the face of another certain disaster down the road. But maybe many won't, and it's not a bad idea for there to be a debate over whether my tax dollars will be spent to fund someone else's crusade against sense.
posted by Dr. Suspicio | 5:50 PM
1 Comments:
Nice to see you using your writing skills for good instead of evil Doc.
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