Year: 2005

Bye Brown

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date September 12, 2005

As expected Michael Brown has resigned as head of FEMA. However, though a move in the right direction, it’s not enough. As the article mentions, the government needs to move FEMA back out into a department of its own, and, contrary to some who may believe otherwise, return it to dealing with natural disasters rather than this obsession with terrorists:

“When you have orders that go down the rung, people interpret them by putting a very tight box around them,” said Bob Freitag, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Hazard Mitigation Planning and Research.

Freitag said the reorganization in Homeland Security had a trickle-down effect in state emergency management as well. For example, emergency management officials from Washington, a state where earthquakes are the likeliest threat, will be devoting their entire annual meeting next week to terrorism instead, he said.

“The locals need more money and we have to get it from grants, and the money that’s available is for terrorism,” said Freitag, who worked at FEMA for about 25 years. “It’s not driven by national hazards. That leadership is not there.”

The Department of Homeland Security has enough resources to deal with terrorists. Life must go on, yellow alert or not.

Replacing Brown is David Paulison currently U.S. Fire Director. I didn’t know we had a U.S. Fire Director. Regardless, this is a man who headed up the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department, as well as overseeing the county’s emergency services. He also attended the Kennedy School of Management at Harvard, but we won’t hold that against him. He is qualified, and with his Florida background, particularly so when it comes to hurricane management.

I have to ask: why was this man reporting to Brown? He is so much more qualified, it’s almost painful to see.

One incidental impact of Katrina and the government mismanagement: states potentially impacted by an earthquake in the New Madrid fault are now taking it a lot more seriously.

Diversity

Tech woman: freak of nature

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date September 12, 2005

Oh my:

Would you rip files at a high or low bit-rate? Do you prefer AAC, WMA or MP3? If you are completely baffled by these questions, you are probably a woman.

And the article goes down from there.

I don’t like pink, I am not fond of round corners, can program a VCR — and the Saudi Arabian anti-missile defense system.

I can say more, but I think I’ll just point to some folks who already have: Some writers are daft. You know you’re a woman if…, Charles on Anything.

I love technology. I just wish idiots would stop presuming that I’m a freak of nature for doing so.

(Found thanks to Dorothea at Misbehaving.)

Weblogging

Get your Bozo on

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date September 11, 2005

Yes! Thank you! I needed this.

The BetterBadNews folk take on Tim O’Reilly, Foo Camp, ranking, as well as making a case for getting your Bozo on. Why? Because being a bozo is where it’s at.

Case in point: Lone wolfs are cool. If you’re a true lone wolf, you don’t care about ranking schemes. Not caring about ranking schemes makes you a bozo within this market driven environment. Hence, being a lone wolf is synonymous with being a bozo. Therefore, you can’t be cool unless you’re a bozo.

Favorite quote:

When I get my Bozo on, I like to agree with the biggest idiot in the room. For no good reason. And then miss the point of the discussion. And then ask a question that has nothing to do with the topic. Is this so wrong?

We need a “What kind of bozo are you” quiz. We could even rank each other within a Bozo ranking system, except that I already ‘own’ bozo. You can ‘own’ bozo, too. All you have to do is not care.

Note that the BBN did make a complimentary comment about my incessant squawking about the uselessness of ranking systems. But even if they had dissed me, I would still point to them — I love their use of satire. And if we can’t laugh at ourselves, then we really are bozos. Not that I’m pointing out any particular bozo when making this statement…

(Thanks to Yule for sending me a heads-up on the broadcast.)

Connecting

Helping out

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date September 10, 2005

In a previous post, I wrote:

AKMA has been writing about St. Patrick’s Church in Long Beach, Mississippi, ministered by a friend of his, Rev. David Knight. The church is gone, but the associated school is running as a clinic. If, in addition to your giving to national charities such as Red Cross, you want to make a targeted donation, sounds like the folks in the area could use a little help: manual or monetary.

(AKMA — are there facilities for people to stay in that region, for those wanting to go down and help the Reverend and other folks? Who should we contact? )

Rev. Knight left a comment I wanted to pull out and put into a post:

Hey. I am the David Knight you speak of. I can answer your question. Anyone can contact the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, www.dioms.org, and they will schedule in all volunteers. It is important to go that route so we can coordinate numbers. THey can give details on housing / feeding, although some degree of self-suffieciency is important. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

If you have a block of time and a means to head south, check with the Diocese to see where you can help with cleanup and repair.

I also wanted to point out that Habitat for Humanity, an organization that helps those who normally couldn’t afford it to buy their own home, has come up with an audacious plan to help rebuild homes lost to flooding, wind, or storm surge.

The plan is called Operation Home Delivery. How it will work is that Habitat associates will be recovered, and then incorporated into the second phase. This consists of Habitat units in other cities to build components of homes, which are then packaged up and sent to the south. The southern units, including new volunteers, will then use these modules to quickly build a home — in a week or less. The third phase will be homes built on the spot.

There’s been much discussion about what will happen with New Orleans in particular. I think that we can assume not all neighborhoods will be restored. Some will most likely be deemed too dangerous to recover, and probably should not have been built on in the first place. Hopefully these will be converted into parks for all the citizens to enjoy.

Other neighborhoods will be restored, particularly those less damaged, or of historic interest. Don’t knock historic interest: this is a key element to the city, and to lose the history is to lose much of the soul of New Orleans.

However, there will be entire neighborhoods that won’t be worth restoring, but will be OKed for rebuilding that can be rebuilt using the Habitat for Humanity three phase approach. The advantage to this is that it encourages diversity–because a New Orleans of nothing but wealthy people, is not New Orleans.

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of the Twin Tower destruction. Of 9/11. It’s memory is marred by the anger and incriminations that reflect our political debate. In particular, we bicker and squabble over memorials: this one is not grand enough, that one too grand, and the one over there looks Islamic.

A better memorial is to save the money from the memorials and put it into building neighborhoods in the south. Name each street, park, community center after the victims. Embed their memories in life, rather than cold granite, and ostentatious glass towers.