Good one from The Sideshow this morning:
Mr. Sideshow came in earlier and quoted to me a permutation of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous formulation that I’d never heard before:
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
I like it.
And on a related note, this little gem from TBogg:
Krugman today:
Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans.
I think it’s time to update the disaster preparedness supplies in the house.
He also makes a very good point:
I don’t think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn’t rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn’t get adequate armor.
At a fundamental level, I’d argue, our current leaders just aren’t serious about some of the essential functions of government.
The bad news out of New Orleans continues, the news out of Iraq is bad too. And from NY, I got an email that my old rabbi has died (UPDATE: here is an obituary).
About the only thing I can do from here is make a donation to the Red Cross.
If Katrina had hit a few weeks ago I could have taken the Red Cross training and gone there to help, but the semester has now started and I’m tied to SF for the next several months.
Bleh.
… is a town I’m quite fond of. I hope it dodges the Katrina bullet.
Update: By way of The Sideshow, I came across this New Orleans webcam site. As of the time I typed this, the cam is still working.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, “study of the week” science is sometimes suspect, but this is news I like to hear:
Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study released Sunday.
Pat Robertson seems to have hurt nobody but his own evangelical bretheren by his recent call for the asassination of President Chavez:
Venezuela’s government has temporarily suspended permits for foreign missionaries after a U.S. televangelist said Washington should assassinate President Hugo Chavez.
The policy announcement came four days after conservative evangelist Pat Robertson said Washington should execute Chavez, a former soldier who often accuses the United States of plotting to kill him.
The chief of the Justice Ministry’s religious affairs unit, Carlos Gonzalez, said Friday authorization of permits for missionaries would be curbed while the government tightened regulations on preachers inside Venezuela.
The permits “are suspended for a short time … while we organize a system to see what additional data we need for people coming into the country to preach,” Gonzalez told Reuters.
“We were already working on this, but these declarations have made us speed things up,” he said.
Heh.
Hat tip: AmericaBlog
