I’m going to leave New Orleans behind now, in terms of this blog, but before I do, I make one last offering: a playlist of music about New Orleans. My heart goes out to everyone involved in this catastrophe.
Give where you can.
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My friend Jon Husband sends news that Qumana has released a new version that works better with Blogger, and allows title fields and so on to be implemented.
So here is the test of the new version, which I’ve loaded up on the Tablet PC for use on the road and elsewhere.
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Put yourself in this imaginary scenario…
There has been a disaster in, say, New Orleans. Everyone working on the ground has said that the best thing people can do to help is provide cash.
You have $100 in your pocket. Faced with the implications of what Katrina means, what do you do with the money?
Fill the gas tank of course.
(I have a better idea…take the bus, or take a week off work and put that money to better use)
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Nice story from Jon at Wirearchy today about what it means to really show up for work:
It’s the tale of a software engineer at Apple Computer – Ron Avitzur – who had been charged with creating some graphing calculator software, to ship with every Apple computer. After a year on the project he lost his job in 1993 because – he says – of internal politics at what was, at the time, a struggling company. The key thing is what Ron did next.
He kept showing up for work.
His swipe card worked, there were lots of empty offices, so he just kept going, unpaid, for months, creating a fully-fleged and entirely unauthorised skunkworks at the heart of the company.
Along the way, he roped in support from various specialist departments and, after huge amounts of work from across the company – and all without top management knowledge – he got the software shipped on every new Mac computer. The software is still going out today, although the relationship between Ron and Apple has, at last, been formalised.
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Is anyone else struck by the alarming symmetry of the events in New Orleans with respect to the flooding and the looting?
As the water contained in Lake Ponchartrain flows into the city, the wealth that is locked in the stores also finds its way into the streets. The looting seems so instinctive, so without purpose (except for the survival necessities of course – what is the immediate survival value of a flat screen TV and a mink coat? What value does such a thing have in a flood? Why waste time and energy acquiring something so useless when food and water is in short supply?). One wonders just how close under the surface the possibility for this lies in places where there is a great disparity of wealth.
Were there similar levels of looting in the tsunami regions of South Asia? Certainly we saw it in Baghdad when the Hussein government toppled and suddenly people who had lived without so much for so long took advantage of everything they could. The comparison between New Orleans and Baghdad has been made often. Don’t people wonder why the situations are so similar? The poorest residents of New Orleans are those that stayed and suddenly there is no law, no wealth, no restraints on them.
I am just struck, with both the water and the social reaction, at how fast something that is pent up can burst from its restraints. It reminds me of Jose Saramago’s Blindness
UPDATE: On WDSU I just heard a report that a New Orleans hospital has been taken over by people with guns. I don’t get it. The tendency towards civil war seems to lie so close to the surface.