Katrina Update #63

February 18, 2006; 12:30 PM CST

This is the largest update I have done in weeks, so grab your beverage of choice and sit back.

Shell Beach Video

WWL-TV showed a video this past week shot in Shell Beach. I have shown you the pictures, and talked about the area in updates 23, 49, 54, and 55. I also reprinted the story about the owner's of Campo's Marina in the Stories section. The video below was shot just this past week, and has Kenny Campo's narrative. Please watch it – and understand that this is five and a half months since Katrina kit.

Oops

Never assume no one is reading what you put up on the web.

In Update #60 I published a letter to the Washington Post written by New Orleans' Mayoral Candidate Johnny Adriani. I also mentioned that he would not get enough votes to win. I maybe could have said that better. Johnny stopped by Coop's Place last week and left word for me to contact him. I did. I met him at Coop's this past Wednesday and we had a great discussion. While his ultimate goal is to be elected, he is not naive. He knows his campaign is an uphill battle, and, if he doesn't win, he hopes to at least bring to light the most important issues facing New Orleans and offer some advice and direction as to how they can be addressed. His initially stated goal was to convince me of why he can win, but I found him to be very personable, and — most important — sincere in his quest. Rarely does one encounter a person with the drive to act upon their convictions. I liked him.

Me and Johnny Adriani at Coop's Place
(Thanks Coop, for taking the picture!)

During the conversation, he asked what I think needed to be done. I have often found it difficult to express exactly what needs to be done, but I seem to have a pretty good handle on what shouldn't be done. For instance, the plan gaining the most favor at one point was a plan to allow people to rebuild, and then, after a few months of rebuilding, the city would look at which areas were forming into neighborhoods on their own, then provide more resources for those areas, while turning other areas into "greenspace." On the surface, this seems simple enough: let the people decide, then support them. But when you think about it, who, in a damaged area, would support this plan? Why should someone rebuild, given the chance the city may come through and just force them to move so they can tear everything down?

Plans for New Orleans are a little like opinions and a**holes: everyone has one. The main problem in coming up with a plan is twofold: any plan that moves forward will have opposition because it doesn't serve the interest of some constituency; therefore, for fear of offending said constituency, no strong plan for recovery has been forthcoming. Eventually, the plan of the people, as they act individually and to their own benefit, will coalesce into a de-facto sort of plan, and whatever the government comes up with will be folded into it. As we talked, certain things became my own personal bullet points for recovery. I am flattered that Johnny asked if he could use some of them in his campaign:

1. Allow people to get their stuff. The government moved people out. They should now provide transportation and temporary housing (say 2 weeks) for these same people to come back and collect what they can salvage of their belongings. Then, these people should be moved back out, with the government paying not only the transportation expenses, but also the expenses of shipping their belongings. Only if someone can show they can to contribute to the local economy should they be allowed to stay.
   
   
2. No income, no residency. Except as noted above, only those with the wherewithal to pay for their own living expenses should be allowed to stay in the city. No source of income, no residency. Simply because the city has no resources to support those without the means to support themselves. (The elderly and infirm should not be allowed here until we have the ability to care for them, either.)
   
   
3. Crime absolutely must be nipped in the bud. It is very distressing that judges find no other recourse but to release known criminals. We still have the opportunity to build a community with no tolerance for crime, but we can't do it if the justice system isn't up to the task of putting people away.
   
   
4. Keep New Orleans Clean. Establish full-time crews to clean up what remains of the debris, and to continue cleaning to make New Orleans a shining example of what a great American city can look like. I was recently in London, England on business and was thoroughly impressed with how clean this city of 8 million people keeps itself. Surely a city of less than 5% of that size can do the same! This would also be an excellent way of providing jobs. I am not talking about Garbage Men here. I am talking about people that walk in groups of two with garbage can and dustpan in hand and pick up what the less considerate citizens and tourists leave behind. This is not an excuse to litter, btw, but simply a means of doing what needs to be done.

The sad truth is that each of us can plan and recommend and advise all we want, but until someone with the authority and power to do something takes the bull by the horns and comes up with an aggressive plan to make New Orleans one of the truly great American cities, we languish in what results from people trying to make everyone happy instead of pointing us in one direction, torpedoes be damned! Johnny's lack of political experience is not what will keep him from winning the race, however (our current mayor had no such experience before running). It is lack of connections, which translates to a lack of funds that will prevent him, and many others, from winning. Barring a spoiler in the race, I predict a runoff election in May between Ray Nagin and Ron Foreman, who is largely responsible for the Audubon Institute's revival in New Orleans. Both Nagin and Foreman have amassed war chests in excess of $1.5 million, which makes them the front-runners unless someone with a bigger war chest enters the race. It is a shame that in today's society we can predict the front-runners in a race by how much money they have access to rather than the soundness of their ideas.

I Still Get Emails

I had another one of those experiences this past week — you know, one of those "who reads this crap, anyway" moments. I was reading over my last few updates, and not really finding anything of substance. I figured I may be straying a bit too far from New Orleans, Katrina, etc. Then I get this email, from another someone I haven't heard from before:

I just wanted to send a note saying “thank you” for all the post-hurricane updates. I have been a big fan of Coop’s Place since my first trip to New Orleans in 1999, and I typically stop in at least twice a day when I am in the Big Easy. I have had the pleasure of meeting quite a few folks while there, although I don’t remember most of their names. Many of the pictures on your “People” page look familiar. When I saw that Coop’s was back up and running, I gave Fay a call to see how she was doing and to let her know that my friends and I (in Cleveland, OH) were thinking about everyone down there.

I really appreciate the insight you have provided into how things have been progressing, some of the root causes of the problem (e.g. the wetlands issue) and the many challenges that New Orleans residents are facing on a daily basis that have slowly left the national spotlight. Many of us here have donated in some way to the relief effort, but it is obvious there is a LOT more to be done. New Orleans is one of the most unique, special places on this planet and we will lend whatever support we can to ensure it is rebuilt to be the same wonderful city it was before the disaster. I decided that one of the best ways that I can help in the immediate future is to come down and help pump a little money into the local economy. So, a few of us are headed down for Mardi Gras on 2/24 and staying until 3/1. I have been to the Big Easy about 10 times for various events, but only one Mardi Gras, in 2003. It sounds like this should be a very special one.

Hopefully we’ll have a chance to buy you a drink at Coop’s, but if not thanks again for the great website.

- Karl

Thanks, Karl. OK - I'll keep writing. And I'll take you up on that free drink, too. Better yet, join us for the parades at 7th and St. Charles and bring some beer. Abita Restoration Ale wins you cut-in privileges for the bathroom line.

Mardi Gras Info

Speaking of Mardi Gras, in case you missed it last week, you can subscribe to view my Parade Calendar here. If you are a Mac user, you can also subscribe to it using iCal. There are 5 parades coming down St. Charles Avenue today and 2 more tomorrow. That leaves about 19 more for next Thursday through Fat Tuesday. There's still time to come on down!

Jazz Fest Info

Not coming to Mardi Gras? How about Jazz Fest? This year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival will be April 28-30 and May 5-7 (which, incidentally, makes it as late as Jazz Fest can ever be - it always ends on the first Sunday in May). Here's the lineup so far:

Remember when "Mega" meant big?

Something notable happened this past Thursday. It has nothing to do with New Orleans, but it is notable nonetheless. I remember about 20 years ago, carrying this metal box about the size of a 10" pie pan and about 2" tall into an Apple user group meeting. It was a 5 megabyte hard drive and sold for about $1000. The person who owned the drive was doing a presentation, and I was carrying it for them. "Make sure you keep it level," he admonished me, "and don't move it side to side too much." The fear being that the drive was fragile, and too much movement would render it useless. Back then, we still talked in terms of "kilobytes," which were 1,024 bytes. (The first Macintosh computer had a built-in floppy drive that used 400K disks!)

Since then, we have learned that 1024 kilobytes (KB) equals 1 megabyte (MB) and 1024 megabytes equals 1 gigabyte (GB), which is the most common unit found for today's hard drives. I remember when I first encountered the term "terrabyte (TB)," which refers to 1024 gigabytes. I read somewhere that Disney was digitizing all their movies. The first one they did was Cinderella and it took 4.2 terabytes of storage. That sure seemed like a lot.

On Thursday, I encountered the term "petabyte" for the first time in common usage. 1 petabyte (1PB) is 1,024 terabytes, or one million gigabytes — that's one billion megabytes! Inventor Michael Thomas thinks he has solved some of the major problems one faces when attempting to create a device with such colossal storage. In fact, his company is called Colossal Storage. You can read more about his project on the planned site. He hopes to have the drive on the market in 4 or 5 years at a cost of $750 each. Sign me up.

Just so you can say you heard it here first, here are the next orders of magnitude:

• Exabyte (EB) – 1024 petabytes, or 1 million terabytes, 1 billion gigabytes, and 1 trillion megabytes
• Zettabyte (ZB) – 1024 exabytes, or 1 million petabytes, 1 billion terabytes, 1 trillion gigabytes, and 1 quadrillion megabytes
• Yottabyte (YB) – 1024 zettabytes, or 1 million zettabytes, 1 billion petabytes, 1 trilliion terabytes, 1 quadrillion gigabytes, and 1 quintillion megabytes

When we get into numbers this large, some perspective is in order:

- According to Wikipedia, The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) in the USA has a 1 petabyte hard disk store and a 6 petabyte robotic tape store, both attached to the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid network. (Source: Electronics Weekly, December 11, 2002)

- The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains approximately 1 petabyte of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. (Source: Internet Archive FAQ) The Internet Archive also acquired an additional 1.5 petabytes of space on June 22, 2005.

- The first commercially available Petabyte Storage Array was launched by the EMC Corporation in January 2006, with an approximate cost of USD 4 Million Dollars.

- NOB Cross media facilities in the Netherlands employs a 1.5 petabyte storage network for the storage of all old and new public television and radio content in digital format. Within the next year, most Dutch public television content will be pulled directly out of this database during broadcast.

- Reportedly, Google has between 1.8 and 5 petabytes of storage.

- In the science-fiction TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the android Data was built with an ultimate storage capacity of 800 quadrillion bits, or approximately 88.8 petabytes

On the other hand, the total amount of printed material in the world is estimated to be around five exabytes and it was estimated that by the end of 1999, the sum of human knowledge (including audio, video and text) was 12 exabytes. Finally, if one would commit just 100 bytes of information to store the location, type, and state of every atom contained in the body of a human, it would require roughly 600,000 yottabytes (that's a lotta yottas!).

Fascinating, ain't it? And this concludes this week's science lesson.

Silly Site Of The Week Award

Occasionally, you run across something that just grasps your attention and you can't take your eyes off it, but you really don't know why. This is one of those sites. I won't spoil the surprise by describing it further. (But make sure your volume is turned up for best effect.)

People

It's been awhile since I updated the people page. In general, that's a good thing. It means people have been settling down. It also means maybe I haven't been paying as much attention to it as I should. So I have gone through all the entries and updated them as needed.

News

- There are now eight officially declared candidates for mayor. I'm still waiting for Krusty the Klown to throw his wig into the ring. I used to be a supporter of Ray Nagin. I even went so far as to say that he should be allowed to have his second term, simply because it is a "no-win" scenario: whoever is elected is going to get grief from some portion of the consituency that isn't happy with the way the world is treating him. His "Chocolate City" comments, and statements about God punishing America went too far, however. Such comments can be excused from a poltical newbie, but he can no longer be considered new to politics. He has had over three years to learn the ropes. Hurricane or not, there is no excuse for losing focus. Some people say that since it was Martin Luther King day he was simply catering to the audience, which was predominantly black. I don't buy that, if for no other reason than the fact that it was the white vote that put him in office. It was political suicide and a move (whether accidental or not) that means he won't get my vote on April 22nd.

- The Washington Post has an excellent article entitled "A Mardi Gras That Means More."

- Here's an article you don't want to miss: New Orleans Levee Failure Assessment. It is the most detailed description yet of how the levees failed, describing in great detail structural details, timelines, and many other things. I found it because there is a link to the Campo story on this site!

- There was a lengthy article on the front page of the Times-Picayune this morning, Carnival Sponsor Search Fizzling. The article explains why New Orleans has been unsuccessful in securing a "presenting sponsor" for this year's Mardi Gras celebration. They did get Glad to donate "a six figure sum" as well as 100,000 trash bags. For those of you who aren't aware, Mardi Gras is not a sponsored event. In fact there are city ordinances in place that prevent Carnival Krewes from advertising sponsors on their floats or in any other public way associated with the Krewe. This makes it hard for a large corporation to sponsor the event. The goal is to raise the $2.7 million in anticipated expenses the city will incur this year to hold Mardi Gras. As previously reported, the city never loses money on Mardi Gras. This is just an attempt to actually mitigate the associated expenses, so it doesn't cost the city anything either.

It is not surprising that no one has stepped forward. First, large corporations already have their budgets set for the year. Scrambling to come up with $2 million on short notice would mean a total disruption of that budget to the potential detriment of the company in other, larger markets than New Orleans. Even if sponsors are found, where is the "fit?" How does one promote sponsorship on a citywide basis without destroying the non-commercial spirit of carnival? What company would step forward for such an expense without the exposure necessary to recoup the money in product sales? An obvious answer would be beverage companies, but that isn't a very good fit for a city that already battles an image of Carnival that is one of debauchery (which, by and large, is a very small part of the event, relegated to an area only a few blocks long on one street - Bourbon). By and large, Mardi Gras is a family event, where families and friends gather and enjoy good clean revelry.

So both the city and potential sponsors find themselves in a "Catch-22" situation, where the city doesn't want to necessarily promote an image of Mardi Gras that unfairly represents it as an "adults-only" affair, while more family-oriented businesses don't want to be associated with the typical raucous image that most people associate with the event. Glad Trash Bags are an excellent fit, because it is something that actually is associated with both Mardi Gras, and (unfortunately) New Orleans right now – and that is the need to clean up the trash. I hope the city finds other sponsors to help it minimize their costs, but it isn't the end of the world if they don't – the city will still rake in far more than they spend.

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