I've switched

I have gone over to the other side.

No, I am not a Democrat voting Windows user now.

I have switched to Live Journal for my blogging activity.

The new address is:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/anachronus/

Pax,
Anachronus

I.D.

Great Link:

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/shouts/050926sh_shouts

Pax,
Anachronus

My theory on the flood walls was right!

Right again. I don't think that should surprise anyone.

From the BR Advocate 0509.22

An LSU hurricane expert said Wednesday that faulty levees are to blame for the massive flooding in New Orleans. Ivor Van Heerden of LSU's Hurricane Center said several of the levees that failed were tall enough, but not structurally sound.

Van Heerden and a team of LSU researchers spent days examining the levee systems that did not hold back Katrina's surge. Van Heerden said while the flood waters were much deeper than predicted, the waters were still three feet from the tops of the levees on the western side of New Orleans, but faulty design or inadequate construction caused those seawalls to fail.

"The individual segments on these walls weren't locked together, there was no cap on top to try to lock them together, there was no foundation," he said.

Van Heerden said if those two levees had done their jobs, 60 percent of the New Orleans area that flooded would have been dry. He suggests the city put in a series of floodgates to keep hurricane surges out of the canals.

Pax,
Anachronus

Katrina....the drink

And lawyers wonder why they have a bad reputation.


http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0920051katrina1.html

New job responsibility?

Here's a new one. Did you know that libraries are supposed to fix parking tickets? Neither did I. But the person who left one here today seems to be under that impression*. I checked with the director and the alumni office. They have no idea what to do with the thing. I am sending it to the Bursar's office so they can deal with it. The guy may still have to pay the ticket but at least I have saved him 37 cents for the stamp.

Pax,
Anachronus

*Of course he arrived when I was busy with two other patrons.

Hydrodynamics

The Minister Reverand Louis Farrakhan is on record saying that he heard from a reliable source that there is a 25 foot crater under the floodwalls in New Orleans and this shows that they blew up the floodwall so that only black areas would be underwater. There are many problems with this statement.

1. How did he see this hole under the very opaque waters? Perhaps he used the scanners on his orbiting mother ship or perhaps he just made it up.

2. How was this explosion manage when no one reported hearing one? Is it some form of new silent high explosive?

Here is a good guess as to what happened.

The point of failure was not a levee, but a flood wall. Floodwalls are concrete barriers that typically rest upon the ground. Normally the footing for these walls would be quite deep but this being New Orleans I would bet they were rather shallow and the money that should have made them deeper was skimmed off. This sort of structure usually fails because water begins to seep under it. The water at the bottom of the wall is under quite high pressure and a small leak will soon become a large one. This large leak will rapidly erode what could appear to be a crater.

Now if you are a demogogue or an idiot you will then think "A HA! Bush was trying to bomb the area to flood the blacks out" when in reality what is being observed is perfectly normal erosion or rather the after effects there of.

Of course the concept of Occam's Razor is probably unknown to Minister Farrakhan.

Pax,
Anachronus

Katrina

I weathered the storm fairly well. I lost power for all of 8 minutes on Monday morning, but more troubling I also lost my broadband connection Monday and it has still not been restored. Dialup access is available but until I came into work I was having withdrawal symptoms.

The archives on New Orleans, especially the Historic New Orleans collection are in grave danger. The Jefferson Davis presidential museum in Mississippi *Just hearing on the radio that the water is no longer rising in New Orleans* has suffered severe damage however.

I have not been able to contact my friend Derrek in Hammond. I am some what concerned by this. Richard and Windi have been granted sanctuary in lovely WadeManor. Could be weeks or months for them to get back to N.O.

Pax,
Anachronus

Open Source

Here is an interesting tidbit for today. As you may know the fuck ups in this town* never got around to approving the Law School Budget for the year. This has had two effects. One is that my justly deserved pay increase has not materialized (though I may get it retroactively applied to July 1 when it does materialize). The other is that all our Micro$oft site licenses have expired. As part of orientation the new students were promised a copy of M$ Office they will be getting OpenOffice**. This will undoubtedly make them unhappy (awww). It should also cause confusion among some of our faculty luddites (awww) and of course amusement for yours truly.

Pax,

Anachronus


*Also know as The Louisiana State Legislature

**Which I might give a try as some of our Faculty Luddites still insist on using Word Perfect (the last Mac version of which was released in 1997 and does not run under Classic very well) and Open Office is supposed to be fully compatible with. Of course we still have 1 faculty member who does not use a word processor at all.