These are the ramblings of a young married couple in the great City of Chicago.
This is a great article are having Federal Legislators work from home. Mr. Dvorak shows how this could save money, provide for security, and help us elect a better government.
Here’s another neat example of what you can do with Google Maps. You can choose any year and see past hurricanes or you can choose 2005 and Rita and track her as she bears down on Houston and the Texas Gulf coast. Head to high ground Houston and Galveston.
read more | digg story
Although Lewis is in the Indiana National Guard, he does not speak for the Indiana National Guard, the US Army, or any part of the Federal or State governments.
Lewis Alexander of The Land of Alexander Blog is out on what if left of the street after Hurricane Katrina. Lewis is in the Indiana National Gaurd and has been called up to work in Operation Vigilant Relief in Mississippi. Lewis has a lot of great links you should read, a lot of which I have not been able to read yet. Lewis also posted some great comments on the post before and I wanted to move them up to the top level. Here they are unedited…
They knew from 1998 (Hurricane George) that the Superdome was not a good place to use as a shelter.They knew that and still used it. Then they denied the shipment of food because they didn’t want people to stay and USE IT AS A SHELTER.
The Mayor waited until the day before the storm hit to order the mandatory evacuation. (He had been tracking for days) It is amazing that as many people got out that did. Hurricane evacuations aren’t speedy processes. Maybe a little more time and they could have taken care of the people that had to stay behind.
And where was the Louisiana National Guard? The Governor is in command of her state’s army. She waited until two days AFTER the authorize them to commandeer school buses to evacuate people. Oops! The buses are sitting like drowned rats in New Orleans. Where was the guard for the first two days? Couldn’t they have helped with the evacuations?
There were missteps by others up the chain that failed to fill in the gaps left by the local and state governments. But make no mistake, the Mayor and Governor should be the first in line to accept responsibility for this disaster response fiasco.
Last week the officials in NOLA were complaining about the evacuation effort being inadequate at the Superdome. The evacuation may have been inadequate, but the situation could have been better if there were food and water. It is very quietly being reported that the Red Cross was not allowed to bring food and water to the Superdome by the Louisiana State Homeland Security Department.
Major Garrett at FOX News reported it last night and here is the story from All Headline News (one of only three I found on Google News).
I am reading The Best Software Writing I. It is a collection of the best writing about software from the last year or so. It is a very eclectic collection. The editor, Joel Spolsky, wants to highlight that writing about software can be good and exciting. Although I think that the book is good and exciting from a geek’s perspective, I honestly doubt that most of you would find it interesting.
I was struck when I found this article by ea_spouse. It is about EA, which is part of the notoriously awful game industry. Even though they are not in the same realm of computing, EA and my former employer, AMS, appear to have a lot in common. As I was reading on the train, I had to stop myself from yelling, “Exactly!”
If you have ever wondered why exactly I chose to be unemployed over working at AMS, read the article.
Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute has this defense of the price fluctuation in the gasoline market. Governments tend to try to stop what they consider gouging by controlling prices. Mr. Taylor points out
[P]rice controls lengthen the shortages. Allowing prices to rise to whatever their natural level might be sets off an economic chain reaction that remedies the shortage quicker than any conceivable government plan to do likewise. That?s because $3 gasoline and moral exhortations from President Bush and Bill O?Reilly to conserve fuel will not produce the same degree of frugality that $6 gasoline would deliver. Likewise, pleas to the oil industry to ?help thy fellow man? will not yield up as much gasoline as the promise of great profit were suppliers to get new fuel to the market.
Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute says there are more to rebuild than just infrastructure, buildings, and lives. He recommends Louisianans should take advantage of this tragedy and rebuild and reshape the policies of their corrupt state and local governments.
Steve Forbes is predicting oil prices being down to $35 to $40 a barrel in the next year. He says, “This is sheer bubble speculation.” And “speculators know now that no matter what happens to the price of oil Uncle Sam is there buying almost every day. Stop the buying and in fact throw some of that oil on the open market, boy that would throw it in turmoil and send the price down.”
Jos and I were talking about this last night and agree. Prices are going to continue to climb until more and more people are unwilling to buy contracts on increasing future prices.
Not a speculator but you want to do your part to fix the problem? You have two options change demand or change supply.
Change your demand and vote for lower gas prices. When you make a purchase you are voting. You are voting that you like the prices. This is a poll where you can vote as often as you like. The more often you say you like the increasing prices the quicker the gas companies will know you like it. So, stop voting if you want gas prices to go down. You really do not need to change you driving patterns that much for everyone to have an aggregate affect on the market. Maybe you vote to only drive to work. Maybe you vote to car pool. Maybe you vote to go to work and to the movies and shopping and visit every drive through in the area. No matter what you do, you are choosing to pay for as much gas as you are willing to pay for.
You might ask, “How can I change supply?” Many people are blaming the short supply on a lack of oil refineries and restrictions on exploration. First, you can invest in refining and exploration companies. Investing is voting that you want to company to do what it is doing very well and give you some of the profits. Also, you can call up the oil refining companies and ask them to buy your land to build an oil refinery. Both of these options will probably be hampered buy existing law that depresses (sometimes killing) the incentive for these companies to do what they do here in America. So, call all your elected officials and tell them that you want to do your part to help the economy, but cannot because they have passed laws that prevent it.