Funmurphys: the Blog

Friday Links Are Back

Today's Post-Dispatch had an article about a St. Louis man walking across the country to lose weight -- you can read his online journal. Good luck, Gary and Cheryl, I hope all goes well.

Jeff Harrell makes a great pitch for a great charity. Yes, I know, the shortage isn't in the worthwile charities.

Mark Kleiman is dazzled that somebody has invented a pocket sized device that can tell when other people bored or annoyed with you. It was invented for autistic people; I don't need one because I have a wife to tell me when I'm boring or annoying.

It's with much guilt that I present the following link to the Politburo Diktat: THE PUBLICITY HOUND DIVA PUNCH-OUT!!! Yes, tasteless can be funny.

Shelly at Burningbird has a great post about the pitfalls of passion:

But I find that every time I get passionate about something, my ability to work with my team and my effectiveness to the team decreases as the passion increases. I have a hypothesis as to why: the rushing of blood to my head drowns out what other people are trying to say. The only thing I can hear, then, are the folks who are echoing my words.

The funWife and I saw Failure to Launch (a romantic comedy of middling quality) while on vacation, so I was mildly surprised there is a real basis to the film. Thankfully, Cassandra explains why more young men are living with their parents.

Scott Ott reminds us that there is no such thing as a double blind study for God.

Joshua Claybourn tackles gambling from a Christian perspective.

Jason points out a significant development in Iraqi Army capabilities.

Danger Will Robinson! Exploading Mammary Enhancers!

And I leave you with: Bing Crosby singing Yellow Submarine. Why you ask? Because I can.

One Good, One Bad

My wife and I rented a couple of movies the weekend before our vacation. We got Wedding Crashers for the adults since we'd read good things about the movie, and Madagascar for the family, since we'd heard good things about it. We learned to trust word of mouth more than what you read in the media.

We watched Wedding Crashers first, and boy, was that a lousy movie. At then end, my wife and turned to each other and in unison said "I thought it was supposed to be a comedy." I know what you're thinking - I'm just an old fuddy duddy. All I can say is, I found the American Pie movies quite funny, even if they were tasteless. Wedding Crashers was about two self-centered jerks who after suffering a series of completely unfunny experiences were by the end of the movie still a couple of self-centered jerks. I'm beyond the point of laughing at something that is "inappropriate" just because it isinappropriate. When I watch a comedy, I want to laugh, so I'm willing to let almost everything slide except the laughs. Wedding Crashers didn't make me laugh even once, but it did lead me to coin the Owen Wilson rule of movies - he makes every movie worse, and he's only funny if he's paired with Jackie Chan. I think the Jackie Chan pairing works because they have opposite onstage personas. Compare Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers - the one without Wilson was much funier than the one with, even though it was a sequal. And don't get me started on The Royal Tenenbaums which had both Wilsons, and which was 109 minutes of boredom for just one laugh. Yes, when there is only one, I can keep track. The only reason I can think Wedding Crashers did so well is that there are so few (OK, pretty much none) good grown-up comedies out there.

On the other hand, Madagascar was sheer delight. Funny, inventive, memorable, yes, fun for the whole family. There were jokes, situational humor, sight gags, references to other movies - I laughed throughout the movie. You couldn't go wrong with a movie that included penguins in a major role in 2005.

Return Of The Native

The Murphy Family has returned from a brief sojurn in the desert. We spent 6 days in Albuquerque, New Mexico, soaking up the sun and enjoying ourselves. We got home last night, and after unpacking I downloaded 215 pictures from the digitial camera. Yes, that is a lot of pictures. No doubt it will take me months to post all the good ones for your viewing enjoyment. We flew there, and boy are our arms tired. OK, it really wasn't bad at all, even though we couldn't get a direct flight and sat next to babies on two of the flights. The lines at the airport weren't bad, the screeners seem more relaxed (but not less vigilant), and the airport in Albuquerque is really nice. It was cloudier than we anticipated, but we did avoid the hordes of spring break parties while enjoying sun and sand.

When The Dog Bites

Here is an abridged sample of a few of my least favorite things:

Nutty anti-semitism wrapped in academics and hidden as political realism;

This guy, who is just wrong wrong wrong and deeply offensive to this Christian man;

both Both these guys (among too many others) who deserve more than just their removal from power; and here's just the smallest taste of why.

Avian Flu Transmission

Why is the bird flu that has us all so worried not transmitted human to human (yet)? The virus doesn't bind to receptors in the upper respitory tract (i.e. nose and throat) and instead binds to receptors deep in the respitory tract (think lung, specifically alveoli). So scientists will now start monitoring for any changes in the virus's ability to latch on and invade upper respitory tract cells, which would mean easy human to human transmission. Whether such a shift is detected in the lab before people start dropping like, well, birds, is more than an academic question.

Hello, I Must Be Going

As you may have noticed, or more likely, will notice sometime in the future when you get around to visiting this blog, I have been slacking off here lately. No, I am not too busy with new love, I am not prone to hiatus, nor am I off doing fine reporting in dangerous but important parts. I am in fact busier than usual, and forecast that state to last a while longer.

Breast Asymmetry Linked to Cancer

In a study with 504 women, researchers at the University of Liverpool led by Dr. Diane Scutt found that a difference in breast size was linked to an increased risk of cancer in a fairly linear way, with every 100 milliliters of difference equating to an increase in the risk of cancer of 50 percent. The average breast size is approximately 500 milliliters, so we're talking fairly sizable differences here.

You can tell the caliber of the news organization by the headline (and photo) they chose to run with this subject:

BBC: "Uneven breasts linked to cancer"

Daily Mail: "Uneven breasts may increase cancer risk"

Xinhua: "Breast asymmetry may increase cancer risk in women"

Atlanta Constitution Journal: "Asymmetrical Breasts May Raise Cancer Risk"

Elites TV: "Study: Breast Size Matters When It Comes To Cancer"

Glasgow Daily Record: "MATCHING BREASTS ARE BEST"

The Sun (UK): "Lopsided boob risk"

Fun With Google

Charles let's me in one another fun game with google: What you need. Put your name into Google followed by needs and see what turns up. So now you know what Kevin needs:

Kevin needs your money.

Kevin needs a picture.

Kevin needs a haircut.

Kevin needs to cut his nasty hair.

Kevin needs a tan and a haircut.

Kevin needs your help.

Kevin needs your help to save his life.

Kevin needs to post.

Kevin needs daddy skills.

Kevin needs Modular dungeon tiles out of LEGOs

Kevin needs to not let people i don't know call my house to try and talk to me.

Kevin needs to go home.

Kevin needs to go home next week for sure.

Kevin needs to listen better and not run off to Vegas every time they fight.

Kevin needs two free hands.

Kevin needs expert witnesses, research, and other things that the court is unlikely to provide much financial help for.

Kevin needs to pull up his pants.

So anything on that list I'd be much obliged for. Especially since Wal-Mart hasn't come through on that HDTV I need.

Are All Creeds Created Equal?

You just have to love a title like "Jesus and the Duke", and the post itself doesn't disappoint after such a strong lead. Andrew Klavan looks at creeds, honor killings, and how they relate to Elizabeth Smart. Yes, there is a difference in creeds, and what make the United States a rare country is that it a nation built on a creed and not ethnicity. Mr. Klavan writes:

I couldn’t help reflecting that if Elizabeth had been the child of Islamic hardliners, her welcome home might not have been quite as loving as it was.

Now the Mormons and every other group have their extremists, but they’re not accepted by our society as they are virtually throughout the Muslim world. To the vast majority of Americans, the idea of punishing, let alone murdering, a raped child is so appalling that language fails. And there can be no multicultural dithering about it: our way is better than their way, as civilization is better than savagery, as love is better than hate. But, of course, our superiority isn’t a matter of individuals, it’s a matter of ideas. The Islamofascist’s creed is a bad one; the American creed is not.

Which brings me at last to the films of John Wayne and the ministry of Jesus Christ. I mean, if these are not the twin pillars our nation rests on, man, I don’t know what those pillars would be. Thus my texts for today’s sermon, brothers and sisters, are John 8: 3-11 and John Ford’s The Searchers.

Not just anybody who can weave the Bible and John Wayne together. I might have gone with Romans 12:19 myself.

I wonder what text Mr. Klavan would choose to go with True Grit?

Huge Explosion Caused Global Warming?

Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences claims that our current global warming is due to changes in the level of atmospheric water amounts caused by the Tunguska Event in Siberia in 1908. Hmmm.

Missing the Real Story

One of the things that burns me up about the coverage of Saddam's trial is that it focuses on the wrong two things and ignores it's only point. It focuses on what he or his lawyers did in court, but not the testimony. Witnesses come in and describe the horrors he perpetrated - hardly a mention of the contents of their testimony. Saddam stands up and blusters - full coverage. And the other question that consumes the press is Saddam getting a fair trial. Personally, the fact that he's getting a trial at all is all the fairness he deserves (yes, I'm aware of the proceedural arguments for the need for a "fair" trial) and the whole point of the trial is for the fullness of his crimes to come out and that he be given a chance to answer for them.

But that isn't what we get. Is this how the truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa was covered?

Dude, Where's My End?

The Shield of Achilles posits that the story of the 20th century was the struggle between fascism, communism, and parliamentarianism in a an epochal war that lasted from 1914 to 1990. [Full disclosure - I haven't made it all the way through the book yet, but what I've read so far is quite interesting if overlong.] It was the vanquishing of fascism and communism during this war that led to the famous claim by Francis Fukuyama that we had arrived at "The End of History". And yet, here we are, locked in another war that looks to be both long and epochal with fascists.

And the parliamentarian nations that triumphed have been thoroughly infected by communism - which is why it's perfectly acceptable to proclaim yourself as a communist at almost any university in the Western world (for instance, I was taught Econ 101 by prof Gurley who made no bones about being a communist), but not proclaim yourself a fascist. It is considered rude to mention the fact that communists are as deadly and inimical to individual liberty as fascists (the communists were able to kill more -- 100 million -- in the last century mainly because they lasted longer in power because the fascists attacked the parliamentarians first) in elite circles.

Rather than an end, we got a brief pause before once again the struggle between divergent societal organizational models resumed; but at least by winning the last war, parliamentarianism is in a far stronger position than the last time and can obtain victory mainly by summoning the will to win backed by the confidence in its own rightness. But our elites, wedded to communism, lack that will and confidence and are hurting, not helping, the war effort -- not by taking an active role against, but by sitting out -- pretending that there isn't a war on, or at least not a real one.

Hamas Election

I enjoy history. Any period, any culture, history simply appeals to me. One of the nice things about it is that you can learn quite a lot just by reading, which I do. And another nice thing is that it provides perspective on the events of today. So one of the lessons of history I draw is that a major problem with rule by a single person, whether by king or despot, emporer or strong-man, whether accepted by the governed or subject to constant rebellion and resistance, is that its quality depends on the quality of a single individual. The character of government depends on the character of the ruler; even where the ruler wasn't particularly able, they could recruit and rely on able subordinates if they were of a mind to. So looking at a nation under such a single person rule over time you see how the overall fortune of the nation depends on how good a ruler is curently ruling.

And its not just true of single person rule, it's just easier to see there. The exact same thing is true of any government -- it's character depends on the character of the ruler(s). And so for representative governments, the character of the government depends on the character of the people. Harsh people lead to harsh rule; tolerant people to tolerant rule, wise people to wise rule, and foolish people to foolish rule. You get the idea.

That brings us to the results in the Palestinian election where Hamas, a terror organization (or not), was voted into office. Some people tell me that Hamas doesn't reflect the Palestinian people. Oh really? Who does it represent then? The Israelis? Look, if the Palestinians wanted a less corrupt government and mutual existance with Israel, then a political party that espoused that view would have formed and been voted into office.

They'll moderate under the pressures of governance alone I'm told. Really? Why should they? When have Palestinian governments every lived up to their end of agreements?

Maybe Hamas is just the natural response to Israeli intransience? Such a view ignores the reality - Israel is ready to coexist with a Palestinian state that is not out to destroy it, the Palestinians are not. (If Israel wanted all the Palestinians dead, they'd be dead already). And as far as Israeli violating a voluntary truce on the part of Hamas, why should Israel hold back against an avowed foe just because the foe wants a break?

And of course, what to do about funds for Palestine. Should the US and the EU continue to subsidize the Palestinian government, or should they be cut off? What about the money Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian government? What will the effect be on the Palestinian people? Should the plight of the people who voted for terrorists to take over sway us? Sometimes, there are no good solutions, just muddling through as best as you can, and guess what - we have been in that situation in the middle east for a long time now.

We need to really keep in mind what the desired end state is, and work towards that with as much focus as we can -- and that is two healthy states at peace with each other. The trick is in figuring out if that requires a firm stand on principle or flexible pragmatism. I think it requires what President Bush has been doing all along - clear expectations for both Palestine and Israel, and keeping our commitments either to withold or provide based on their behavior. The previous and current goverments of Palestine have not reflected favorably on the Palestinian character. I'm hoping that that changes.

I Love Wal-Mart

Yessir, I love everything about Wal-Mart. I'd especially love one of those wall mounted plasma HDTVs from the electronics department. I'm sure with one of those in my possession, I would be able to rhapsodize at great length about Wal-Mart, it's ability to deliver quality products at a low cost, the unfairness of the union smear campaign against it, the unfairness of Maryland singling Wal-Mart out over employee healthcare. Of course, I could learn to love Best Buy, Comp USA, Target, or another store that sells plasma HDTVs if it somehow managed to come into my possession.

Because as a blogger, I have no code of ethics, ergo I must not have any ethics (or plasma HDTV).

Of course, I could do a review of one, and somehow never return it. Because it's not like companies never send freebees hoping to get a (good) review. And believe me, I'd love a plasma HDTV (as long as it's widescreen and has a 3D YC comb filter).

Gerrymandering

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the gerrymander.

Gerrymandering is universally unpopular with voters and popular with politicians. And Stuart Taylor puts the case against gerrymandering quite well:

"The one-person, one-vote decisions of the early 1960s have had the unintended consequence of enabling politicians to choose their voters rather than the other way around".

I don't know which is worse, when one party gerrymanders at the expense of the other, or when incumbents of both parties combine to gerrymander at the expense of challengers of the other party.

One of the complaints is that as we have more and more safe districts, we have highly polarized politics. But what about the other extreme? If we drew districts to maximize competitiveness, would we be happy if a party that had 48% of the electorate managed to win 100% of the seats -- which might happen in a smaller state with every district highly competitive. Would politics become focused even more on appearance, on sound bit, on the immediate tactical advantage on election day to the exclusion of good governance? So is the choice between polarized politics or representation that isn't representative?

The other alternative is to take gerrymandering to the other limit, so that districts would be all equally safe which would mean that the representation in the legislature would most closely reflect the party makeup of the electorate. That would achieve the global result of accurate representation of the electorate, but people would feel even less connected to the political process. Heck, we could avoid all the expense and controversy associated with general elections and just hold primaries.

And if you think that most people vote for the person and not the party (you of course never do that, free thinker that you are), then gerrymandering wouldn't work. What makes gerrymandering break down isn't our rugged individualism, but that over time we move around and thus change the relationship between party and location, and that there are slow shifts in the electorate between the parties.

I don't buy the theory that safer districts have led to more political strife. I think what we are seeing is a return to normal (although unpleasant) levels of political strife and incivility that after an abnormal period of consensus that was due to the experiences and outlook of my fathers generation - the one's who grew up during the depression, fought WWII, and came home with the ability and desire to get along to get things done -- and this change happens to correlate with more effective gerrymandering.

We could just select districts based on compactness and carve them up by computer without regard to their competitiveness, but then who knows what you'll get -- which is why politicians will never agree to such an approach. Would we be happy if such a scheme meant the dilution of minority votes, or inadvertantly made uncompetative districts that didn't represent the relative strengths of the parties? Would we then have to step in with some sort of neutral commision to adjust the boundaries so that the districts conformed to notions of fairness, as if that isn't a political judgement in itself?

Is there even a good answer on how to draw legislative districts in a two party system?

And don't even get me started on the problems with one man, one vote.

A Network Moment

I was complaining about the news media the other day at work. I started with the local newspaper, the Post-Dispatch. I was relating that I had to disregard any item in it that was "news" because the high likelyhood of its inaccuracy. I was told there were other sources of news. I then said TV news wasn't any better and that cable news focused far too much on sensational but trivial stories (yes, even Fox). Just get your news from the internet I was told. The trouble is that even on the internet most of the primary sources are the very same news organizations that have been misinforming me for years and show no inclination to stop. You have to check everything against primary sources, which is a time consuming pain in the rear.

What I want is a reliable newspaper I can read in the morning. I love the idea behind them, it's just the execution that stinks. I want to be able to flip on the TV and be informed by accurate and relevant reporting. This current passing off opinion as fact just drives me nuts, and does so because I care about the news. If I were indifferent, I wouldn't care that the press can't do its job.

In other words, I'm having what he's having:

I want to be able to read the New York Times or watch CNN, or listen to NPR and be able to trust what they're telling me. Since I can't do that, since the media is no longer fulfilling their basic function, I have to blog, and I have to read blogs. It pisses me off, because I had better things to do this decade than be my own news service. I don't like having to read transcripts of press conferences because I can't trust the media to even write down what was said correctly. I don't like having to spend hours finding real experts on the web to analyze how this or that media expert has distorted the facts. I don't like having to pore through the blogs of journalists, soldiers and Iraqi citizens so I can get some inkling of how things are really going, without the hype. Even though I do it, I don't even like having to download the Brookings report once/month in order to see what the numbers say about how the war is going.

But I have to do all that, because its the only way I can truly be an informed citizen.

Is that really too much to ask for?

And I feel this anger too:

But I’m pretty sure the message behind “The Unit” wasn’t that the press is the cause of global terrorism. I haven’t watched the show or anything, but I’m just guessing that the message is that terrorists are the cause of global terrorism. Not American foreign policy, not economic inequity, not religious oppression, but terrorists themselves. You know, the killy, murdery, explodey kind.

That’s a nuance that’s lost on the Express’ Chris Mincher, though. “The enemies are nothing more than terrorist caricatures with beards and guns,” he writes. “Their goal: killing. Their purpose: to be shot. Their motivation: unknown.”

Maybe Chris longs for a TV show or movie that personalizes terrorists, that tells their story, that makes us empathize with them and think that maybe they’re just not that bad after all.

Sometimes a bad guy really is just a bad guy.

Oscars: Context and Explanation

Sunday night my wife and dauther attended a ladies only Oscar Party at the Fischers. Dress was strictly red carpet. So Mister and Master Fischer came to our house and from there we were going to go see a movie. Only there weren't any movies any of us wanted to see. So instead we stayed home and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail and then played Scene It just for fun. And that's what's wrong with Hollywood -- we wanted to go spend money on their product by they didn't have anything we wanted to buy. And just to be clear here, Mr. Fischer liked Fahrenheit 9/11.

I think the biggest problem for Hollywood is that they've lost sight of the fact they are another business, just like every other business. When butts aren't in movie theater seats, the response shouldn't be that there is something wrong with the audience, but that the movies aren't compelling enough. Yeah, movies have more competition than ever, but I can think of few more enjoyable ways to spend a couple of hours than at a good movie. Hollywood just doesn't make enough good movies anymore, and I think that there is a real danger for them that once you don't go to a movie in a while (depending on the person), you stop even thinking about going to movies. It takes something like Passion of the Christ to get people back who've lost interest.

The Oscars have become another sign of a disfunctional Hollywood. What is the point of the Oscars? Stroking the ego of people who have their ego's stroked every day and who are paid fantastic sums to play make believe? An excuse to have a party afterwards? No, that's what they've become, but their point from a business perspective is marketing. And the marketing is two fold - the individual product in the form of the movies, directors, actors, etc. who win, who are nominated, and who show up and are seen by the audience watching at home, and the brand of Hollywood movie. From the business perspective, there isn't a lot of difference between the Oscars and an ad for a particular movie - they are both marketing, although in different forms. So Hollywood would ideally put on a show that people wanted to watch and showed its product (and I'm including "the talent" here as part of the product) in such a way that people want to pay to go see it.

And they are failing miserably on both counts. Viewership is down both in the theaters and of the Oscars. So does Hollywood make use the Oscars (as they used to do) to remind people of the good movies that were made? Nope, they remind people of the crappy ones they stayed away from in the first place. They could have brought Bob Hope and Johnny Carson back from the dead and in their prime, and it wouldn't have changed that goof. The show reinforces the idea that Hollywood is smug, arrogant, out of touch, and basically not interesting in making a movie you want to see. Does George Clooney's speech make anyone who's on the fence, let alone not a fan, want to go see a movie that he's associated with? In a word, no.

As somebody who really like movies, should I be worried? Yes and no. In the shortterm, I'm worried because I don't think Hollywood is going to pull its head out and make product I want to see. In the long term, I'm not worried because I think between movies made in the old Hollywood mold in other English speaking countries (think Bollywood) and a new breed using new technology in the US once again there will be movies I want to see.

Mark at Kaedrin liveblogged the show, as did Andrew Olmsted in a display of their ability to do what it takes to bring you their opinion, whatever the cost is to themselves.

Libertas, as you would expect, has an in depth look at the night. I think we're saying the same thing when I say they've forgotten they are a business and Libertas says they think they are entitled to an audience.

Manhatten Transfer looks at the politics of Oscar voting this year.

Busy Mom has a non-analytic take on the event.

McQ looks at the numbers and discovers in all of 5 seconds what Hollywood can't seem to get: People want to see movies the whole family can go to.

Patrick Runkle provides a brief synopsis of everything Oscar.

Crooked Timber notes an unintended irony from the broadcast.

Eamonn Fitzgerald looks at the Best Picture winner, Crash.

The Chicagoist is ambivalent about the oscars.

Bragging

I don't mean to brag -- OK, who am I trying to kid, I DO mean to brag -- but this was a weekend of notable achievements in the Murphy Household. First off, my daughter spent her first two and a half hours behind the wheel of a car and she didn't hit anything (if you don't count the outside of my brain smacking the inside of my skull while she learned how to brake properly). We even spent more time on roads than parking lot. In fact, we both had fun - something that is getting harder to do for this father and teenage daughter duo. I learned an important lesson - don't get too funny because when she's giggling she's not driving. We spent half an hour practicing right turns by driving around and around on a three street combo until we spent another half an hour practicing left turns by driving the other way. Then we drove to a couple of her friends houses just to show off.

While the father daughter combo was out and about, the mother son combo was in Jefferson City competing in the Missouri State K-9 Championship chess tournament where my son came in 4th in 6th grade and under. I taught him everything I know, and fortunately he picked up a lot more somewhere else. Yes, we own Searching for Bobby Fischer, why do you ask?

Katrina Redux

The Return of Katrina, first as tragedy, now as farce. Videos from before the disaster of various meetings with President Bush about Katrina are being touted as showing that Bush was complacent and under prepared. But when you get to the details - you have things like Bush didn't ask any questions in a particular meeting or this sleight of hand:

"I don't think anyone can tell you with confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but that's obviously a very, very great concern," Mayfield says in one.

In a September 1 television interview, Bush said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," a statement Chertoff agreed with three days later.

Maybe I'm just a yokel from the midwest, but there is a difference between topping a levee and breaching a levee, although topping is a quick way and effective way to breach an earthen levee. Topping means that a (relatively) small amount of water will make it's way past the levee - breaching means whatever is behind the levee is now part of what's in front of the levee - i.e the levee isn't holding back anything.

I'm not sure what President Bush was supposed to do a few days in advance of levees being overtopped - sent that non-existant armor that also wasn't sent to Iraq? The time to sound such a warning and for it to have an effect is in the years before such an event, not days.

I'll start with the highest level argument - the "fault" of Katrina lies squarely with the citizens of New Orleans, past and present, who built a city that could be devasted by a hurricane, and then didn't take adequate steps to protect themselves. Yes, I have a lot of symphathy for the victims, but ultimately it was local failures over a long period of time that brought about this disaster. Am I blaming the victim here -- to the extent the victims were the perpetrators I am. It's not like this was a hidden hazard.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee, said the tape "demonstrates for all to see what our committee discovered during its investigation of the preparations for and response to Hurricane Katrina."

"Government at all levels was forewarned of the catastrophic nature of the approaching storm and did painfully little to be ready to evacuate, search, rescue and relieve," said the Connecticut lawmaker, who had accused the White House of stonewalling the committee.

Sen. Lieberman is correct, we just disagree on the time frame involved. The problem has more to do with human nature than anything else. The best time to fix a leaky roof is when it's sunny, not when it's raining, but we only think about the leaky roof when its raining. Preventative maintaince is always far easier and cheaper than heroic measures, but it gets little support and less acclaim. New Orleans was a special case, or in the words of Michael Brown, a disaster within a disaster, because people decided to put themselves in harms way and do little to prevent disaster thinking that while a disaster was statistically inevitable, it still wouldn't happen to them and if it did, they would be taken care of. [What will you write when the New Madrid Fault levels St. Louis? I'll change the they's to we's -- but it won't happen].

By that time, 11 inches of rain had fallen in New Orleans, the massive storm surge had damaged the flood protection system and about 15,000 people were in the Superdome. That figure eventually doubled, leading to days of intolerable conditions before residents could be bused elsewhere.

OK, the conditions weren't intolerable since the people did in fact tolerate them, although I certainly wouldn't want to go through it. There were national guard troops at the Superdome throughout the ordeal maintaining order. The conditions weren't any worse -- just the reporting about them -- than when Ivan exposed how bad things could get at the Superdome during a hurricane. And Ray "Chocolate" Nagin and the rest of New Orleans didn't make any improvements to what was demonstrated to be unacceptable.

Why didn't people get out? The Post-Dispatch had stories in the first few days about how local St. Louisans got out after the hurricane. According to the paper, the first people to show up at the convention center were a group of St. Louis tourists who were directed there by the hotel they were staying at, and who left and came home after being warned to leave by residents. I think people thought aid wouldn't simply come to them because of their great need. Let that be a lesson to all of us - you are on your own in a giant disaster, and the first help will be from your neighbors, not your government.

I have yet to see the press own up to their own mistakes, or pursue with such fervor the timeline of their own flawed reporting. The hysterical and wrong coverage of the press caused assets to be diverted to supressing criminal behavior that was virtually non-existant. Gen. Honore uttered the memorable "Stuck on Stupid" line because the press didn't want to do it's job of informing people, but wanted to second guess and badger. What a President says after the fact is trivial - what the media reports at the time is vital not just because it shapes our perceptions, but because it effects the response. The media failed during Katrina, and made things worse. I'd take a lot more notice of their reporting if news people ever got fired for their mistakes, and not just making things up out of whole cloth.

And as far as the response to the disaster, the real tragedy was the decision (and it's still not clear exactly who decided) not to provide relief in New Orleans, but to use it as a carrot to entice people to leave. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army were ready to go in, but they were prevented. That is truly what caused the suffering that we saw on TV.

Gateway Pundit writes the headline the AP should have written for this story.

Powerline focuses on the factual errors of the reporting.

The Junkyard Blog wonders why the AP is so hot to report this video but so cold to report some other facts.

Wizbang notes the ability of the media to turn on a dime - from Bush was out of touch because he was on vacation, to Bush was out of touch even though he was being thoroughly briefed.

Why I Visit Hospitals

Tom McMahon shares what he has learned in the 15 years of life with a disabled son in a truly wonderful, makes the whole blogging thing worthwile kind of post.

One of the things he learned is that "Everybody will have a story. And Yours is not the worst story." So I'm telling you the story of why I visit people in the hospital. It's actually not a sad or bad story -- it has a very happy, ongoingly happy ending, but at the time I didn't know how the story would turn out.

When my daughter was three months old, she had to have an operation to correct a coarctation of the aorta. She spent about a week in the hospital. That was a very difficult time, and a big help to getting through it was all the people who took the time to come visit us in the hospital. And I'm not taking about just family. There were a couple of close friends from work, but we got a lot of visitors from our church, and people all over the area were praying for her. I ran into our pastor and a couple of elders in the elevator of the parking garage after I dropped my wife and daughter off -- they were there that fast and my first thought on seeing them was I wonder who they are visiting? Most of our visitors came after work, and we often had so many we had to move to a public area. It really helped to have people to encourage us, to share with us, and to just pass the time that crawls by in the hospital with us. Since we know what it means to have visitors, we try to visit people we know in the hospital -- we aren't always successful, and we could do a lot better. So far not one person hasn't been happy to see us, and not one hasn't said to us "You didn't have to come." No, we didn't have to, we wanted to.

Bacteria Numbers

A school girl did a wonderful science project - comparing the number of bacteria in the ice they serve you versus the number in their toilet water at fast food restaurants. Her answer is quite unappetizing as she discovered that in most (70%) locations there were more in the ice than there were in the water. Ugh. I do remember that when I was in Pakistan the leader of a detachment of seabees building terrorist defenses at the American Consulate told me how he was fanatic about keeping ice machines clean and disinfected because they could cause illness pretty easily. And don't even get me started on soft-serve ice cream dispensers.

Beware the people who compare the number of bacteria on some surface to the number of bacteria on a toilet seat -- they are misleading you with that comparison because the toilet seat has the fewest number of bacteria of any location in a bathroom - mainly because peoples butts and thighs (and yes, urine) don't have a lot of bacteria on them, and the (toilet) seats are routinely disinfected. And besides, you can only get skin type infections in the parts of your body that come into contact with the seat, at least if you're using the toilet properly that is. Generally, toilet seats are down right sterile compared to most other surfaces you regularly come into contact with. If the number of bacteria bug you, stay off the floor of a public restroom.

But the important thing isn't numbers, but variety of bacteria. For instance, should you be grossed out by that figure of 3 million bacteria on a computer keyboard? Well, when you consider that your very own personal body has 10 times more bacteria than you have cells, or a whopping 100 trillion (give or take a few trillion), that 3 million on the keyboard is insignificant. What matters is if there are any pathogens and your own general health since a lot of stuff that is normally harmless will turn on you if you let your guard down. It doesn't take many salmonella to ruin your day.

The best defense against bacterial invaders are clean hands and clean food. The 100 trillion that are already there will take care of the stragglers.