Insurmountable Opportunities

This guy printed out a bunch of blank catoon-speech ballons and put them up all over the place. Then he went back with a camera and took pictures of what people wrote in them.

It’s got all that I love about AdBusters (off-kilter ways of re-purposing the advertising messages of corporations) without all thatbugs me about AdBusters (their elitist above-the-hoi-palloi kind of crap…like dropping bunches of dollar bills off a balcony in a mall and videotaping the dirty, dirty lowlifes as they scramble).

Thanks boingboing!

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I’m not sure who Adam Rifkin is, but he sure has great taste!

#116 ain’t bad!

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Alison’s coming to look at my blog. I’m sooooooooooooo excited!!

I just have to clean up a bit. Let’s see…did I spellcheck that post? NO? Shit, too late. I already sent the email with the link. Fucking hell!

Oh well. I hope she likes it. She’s so…well, so…

hm.

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This heartwrenching (in light of current events) National Geographic article from October of 2004 was stunningly prescient in it’s description of a — at the time, still fictional — hurricane hit on the coast of Louisiana. The recent protestations from FEMA, DHS, and the White House ring hollow when it’s so obvious that many people know if the dangers, and were quite vocal about what needed to be done to prepare.

Such high stakes compelled a host of unlikely bedfellows?scientists, environmental groups, business leaders, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers?to forge a radical plan to protect what’s left. Drafted by the Corps a year ago, the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) project was initially estimated to cost up to 14 billion dollars over 30 years, almost twice as much as current efforts to save the Everglades. But the Bush Administration balked at the price tag, supporting instead a plan to spend up to two billion dollars over the next ten years to fund the most promising projects. Either way, Congress must authorize the money before work can begin.

“The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours?coming from the worst direction,” says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city’s hurricane armor. “I don’t think people realize how precarious we are,”
Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. “Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it’s going to make things much worse.”

(Emphasis mine.)

http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/

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CU Wireless Network is a community group coordinating with the FCC to establish a community wireless network in New Orleans. They are also bringing together VIOP, Low-Power FM, and Ad-Hoc Networking folks. Needed: solo geeks to help out, and money.

PayPal Donation:

Thanks BoingBoing !

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I had been trying for the past few weeks to be more regular at posting to this thing. There just doesn’t seem to be much to say since the world turned upside down. I’ll just leave it at this for a while and be back later:

Donate:
Red Cross
Salvation Army

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This Salon.com article hopefully will help start a dialogue that is something we are in desparate need of.

There are lots of problems out there, to be sure, but the way the United States treats it’s poor is shameful. The reports in the news and the statements from pundits are reactionary and disgusting.

You certainly can’t excuse people shooting guns at the people who are involved in rescue and releif efforts, to be sure, but that’s not all that this disaster is about. It’s about terrible preparation and response too. It’s about the expectation that any offer of help is going to be met with tearful gratitude (Extreme Makeover Home Edition) rather than “fuck you, where were you last week, dick?”

People in need will always be there, hungry, cold, whenever we are moved (or forced) to offer compassion and assistance. We’ll always know where to find them because they have nowhere else to go. If you beat someone at the same time you starve them, don’t be surprised if they bite your hand. And when they bite your hand and that leads you to the conclusion that they aren’t worth feeding, then “fuck you, where were you last week, dick?”

Some supporting video from Crooks & Liars

• Paula Zahn tears into the head of FEMA
• Then Ted Koppel takes his turn
• Anderson Cooper (CNN) has it up to here with Senator Landreiu’s polital crap and lays into her for thanking her fellow politicians when he’s seen rats eating a woman’s body.
• Mayor Lagin is pissed.

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