A happier New Orleans just eight months ago.

Our hotel was at the corner of Bourbon and Canal.

Ernie the Attorney has been a valuable, if understandably sporadic, source of information about what the Katrina experience was like. He escaped from New Orleans the other day, and I thought that might be the end of his “citizen reporting”. But today he posted an account written by Greg Henderson, a doctor working to help [...]

It’s time to come to the aid of our neighbors. I’m going to ask Wendy tonight if we can make a small donation to the American Red Cross fund for hurricane relief; it won’t be much, but if everybody donates something, then together we will be able to help many people. Please consider donating what [...]

The reports of the devastation from the Louisiana-Mississippi-Alabama gulf coast just boggle the mind. Levees breached. Buildings collapsed. Flooding. Over fifty dead in one Mississippi county alone, and that toll expected to rise. You expect lots of property damage from a class 4 storm, but the death toll is sadly astounding. New Orleans may not [...]

Katrina has made landfall, but the storm’s eye has not yet passed over New Orleans. People there still have to face the worst, but three developments bode well for the city:

The storm weakened slightly to category 4 overnight;
It increased its speed to 15 mph;
Its track shifted a few miles to the east.

So it will spend [...]

Every time I saw Wendy yesterday she’d say “Well, Katrina still hasn’t turned to the north.” I’m still not 100% convinced that she’s going where they say she will, but it’s becoming clear that she’s headed for somewhere along the Louisiana coast.
Most national news sources are covering the Katrina story, so you all probably know [...]

As many of you know, I’ve made a hobby in the past couple of years of making music videos. Well here’s a new twist on that idea: use Google Earth to generate some video, set it to music, and you have a nice geographical music video. Here are three nice videos made with Google Earth:
“My [...]

Dear Katrina,
Please turn north. We’ve had an excellent summer so far, and we don’t want you ruining it. So please turn north and visit the good people of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana. And please do so immediately.
Sincerely,
The Texas Gulf Coast

PS: The Central Florida Hurricane Center is now using a Google Map to keep track [...]

Message to the Earth’s core: slow down! It seems that scientists have suspected for about a decade that the Earth’s core rotates faster than the rest of the planet. They have now presented data showing that the core rotates about a half degree more per year than the surface. This is not entirely unprecedented in [...]

The rumor mill was running extra hard yesterday with news that Google would be launching a new instant messaging site. I went over to Google this morning to see if there had been an announcement. No announcement, but the site is now up at http://talk.google.com with software for download.
I don’t know if I’ll be using [...]

The World’s Ugliest Dog.

Update: Here’s a Houston Chronicle story about this ugly mutt.

When I came home this afternoon, I parked in a much cleaner garage. That was the weekend project: clean it out and throw some stuff away. We spent pretty much all day Saturday, 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM, working at it. We took everything out, swept it out, hosed it out, and then put everything [...]