Posted on 11/13/2019 8:08:14 PM PST by caww
According to Mike EVERYTHING is seen in racial terms. She/he/it (or whatever pronoun is applicable: nowadays it is hard to tell) is the quintessential racist.
New Orleans does appear to be a great example of layers & iterations of geographic & construction idiocies aplenty. What were they thinking?
Oh, right, they weren’t.
Even as a young kid my parents would comment on constructions in low lying areas near a river—and how utterly unwise to stupid such doings were. Made sense to me then. Makes sense to me now.
It doesn’t take a genius construction, planning expert, or geologist to know that water tends to flow downhill; that high tides & hurricanes mean more, deeper water in a given area.
Sentimentality about wonderful New Orleans or Venice doesn’t help poor people in either area. maybe Venice doesn’t have poor people. IIRC, new Orleans does.
I’m not pretending that hard choices are absent in either region. I don’t think that idiocy piled on top of idiocy is any kind of solution for anyone—particularly the poor.
IIRC, around the time of the most devastating hurricane not many years ago in New Orleans, there was plenty of corruption & out-right official malpractice to go around—resulting in outrageous costs to the poor & others—and possibly some deaths. There’s no excuse for that.
Excusing such by silly appeals to sentiment do not impress me.
It’s easy to say that even poor people should realize that water flows downhill. And, I agree.
Nevertheless, years of stupid to corrupt and other problematic planning & other construction decisions resulting in the poor living in untenable areas involve more than a lot of blame to go around.
Could we move New Orleans? Depends on how much of it we are talking about at what costs. We could move all of it. Is it practical? Probably not. Maybe.
Could they move key vulnerable areas? Probably.
Could they move areas in ways that protected the charm etc. that’s so attractive about New Orleans? Sure. Look at Disney. Enough money makes lots of things ‘magical.’
Could they better protect major key areas with herculean & expensive measures. Probably. Will they? Doubtful.
Sounds like inertia & corruption are still factors, IIRC.
Blathering about how quaint, historic, sentimentally attractive this or that area is doesn’t protect lives in huge hurricanes. And evacuation is fraught with massive problems, as well.
Hard choices go with leadership of all kinds.
Corruption, stupidity, arrogance, short-sightedness etc. are political malpractice & deserve prosecution & punishment accordingly. Seems to rarely happen. Why? What are the excuses for that?
You seem to be Denny Hastart with a better vocabulary.
I’m off to New Orleans for my birthday next week. Can’t wait! Beautiful city in December without a lot of tourists and Mardi Gras crazies.
I’m just a fossilized old fart pontificating in retirement as it strikes my fancy. Mileage may vary.
Well, at least you’re not pontificating in prison like Denny.
Thankfully.
Most of my sins & misdeeds have been solitary private stupidity, habitual OCD crap, over-eating etc.
And the few exceptions have certainly involved consenting adults. Anything less has never computed for me to any degree in any way shape or form.
Can’t & won’t tolerate abuse of the vulnerable—children, animals, spouses etc.
Many,many years ago, four of us went there at the beginning of February. We got a great room right in the Quarter and had a great time, Actually got to stand just a few rows of people back from the players at Preservation Hall. The bars were filled with “colorful” locals with their great stories and good advice about where and what to eat and what to see that regular tourists skip over.
I have no idea what it’s like now, but good luck.
I don’t think it’s changed at all. I’ve never been able to get into Preservation Hall. I suspect I won’t this time as well.
Venice was sinking the moment the first piering was pounded into the sand over 1500 years ago.
2nd highest in history, translation: it has happened before, and worse; further translation: this is not “climate change”
Help save Venice...everyone mail them your contributions of dirt.
When asked for thoughts on the flooding, Marco Polo replied: “People were running around like a Chinese fire drill trying to get out of it”.
One of the oldest settlements in what is today’s “Venice” — actually a cluster of islands and dependent territories on the mainland — is on Torcello, a smaller island out in the lagoon northeast of today’s main islands. It is actually closer to the mainland than today’s tourist Venice with which we are all familiar; it’s due east across the water from Marco Polo Airport. Torcello is often claimed as the first offshore refugee settlement in the Venice lagoon. In the early days it was a substantial place and was far more important commercially than today’s Venice. The land was farmed in Roman times, but the Roman settlement was apparently completely wiped out by flooding. It was resettled by the first refugees and again became a substantial urban place. Population estimates vary widely, but there may have been as many as 20,000 people. Today, there are fewer than a hundred residents. It is reachable only by boat. There are two notable churches on the island, so it’s a port of call for the tourist boats on the lagoon. The point being: catastrophic flooding is nothing new around the Venice lagoon.
Interesting. Thanks for the fascinating history.
Singing there was probably pretty good though.
local single from years ago:
https://home9.bandcamp.com/track/time-traveler
The second-worst apocalypse in Venice since 1965! More proof of Global Warming. /s
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