b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Gas Panic in Georgia
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"I'll take a pound of relevance, to go please."
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Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Nature Wins
The image below, and the quotes from both Dave Winer and Jeneane Sessum, point to the real problem in New Orleans - the city is in a sinkhole. It's below sea level and, in fact, has been sinking for decades. That it was dry at all was a miracle of engineering. And now that the New Orleans basin is full of water it may never be dry again.
The effort to dry it out will make draining the Boston Back Bay and the levees of Holland pale by comparison. I don't know if they'll ever be able to rebuild. Worse, we knew this was coming. We had years of credible, sustainable, evidence that the city was in danger of flooding, that it needed serious change to survive a major incident, and that everyone there was at risk. But our political will was such that nothing ever happened. And we have paid the price.
Dave Gets It
If I hear one more ill-informed anchor or blogger say: "when the water recedes" my head might explode. Dave says it best:
The correct answer...is that the water isn't going to recede. The only way to get the water out of the city is to pump it out, after the levees are fixed. In the meantime, the water isn't receding, it's going the other way, it's rising.
Gas Panic in Georgia
This is a nit compared to the devastation suffered by people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, but a full-fledged gasoline panic has hit Atlanta.
Gasoline prices soar above $3 a gallon in Katrina's wake
Gasoline prices surged above $3 a gallon in many parts of the country Wednesday and shortages cropped up in some areas as supply disruptions from Hurricane Katrina widened.
[...]
"There is a possibility that we will see some form of rationing with the conditions being as bad or worse than many people thought," said Fred Allvine, an oil industry expert with the Georgia Institute of Technology. [...]
I've heard unsubstiantiated reports of local stations pricing gas at $4.99-$5.99 per gallon. I know that many stations in my Atlanta exurb have run out of gas, with pumps closed all over town and long lines at those that are open.
I really don't understand this. It's the same mentality that causes people to run out and clean out the grocery stores of bread and milk every time there's a snow storm.
There is a problem. Supply lines from the Gulf were disrupted in the storm, and power outages have taken pumps and refineries offline. But it's not like there will never be gas again. Once power is restored the storage facilities will come online and this will pass. It's the hoarding and panic that is the problem.
[...] Owner Mike Brown looked outside the office of his Chevron gas station in the Atlanta suburb of Chamblee, Ga., on Wednesday and saw something he hadn't seen in years -- a customer topping off the tanks of not one, but three cars, and then filling up a handful of gas cans. "So the hoarding begins. I topped off my truck today," said Brown. [...]This sort of behavior just makes things worse, and won't really do anything to help the people who do it, since gas will likely be available at sub-panic prices next week or soon thereafter.
Our lemming-like behavior is just one more symptom of our self-destructive tendencies in times of crisis. New Orleans is under martial law, and that's apparently a good thing, since looters have been rampaging through whatever they can find. I don't know that I could do any better. I can't imagine. But I have friends in New Orleans and, for their sake, I hope we can all regain our sanity soon and get to the serious business of rescue and figuring out what to do with a major US city that has been destroyed as thoroughly as any "nucular" blast could have done.Perdue signs order allowing sanctions against gas gougers
With some retailers advertising gasoline prices as high as $6 per gallon, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed an executive order Wednesday authorizing state sanctions against gas stations that gouge consumers."I do not believe there is an energy emergency in this state but we will not tolerate our citizens perceiving the fact there is by exorbitant price-gouging prices,'' he said.
Perdue's order allows the Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs to seek civil sanctions against retailers who can't justify their prices based on the price they paid at the terminal for the product, adjusted for their normal markup.
[...]
He asked the state's drivers to alter any discretionary driving plans they might have for the Labor Day weekend and stay home with their families instead."There's no reason to panic. There's plenty of gas on the way, and the only reason we would have problems locally is if we rush out to hoard and try to accumulate gasoline that we won't need for a long time,'' he said during a news conference with Red Cross officials.
Perdue said gas distributors assured him they were working around the clock to restore service to two major gas pipelines that serve the state but he added that another major source of supply through the Georgia ports hasn't been hampered.
"Fresh fuel is continuing to reach our ports and Atlanta and other markets throughout Georgia,'' he said.
More on Georgia gas prices:
Trader Mike
Tiffany B. Brown
Testing Trackback
This is a test of the trackback function. Test link.Test link 2
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
A Tag I Can Learn to Love
Tag: irrelevant. There are a paltry 27 links at technorati and a piss-poor 2 at delicious. Why aren't there more? This is a tag that means something. A tag we can all use. A tag that says "this is just more internet bs."Everyday, more and more, the internet reminds me of that carnival game where you whack the little gopher on the head with a mallet, and the person who whacks the most gophers wins.
Flickr Users Stunned by Obvious
This Wired article bespeaks a monumental naivete on the part of Flickr users. Massively commercial mega-portal (MCMP) Yahoo! bought the photo service in March and - surprise! surprise! - is going to commercialize it without hesitation. Now users are in an uproar:"If Flickr really forces me to join Yahoo in 2006 in order to still use my account, I will quit 24 hours before the deadline," wrote Thomas Müller, a Hamburg, Germany-based artist who shows more than 1,400 photos at the site. On Wednesday, Müller created a protest group, Flick Off, that has attracted almost 400 members.
[...]
"This comes after many of us have invested so much time and effort; it makes it a chore to do anything except bend over, grab our ankles and smile," said Dana Smith, a San Francisco-based Flick Off supporter whose photographs rank among Flickr's most interesting material.
A few months ago I wrote that "...dumping thousands of photos into some beta service that could disappear tomorrow seems like a giant time sink hole." It's astounding that people could really believe a service like Flickr could exist in a technical nirvana where no one has to pay the bills. Or that the purchase and integration of such a service wouldn't be irresistable to MCMPs.
So get your Yahoo! account or get out. But quit whining. Anyone who can prop a single eye open for more than a minute could see this coming.
"I'll take a pound of relevance, to go please."
Doug Kay, in the August 28 IT Conversations newsletter, says:I wonder if all those bloggers proudly promoting their "Top X" ranking would just as soon publish their "ads by gooooooooogle" revenue figures. Seems to me that's what the popularity contest is all about, right? That's a contest I can understand.The Top Podcast?
Feedster just released their Top 500 most interesting and important blogs and IT Conversations is rated #26 - higher than any other podcast. Cool! But as Dave Slusher pointed out, lists like this, iTunes, Podcast Alley, etc., suggest that what's important is volume: that the goal is the largest possible audience. This is the fat-head (as opposed to the long-tail) position. It's all about hits and stars, and follows the lead of broadcasting and the traditional music biz. But the best blogs and podcasts aren't those that appeal to the largest and most generic audiences, but rather those that deliver the greatest value to an audience, regardless of the size of that audience. One might have a blog or podcast about organ transplants, for example. Wouldn't make the Top Anything list, but for the intended readers/listeners, it would be #1. Old media can't do that. New media can and should. Change lives in as profound a way as possible.
I can also see why, and how, mass marketers (and Madison Ave) would be interested in this sort of mass ranking as some sort of generalized view to where the mass market is going.
But to the rest of us, it's irrelevant.
Monday, August 29, 2005
The CSS Zen Garden
I was having an IM discussion with Matt Mower this morning and he pointed me to the CSS Zen Garden. Marvelous. Wonderful stuff. You can click through dozens of stylesheets and see them applied to the same content. It's an amazing display of what can be done, if you know how. Unfortunately, I don't. So my site will remain simple and ugly. Such is life.
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