Not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be

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rollick

Name: Consistency is my hobgoblin

	August 2008
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I'm reading a whole bunch of comics for review.

Someday I might get around to reading:

I'm about to watch:

I'm obsessively listening to:

I recently wrote:

I'm playing with:

I'm inordinately fond of:

Like several other people who've posted about it, I was queasily horrified by the National Weather Service's grim, graphic report on Hurricane Katrina, with its dire predictions ("most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer… all gabled roofs will fail, leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed… all windows will blow out… persons, pets, and livestock exposed to the winds will face certain death… power outages will last for weeks… water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards…") which sounded more like an excerpt from a Drudge Report story than an official government bulletin.

nihilistic_kid posted the text of that bulletin when it first appeared, and linked to the Weather Service source page. I checked the link and read the same text. One of his readers apparently even called the National Weather Service to confirm that that was their press release and they hadn't been hacked or spoofed, which they confirmed. Still, checking the exact same link again, it appears that that press release has been taken down and replaced by a far more generic report.

Meanwhile,

hoodcity has created something a lot of people will want to look into. The new "LJ user"

katrinacane is an aggregate account which he's used to Friend everyone he can find who's living in New Orleans and choosing not to evacuate. If you go to that journal and click on "Friends," you'll be reading the journals of a bunch of people reporting in their LJs from Ground Zero of Hurricane Katrina. Here's hoping they all come through it all right, though I expect as the power goes out, they'll stop posting and scare the crap out of all their new readers. Meanwhile, it's deeply shocking to me how many of them are casually posting about how they might die, but they ain't movin' anyway, for whatever reason. (Like, for instance, because their cats aren't freaking out.)

I'm-a feelin': worried

	From: ladycelia	Date: August 29th, 2005 04:49 am (UTC)		(Link)

Thanks for adding the link to katrinacane

	From: hoodcity	Date: August 29th, 2005 05:04 am (UTC)		(Link)

I was skeptical of that press release too (it sounded like something Matt Drudge threw together), until I read it on the NOAA website. I guess they thought previous hurricanes may have been overhyped, and this was the only way to get people's attention... it definitely worked.

	From: lots42	Date: August 29th, 2005 07:02 am (UTC)		(Link)

To combat the problems of overhype, they overhyped. Oy.

	From: jerel	Date: August 29th, 2005 11:36 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I think maybe they were hoping if they scared the shit out of people, people would move. If I were the NOAA, I would rather have people scared and out of the way than complacent and dead.

But the scariest part is, if the storm had stayed a Category 5, it might have been true. Just look at pictures of Homestead and Miami after Andrew.

	From: animejump	Date: August 29th, 2005 05:25 am (UTC)		(Link)

Neat journal concept. Unfortunately it looks like one of the posters cut-pasted an EXTREMELY long url into an entry, therefore breaking the journal's table and rendering the thing almost totally unreadable.

	From: hoodcity	Date: August 29th, 2005 05:30 am (UTC)		(Link)

Reads fine for over here. I see the URL you refer to, and it's on several lines now.

	From: lots42	Date: August 29th, 2005 07:00 am (UTC)		(Link)

My journal's friend 'style' is 'Generator'. Thus ass-long URLS don't screw up the rest of the entry.

P.S. To save on comments, I thought the 'water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards…' was insane nonsense. Even if New Orleans does get it's ass kicked in all sorts of new ways, it is right in the middle of the U.S. America is pretty damn good at getting relief in to in-country disaster spots.

	From: modernorpheus	Date: August 29th, 2005 05:47 am (UTC)		(Link)

Worse yet, 20,000+ people are taking shelter in the Superdome, mainly because they have no transportation out of New Orleans. The actual football field is expected to flood, and they'll have everyone climbing the stairs as high as they'll go. The stability of the entire building apparently rests on the dome itself, so if the dome goes, the entire building goes.

On the lighter side, though... um... yeah.

	From: rollick	Date: August 29th, 2005 05:53 am (UTC)		(Link)

I'm reminded of the entire country watching the WTC towers burn and fall on live television. Just that sense of helplessness and disbelief… The prospect of something like a Superdome collapse being predicted in advance and then playing out live on national TV… my mind boggles.

	From: lots42	Date: August 29th, 2005 07:02 am (UTC)		(Link)

I fail to see how the stabillity of the entire building can rest on the dome. What, they built it first?

	From: rm	Date: August 29th, 2005 01:11 pm (UTC)		(Link)

It's sort of like suspension bridges. It's a pressure thing and the dome is what holds the walls up.

	From: niemandsrose	Date: August 29th, 2005 05:33 pm (UTC)		(Link)

It's like a bubble?!

	From: modernorpheus	Date: August 29th, 2005 07:11 pm (UTC)		(Link)

My main source of info is unfortunately Wolf Blitzer, who said, "[the Superdome] is literally held together by its roof." I've heard others say that the dome is air-tight, built of flimsy materials, and reaffirm that the stability lies in the dome.

I admit this does dound like the dumbest way to build a stadium, but hey, this is football.

The storm did tear a few holes in the dome, but it wasn't nearly enough to bring it down. Also, there were only 9,000ish people there, not the 20k that I said earlier.