August 31, 2005
Black people loot, white people find?
Racism, originally uploaded by dustin3000
Short version: two photos, one of a black child, and another of a white couple, doing the exact same thing - wading through the water with things they have "looted" or "found".
August 29, 2005
Hurricane Porn
So today's big story - and for the next 6 months - will be Hurricane Katrina and its impact on New Orleans and the rest of the nation. Here is an article from Popular Mechanics about the effects of a Category 5 hurricane on New Orleans.
The web is doing a great job of bringing good information to bear. For official news, check the NOAA's Katrina Stormtracker. Wikipedia of course has an accurate, ever evolving article while MetaFilter has a discussion of the long term affects of Katrina. Mike is recording live journal accounts of the hurricane. Watch the NO webcams and look at all of the Flickr photos tagged with Hurricane Katrina.
Stay safe.
Later... This doesn't sound good:
THIS IS FROM THE NWS IN NEW ORLEANS..DEVESTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE IN 1969. MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS..PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL LEAVING MOST HOMES DAMAGED OR DESTROYED. THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BE NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAME LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE. HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT. AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS..PETS..AND LIVESTOCK WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK..POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS..AND MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS..THE VAST MAJORITY OF TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT TOTALLY DEFOLIATED..FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN, LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED..
Update 11:18
Bloggers Josh Britton & Brendan Loy are blogging from NOLA and Flickr Group Hurricane Katrina has some photos.
Watch the LSU Webcam and the data from a tidal gauge near Lake Pontchartrain.
August 25, 2005
It Really Has been Quiet, Here
You might have wondered where all of the posts have gone. Well, we have been posting all of our more political junk at Liberal Penpal along with a special, permanent guest.
At some point we will be redesigning Grubbykid in order to integrate the posts from Liberal Penpal, and other side projects.
So if you like that sort of stuff Go. There. Now! If not, stay here and enjoy some photos.
August 24, 2005
Cellphone Vigilantes, Unite!
pervert081805, originally uploaded by friendly_chic407
Oh, the joys of living in New York City! Lady was in the subway, and some pervert started masturbating; so what did she do? Take a cellphone picture, of course!
I was riding on the R train uptown at 3pm on Friday August 18th when a man exposed and began molesting himself on the train. It was at the very end of the train but it wasn't completely empty.
...
I tried to avoid eye contact with him but I had a feeling he was up to no good when he kept massaging his crotch. I couldn't believe this guy had the audacity to do something like this in the middle of the day! So I took out my cell-phone and turned on the camera. Then I aimed the camera at him and took a quick shot. He quickly zipped himself up and got off at the next stop...
This is way better than the whole Dog Shit Girl (photo), this guy was scum. We have forgotten how many people we know who have been flashed or seen creeps masturbating in the city or on the subway.
Quick Link for Posting to del.icio.us on Movable Type
So, I was reading This Is Going to be Big (specifically the 10 Steps to a Hugely Successful Web 2.0 Company article) and I noticed at the end of the article these links:
And it hit me: what an easy way for people to quickly link your article to del.icio.us without a whole lotta overhead. So I did what any good web person does: I stole the (great) idea. And I will show you how to do it (mostly for Google) for Movable Type.
In your Individual Archives, preferably near the bottom with all of your other meta data, place the following code:
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&title=<$MTEntryTitle encode_html="1"$>">Remember this post with del.icio.us</a>
This will create a link with your post title, nicely formatted for del.icio.us. And that's it!
So very simple!
August 17, 2005
Mr. Housing Bubble
Get yer Mr Housing Bubble T-Shirts before they're all gone! Man, how could would it be to slap something on a T-shirt and then end up featured in a Reuters article and making money, hand over fist?
August 15, 2005
Flood
Last night, during the torrential rain which hit New York City, our apartment decided it would be a great idea to flood itself. So my bedroom was filled with 2-3 inches of roof drain water. Not a fun thing to have to clean up.
Regular posting will occur once we dry out.
August 11, 2005
Politics, Religion & Science
I've had this in the queue for awhile, and finally I'm going to post it before the Crybaby Option is triggered. What I want to draw upon, is how religion affects two (of the three) other competing spheres of life: science and politics (commerce being the last).
Here is an interesting article by Richard Dawkings, discussing science and religion entitled, Snake Oil and Holy Water:
In any case, the belief that religion and science occupy separate magisteria is dishonest. It founders on the undeniable fact that religions still make claims about the world that on analysis turn out to be scientific claims. Moreover, religious apologists try to have it both ways. When talking to intellectuals, they carefully keep off science's turf, safe inside the separate and invulnerable religious magisterium. But when talking to a nonintellectual mass audience, they make wanton use of miracle stories--which are blatant intrusions into scientific territory.
The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children. Every one of these miracles amounts to a violation of the normal running of the natural world. Theologians should make a choice. You can claim your own magisterium, separate from science's but still deserving of respect. But in that case, you must renounce miracles. Or you can keep your Lourdes and your miracles and enjoy their huge recruiting potential among the uneducated. But then you must kiss goodbye to separate magisteria and your high-minded aspiration to converge with science.
This article by Dawkins dove-tails exceedingly well with an article by Matthew Yglesias:
The natural law thing is key. The best gloss you can put on the natural/supernatural discussion is that science supposes the world to be governed by certain unchanging natural laws such that the world unfolds through a series of causal interactions that are, in principle, predictable. The content of science consists, in part, of exploring what these laws might be, an effort to discern what sorts of laws might explain the available data and, therefore, allow us to make conjectures about what happened in spatio-temporal regions where we have no data, including, of course, the future.
The two articles both deal with supernatural forces, and how to reconcile them with science, but attacking the issues from different angles. How we resolve the natural/supernatural issue, is something I don't want to get into now. However, what is interesting to me, is that Catholicism has a better track-record. in dealing with science than modern Evangelical Protestantism. Yes, yes, for every near-excommunication of Galileo there was a Saint Augustine and a Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Not that Catholicism and many religions as a whole don't continually interfere with science (see cells, stem), but it seems that Catholicism has reconciled itself with the big issues. Namely, evolution and natural selection. Also, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism all have reconciled themselves to evolution and natural selection. It seem plausable (to me) that evolution can exist with a supernatural being - at some point God enters the picture as an origin. I don't know if there are vestiges of Lamarkian "Divine Watchmaker" in this line of thought, but Catholic dogma largely has put evolution aside as a contentious issue.
But not Evangelical Protestants. The groups who are largegly pushing for the eradication of science in the classroom are Evangelical Protestants, and in some cases, Evangelical Catholics (which are another breed of Catholocism). I was always curious why Protestantism, especially of the evangelical flavor, seemed to be at the leading edge of the attack on evolution, natural selection, and science in general.
The only hypothesis I have been able to center on was the arbiter of truth and the path to God. Protestantism lacks a centralized arbiter of right and wrong like Catholocism has in the Pope. Lacking this shield and arbiter, Protestants are well aware of their tenouous connection to "revelaed truth." While Catholics fetisize the Pope, Evengelical Protestants fetisize the Bible. Which is understandable, becuase the Bible is the only unfalible truth when they don't have the "unfalible" Pope.
Personally, as a protestant (Lutheran) I take great umberage about unfailibility of a man; the only unfalible man was Jesus, but this is besides the point, and many wars have already been fought over this point. Protestants lacking a Pope fits me fine: I'm secure in my (if somewhat Gnostic) beliefs and don't need a falible man intepreting the bible which I can do, thank you very much. There are hard times where a Pope would have made things easier, but the power of not having to go through an intermediary (the Pope) to talk to God outweighs this.
This is a larger point: the distance between God in Catholicism and Protestantism (especially the Evangelical flavor) is quite different.
August 10, 2005
What Humidity Does to a Lens
What Humidity Does to a Lens, originally uploaded by plemeljr
Watching the Sunset at Key West.
August 9, 2005
What I woke up to this morning
What I woke up to this morning, originally uploaded by plemeljr
Key West is exactly what you would think it is - but luckily we have tried to steer clear of the really tacky places.