Lee.org

Micro-er than twitter, it’s…. it’s nano-blogging from Flutter!

Trav makes some excellent commentary about government intervention after the Katrina hurricane.

for want of a heavy rain a few billion dollars were lost

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/us/05t…

many of the children of Hurricane Katrina are behind in school, acting out and suffering from extraordinarily high rates of illness and mental health problems. Their parents, many still anxious or depressed themselves, are struggling to keep the lights on and the refrigerator stocked.

Oh, good, a new victim class, ripe for dependency on the federal government, and the leftists who run it, and who profit from broken people and broken habits!

You know what the Germans were doing three years after we smashed their state, fire-bombed Dresden, and occupied their country?

They were rebuilding, and getting ready to become the best economy in Europe.

You know what the Japanese were doing three years after we burned Tokyo to the ground, nuked Hiroshima, nuked Nagasaki, and killed the better part of a generation of young men?

They were rebuilding, and getting ready to become the best economy in Asia.

You know what the residents of New Orleans are doing three years after it rained ?

Bitching, and moaning, and not accomplishing jack.

Ptooi.

For some, like Kearra Keys, 16, who was expelled from her Baton Rouge school for fighting and is now on a waiting list for a G.E.D. program, what was lost may be irretrievable.

I blame Bush.

More than 30,000 former trailer residents landed in apartments paid for by the federal government until March 2009,

WT* ?!?!?!?

I’m glad my tax dollars are paying for people so stupid that they lived below sea level to now live in taxpayer funded housing for four years.

I’ve read and heard several reports of people that were put into FEMA Katrina relocation camps trailer parks. Every report I heard was mind-bendingly bad. For example: suicide attempts at the parks are 79 times the national average.

Here is a local copy of the NPR radio audio story, Stuck and Suicidal in a Post-Katrina Trailer Park. it’s 20 minutes long.

Here is a transcript excerpt. 

Look on the NPR website for more stories.. Stuck and Suicidal in a Post-Katrina Trailer Park

All Things Considered, August 8, 2007 · The first morning of my visit to Scenic Trails, I was walking the path between some trailers when I bumped into a man named Tim Szepek. He was young, tall, and solidly good-looking. I asked if I could speak to him for a moment and he agreed. We found a spot of shade beneath a tree, and I started with what I considered a casual warm-up.

“What’s it like to live around here?” I asked.

“Well,” he replied, “I’ll be honest.”

“Ain’t a day goes by when I don’t think about killing myself.”

And so began my time in Scenic Trails, a FEMA trailer park deep in the Mississippi woods where 100 families have lived in near isolation for close to two years.

Though Szepek was the first resident to tell me he wanted to commit suicide, he certainly wasn’t the last. The day I spoke with him, three other residents confided the same.

The second person was Stephanie Sigur, a 28-year-old mother of two. She was sitting in front of her trailer at a picnic table, her daughter on her lap, when she explained that if it weren’t a sin, she would have blown her brains out months ago.

“I know it’s a bad thing to say because I’m a parent,” she told me as her toddler played with her hair, “but I can’t live like this no more.”

Stephanie Sigur and Tim Szepek aren’t alone. According to a recent study of 92 different Katrina FEMA parks published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, suicide attempts in Louisiana and Mississippi’s parks are 79 times higher than the national average. Major depression is seven times the national rate.

When I first read those numbers, I found them hard to believe. But after three days at Scenic Trails, they made a lot more sense.

The residents there, in essence, are trapped. It is no longer possible for them to live outside the trailer parks. Prior to Katrina, most of the people who now live in the parks were renters.

Along the Mississippi coast, a family of four could rent a two- or three-bedroom apartment or small home for around $500 a month. But when the storm wiped the Mississippi coast clean, it took out all the housing infrastructure that supported these people. Most of them are minimum-wage workers who live paycheck to paycheck. Today, a two- or three-bedroom apartment in Hancock County, where Scenic Trails is located, costs $800, $900, even $1,000 a month. This is an impossible amount of money for the people who live in the parks, and there is no immediate end in sight. FEMA says it would like to close the parks, but state and federal government plans to rebuild low-income housing for Mississippi coast residents have yet to break ground. Housing experts says it will probably take years to produce enough low-cost housing to move people out of the parks.

And so they are stuck. And the place they are stuck is not the kind of place you would want to spend an extended amount of time. For two years, many have lived in travel trailers intended for weekend use. Families of four housed in a space the size of most people’s living rooms.

Worse, as time wears on, the communities around them seem to be falling into a kind of madness. At Scenic Trails, almost everyone at the camp has been burglarized at least once. Meth and cocaine addiction is rampant, and residents seem to be turning against one another.

Recently, the park has seen a rash of animal mutilations. One resident told me that her cat had come home bleeding — a long, thin razor cut along its leg. Another resident said his dog’s throat had been cut, and several people reported that someone in the camp had been feeding anti-freeze to dogs.

No one seemed to have a particular suspect in mind. There was no specific theory of why. That was just the way things went at the camp nowadays. With no way to leave, people were angry and frustrated, and so they act out.

On the animals. On each other. On themselves.

The government is not helping by “helping”.

I just received this (wonderful) announcement. Put the PTDR on your calendar!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, please brace yourselves for the following
double-barreled announcement.

You Said It Would Not Happen!
You Said It Was Better Last Year!
You Said There Was No Way You Would Stand In Those Concession Lines Again

BUT IT DID. AND IT WASN’T. AND YOU WILL.

Assorted parties are PROUD to present

The One And Only

POWER TOOL DRAG RACES

TWO WEEKENDS. . eekends. . . eekends. . .eekends

At The Maker Faire. . .aire. . .aire. . aire

Maker Faire Bay Area
May 3rd and 4th 2008
http://makerfaire.com/

And then AGAIN at ACE! International Speedway. . .eedway. . .eedway. .
.eedway. . . Continue reading ‘Power Tool Drag Races!’ »

I hadn’t looked into who the body actor behind that groovy Golf GTI ad was. It is David Bernal, AKA David Elsewhere. Normal physics does not apply to this person!

Watch some of his Youtubiness.

Don’t look at these. They’ll hurt your eyes.

Continue reading ‘Eye Popping Optical Illusions’ »

“A person in a uniform is merely an extension of another person’s will” – Philip Slater – according to RPG Motivational Slides

Oops. This attorney has some unusual payment terms..

over 10,000 satisfied clients indeed!

From Nate Smith to David Ellsworth to you:

Nate sent me a list of some good pictures and videos of Crude Awakening / BLEVE. If you have more, please send them to me and I will forward them to Nate.

- David

Continue reading ‘Images and videos of Crude Awakening and 4BLEVE at Burning Man 2007’ »

This is really exciting!

The Lunar X-Prize.

This is a part of the Ocean Beach Fire Pit Project

Hi there all my nearest and dearesteses… For the past two and a half months many of you have not heard from me or seen me much. During this time Rebecca, the Fire Bloom crew and I have been bustin’ our butts to get Bloom #2 ready and onto the beach. We accomplished this with many, many hours of cutting, welding, patterning and grinding!
Now it’s time to play!
This Sunday, July 22nd 2007 (my little sister Amna’s birthday) around sunset, we will be celebrating not only Fire Bloom 2, but also Charlie’s beautiful Starfish! The location is Ocean Beach, between Lincoln and Fulton, across the street from the Beach Chalet. Please join us in the festivities. Bring something to drink or eat, wood to burn and your friends. It will be a lovely time burning, watching the sun set and making merry after a grueling two months of hard work! It has definitely paid off.
Thank you to everyone who supported us and helped make this happen. We look forward to seeing you out there!!
Yasi xoxoxooxo

Ok, this is stupid.

(local copy for posterity) Continue reading ‘Keeping America Safe From the World’s Most Dangerous Poi Spinner’ »

Here’s a follow up to Where to buy art supplies and Burning Man supplies
Originally from The Jack Rabbit Speaks RESOURCE ISSUE #2 Volume 11, Issue #13 JULY 5, 2007.

Here are more resources for buying art and other supplies for Burning Man.

Continue reading ‘Where to buy art supplies and Burning Man supplies: Part 2’ »

In the July 2007 (volume 8, Number 6) issue of Business 2.0 there is an interesting article about Burning Man. It’s cool that there is a photo of the Serpent Mother at the top of one of the pages.

This is a wonderful wonderful article. Don’t read it here, read it on it’s author’s home page.

Continue reading ‘The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel’ »

(via, and)

But let me again emphasize, to be good at chess, you need to study and read a bit.

But you also have to have the talent.

I used to be, what I thought, was a pretty decent chess player. I easily beat most people I played and could defeat most of those hand-held computers that were coming out in the 1980s.

Then, one day, a friend invited me over for a smoke and a drink. Seeing that he had a chess table set-up, I asked him if he fancied a game. He beat me quickly. Twice.

So I figured I would see how good he was. During the third game, we’re about 30 moves into the game, and he steps out of the room, so I moved one of his pieces to my advantage. My friend Mark comes back in, sits down, and immediately moves the piece back. Somewhat surprised, I ask if he saw me move it.

Mark looked at me curiously, wiped all the pieces off the board, set them up from the beginning, and says to me “In Chess, you either see it or you do not.” He then makes my opening move, explaining “The standard opening for white,” pausing for effect and then adding “and also the opening move Spasky used in his third match against Fisher in the game I was studying last night.” “Boris is a ham and egger,” he tells me.

“I countered with Fischer’s move,” he says moving his piece. “Also very standard.”

“And then you did something very interesting. A very unconventional move, but I’ve seen it used a few times. When I was 13 someone did this to me and it really threw me off my tempo since it was not like any standard opening. I lost that game in 25 moves.”

Mark was 35 and he was telling me about a game he played when he was 13. At this point I began to understand that I was out of my league.

So he looks at me, and says, “I countered your move with the same move I used against the Israeli national champion at the Philadelphia Open when I was 15. He tried your same trick on me too, but by then I had figured out several defenses.”

He moves his piece, turning a gimlet eye to me, he says “And then you made a really stupid move so I knew you didn’t know what you were doing.”

And he goes on the explain each move up to where he left the room. “This was the position of the board when I left, you moved this pawn here while I was out.”

I was gobsmacked.

It is not enough to study the game, you have to have a photographic memory and a massive intellect to really be any good at it. Turns out my friend Mark Coles – who was one of the smartest people I have ever met – was a ranked Chess Master with a long list of merits and trophies. We were both playing chess, but he was playing another game. I never played much chess after that. I’ll play a game or two with a couple of ex-cons I know who learned to play in the joint, but I don’t really consider it as playing chess. I don’t know anything about the game.
posted by three blind mice at 1:33 AM on June 20 [115 favorites]

Trav’s been talking about this lawyer he’s been interacting with. It’s krazy.

He got BoingBoinged today, bringing down his server (darn it, I was -just- going to mention that he install WP-Cache). The server’s back up and the story is funny. Check it out.

Google for “Raptor Jesus”. I dare you.

(via)

Here is the original, the one, the only: http://sweetraptorjesus2.ytmnsfw.com/

Now google for Raptor Jesus.

It plays smoother on ytmnd but here’s a local archive…

Here is the Raptor Jesus slideshow (click on the image to see an an animated gif) to be played with the video raptor_jesus.mp3. Put your audio-player on ‘repeat’.

Update 3-3-08: The raptor battle just above was painted by Brandon Bird, titled “Killing Machine”. I’m an instant fan! (yes, that’s Bea Arthur grappling that raptor)

This was forwarded to me by my cousin. It’s incredible. I was moved by his singing.

Here’s what I was sent:

Even if you hate opera, you will LOVE this!!!

Paul Potts, a shy, 36 year old mobile car salesman from Wales entered the British version of “American Idol”. He was near bankrupt from a series of health issues [tumor on adrenaline gland, ruptured appendix, and a smashed collar bone from being thrown from his bike]. He never sang professionally and lacks confidence from being bullied as a child. He said, his voice was his only friend at times.

This video was Paul’s audition.

The finals were held on June 19, and that evening, after 2 million viewers voted by phone, Paul won the contest will receive $200,000, sang on NBC’s TODAY SHOW on 6/21/07, and will sing for the Queen later this month.

His first CD will be available in July.

WHAT A STORY!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA&mode

Local copy of the video available here

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Originally from Jack Rabbit Speaks Volume 11, Issue 11 June 14, 2007

There are several good resources for buying art and other supplies here

Continue reading ‘Where to buy art supplies and Burning Man supplies’ »

Cool, my friend TJIC’s company, Smartflix.com is offering a chance at winning a free Sherline Lathe.

Lathe giveaway details

How do you enter to win? Just rent any metalworking video from SmartFlix between today and June 10th. Every video you rent is a whole ‘nother chance to win.
…
This lathe is an excellent choice for clockmakers, modelers or others who work on small parts. It is easily used where space is at a premium and can be stored on a closet shelf.

…And, last but not least, it’s the lathe that got the president of SmartFlix interested in metalworking, and led him to start the company!