It seems like you hardly even hear about the status of New Orleans, and other areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.  They talked about it for awhile, collected donations, etc....but it seems like it has been totally put on the back burner.  What exactly is the current status?  Have the evacuees returned?  Have they cleared all of the debris?  Have they started rebuilding houses, buildings, etc? Are there still people stranded in other cities/states (obviously still homeless)?  I can't imagine having to go through something so horrible, having to then put your entire life back together after it had been quickly taken away.

I don't think they're going to be done cleaning out the city for a while.  They have to worry about trying to fix the levees before hurricane season starts; this year's season is expected to be worse than last year's.  As far as I know, there's been rebuilding, but some areas are inaccessible even still, because of water, debris, bodies......it's still a holy mess.  Whether or not evacuees went home; I think people in the areas that were not as badly damaged were able to go home, but if you were from the 9th Ward, chances are you're still somewhere else. 

Ray Nagin has a PLAN.

"Don't hesitate, evacuate" ;D

"I haven't actually BEEN to the levee, I got people that do that for me, Imus"

;D ;D Man I love Bernie's Ray Nagin impersonation on Imus in the morning.  It really does sound just like him.

PLAN: Let it rot a while longer. Make sure "those people" don't come back. Hand over real estate to private hotel and entertainment industries. Insurance industry will raise premiums to unaffordable levels for all except the rich and the bigtime tourism businesses.

The government has turned its back on the people and is right proud of it!

PLAN: Let it rot a while longer. Make sure "those people" don't come back. Hand over real estate to private hotel and entertainment industries. Insurance industry will raise premiums to unaffordable levels for all except the rich and the bigtime tourism businesses.

The government has turned its back on the people and is right proud of it!



yes, and that pisses me off. Those people are the ones who should have first priority...but they don't.

There was a big special on NO rebuilding last week on History Channel.

They are still rebuilding the levees, and will be doing so for the next 2-3 years.  However, no matter what they do, it will just happen again.

Some of the things they discovered are startling.  It was believed before Katrina, NO was sinking at a rate

I don't think they should just give up like that Mushroom.  If an entire country below sealevel(Holland) can make it, there is a way for NO to be safe.  They can't just let it die. :(

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Well dammit, we're not Dutch, we are Americans! We don't make stuff that works for everybody, we make stuff that makes a few people rich!
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At the same time, I can't deny Mushroom's point on a geological level. Another Katrina-strength hurricane WILL nail New Orleans, and it may even happen this year. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are getting hotter earlier and staying hotter longer. The entire Gulf coast is at risk for imminent catastrophe.


Oh, I have stated in here that I think even more needs to be done, and I am going to state it again.

NO needs to be considered a "total loss".  And the Old River Control Structure needs to be eliminated, and let the river resume it's natural course.

http://users.stlcc.edu/jangert/oldriver/oldriver.html

I bet that most readers in here did not realize that the Mississippi River no longer wants to exit into the Gulf at NO.  It wants to shift further West, and come out closer to the Texas border.  For almost 100 years now, the Army Corps Of Engineers have been holding it back.

Maxwell, you are very right, I look at things like this on a vastly different scale then most people.  Most people look at a few hundred years of "modern history", and say things are getting warmer.  Myself, I look at millions of years of geologic history, and state "we are still in an ice age, polar ice caps are an abberation in the history of the planet".

Humans simply can't understand the things that this planet does, because the time-scale is so vast.  3,000 years ago, Death Valley was a huge inland lake.  2,000 years ago, large areas of the Middle East was lush farmland.  100-500 years ago, the Earth experienced the lowest temperatures in 10,000 years.  However, they mistakenly became accepted as being "the norm", because this occured at the same time as some of our largest scientific discoveries.

Within the next 10,000 years or so, NO will vanish under the sea.  So will London, New York, San Francisco, and large areas of Los Angeles.  Why?  Global Warming.

You see, we are still in the tail end of an "Ice Age".  And our polar ice caps and glaciers will continue to melt off.  It happens every time at the end of an ice age.

And here is some more doom & glioom:  The Yellowstone Caldera will explode in a Supervolcano eruption, sometime in the next few thousand years.

The New Madrid Fault will eventually give way, causing the deaths of possibly millions of people, and distruction as far away as New York City.  In fact, this is actually overdue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone

And if anybody thinks I am axagerating, look up some facts on continental drift and Paleontology. 

^Well isn't that just uplifting?

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Mole rats?  You know, it seems like I heard somewhere that one day rats might evolve to the "top" of the Animal Kingdom.  Did you pick mole rats intentionally or is that just a coincedince?

I know what you're getting at... and it is depressing.  But we really are the blink of an eye.  Modern humans have only existed for like 50,000 years, and humans period for only 2 million I think.  Civilization has only been around for about 5,000 years.  What is everything to us, the sum of what we are, is nothing to the planet.  You're absolutely right, unfortunately.

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Mushroom is also correct in pointing out the Mississippi delta has been engineered to do what we want for the past century. He's right. Man can only boss nature around for so long. In a hundred years Las Vegas and Phoenix will be American ruins, the first "ghost cities," if you will. Think we can beat the desert with our water diversions and oil pipelines? Think again!
The global climate may be warming on a natural cycle, but I do believe the human activity is hastening the process. Biological life is tough and adaptive on Earth. The requirements that make our modern lives possible rely on an ideal set of climate patterns and water-to-ice ratios. Mother Nature might have brushed those conditions away in 10,000 years. However, with mankind's suicidal mission, we might beat ourselves out of it in another century!
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Monty Python, from The Meaning Of Life

"Makes you feel rather small, doesn't it?"
"May we have your liver then, Mrs. Brown?"
;D