Well, well, well ... !

Click to read the comments on the image.

1. Gas prices. Blamed on Katrina as usual. What a crock of shit.

2. Levees breached. You know what is so funny? One person commented in French Quarters that they were spared by Katrina when the Hurricane headed up north. That there was minimal damage and no "flood" prior to the levees' collapses. I was holding my breath because I knew Katrina would pull a sucker punch. And she did.

I knew the levees would be breached *after* Katrina left the town, know why? The soil in Louisiana are saturated with water, the soil rejected the water and it went into Lake Pontchartrain. Of course, the lake grew bigger because Katrina dumped the rain on it as well as other water that flowed into the lake. Then the city of New Orleans attempted to pump all water that were rained on the city into the lake -- overflowing the capacity of the lake itself -- it breached several levees and flooded the city. Then the water pump tried to pump it back into the lake ... again, just to make things worse.

Basically, it was a time bomb waiting to happen in the first place.

You see, the environment where New Orleans is is not designed to support a major city. In fact, it is swamp. For years, people drained the swamps out of the land and make it a city. It is fitting that Katrina attempts to restore its nature by burying the town back to the original state.

For years, there were no communities on coastal areas. Look at Savannah, St. Augustine, New York, Jamestown, Baltimore, Philadelphia --these towns were situated not on the coastal area -- they were situated far inland bit outside of the coastal areas. Tthe people back then knew that it is not always safe to live by the coastal areas because of hurricanes.

But Time has changed -- thanks to our capitalism, it practically ignored the safety of others by providing what people wanted. Supply and demand, basically. People liked the beaches, they have the money and means to build a community right on the beachfront. In the last 100 years, The beachfront communities exploded all over the eastern seaboard all the way from Maine to Texas!

These communities are subjected to be taken care of by our mother nature's plaything: Hurricanes. Which is why Biloxi, Gulfport and others were trashed just like that.

It is not that I'm malicious. It is how the mother nature operates. We can either accomodate or challenge the mother nature's whims.

If people really wanted to keep New Orleans intact -- Jason Lamberton and I had a conversation via the IM recently and frankly, we had the same thing in mind. In fact, we IMmed each other at the same time of our "imagineable solution' for the city of New Orleans -- drain Lake Pontchartrain. It was frightening that we had the similar idea.

Simply close the flow into the Gulf of Mexico (mainly because it is on the same sea level) and drain the lake as much as they can -- sell the water to the West -- perhaps New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona or California? Build a massive pipeline from the lake to the southwest -- hell, Alaska did, did they?

Try to keep the lake down as much as 15 to 30 feet below the city. It is a possibility. Hell, the city of New Orleans can make bottled water called Lake Pontchartrain -- yeah, I know the lake itself is salt water but ... we can remove the salt and make bottled waters! Not bad idea ... the possibilities are endless -- they can simply drain the lake to prevent it from breaching the levees ever again.

We cannot get rid of hurricanes but we can modify the arrangements *around* us -- the only option is to close the lake and drain!

How did the hurricane come in formation? Well, you can always blame Africa, really. There is a natural phenomenon called Intertropical Convergence Zone, also known as ITCZ. It is situated near the equator where the northeast trade winds and southeast trade winds merges and created the low pressure that caused the tropical atmosphere in Africa.

These low pressures soon drifted into the Atlantic Ocean where it occasionally, thanks to the solar heats, worked its way into Tropical Depression. If the winds reached more than 39 MPH, it gets a name from the National Hurricane Center as well as classify it as Tropical Storm. If it goes over 74 MPH, it becomes a hurricane. They added "Category 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5" not a long time ago to define the might of hurricanes. Basically, it is ITCZ that produces hurricanes. Yes, the warm waters played a huge role in this. It was said that the Atlantic Ocean used to have less than 10 Tropical Storms/Hurricanes but thanks to global warming, we have more than 10 per year. It is still a theory amongst the scientists and meterologists, though.

Now, you can see why I can echo with the old man in the image above. He seems to be wise, is he?

Cheers,

R-