Ok, so we went to the hill country with some friends this weekend for a collision of culture. First up: The vineyards. I’d never been out to tour and taste before and it was excellent times. You meet some interesting people, and you drink some good wine. Inevitably these places are found off back roads, well away from the main highway, so the scenery i also quite nice.
Next up: The Spicewood Demolition derby. Redneck FUN!!! This was almost unbelievable. The Volunteer fire department holds this every year as a fundraiser, and they now bring in about 3000 people. They even have vegetarian fare. All pics.

When we’re seeing the masses stranded in New Orleans, a common refrain I’ve heard is ‘Why didn’t they leave when they had the chance?’ The answer: they couldn’t. In 2002, the Times-Picayune published a series entitled “Washed Away,” describing the repercussions of a major hurricane.

“100,000 people without transportation will be especially threatened,” the newspaper wrote. “A large population of low-income residents do not own cars and would have to depend on an untested emergency public transportation system to evacuate them.”

Our insane addiction to cars in this country has finally left us with a publicly visible scar. If this had occurred in a European country (or really anywhere with a sizable rail system), more than likely a multitude of transportation options would have been available to citizens of an endangered metropolis. Those with means would drive or fly out, those without, could take the state operated railway out. But, again and again we’ve refused to build these systems in this country, relying instead on an over burdened interstate system that regularly receives failing grades from the ASCE.

How have we waited this long to develop these systems ?

In watching the New Orleans coverage over the last few days, I’m starting to wonder at what point can you feasibly rebuild a major metropolitan area after such extensive damage? Some have bounced back from the big storms. Galveston in the 1900 hurricane is a good example, but Galveston also required a massive public works and recovery effort following the storm, with the construction of the seawall and the raising of the entire island to prevent further catastrophe. We cant even fund reasonable health-care and public radio. Can we pull something like this off, in this day and age ? Also in the time it took to rebuild the city, Houston had surpassed it as the port of choice, so it was never quite the economic powerhouse it was before.

Addtionally, what a lot of people don’t realize is the island used to have a second suburb city of West-Galveston, that was lage enough to have its own theatre, race track, etc., Which was completly washed into the bay. Indianola is an example of another town on the Texas Coast that simply doesn’t exist anymore after getting wiped out by these storms. Maybe the real kicker here is getting people to return. Will people want to go through this again even if it is 40 years from now ?

I realize the kind of infrastructure investment that a place like New Orleans represents, but when is the psychological factor too much? What if people simply don’t want to come back after this?

Regardless, all our good vibes go out to the locals there.

Ok, so after a bit of a marathon session today, I think we’ve got everything going here. Comments and all that hoo-ha are turned on (we’re a real blog now, pinnochio!), and all the pages have hopefully been brought over to the new system. If we’re missing something crucial, im sure we’ll find out eventually.

I’ve also managed to sort out all the ‘issues’ with the code that was making the site run at stupidly slow speeds, so hopefully were good there.

Anyhow.

I’m talking the server through a little upgrade so we may be up and down a bit. I recomend everybody panic.