Chris Boese's Weblog

What I'm not seeing in the hurricane disaster coverage...

I know rescue workers are putting their lives on the line, people doing everything they can to get survivors out of uninhabitable places, and the devastation looks so awful, I feel like I'm looking at the aftermath of a Bangladesh typhoon or sectors from the Asian tsunami.

Then I hear stories of New Orleans police stretched to their absolute limit, exhausted and unable to keep order in my favorite city. It seems like an impossible task, and as the stories say, rescues of the living are a higher priority.

And here in the New York Times, we have a story of military deployment. But where are the National Guard units normally in Louisiana?

Why aren't Chinooks of National Guard people ferrying over the broken freeway bridge and fanning out around the Superdome? Why don't I see the familiar National Guard presence, maybe in ones and twos, on street corners?

Transport is a major issue, of course, but it's been two days since the storm came through, and there's traditional media disaster coverage that I'm just not seeing. Chinook choppers could come in, off-load National Guard troops, pass out supplies, and take the equivalent of busloads of people OUT of the Superdome, get that evacuation on the road. I'm not seeing any coverage of anything like that.

I'm not seeing any footage of MREs or bags of ice or anything like that being passed out at all. I'm sure it is, somewhere, but I'm not seeing video of it.

Maybe I'm just getting ahead of the overwhelmed rescue workers and public officials. I just know how comforting that announcement is when it comes, that emergency relief funds are being released, that large numbers of National Guard troops are on the scene.

Where are they? Not Corps of Engineers. Not Pentagon deployments. NATIONAL GUARD. Our folks. The people from local hometowns who signed up to take care of their own.

There are some National Guard folks out, but I'm hearing numbers like 800 or 1,000, 500 Coast Guard reservists. This New York Times story says 10,000 National Guard forces will be mobilizing soon. Millions of people are affected. MASSIVE refugee camps will need to be built, and FAST. Why not a massive deployment? Maybe I'm underestimating the time it takes to mobilize those folks, but still.

This also happened in the initial response to the Asian tsunami disaster as well. It's like people can't wrap their minds around the sheer scope of the need. But with the hurricanes from last year, the response seemed a lot quicker.

Link: Navy Ships and Maritime Rescue Teams Are Sent to Region - New York Times.

Emergency Response

Navy Ships and Maritime Rescue Teams Are Sent to Region

By ERIC LIPTON and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: August 31, 2005

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 - The Pentagon late Tuesday ordered five Navy ships and eight maritime rescue teams to the Gulf Coast to bolster relief operations as worsening conditions overwhelmed the initial response.

One Navy amphibious assault ship, the Bataan, with six Sea Stallion and Sea Hawk helicopters that could be used for search and rescue missions, was en route from Texas. Four other vessels from Norfolk were expected to sail within 24 hours and take four days to reach the gulf, said Mike Kucharek, a spokesman for the Northern Command.

The ships will carry food, fuel, medical and construction supplies, as well as hovercraft that can be used for evacuation and search-and-rescue missions.

The Navy was also considering sending the hospital ship Comfort.

[...]

The Federal Emergency Management Agency had sent more than 10 teams of search-and-rescue crews and other personnel, but in some cases they were delayed in getting to the most devastated zones, because of the flooding and impassable roads.

Just 10?!

[...]

In addition to the search and rescue teams, the emergency management agency had sent 23 disaster medical assistance teams. The federal Department of Transportation, meanwhile, had sent 390 trucks carrying millions of liters of water, tarps, millions of pounds of ice, mobile homes, generators, containers of disaster supplies, and forklifts to flood damaged areas. The Department of Health and Human Services dispatched dozens of public health officers and loads of medical supplies.

The governors of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi have called up about 10,000 members of their National Guards and are expected to mobilize more, the Pentagon said. Several neighboring states, including Arkansas and Texas, were also calling up Guard soldiers.

Pentagon officials asserted that deployment of thousands of National Guard members from the gulf states to Iraq and Afghanistan had not affected relief efforts. But on Tuesday the two hardest-hit states, Louisiana and Mississippi, which each have more than 3,000 National Guard troops in Iraq, requested military specialists and equipment from other states, ranging from military police and engineers to helicopters and five-ton, high-wheeled trucks that can traverse the flood waters.

[...]

In Mississippi, teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were searching for the injured and dead in the hard-hit areas in and around Biloxi. In Alabama, 500 National Guard members were working in Mobile and neighboring Baldwin County, driving military trucks and Humvees that can travel through water several feet deep. One team had six inflatable boats with high-powered outboard motors. Lt. Col. Robert Horton said most of the National Guard troops along the Alabama coast were patrolling flooded areas and delivering generators.

Asked whether the governors were short of Guard members for the hurricane mission, a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman said, "The numbers would suggest otherwise."

According to the statistics provided by Maj. Gen. Ron Young of the National Guard Bureau, about 4,000 Army and Air Force National Guard personnel were on hurricane-relief duty Tuesday in Louisiana. Before the hurricane, the state had 65 percent of its National Guard capacity available, or 6,505 people. Mississippi has also mobilized about 4,000 Army and Air Force Guard members for the hurricane, and had 60 percent of its capacity available, or 7,014 Guard members.

Wired News: Flickr Fans to Yahoo: Flick Off!

Will standard business practices kill another vital online community? Or perhaps just part of it?

I'm always amazed at the ways the commercial web both lusts after and fears engaged and active online communities. Online sectors of traditional media sites experimented with community and even hosted bulletin boards in the 1990s, only to have them later killed off by nervous legal departments or staffing cutbacks and layoffs.

Even various widget producers tried to get communities to spring up around their products back then, products like Ragu pasta sauce. Most of those efforts failed too.

Despite commercial interests bent on control rather than riding that wild horse of interactivity, close-knit online cultures and communities keep springing up, only to later find their "host body" is unreliable, as with the strictures created at Friendster that spawned a public online protest, and now Flickr too?

Link: Wired News: Flickr Fans to Yahoo: Flick Off!.

Flickr Fans to Yahoo: Flick Off!

By Robert Andrews
02:00 AM Aug. 29, 2005 PT

A splinter faction of Flickr photo-sharing community members is threatening a symbolic "mass suicide" to protest closer integration with the website's new owner, Yahoo.

The portal giant bought Flickr's developer, Ludicorp, for an undisclosed sum in March and took ownership of the site when it moved from Vancouver, Canada, to Yahoo's Sunnyvale, California, campus this summer.

Now, angered by a new requirement to tie their member profiles with Yahoo accounts, some Flickrites say they plan to kill off their identities before they can be moved into the new family next year.

"If Flickr really forces me to join Yahoo in 2006 in order to still use my account, I will quit 24 hours before the deadline," wrote Thomas Müller, a Hamburg, Germany-based artist who shows more than 1,400 photos at the site. On Wednesday, Müller created a protest group, Flick Off, that has attracted almost 400 members.

[...]

"This comes after many of us have invested so much time and effort; it makes it a chore to do anything except bend over, grab our ankles and smile," said Dana Smith, a San Francisco-based Flick Off supporter whose photographs rank among Flickr's most interesting material.

"If Flickr was honestly concerned about anything besides bank account size, then there would be zero point or purpose to force us into an account we did not originally agree to," Smith said.

Launched in 2002, Flickr has grown along with digital camera sales and has helped popularize tagging. Named "Breakout of the Year" at the 2005 Webby Awards, the community now numbers 37 million photos and 1.2 million members, many of whom are considered to be among the web's most creative image makers.

The concern comes as the site, celebrated for its close-knit and cozy air, joins the large Yahoo network. The portal ruffled feathers back in 1999 when it bought up web homestead community GeoCities and claimed the copyright on all members' pages.

[...]

Water is pouring into the French Quarter

Coming from a broken levee at Lake Ponchartrain.

It looks like Gulfport got some of the "Homestead" treatment, and that's what I was bracing myself for yesterday. The first reports out of a devastating hurricane (or a tsunami) come from the less damaged areas, because little communication comes out of the areas of total devastation. Watching the images coming out of Katrina's aftermath this morning, that pattern seems to be holding.

Link: CNN.com - Katrina kills at least 55 in Mississippi - Aug 30, 2005.

Katrina kills at least 55 in Mississippi

New Orleans levee breaks; 80% of city flooded

Tuesday, August 30, 2005; Posted: 9:59 a.m. EDT (13:59 GMT)

[...]

New Orleans levee breaks

Water poured into New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain after a two-block-long breach opened overnight in a section of a levee that protects the low-lying city.

Nagin had said that about 80 percent of the city was flooded and that some areas were under 20 feet of water. (Watch emotional account of New Orleans' devastation)

"My heart is heavy tonight," Nagin said in the interview on CNN affiliate WWL-TV. "I don't have any good news to share."

In the city's 9th Ward neighborhood, rescue efforts continued throughout the night, with authorities in boats plucking residents from submerged homes after water topped another levee.

CNN's Adaora Udoji, monitoring the rescue efforts, said authorities had ferried at least 500 people from their homes, flooded with as much as six feet of water. Some residents reported water rose so fast they did not have time to grab their shoes.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco told CNN Monday that a 50-inch water main was severed during the storm, cutting the supply of drinkable water.

[...]

I'm taking stuff out of order in this story...

[...]

The storm is blamed for at least 68 deaths and that toll is almost certain to rise. Mississippi officials said at least 55 people were killed there, including 30 who were killed in an apartment complex near the Biloxi beach. Alabama reported two deaths. The storm killed 11 people last week when it made its initial landfall in Florida.

While Louisiana officials have not yet confirmed any deaths there, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said there have been reports of bodies floating in the floodwaters.

'This is our tsunami'

In Mississippi, streets and homes were flooded as far as six miles inland, and the eastbound lanes of Interstate 10 between Gulfport and Biloxi were impassible because of debris deposited in the roadway by floodwaters.

"This is our tsunami," Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway told the Biloxi Sun Herald newspaper, referring to the December 26, 2004, tsunami that killed more than 226,000 people in the Indian Ocean region.

[...]

And from a related story:

Link: CNN.com - When can I go home? - Aug 30, 2005.

Red Cross launches largest relief effort in its history

[...]

"It's too dangerous to come home," said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who ordered state police to block re-entry routes to all but emergency workers. (Full story)

A Louisiana public health expert described conditions in New Orleans that are probably typical in all the stricken areas:

"No sewage, no drinking water, contamination, threat of rapid increase in mosquitoes, roads are impassible, downed power lines everywhere, trees, debris from houses in the roads, no way to go shopping, no gas," said Ivor van Heerden, director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes in Baton Rouge.

The American Red Cross' relief operation would be the largest in its history, the organization's president, Marty Evans, said on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" -- larger than for all four of last year's Florida hurricanes combined.

More than 75,000 people were being housed in nearly 240 shelters across the region, and "we expect that to grow" as people who can't return home seek somewhere to stay, Evans said.

Baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice are being rushed into hard-hit areas by the federal government, along with doctors, nurses and first-aid supplies, The Associated Press reported.

Experts to help with search-and-rescue efforts have been dispatched by the Pentagon, the AP said.

I suppose it would be nice if there were a full compliment of National Guard troops to keep order, but significant numbers would have to be brought back from Iraq to do that.

MILLIONS of people could be homeless for quite some time. Here's some initial National Guard numbers pulled from the top CNN story cited above.

The Alabama National Guard activated 450 troops to secure Mobile. Two other Alabama battalions, or about 800 troops, were activated to assist in Mississippi.

A revealing quotation on the housing industry bubble

Before I left Atlanta, I was talking to an African American woman working in my dentist's office. She was telling me that EVERYONE she knows has gotten those new (when did they start? I missed it) "interest only" mortgages.

What is an interest-only mortgage?! Is that even a mortgage? It sounds to me like something I'd call RENT. I already pay that, thankyouverymuch. You can keep that "interest-only loan." Talk about a euphemism. I suppose "equity" could accumulate even with interest-only payments, but only in a bubble market.

What she told me gave me the heebie jeebies on a non-existent word in the 2000s: usury. Exploitive lending practices seem to have been completely legalized in the U.S. I'm also having flashbacks to the savings and loan crisis from not too long ago, to anyone with a memory. I'm not surprised people are predicting a collapse, a subject I've also written about here ["Flatland" vs. the "Zoned Zone"?]

The New York Times' Paul Krugman has a paragraph that just struck me in his August 29th column, and it's worth meditating on, I think. I put it in bold below, with a few other pithy bits.

Link: Greenspan and the Bubble - New York Times.

Op-Ed Columnist

Greenspan and the Bubble

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 29, 2005

[...]

Regular readers know that I have never forgiven the Federal Reserve chairman for his role in creating today's budget deficit. In 2001 Mr. Greenspan, a stern fiscal taskmaster during the Clinton years, gave decisive support to the Bush administration's irresponsible tax cuts, urging Congress to reduce the federal government's revenue so that it wouldn't pay off its debt too quickly.

Since then, federal debt has soared. But as far as I can tell, Mr. Greenspan has never admitted that he gave Congress bad advice. He has, however, gone back to lecturing us about the evils of deficits.

Now, it seems, he's playing a similar game with regard to the housing bubble.

[...]

But as recently as last October Mr. Greenspan dismissed talk of a housing bubble: "While local economies may experience significant speculative price imbalances, a national severe price distortion seems most unlikely."

Wait, it gets worse. These days Mr. Greenspan expresses concern about the financial risks created by "the prevalence of interest-only loans and the introduction of more-exotic forms of adjustable-rate mortgages." But last year he encouraged families to take on those very risks, touting the advantages of adjustable-rate mortgages and declaring that "American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage."

If Mr. Greenspan had said two years ago what he's saying now, people might have borrowed less and bought more wisely. But he didn't, and now it's too late. There are signs that the housing market either has peaked already or soon will. And it will be up to Mr. Greenspan's successor to manage the bubble's aftermath.

How bad will that aftermath be? The U.S. economy is currently suffering from twin imbalances. On one side, domestic spending is swollen by the housing bubble, which has led both to a huge surge in construction and to high consumer spending, as people extract equity from their homes. On the other side, we have a huge trade deficit, which we cover by selling bonds to foreigners. As I like to say, these days Americans make a living by selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from China.

[...]

Run that by me again...

"As I like to say, these days Americans make a living by selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from China."

Here in Missoula on NBC morning news (I don't know if this is running elsewhere) a ridiculously MISINFORMED "Death Tax" scare ad is running, one that in another time would have been pulled off the air by the FCC for outright falsehoods, an ad that claims everyone who dies will have their property taken from their heirs by the "Death Tax," a claim so blatantly absurd it makes me want to spit.

The endangered inheritance tax affects less than one percent of the population and is used to keep the U.S. from becoming a more of a class-based society run by an aristocracy than it already is. People are being DUPED into thinking their assets are at risk when even the most rudimentary fact-checking proves the claim wrong.

Well, when you think about the Krugman quote, it gives pause.

Is it possible that people are forced to live with the expectation that the ONLY way to get ahead in the U.S. is through mortgages and assets, and not through working for a living?

It's sobering too, when you realize that very nearly each and every mortgage-holder is exactly ONE layoff away from foreclosure, with only the now-pathetic bankruptcy relief.

If investment becomes a primary source of income for a larger and larger segment of the middle class (due primarily to the housing boom, because few other middle class assets show that kind of performance, nor do most other assets EVER give that kind of performance over time, except for the very rich, who can plow money into extremely risky ventures that can pay off big, but can also be like pouring money straight down a drain), what does it say about the society at large? It would appear to me that the general economy is already deeply depressed, if you remove distorted investment indicators.

The indicator I'd draw on is whether it is REQUIRED for one to have investment income (real estate) in the U.S. as the only way to see dramatic increases one's net worth. I've resisted the mortgage game because I move around too much, and because I tend to see the Schedule A tax-break as only advantage to the mortgage ball and chain. Many would, of course, call me stupid, or at the least naive.

But a focus on investment rather than real productivity gives me a deja vu of the Ponzi scheme that hit the U.S. stock market before the crash in 1929.

Which makes this quotation sound even more frightening to me.

"As I like to say, these days Americans make a living by selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from China."

My thoughts are with New Orleans

An AP headline:

Experts expect Katrina to turn New Orleans into Atlantis

Here's an interesting bit from a Miami Herald article:

[...]

Some people have no intention of leaving New Orleans, even in the face of the mayor's mandatory evacuation order.

''It's been there for a long time,'' said John Martin, 60, of the circa 1824 Creole townhouse he lives in on Dumaine Street in the French Quarter. Martin, a druid and voodoo priest, lives on the third floor of the building, which houses a voodoo museum on its first floor. The brick walls are nearly two-feet thick, Martin said, pointing to them from the tropical interior courtyard of the building.

It's not easy for Martin to leave, anyway. He has four snakes, including a giant Burmese python, Eugene, who has gone into hiding. The snake senses something coming, Martin said, something horrific.

''I don't believe you're going to go until God takes you,'' Martin said. ``I've lived a good, full life and I'm not worried about it. You've got to take life as it comes.''

''Well, if you need any alcohol, just kick my door in,'' said neighbor Christy Franchi, 35, fleeing on a 5:30 p.m. flight to New York. ``I have plenty of wine.''

[...]

I've heard the Hurricane Katrina has sped up slightly and will come ashore near the Big Easy sometime overnight. Having ridden through last year's hurricane season at a distance in Atlanta, getting the strong arm of Ivan, and this year the strong arm of the weaker Dennis, my stomach just hurts when I think of what could happen to one of my very favorite cities on Earth. So many good times in Naw'lins, I even published a poem about it in the Santa Clara Review, also archived here.

Potentially catastrophic, maximum sustained winds at 160 mph. I just don't want to think about it. And it's a big one too. The entire Delta is going to be swamped.

Jeff Master's blog at Weather Underground says Katrina is now stronger than Camille, from 1969. Only three others stronger. And he says it now rivals Gilbert (1988) and Allen (1980) as the largest hurricanes recorded, in terms of size. Masters gives New Orleans a 70% chance of levees getting breached and the city swamped, with a possible death toll in the thousands. That sounds high to me, given the evacuations, but I sure do hope I'm right, not that I'm an expert or anything.

He says people who ride out the storm should wear life jackets and helmets, because a 25-foot storm surge could still knock down steel-reinforced high rise buildings.

This is from the National Hurricane Center, via Weather Underground:

Hurricane Katrina Intermediate Advisory Number 24a

Statement as of 7:00 PM CDT on August 28, 2005

...Potentially catastrophic Hurricane Katrina now moving north-northwestward toward the northern Gulf Coast...

a Hurricane Warning is in effect for the north central Gulf Coast from Morgan City Louisiana eastward to the Alabama/Florida border...including the city of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. Preparations to protect life and property should be completed this evening.

[...]

At 7 PM CDT...0000z...the center of Hurricane Katrina was located near latitude 27.2 north... longitude 89.1 west or about 130 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Katrina is moving toward the north-northwest near 11 mph...and a turn to the north is expected over the next 24 hours. On this track the center of the hurricane will be near the northern Gulf Coast early Monday. However...conditions are already beginning to deteriorate along portions of the central and northeastern Gulf Coast...and will continue to worsen through the night.

Maximum sustained winds are near 160 mph...with higher gusts. Katrina is a potentially catastrophic category five hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Some fluctuations in strength are likely prior to landfall...and Katrina is expected to make landfall at category four or five intensity. Winds affecting the upper floors of high-rise buildings will be significantly stronger than those near ground level.

Katrina is a large hurricane. Hurricane force winds extend outward up to 105 miles from the center...and tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 230 miles. Sustained tropical storm force winds are already occurring over the southeast Louisiana coast.
A NOAA hurricane hunter plane reported a minimum central pressure of 904 mb...26.69 inches.

Coastal storm surge flooding of 18 to 22 feet above normal tide levels...locally as high as 28 feet...along with large and dangerous battering waves...can be expected near and to the east of where the center makes landfall. Some levees in the greater New Orleans area could be overtopped. Significant storm surge flooding will occur elsewhere along the central and northeastern Gulf of Mexico coast.

Rainfall totals of 5 to 10 inches...with isolated maximum amounts of 15 inches...are possible along the path of Katrina across the Gulf Coast and the Tennessee Valley. Rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches are possible across the Ohio Valley into the eastern Great Lakes region Tuesday and Wednesday.

Isolated tornadoes will be possible this evening over southern portions of Louisiana...Mississippi...and Alabama...and over the Florida Panhandle.

[...]

From Editor & Publisher: American Legion takes a stand against free speech?

I'd been hearing some scuttlebutt about this on a few podcasts (I still don't have cable in Missoula, or a real TV, so I'm experimenting with time-shifting audio as my primary media source. Jury's still out on that one, but I'll keep you posted).

Anyway, I'd only caught the end of it and thought it was an exaggeration, but this writeup in E&P nails it down.

Link: American Legion Declares War on Protestors -- Media Next?.

American Legion Declares War on Protestors -- Media Next?

By E&P Staff
Published: August 24, 2005 4:20 PM ET

NEW YORK The American Legion, which has 2.7 million members, has declared war on antiwar protestors, and the media could be next. Speaking at its national convention in Honolulu, the group's national commander called for an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war.

"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu.

The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

[...]

He explained, "No one respects the right to protest more than one who has fought for it, but we hope that Americans will present their views in correspondence to their elected officials rather than by public media events guaranteed to be picked up and used as tools of encouragement by our enemies." This might suggest to some, however, that American freedoms are worth dying for but not exercising.

Without mentioning any current protestor, such as Cindy Sheehan, by name, Cadmus recalled: "For many of us, the visions of Jane Fonda glibly spouting anti-American messages with the North Vietnamese and protestors denouncing our own forces four decades ago is forever etched in our memories. We must never let that happen again….

"We had hoped that the lessons learned from the Vietnam War would be clear to our fellow citizens. Public protests against the war here at home while our young men and women are in harm's way on the other side of the globe only provide aid and comfort to our enemies."

[...]

New Blog I just subscribed to: Participatory Culture: News and Ideas

Got the lead from Dan Gillmor. I was looking at the link to Internet TV, which has a Mac beta version out. But then I got drawn into the blog by the concepts and topics discussed. I frequently bemoan the lack of any kind of real culture in the U.S., so much is fed to us by marketing people, even pop culture is highly manipulated (De Certeau would argue with that, and he makes a good argument, so go read The Practice of Everyday Life part one, for a counterpoint [G]).

But anyway, to my view, people have to be active participants for a culture and civil society to be real (and yes, pomo heads would say there is no "authentic" for an imitation to imitate because we are "always already in drag," yaddah yaddah yaddah). So if engaging, involved cultural practices are going to evolve under the noses of top-down marketing people and spin doctors, maybe thinking about a participatory culture is one way to approach it. Or maybe it's just another version of open access cable and "Wayne's World."

Link: Participatory Culture: News and Ideas .

Here's some of their "hype."

DTV: Internet TV

There's a world of amazing independent video out there and now there's an easy way to watch it. DTV is bringing internet TV to the fullscreen -- lean back and enjoy. Browse the built-in channel guide, subscribe to channels, videos download in the background, and DTV notifies you when they're ready to watch. Open-source and open standards means everyone can watch and everyone can create.

Create your own TV Channel:

With our Broadcast Machine video publishing software, you can publish video to an unlimited audience, with virtually no bandwidth costs. It dovetails perfectly with DTV, giving viewers a TV-like experience watching your channel.

Open and Independent:

Internet TV should be open-source and based on open standards, just like blogging and podcasting. We're working to ensure that the new mass medium of internet TV is free, accessible to all, and built with independent voices.

I'm new to Montana, but this is gross even by Alaska standards

I've been quiet in blogland recently, undertaking a cross-country haul (as in U-Haul) to Missoula, Montana, a beautiful and serene place with a wonderful river running through it. Unpacking and setting up my household takes some time too, but I'm finally unpacked enough to go online. (I think this is the longest I've been unplugged from the Internet since 1993, nearly two full weeks. What a freaky feeling!)

Anyway, I grew up in Alaska and learned to live with the idea of massive bears showing up on your camping trips or around salmon streams, but they say this hasn't happened in Glacier National Park in a long time. A mama bear with cubs is the most unpredictable thing, however. I remember a similar scalp hit just like this on a guy in Alaska when I was much younger. Knocked him down a steep hill too, while all the others in the party were chewed up and killed. The hill saved the one man's life.

One local TV station is the only place where the more gruesome details are showing up. I just heard about it on the 10 pm news. On TV they're saying the hikers came around a blind corner and surprised the she-bear, only five feet away from her.

Link: NBCMontana.com: Bear Attacks.

Bear Attacks in Glacier National Park

By Dax VanFossen
8/26/05

Officials said the man was taken to Seattle and will probably need plastic surgery.  A doctor we spoke with said he suffered a lot of deep skin injures, near scalping and a lot of deep puncture wounds and lacerations.  He also broke his neck in a couple of places and broke a few ribs but he remained conscious throughout the entire ordeal.

The woman is still at Kalispell Regional Medical Center.  Officials tell us her injuries were much less severe. She received a cut on her face and a large wound on one of her shoulders. Officials have not released the names of either victim.

It was another hiker that came across the bloody scene after the two people had been attacked. That hiker then ran to find a ranger who radioed in for help

Rangers were the first to give the man and woman who had been attacked medical help before the Alert Helicopter was able to get to them.  The helicopter was not able to land because of the rough terrain. "We had to hover overhead and use one hundred and fifty foot cavalier logging line to deliver the medic and the litter to the patient.”  Ken Justus, Alert pilot.

[...]

Here's the older, more restrained AP version:

Link: Glacier park visitors injured in likely bear attack.

West Glacier

Glacier park visitors injured in likely bear attack

Aug 26, 2005, 09:19 AM

Two hikers who surprised a grizzly bear and her cubs in Glacier National Park are hospitalized in Kalispell today.

Park officials say a man and woman were hiking along a popular park trail when they apparently encountered the sow and two cubs this morning.

Spokeswoman Amy Vanderbilt says it appears the hikers' injuries are not life-threatening. 

But she says both apparently suffered bite wounds, along with other injuries sustained rolling down a hill trying to escape the attack.

[...]

"Flatland" vs. the "Zoned Zone"?

Paul Krugman says the housing bubble is springing a big leak. Wouldn't you know it, just about the time I was rebalancing my retirement portfolio to lean toward real estate because the returns were so ridiculously high I was feeling stupid not to be more in there.

Oh well, trust dollar cost averaging and a balanced fund, and I still got a decent mix of things going on. Dan Gillmor talks about the bubble all the time too. I have no desire for a mortgage, and I'm sort of too transient to partake anyway. And McMansion white flight social segregation makes me break out in hives.

I enjoy the turn of the phrase though, Flatland and the Zoned Zone. I think it appeals because lately I've been entertaining the idea that the "Zoned Zone" and the avenues of the mega-rich in the U.S. actually constitute a separate economy of scale from where most people live, an economy of scale (neo-Gilded Age?) fully as divided as the difference of scale between the dollar and the peso.

I mean, why else would Winona Ryder shoplift $80 socks?!

That's the only way I can explain in my own mind WHY anyone would buy the insanely inflated housing in California and on the Northeast coast. If you don't think in those terms,  you have to imagine folks (many of my good friends live there, so I don't like to imagine this) with the word "sucker" written across their foreheads. Isn't that the definition of sucker? To pay a ridiculously inflated price for something that has far less "real" value? A quarter-million for a one-bedroom glorified closet? Swamp land in Florida?

Maybe it isn't a neo-Gilded Age after all. Maybe those of us striving to be present in the new nation of the mega-rich (as opposed to the neo-Third World growing in U.S. Flatland) are merely the fawning courtier class to a new feudal aristocracy taking root in the Zoned Zone. That's the impression I get on those mindless days when I'm accidently exposed to that exercise in extended nausea that is "Entertainment Tonight."

Here are a few pithy bits from Krugman.

Link: That Hissing Sound - New York Times.

Op-Ed Columnist

That Hissing Sound

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: August 8, 2005

This is the way the bubble ends: not with a pop, but with a hiss.

Housing prices move much more slowly than stock prices. There are no Black Mondays, when prices fall 23 percent in a day. In fact, prices often keep rising for a while even after a housing boom goes bust.

[...]

Of course, some people still deny that there's a housing bubble. Let me explain how we know that they're wrong.

One piece of evidence is the sense of frenzy about real estate, which irresistibly brings to mind the stock frenzy of 1999. Even some of the players are the same. The authors of the 1999 best seller "Dow 36,000" are now among the most vocal proponents of the view that there is no housing bubble.

Then there are the numbers. Many bubble deniers point to average prices for the country as a whole, which look worrisome but not totally crazy. When it comes to housing, however, the United States is really two countries, Flatland and the Zoned Zone.

In Flatland, which occupies the middle of the country, it's easy to build houses. When the demand for houses rises, Flatland metropolitan areas, which don't really have traditional downtowns, just sprawl some more. As a result, housing prices are basically determined by the cost of construction. In Flatland, a housing bubble can't even get started.

But in the Zoned Zone, which lies along the coasts, a combination of high population density and land-use restrictions - hence "zoned" - makes it hard to build new houses. So when people become willing to spend more on houses, say because of a fall in mortgage rates, some houses get built, but the prices of existing houses also go up. And if people think that prices will continue to rise, they become willing to spend even more, driving prices still higher, and so on. In other words, the Zoned Zone is prone to housing bubbles.

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In the nation as a whole, housing prices rose about 50 percent between the first quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2005. But that average blends results from Flatland metropolitan areas like Houston and Atlanta, where prices rose 26 and 29 percent respectively, with results from Zoned Zone areas like New York, Miami and San Diego, where prices rose 77, 96 and 118 percent.

Nobody would pay San Diego prices without believing that prices will continue to rise. Rents rose much more slowly than prices: the Bureau of Labor Statistics index of "owners' equivalent rent" rose only 27 percent from late 1999 to late 2004. Business Week reports that by 2004 the cost of renting a house in San Diego was only 40 percent of the cost of owning a similar house - even taking into account low interest rates on mortgages. So it makes sense to buy in San Diego only if you believe that prices will keep rising rapidly, generating big capital gains. That's pretty much the definition of a bubble.

Bubbles end when people stop believing that big capital gains are a sure thing. That's what happened in San Diego at the end of its last housing bubble: after a rapid rise, house prices peaked in 1990. Soon there was a glut of houses on the market, and prices began falling. By 1996, they had declined about 25 percent after adjusting for inflation. And that's what's happening in San Diego right now, after a rise in house prices that dwarfs the boom of the 1980's. The number of single-family houses and condos on the market has doubled over the past year. "Homes that a year or two ago sold virtually overnight - in many cases triggering bidding wars - are on the market for weeks," reports The Los Angeles Times. The same thing is happening in other formerly hot markets.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has become deeply dependent on the housing bubble. The economic recovery since 2001 has been disappointing in many ways, but it wouldn't have happened at all without soaring spending on residential construction, plus a surge in consumer spending largely based on mortgage refinancing. Did I mention that the personal savings rate has fallen to zero?

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