Click pic to view webcam found by Brother Uncle Don

At the NOLA website which has much more info on New Orleans and Gustav, the image is updated every 30 seconds. At least until the camera is blown away.

Check out what New Orleans IT departments are doing to prepare.

While watching, take a listen the old blues song, When The Levee Breaks, by Kansas Joy McCoy and Memphis Minnie. It inspired the song of the same name by Led Zeppelin.

Telegraph – August 13, 2008:

Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family, one of America’s leading evangelical groups, was shown in a video filmed at Denver’s Invesco Field, where 75,000 are expected to cheer Mr Obama on Aug 28, asking Christians to pray for “torrential” rain.

“I’m talking ‘umbrella-ain’t-going-to-help-you rain,” the former pastor and television meteorologist said.

LA Times – August 31, 2008:

With Hurricane Gustav bearing down on the Gulf Coast, Republicans have canceled all but the bare minimum requirements for Monday’s session of their convention, as GOP presidential candidate John McCain called on delegates to turn their attention to people likely to be displaced.

Perhaps the Russian Prime Minister is trying to keep up with the French president?

Russian President Vladimir Putin quashed a rapidly circulating rumor today, denying a newspaper report that he had secretly divorced his wife and planned to marry a famous Russian gymnast less than half his age.

Full Story

"Gotcha"

I think American ad folks do these ads to show that if they were allowable in the USA we could outshine the Europeans for suggestive humor in advertising.

Found by John Ligums.

Members of original programming team

Terror watchlist “upgrade” is “imploding,” legislator says

In a letter to the inspector general at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) complained that the National Counterterrorism Center’s “Railhead” initiative, designed to upgrade the government’s master database of suspected terrorists, “if actually deployed will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system in operation today.”

Miller, who chairs the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, cited “severe technical troubles, poor contractor management, and weak government oversight,” which he said had brought the Railhead program to the “verge of collapse.”
[...]
The current TIDE system has its own set of “serious, long-standing technical problems.” It requires users to perform “cumbersome and complex” SQL searches rather than delivering straightforward text matches. And its data is scattered across 463 different, poorly-indexed tables.

But the Railhead “upgrade,” Miller’s letter charges, only compounds the problems. According to his subcommittee’s analysis, the new-and-improved system boasts fewer features, hobbles information sharing between agencies, fails to match slight variations in aliases contained on the watchlist, and is stymied by basic Boolean search operators. Miller also alleged that some of the $500 million spent on Railhead already had been improperly used to renovate a facility owned by contractor Boeing.

WTF? 463 tables? Was this written by Microsoft? Why doesn’t the government just hire a Google reject? He could probably kludge up something better over a weekend with a Friday night drinking binge hangover than this.

Wonder what people 10,000+ years from now who find one of these will think of Genesis, part of a — certainly by then if the history of religion is any judge — long dead religion. Or will it matter because human language will be so different that none of the languages on the disk will be decipherable?

[The] problem of long-term digital storage seemed a crucial hurdle for any civilization trying to act generationaly. How could a society think in terms of centuries unless there was a reliable way to transmit and store its knowledge over centuries? [...] Norsam promised to micro-etch 350,000 pages of information onto a 3-inch nickel disk with an estimated lifespan of 2,000 -10,000 years.
[...]
During a Long Now field trip to a southwest archaeological site, the idea of a modern Rosetta Stone came up — a backup of human languages that future generations might cherish. At a winter retreat in 1999, Long Now board member Doug Carlston suggested that for the parallel common text of this modern Rosetta Stone we should use the book of Genesis, since it was most likely already translated into all languages already.
[...]
Following the archiving principle of LOCKS (Lots of Copies Keep ‘em Safe) we would replicate the disk promiscuously and distribute them around the world with built in magnifiers. This project in long term thinking would do two things: it would showcase this new long-term storage technology, and it would give the world a minimal backup of human languages. We thought it might take a year to do.

Long story short, it took eight years.

I found a pair of Sennheiser CX300 earbuds at Newegg for only 20 bucks shipped, the low price included the use of a coupon I found at SlickDeals.net. Since the list price is about $50 bucks and the shipping was free, I decided to give them a try.

I’m from a generation of old guys who wore giant headphones and I just never got the hang of keeping typical earbuds from falling out. So the best for me are the kind that fit deep in my ear canal. I usually use Philips SHE5920 earbuds as they fit pretty tight and aren’t prone to falling out.

The CX300 are slightly different in that the entire bud fits in your ear canal. So they fit very tightly and do a very good job of blocking ambient noise. They’re basically a combination of foam earplugs and earbuds. I’ve used them while mowing the lawn and I didn’t even need my noise blocking earmuffs to cover my ears. But yet the music sounded great, rich, full, with deep but not overbearing bass. So these would be great anyplace where ambient noise is a problem: Airplanes, construction sites, auditoriums, etc.

08.08.30 Sat. – Episode #45

Click image to go to No Agenda.

Do you believe?

This Episode’s Show Notes by KD Martin:

From the Thames to Northern Silicon Valley, it’s No Agenda! First up, it’s the 18th birthday party for Adam’s daughter, complete with club, bouncers, free drinks and 80’s theme. John will celebrate his 18th birthday soon.

John claims to have predicted Sarah Palin (Tina Fey?) as VP some months ago. And then claims Obama still has no chance to win. Adam brings up Obama’s speech, the great venue and how the whole thing looked like a rock show performance. Do the Dems have the clout to elect anyone they wish? John hedges a bit by saying he thinks it could be so. Why is everyone following Karl Rove on Fox? We’d better keep an eye on Joe Biden as well. John goes back to the Kennedy years to draw some analogies. Did you see the Free Speech Zone?

Adam switches to the financial times. Have we hit the bottom yet? John claims we have, Adam says we’re not even close. Will the market hit 6,000? How about Sarah Palin and all that Alaskan oil?

Newspeak: “Hey John, do you know what? Right?” Guess what? John isn’t too happy with it. Well here’s what Adam feels about this…

Adam delves into high-end food and the choices available in some new stores in the UK, like Marks and Spencer. John recommends Fortnum and Mason for some great packaged food and ideas.

From here it’s a 180 into the worst economy in 60 years, expecting over 1,000,000 job losses. Lehman Bros. has lost over 36 years of profits in the last 18 months.

Ala. To Charge Obese Workers $25 Monthly – KXAS | Dallas — Talk about a money maker. Alabama? Obese? Cha-ching!

I know, I could have gone for the cheap joke, but…

Alabama, pushed to second in national obesity rankings by deep-fried Southern favorites, is cracking down on state workers who are too fat.

The state has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit or they’ll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free.

Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don’t work on slimming down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthy behaviors.

Alabama already charges workers who smoke and has seen some success in getting them to quit but now has turned its attention to a problem that plagues many in the Deep South: obesity.

Kind of a disgusting video regarding RFID, if true.

Found Michiel deRoos.

Reader Marika Buchberger found this in her email. It’s from a float that was on display in Düsseldorf during Rosenmontag just before “Super Tuesday” this year. Exactly why the Germans are so into our election needs discussion.

Clarificarion by Michael Auerswald who adds a link to the key slideshow highlighting this float here.