First, there is this:

These tourists from Oklahoma drink on Bourbon St. and say they are “playing it by ear,” regarding a possible evacuation as Gustav enters the Gulf of Mexico. Nagin said mandatory evacuations would begin if the storm becomes a Category 3 hurricane.

against this:

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered the city’s more than 239,000 residents to evacuate on Sunday in the face of powerful Hurricane Gustav, which he called “the mother of all storms.”

The evacuation order issued on Saturday was the first in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina devastated the historic Southern city in August 2005.

“This is the mother of all storms,” Nagin said of Gustav, a monstrous Category 4 storm that could approach the central Louisiana coast just west of New Orleans on Monday.

“You need to be concerned and you need to get your butts moving and out of New Orleans right now,” Nagin said at City Hall. “This is the storm of the century.”

The evacuation order, which will not be physically enforced by officials, will start with the city’s low-lying West Bank starting at 8 a.m. CDT (9 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, followed by the East Bank at noon CDT (1 p.m. EDT), Nagin told reporters.

Residents have the choice to remain behind and weather the storm, but “that would be one of the biggest mistakes that you could make in your life,” Nagin said.

He said people might have to chop through the roofs of their houses to escape rising waters if they stay.

“Make sure you have an ax,” he said.

But one day after the third anniversary of Katrina, many had already decided to abandon the city, much of which lies below sea level.

Thousands of people fled New Orleans earlier on Saturday. Hoping to avoid the 2005 spectacle of desperate city residents crammed into the New Orleans Superdome, the government lined up hundreds of buses and trains to evacuate 30,000 people who cannot leave on their own.

About 10,000 people left the city by bus or train on Saturday, Nagin said. The rest of the 20,000 people that had requested evacuation assistance would leave on Sunday, he added.

Many evacuees were issued wrist bands with bar codes that will allow city officials to track them.

Gustav crashed across the Cuban mainland on Saturday and could hit the U.S. Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm, the second-highest on the five-stage Saffir-Simpson scale, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

SIGNIFICANT FLOODING EXPECTED

In the Lower Ninth Ward, plunged under water by Katrina’s floodwaters, hundreds of residents packed belongings into cars and trucks and left. Some had returned home only a few months ago after fleeing Katrina.

“After Katrina, you’ve got to leave,” said Ruby Hall, a longtime resident, pointing to the place on the timber frame of the porch where Katrina’s waters rose. “I’m not going to chance it, not with my grandchild.”

The city’s West Bank was largely spared by Katrina but could see “significant flooding” because its 10-foot (3-metre) levees are no match for Gustav’s storm surge, which could top 20 feet, Nagin said.

Katrina’s massive storm surge broke through protective levees on August 29, 2005, and flooded 80 percent of the city. New Orleans degenerated into chaos as stranded storm victims waited days for rescue.

The hurricane killed about 1,500 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast and caused $80 billion in damages, making it the costliest U.S. natural disaster.

There was bumper-to-bumper traffic on highways leading out of the city on Saturday, and six low-lying parishes — the Louisiana equivalent of U.S. counties — issued evacuation orders.

All major Louisiana interstates will allow only one-way traffic away from the coast starting at 4 a.m. CDT (5 a.m. EDT) on Sunday. The last flight out of the New Orleans airport is scheduled to depart at 6 p.m. CDT (7 p.m.) on Sunday.

In all, 11.5 million people are in the path of Gustav, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Walter Parker, a security guard who was trapped for eight days in his apartment during the Katrina flooding, lined up outside the Union Passenger Terminal as families with bags packed and children in tow waited for transportation.

“I don’t want to see another Katrina, with dead bodies floating in the water,” Parker said.

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Greyhound screwed me and I didn’t get to head home for the weekend. Left with an uncomfortable amount of frustration, I decided to destroy something.

Now I have some wonderful scraps for art projects.
Now I have a room that looks like the afterbirth of an ice cream social for tornadoes.
Now I need a new dresser.

And now? I feel pretty damn good.

After this, one more day of work left. I’m amused by what’s happening. Certain people have stopped talking to me pretty much altogether, while others are talking to me for the first time..wishing me luck, asking me what comes next. Exit interview tomorrow. I crack my knuckles in anticipation. I’ll leave it at this: I have some things to say.

I’m nervous, so nervous. My plans unfortunately fell through for tonight so maybe I’ll just practice guitar, meditate on what’s coming. Write my heart out, pack for the trip to see the family. And wait. Wait like a champ.

I feel like disappearing. I guess I’m kind of doing that by getting out of town this weekend. Eh, I don’t know. I’m tired and stressed and I feel unbelieveably disconnected.

I’d like to thank the summertime, for some very pretty storms.
(more…)

Friday is my last day of work at the current job. I’ve been there for two years now, and despite the grumblings, I’m sad to go. I will definitely miss the people I work with. It just wasn’t for me, and more importantly. I’m after a much larger picture. Monday I start working at Pitt, and I begin the admission process for going back to school. As with most jobs I have a grace period, and once that passes, I will start classes. I’ve wanted to go back for a long time, and now I am.

I’ve been working downtown since 2001, give or take a few breaks in employment while working the odd/adventurous job elsewhere. I’m so familiar with the downtown environment that it’s kind of creepy. I get off the bus, and the business mode kicks in. It’s a strange world to enter five days a week. I do not go downtown for anything else, save the odd show here or there.

Next week I will start working on a college campus, and I welcome the difference. But oh my am I nervous, and anxious, excited. Katie and I were talking about how crippling the anxiety over leaving a job/starting a new one can be. It is a bit nerve wrecking. I’m going to visit my family in Ohio for the weekend before the new venture starts, and hopefully that will provide me some much needed space to calm myself down, and meditate on all the good-good things ahead of me. I know that change can be hard, and this is a big one. I’m trying to handle it as best as I can, but I will admit that tonight I feel overwhelmed by all things turning, altering shape. I have been anticipating change all summer long—sometimes you can just feel it coming, but you have to be patient and accepting of the fact that you cannot define it just yet. Then change happens and quite quickly you feel umprepared; one foot feels around for the invisible brake. But once the motion has started…well. Take note that the brake is invisible, mythical.

Enter deep breath. It kind of feels like everything starts here. I’m going to start focusing on the studies ahead of me, continue work on my writing and on the self, and just be strong for what is next. I wish I wasn’t so nervous, but….it’s energy that I can use.

Came home to find a sharply dressed amazing someone in the hammock, waiting with shiny shoes crossed and Spak’s take-out.

Now that’s what I call wonderful.

carl hancock rux

Buddy Rich vs. Animal
holy cannoli, is Buddy Rich amazing

Gene Krupa vs. Buddy Rich on the Sammy Davis Jr. show..KILLS IT

(more…)

By GREG BLUESTEIN

ATLANTA (AP) - The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn it into a computer control pad.

Georgia Tech researchers believe a magnetic, tongue-powered system could transform a disabled person’s mouth into a virtual computer, teeth into a keyboard - and tongue into the key that manipulates it all.

“You could have full control over your environment by just being able to move your tongue,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, a Georgia Tech assistant professor who leads the team’s research.

The group’s Tongue Drive System turns the tongue into a joystick of sorts, allowing the disabled to manipulate wheelchairs, manage home appliances and control computers. The work still has a ways to go - one potential user called the design “grotesque” - but early tests are encouraging.

The system is far from the first that seeks a new way to control electronics through facial movements. But disabled advocates have particularly high hopes that the tongue could prove the most effective.

“This could give you an almost infinite number of switches and options for communication,” said Mike Jones, a vice president of research and technology at the Shepherd Center, an Atlanta rehabilitation hospital. “It’s easy, and somebody could learn an entirely different language.”

That’s quite a contrast to the handful of methods already available to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are disabled from the neck down.

The “sip and puff” technique, which lets people issue commands by inhaling and exhaling into a tube, is among the most popular. But it offers users only four different commands, limiting their options.

Control systems that use sophisticated pads to measure neck and head movements are also widespread, but using the hardware can be tiring, and frustrating on smaller electronics like computers.

And while newer innovations that track eye movement are promising, they can be costly, slow and susceptible to mixed signals.

The tongue, though, is a more flexible, sensitive and tireless option. And like other facial muscles, its functions tend to be spared in accidents that can paralyze most of the rest of the body, because the tongue is attached to the brain, not the spinal cord. (more…)