Yahoo Media Group has hired well-known war blogger Kevin Sites to create Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone a nightly news program where Sites will be filing video, audio and text dispatches to Yahoo News each day and hold live chat and videoconferencing sessions from the world’s most brutal conflicts.
Some smokey dude in France has posted a very large collection of pictures of cigarette packs from all over the world. Something about the black heart and lung simplicity of this pack of Zen is appealing.
Architecture students at the University of Stuttgart have developed perfect products for powernapping. My favorite is the Napmosphere, but don’t miss the Schlafgras.
Got a sinister feeling that the white old money of New Orleans is gonna rebuild the city in it’s own image. And this Wall Street Journal article describes how it’s already beginning. Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically, says Audubon Place resident James Reiss.
An amazing collection of 197 photos of New Orleans [it's back up] before, during and after Katrina by someone living in the French Quarter. It seemed like the first two days after the storm no one was really worried.
It’s a lonesome life, being a monster in love.
An Ottawa-based company, DNA11, lets you turn your dna into artwork. It’s simple really. You spit into a cup and mail it to them. DNA is then stained with a fluorescent dye and illuminated by UV light, which then glows, giving off a fluorescent signal An image of this is then printed as a Giclee fine art piece on a large canvas you can hang on the wall.
Just like the Onion headline, Area Man Drives Food There His Goddamned Self, three Duke University sophomores drove down to New Orleans and evacuated seven people in their Hyundai. “Anyone who knows that area, if you had a bus, it would take you no more than 20 minutes to drive in with a bus and get these people out,” Buder said. “They sat there for four or five days with no food, no water, babies getting raped in the bathrooms, there were murders, nobody was doing anything for these people. And we just drove right in, really disgraceful, said student Hans Buder.
The stories are beginning to come out of New Orleans. You must read this amazing firsthand account from Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky , two California paramedics who were stranded in New Orleans after Katrina. All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair.
Raised Awareness: Curated by Bill Woodrow at London’s Tate Modern is an exhibition of raised, touchable drawings that can be appreciated by blind and visually impaired visitors to the museum. There are works by Michael Craig-Martin, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Richard Long, and others You can also download them all as pdfs and print ‘em out if you want.
L.A. design firm Creative Bottle has created a Google Map mashup tour of the California Missions.
The U.S. military sees helping people in New Orleans as a combat operation. We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control, Brig. Gen. Gary Jones. What the hell? American citizens are now insurgents? Does this mean the United States is now in an undeclared state of civil war against teenagers who looted guns at Wal-Mart?
Slate’s Jack Shafer lays out how the tv reporters are growing a spine and criticizing the official line coming from politicians about helping the people of New Orleans. And Matt Wells of the BBC even calls the situtuation the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
Google has added another very cool and helpful mapping resource for Hurricane recovery and information. When you lookup an address in Google Maps, there is now an option to see a satellite photo of the post-Katrina flooding of New Orleans. The photo was taken Wednesday, August 31 at 10 am. Most places below Rampart Street seem dry.
A very useful Google Map mashup to provide information about Katrina damage along the Gulf Coast. They’re asking that you Please do NOT add markers that ASK for information, only add markers that PROVIDE information.
So then The New York Times goes, like, I’m just saying Mississippi has 3,800 Guard troops in Iraq, and Louisiana has about 3,000.
Incredible firsthand video of the town of Gulfport, Mississippi from Mark of hurricanlivenet.com shows the eerie wind, soggy wood scraps and emptiness left behind. It must have been taken just hours after Katrina moved North.
As for the stuff you really wanted to know about New Orleans: how are the restaurants holding up? Half of the facade of Commander’s Palace is gone and Antoine’s is now al fresco.