September 2, 2005
From the desk of Jane Galt:Signing off
I know that everyone's thoughts are with the victims of Katrina, but that's literally all I've thought about all week, since I've been writing about it. By the time the boyfriend arrived home from Vancouver on Thursday night, I was on the verge of tears; I'd been doing nothing but squat in my apartment, watching television and writing about the wreckage for days.
Journalists are too prone to think that the importance of the events they cover rubs off on their own lives, and I'm not trying to imply that I'm somehow better, or deeper, because I'm sad. I'm sad because that's the normal reaction to stark human tragedy, and as terrible as it is to read and write about the events in New Orleans, it is incomprehensibly worse to be one of the frightened people crowding the tarmac as the filthy waters swill about their feet, not knowing where or when, or even if, help is coming.
These people need our help. They need it now, and they will need it three months from now, when America's attention has turned elsewhere. They will need temporary shelter, and permanent housing filled with furniture and housewares that few of them can probably afford. They will need clothes and schools and jobs and churches . . . in short, they will need to do in days or weeks what most of us do over a period of years, which is weave together a life and a home. We cannot replace their lost loved ones, or their precious family mementos, but we can give them stuff.
Please, dig deep. I've given money to the red cross, and money to this effort, which I blogged about earlier. Being a journalist, I'm afraid I can't afford matching funds, nor do I have anything nifty to offer like the folks at Crooked Timber have. But I'll offer this: for every hundred dollars you donate to a recognized charity (or the Lake Providence effort), I will mail you a homemade pound cake. I'm a pretty good baker. If you donate $250, I will write a blog post about anything you like*. It's on the honor system; just use the NZ Bear registry, or email me.
I'm off to go camping now. I feel a little weird going off into the woods when my country is suffering so much, but the holiday has been planned for months, and to be honest, I'm looking forward to being away from the television news for a few days. I hope everyone has a good Labor Day weekend, particularly anyone who's involved in the rescue efforts down there.
*Except my personal life. I know, I know, but you wouldn't believe some of the emails I get.
Posted by Jane Galt at September 2, 2005 5:37 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksHello good posters of Asymetrical Information.
Contact alan@engrm.com to help New Orleans by organizing the wealth of information getting lost in the forums.
Many residents are posting important updates to these forums and they are scrolling right off the page. You can really make a difference by creating a Wiki page for any community you choose, a Univeristy, school, church, hospital, etc.
There are survivor databases like:
http://familymessages.org/index.php
But people need to know about looting, flood levels, relief.
http://thinknola.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page#Mission_Statement
It really makes a difference...
http://engrm.com/blogometer/2005/09/02/wiki-in-case-of-emergency.html
Contact me directly please.
A homemade pound cake? Count me in, but can you really afford to mail a cake to EVERYONE who donates $100? That sounds like an awfully expensive proposition, especially considering how many readers you must have!
Hello all,
I pop in here to this blog every once in awhile. I am writing because of a different reason. On my blog, I have listed a lot of anti-child-pornography resources and I blog on the subject too. So obviously there appears on my blog the words "child," "porn," (and similar variations ) with some frequency. I have a web service (statcounter) that tells me info about people who visit my blog. When somebody does a search on a search engine, and a link to one of my blog pages appears in the results, and they click on the link and come to my blog, I can see which words they searched by to come to my blog.
What I am noticing is that some pedophiles (apparently) are ending up on my blog, because they are searching for child porn online (examples " ch1ld porn", "cartoons 3d pedo". This service also tells me the person's IP address (example: 82.173.6.196). I am not a hacker, unfortunately. However I hate to see that pedophiles (from all over the world) are doing this.
The only online organizations I know of that deal with child porn, such as the FBI/missing children, you can do a report of an incident and then you don't hear back about if anything was done.
I like that idea that was tried out to curb street prostitution where a mayor publicized the name of solicitors. I was wondering if any of you (specially since Allison is in journalism), may have any clever ideas of how I could take action about this.
I don't feel filling out these online reports are going to do anything in this case (specially since hits are international). And I hate having to sit and watch this happen on my blog!
Any help or suggestions are very welcome!!
Have a good day, all.
"I thought about skipping my vacation after this crisis, but I was planning it for *months*."
More self-centered libertarianism...
Personally, El Jefe, I think that's completely unfair. Or did you mean to be ironic?
"Being a journalist, I'm afraid I can't afford matching funds, nor do I have anything nifty to offer like the folks at Crooked Timber have."
Using grammar like that, "journalist" might be something of a stretch.
Got style book?
What is this, pile on Megan day? Would it help the refugees if she were to cancel her vacation and cry in front of the TV all weekend? Does it matter to anyone but a control-freak-English-teacher if she writes the occasional awkward sentence?
Good Lord, people, get a grip or maybe take a vacation yourselves.
There was nothing grammatically non-halal about the ""Being a journalist ..." sentence in the first place, though you might argue the syntax was a bit non-Cyd Charisse, grace-wise. Not all the fruitcakes are from the JaneGalt kitchen.
We feel you Jane. Feel better.
By the way folks, we've just launched a message board/support group for Katrina. www.katrinatalk.org Come over and give some support and get some, too. Talking about it helps.
Mindles--would you mind adding a link? It will be helpful to people.--Thanks
From the weblog of the objectivistly-named Jane Galt, here is the worst of American reaction to the New Orleans disaster in a nutshell. Below find samplings of statements that reveal a seemingly bottomless capacity for churlish, selfish, callous, racist cruelty by self-congratulatory blog barnacles who coolly watch the NOLA tragedy play out from the comforts of their dry, food-filled, proudly right-wing homes. I believe many of them may fancy themselves a tad intellectual, and hard-nosedly so. The poverty of their arguments demonstrates otherwise. And as none of them lay claim to any sort of humanitarian compassion, you won't be surprised to find it absent here. Hold on to your lunch:
Nice place you have there, You make me sick. At least someone is enjoying the hurricane.
Jane:
Sometimes it's just good to unplug.
Your blog will work for you 24/7 raising money for the catastrophe victims.
Is it just me, or are blog comments not supposed to generally be for posting on the topic that the post is about? Ah well, I'll jump on the bandwagon of non sequiturs - I think you just disappointed a whole lot of guys by mentioning a boyfriend :P
What happened to your archives?
http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005433.html
Did you retract your last statement?
Let me refresh:
“It seems to me that the poor should have had the EASIEST time leaving. They don't need to pay for an extended leave from their home, they could have just packed a few belongings and walked away to start over somewhere else. What did they have to lose?
When the wealthy evacuate, they leave behind nice houses, expensive cars, possibly pets that they treat as members of the family, valuable jewelry, family heirlooms, etc. This makes it emotionally difficult for wealthy people to leave. But by definition, the poor do not have this burden: they either rent their homes, or they are in public housing; their cars are practically junk anyway; and they don't have any valuable possessions. This is what it means to be poor. These people could just pick up their few belongings, buy a one-way bus ticket to any city and be poor there. Supposing they even had jobs in NO, it's not like minimum wage jobs are hard to come by.”
Well, I followed the archive link - from here in Western Australia - after reading the above comment. Glad its been deleted, actually - if it is written by a fellow American it doesnt paint him/her in a good light...kind of reminiscient of cats that eat their own young. As Miss Jane says 'Have a little human decency.'
We're also being barraded with news reports of comments about race.
I'm glad the rest of the blogs are positive ones. Over here we are trying to put together relief kits to send, and our government has committed 10 million or so.
I was in the unfortunate position of losing everything in a house fire - our insurance had run out by two days, and with six kids, things were a little tight. My heart goes out to all the victims, and to your country.
moondoggy
Below find samplings of statements that reveal a seemingly bottomless capacity for churlish, selfish, callous, racist cruelty by self-congratulatory blog barnacles who coolly watch the NOLA tragedy play out from the comforts of their dry, food-filled,
Mighty infatuated with your desktop thesaurus and gift of hyperbole, I see. Bear in mind this is the Internet, where persons genuinely interested in dialog have to wade around less-palatable elements of society exploiting the open medium for bleating purposes (doing so, in many cases, because they have already alienated a circle of friends who would normally fulfill the audience function).
proudly right-wing homes.
-60/100: Willful partisan (and irrelevant) flamebait.
I believe many of them may fancy themselves a tad intellectual, and hard-nosedly so.
I believe you are guilty of all of these traits, also, albeit motivated perhaps by a somewhat different skew of political prejudices. Does my belief make it so? Or are your indiscretionate words sufficient proof on their own merits?
Jeez, do you people have no shame? Jane is offering to undertake extra work (baking cakes, blogging about subjects her readers suggest rather than what pops into her head) and what she gets is snarky posts about grammar, whether she has the right to enjoy a vacation, and irrelevant comments about posting IP addresses for perverts?
Jane, I’m sure your first impulse is to say, “Screw these people, I’m hanging up the blog in favor of golf,” but many of us do appreciate and enjoy what you provide.
E-mail me when you get the chance and let me know what documentation you’ll need when I take you up on your offer. My suggested blog topic is, post a link when you publish an article in The Economist. They don’t seem to do by-lines and I’m interested in seeing the work you do for the regular press.
If you can't do that because of copyright or other reasons, I'll take a cake....preferably lemon-glazed or almond.
Vacation is a good thing. Not taking it leads to lack of perspective. Enjoy your rest, Megan.
From a previous discussion...
"The jury system is broken. The entire tort system is broken. Trial lawyers are scum. There's no other way to put it." —William Edwards
Well, I suppose there are other ways to put it.
The legendary dysfunctionality of the Hammurabic Method of Social Regulation has been well documented for millenia.
Unfortunately, to fully appreciate the analysis, one has to be able to understand some mathematics.
It's not too hard to recognize an instance of dysfunctionality when it smacks you between your eyes.
What's hard is to introduce functionality into the culture.
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