If you don't have HBO, you must have Netflix?

Couldn't a rental queue mean any sort of list of movies that one writes down? Which is something that people do.

Yeah, I have to physically keep a list of the movies I want to see.

Do you also check them off the list so you can remember seeing them?

Maybe I should've said "mental queue."

Yes, you should have. Because the implication that normal people have Nexflix is oh so elitist of you.

First of all, use of Netflix isn't elitist. It's legitimately devouring the rental market. Second, are the people who I know read my blog regularly normal?

it's not unreasonable to suggest people put something in their "rental queue." he wasn't speaking to people without rental queues (i.e. non-netflix or non-blockbuster people), so it wasn't really an assumption that everyone has one or the other.

but i see what one would be irked. after all, you know the old saying: "when you assume... you're an asshole."

Um, I was joking.

Getting SLIGHTLY closer to topic: My friend who's from New Orleans said this documentary made him angry.

Me: "Well, it's Spike Lee, so it was probably supposed to make you angry."
Him: "Not at the government. At the people who think the government blew up the levees."

I don't assume JBG is an asshole. I know he is.

isn't that like getting angry at the people that thought 9/11 was a (reptilian) bush conspiracy to start a war? how angry can you be at crackpots?

Jon Stewart called it a docu-joint, which made me laugh.

you can be angry at crackpots. i hate those assholes that walk around with "911truth" paraphenalia, trying to get people to believe that the whole thing was a government conspiracy. why? because there are so many real and actual reasons to despise this government and its assorted fuckings of the american people.

it's like people who believe courtney paid someone to murder kurt and make it look like a suicide. i don't believe that: but i'm 100% certain she's responsible for his death. there's more than one way to kill someone (or thousands of people).

Yeah, crackpots are crackpots, but the docu-joint gave some justification to their paranoia. Namely, that in the early 20th century, during another incident of flooding, the government in broad daylight *actually did* dynamite the levees near the 9th ward, in order to flood it instead of the wealthy neighborhoods. I.e., it's something that had happened before. The only difference is that in the original case, the government was open about it, while during Katrina, the accusers posit, they did it secretly. It should also be noted that along with the conspiracy theorists, Lee cut to various people who dismissed the theory out-of-hand.

The land values in an area prone to flooding are going to be low, hence the poor people will live there. Land values are high in areas not prone to flooding, hence the rich people will live there.

Poor people tend to get screwed in this sort of situation because of economics. If the area wasn't disaster-prone, fewer of them would have been able to afford to live there.

This is similar to the strange protests I saw in Boston where people in poor neighborhoods were demanding a subway line be built to give them greater access to the city. I always wondered if they realized that by building a subway line, they would dramatically increase the value of thier property overnight and high rents would most likely drive many of them out of the neighborhood they were attempting to benefit. The reason that poor neighborhoods have fewer subways are because subways raise the land value of the neighborhood.

So, yeah, cheap houses==potential lakes.

They should have left the city submerged and only rebuilt on high ground.

You are right to a degree, Brian. But economics should not determine where federal money on public works projects is spent. If rich people happened to live in that low area (say, because the pretty lake front views, like how rich people build houses on precarious beach locations), you can bet your ass that the Army Corps of Engineers would've spent much more time strengthening the levees. This isn't economics: these are government dollars we're talking about.

Also, the film has a scene where some engineers travel to the Netherlands and are embarrassed as to how advanced they are in holding off waters. So there's no real need to leave the lowland areas underwater, as you say, except apathy.

And the cost.

There's really was no reason NOT to leave them underwater. It's expensive to protect a city below sea-level from flooding. I know I'm in the minority here, but I'd rather spend the money on areas that don't need constant protection from mother nature. Federal money should be spent elsewhere.

If you want to live by a lake, that's great. Buy insurance. Rich people pay for the threat of natural disaster via insurance. The poor just hope it won't happen. Let's help everyone out and not create land especially susceptible to natural disaster. At the very least, let's elevate that area of the city that's underwater. Bring in some dirt and lift the whole region up. It's got to be cheaper and safer than constantly battling flood waters.

You know that's never going to happen -- people are very passionate about their roots. Oh, and there's another part of the docu-joint that covers how the insurance companies are screwing over many of the victims of Katrina, leading to several class-action suits.

I'm always in favor of suing insurance companies.

I wonder if anyone sells insurance for when you have to sue your insurance company.

Ingen: There's an active industry of "reinsurers" who cover other insurers, but in order to market that to individuals, you'd have to convince them that it's better to pay for insurance twice than to sue the shit out of an insurer who reneged on its policy.

Also, it's worth thinking about whether anyplace in America is free of natural disaster.

J-May: I think he was also angry at Spike Lee for giving them lots of time in the movie. "I wasn't there, but I think a ton of steel-reinforced concrete breaking MIGHT sound like an explosion."

The government-blew-up-the-levees theory is very widespread, so it makes sense that something documenting the event and its aftermatch would include the belief. they didn't get *that* much screen time -- maybe 3-4 minutes.

Of course there are very few places in America that are free from natural disasters, but there are areas that are so stupidly prone to natural disasters that it might best to abandon them.

One example from my own family is a town called Old Shawneetown, Illinois. My family used to live there. It is built immediately next to, and ten feet below the Mississippi River. You get to the edge of the town, walk up a ten foot hill, and when you get to the top you're looking at the top of the Mississppi River. I don't know how the hill got there. It's the strangest thing.

Anyway, as you can imagine, there's a reason why it's called Old Shawneetown. After a series of giant floods, everybody moved out. They all live in New Shawneetown (or just plain Shawneetown) a few miles further out from the river. It was a stupid place for a town and it should be abandoned. There's no sense in maintaining something that's going to be washed out every few years... might as well just pull back a few miles.

New Orleans strikes me as being similar.

Hey, look, I found a Panoramic View of the hill. The one I was on didn't have a wall at the top, but basically it looked the same. The place is so weird.

Ingen, your example about boston subways and economics isn't quite right. People along washington (blvd? street? i'm gonna say street just so i don't have to look it up) were clamoring for a subway because they *used* to have one - the orange line, when it was elevated, ran down washington street and an economic center grew up along that stretch. It was still mostly poor and mostly black. Then, in the 80s, the mbta decided to tear the elevated down and put in a subway, but they moved it over a few blocks, enough to be really inconvenient, and the busses that were meant to replace the capacity and convenience of the subway of course couldn't. a subway does not necessarily increase the prosperity of a neighborhood - there's plenty of down and out places in the bronx and brooklyn that are on the subway - but it does tend to concentrate commerce around it. in washington street's case, the commerce is still there, but the subway left, creating something of an empty shell.