Tim

Campaign for America’s Priorities

Today, I’m splitting my time between attending sessions at the N-TEN Regional Conference (here in DC) and checkng progress on this wicked-cool application we just finished building for a client. I’m really proud of it…especially since we turned it around in less than a week (and that included multiple content and graphical changes by the client at all points in the development process).

We used the Google Maps API to build the Campaign for America’s Priorities (actnow.org), allowing people to add a personalized protest sign to a map and send links out to friends. Pretty cool, really.

Here’s my map.

I’m not sure if it’s the first virtual march. Let me know about others you’ve seen.

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Speech Bubbles, Just Waiting For Your Pen

This guy printed out a bunch of blank catoon-speech ballons and put them up all over the place. Then he went back with a camera and took pictures of what people wrote in them.

It’s got all that I love about AdBusters (off-kilter ways of re-purposing the advertising messages of corporations) without all thatbugs me about AdBusters (their elitist above-the-hoi-palloi kind of crap…like dropping bunches of dollar bills off a balcony in a mall and videotaping the dirty, dirty lowlifes as they scramble).

Thanks boingboing!

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Yay!!

Alison’s coming to look at my blog. I’m sooooooooooooo excited!!

I just have to clean up a bit. Let’s see…did I spellcheck that post? NO? Shit, too late. I already sent the email with the link. Fucking hell!

Oh well. I hope she likes it. She’s so…well, so…

hm.

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Didn’t Know it Could Happen?!?

This heartwrenching (in light of current events) National Geographic article from October of 2004 was stunningly prescient in it’s description of a — at the time, still fictional — hurricane hit on the coast of Louisiana. The recent protestations from FEMA, DHS, and the White House ring hollow when it’s so obvious that many people know if the dangers, and were quite vocal about what needed to be done to prepare.

Such high stakes compelled a host of unlikely bedfellows?scientists, environmental groups, business leaders, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers?to forge a radical plan to protect what’s left. Drafted by the Corps a year ago, the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) project was initially estimated to cost up to 14 billion dollars over 30 years, almost twice as much as current efforts to save the Everglades. But the Bush Administration balked at the price tag, supporting instead a plan to spend up to two billion dollars over the next ten years to fund the most promising projects. Either way, Congress must authorize the money before work can begin.

“The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours?coming from the worst direction,” says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city’s hurricane armor. “I don’t think people realize how precarious we are,”
Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. “Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it’s going to make things much worse.”

(Emphasis mine.)

http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/

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Flushing Out The Ugly Truth

Milvertha Hendricks, 84, waits in the rain with other flood victims outside the convention center in New Orleans Thursday. This Salon.com article hopefully will help start a dialogue that is something we are in desparate need of.

There are lots of problems out there, to be sure, but the way the United States treats it’s poor is shameful. The reports in the news and the statements from pundits are reactionary and disgusting.

You certainly can’t excuse people shooting guns at the people who are involved in rescue and releif efforts, to be sure, but that’s not all that this disaster is about. It’s about terrible preparation and response too. It’s about the expectation that any offer of help is going to be met with tearful gratitude (Extreme Makeover Home Edition) rather than “fuck you, where were you last week, dick?”

People in need will always be there, hungry, cold, whenever we are moved (or forced) to offer compassion and assistance. We’ll always know where to find them because they have nowhere else to go. If you beat someone at the same time you starve them, don’t be surprised if they bite your hand. And when they bite your hand and that leads you to the conclusion that they aren’t worth feeding, then “fuck you, where were you last week, dick?”

Some supporting video from Crooks & Liars

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