Live from the Nuke Free Zone

The levees around Lake Pontchartrain have been breached in several places,
repair actions have failed, and the entire city of New Orleans is
flooding over in a situation that is only slightly less bad than
the absolute worst case scenario because there is still a chance of
rescuing some people.
As it stands, we have lost one of the United […]

And Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
(Caption and hat tip under the cut)

What Andante said.
(Far be it from me to simply post a three-word link to somebody else as a complete post, but … yeah.)

This NFZ article will be more speculation and ideas than news analysis. It is sparked by a news article: I’m sitting here reading a story on New York’s summer school system and Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to end social promotion.
There are several conflicting forces at play here. We know that students who are promoted […]

Update, Aug 30th: Things got worse in New Orleans. Boingboing reports levee breaches in three places and points to an article estimating that 80 percent of the city is now “under water”. The old posting, based on earlier reports, is below.

Hurricane Katrina soaked New Orleans, causing billions of dollars worth of damage to that city […]

A few days ago, I mentioned a major breakthrough in the production of carbon nanotube sheets on something resembling an industrially-useful scale. I was going to do a larger article on it this weekend, until I found that WorldChanging went and did a better job than I would have anyway, no surprise.
Anyway, go read their […]

A guest on Fox News, former prosecutor John Loftus, reported that one of the London bombers was living at an address in the United States, and he gave the address out on the air. It turns out the guy hasn’t lived there in three years, and the people living there now don’t appreciate the carloads […]

Multiple news stories recently about efforts across the nation concerning redistricting: initiatives have been promulgated via governor and grassroot to remove the responsibility for redistricting from state legislatures and provide it to a neutral commission. California’s Proposition 77 is still on the ballot, while Florida’s is at least partly off due to a technicality. […]

Former Abu Ghraib commander Janis Karpinski
describes the scandal:
This is about instructions delivered with full authority and knowledge of the Secretary of Defense and probably Cheney. I don’t know if the President was involved or not. I don’t care. All I know is, those instructions were communicated from the Secretary of Defense’s office, from the Pentagon, […]

The latest Bad News from Iraq: Najaf police led by a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq attacked and razed Moqtada Sadr’s headquarters in Najaf. This is a worrying development. Sadr’s militia did at least as much damage as the Sunnis when they were active, and putting them on the sidelines […]