OK, say what you like about who's to blame for Katrina response ...

...but this is despicable.

This should be required reading

A first-hand account from the streets of New Orleans discusses how a large group of evacuees kicked out of French Quarter hotels -- a mixture of locals, conference attendees, and foreign tourists -- tried everything they could to rescue themselves and were thwarted at every turn, not by Nature, but by the authorities.  They pooled $25,000 to charter ten buses to evacuate them; the buses were commandeered by the military upon arrival.  They camped out outside a police station trying to get attention, and were told by the police commander that buses were waiting to evacuate them.  The buses never existed; it was just a lie to get rid of them.  They tried to walk out of the city, and they -- and thousands of others, by ones and tens and scores -- were turned back at gunpoint at the Greater New Orleans Bridge by police who didn't want black folks crossing the Mississippi into places decent folks lived.  They set up a camp and started providing for their own shelter and sanitation, only to have it broken up at gunpoint by a Gretna sheriff backed up by a helicopter, who then took what food and water they'd managed to gather.

It'd be altogether a tale of misery and shame, if not for the discussions of how ordinary people banded together to rig generators, improvise local electrical power grids, transport the sick and disabled, and in general to pull together and work to rescue themselves.  With every word you read of what was done to them, remember what they did for themselves -- and that they never gave up.

When stories like this can come out of New Orleans, there's hope for America.  Maybe it just needs a big enough disaster to remind us what's important.

---

Edit:

rbos commented that when you hear things like this, it makes the stories of shooting at helicopters a bit more understandable.  "Oh, no, here the bastards come again...."

Vascular study

Today's vascular study was uneventful, and a lot quicker than I expected.  The capsule summary is that my left leg appears to have re-vascularized very well, and blood pressure and flow in my left leg and foot -- all the way to the toes -- is barely distinguishable from the much-less-damaged right leg.

Now after these test results get back to my new podiatrist, we'll discuss options for improving the state of my toes.

Old, but .....

3dFrontier.com forum commentary on the best science fiction battlecries.  (Though some of these ... well, quite a few, actually ... don't originate from SF.)

I notice the forum missed a few.  Two in particular spring to mind; the first:

Muad'dib!

And if "Semper fi, do or die" belongs in there, then so does the other motto of Uncle Sam's Misguided Chidren:

Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle.

And I'd like to nominate one more, even though it isn't SF either, and doesn't even have the connection of the Once And Future Marines to carry it into the category.  But I think it carries as much weight and honor, and means just as much, as any of the entries nominated on that list and above.

It's just two words.

Let's roll.