Category: Blog

Katrina, Real Point of View

Two paramedics from California were attending a conference in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. In this excellent write-up, they offer us a very real description of how they were treated as refugees, how the local police response was inept, and how they eventually escaped to Texas.

The Bush administration is currently trying to shift the blame of what happened in Katrina’s aftermath to the local and state governments. The evidence is strong that screw-ups were across-the-board at all levels of government, but that does not mean Bush can “pass the buck”. In almost every instance, the local and state police would have handled the siituation better had the Federal government been more prepared and provided them with support during the first two days of the disaster. I don’t blame Bush for the failures of federal emergency response in the days following Katrina, but I do blame the “old boy network” that allowed someone as incompetent and unqualified as Michael Brown to be appointed director of FEMA. And that, unfortunately, describes most of the Bush administration to a tee.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at September 7, 2005 01:28 PM

“Twins” is Now on Bookshelves

Fellow Brooklyn-ite and author Marcy Dermansky’s first novel has finally hit the store shelves. Her debut novel is about an identical pair of twin sisters who live in New Jersey, their dysfunctional family, and the pains of growing up.

Marcy was kind enough to mail me an signed copy of “Twins” a few weeks ago after I told her I was an identical twin and would love to review it from a twin’s perspective (Marcy is not a twin). I blew through the book in about 4 days and can happily say it was a fine read. In numerous places in the book, Marcy absolutely nails what it is like to be a twin; the feelings and emotions that bind us to our “other half” for our entire lives.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at September 6, 2005 02:29 PM

Preparing For the Worst

I spent much of this past weekend putting together an emergency survival kit, which now sits in a couple of cardboard boxes near my apartment door ready to be transported to the trunk of a car should a quick evacuation be needed. I did this not because I think that NYC will be attacked again soon, either by terrorists or Mother Nature, but because I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer trust our Federal government to handle a catastrophe with any competence at all. It’s just common sense to be prepared for the worst. Here are the contents of my emergency survival kit:

Feel free to add more items in the comments. Obviously, this list is designed to be flexible, as some items would not be needed depending on the kind of emergency. For instance, packing more lightweight food (beef jerky, ramen noodles, nuts, etc.) would be better if you expect to not be able to find food and are not tied to an automobile. I designed my list along with a plan of action that I have shared with my girlfriend, my brother and his girlfriend. We have all agreed upon on meeting locations in both Manhattan and Brooklyn, should a catastrophe strike — with the goal being to make it to Park Slope in Brooklyn where the car is. We then will go as a group to the end of Long Island where we can catch a ferry to Connecticut or wait out the catastrophe until it is safe to go back to NYC. We also have made sure each one of us has a cell phone that is capable of email and/or SMS text messaging, since these services are the most likely to work while the voice network is overloaded (as it happened during 9/11 and the blackout of 2003).

Posted by Cameron Barrett at September 5, 2005 09:57 PM

How the Bush Administration Crippled FEMA

If, like me, you are questioning why FEMA and the Bush administration is doing such a terrible job in responding fast enough to Katrina, you should read this article that came out last year that explains exactly how the Bush administration has effectively crippled FEMA by appointing unqualified directors and rolling it into the Department of Homeland Security.

Some FEMA veterans complained that Allbaugh had little experience in managing disasters, and the administration’s early initiatives did little to settle their concerns. The White House quickly launched a government-wide effort to privatize public services, including key elements of disaster management.”

In addition, the White House has pushed for privatization of essential government services, including disaster management, and merged FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security, where natural disaster programs are often sidelined by counterterrorism programs. Along the way, morale at FEMA has plummeted, and many of the agency’s most experienced personnel have left for work in other government agencies or private corporations.

Waugh says that recent hurricanes could serve as a wake-up call to highlight FEMA’s drift in priorities. “If you talk to FEMA people and emergency management people around the country, people have almost been hoping for a major natural disaster like a hurricane, just to remind DHS and the administration that there are other big things – even bigger things than Al Qaeda.

Final thought: If Katrina had happened last year, Bush would certainly not be President right now.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at September 3, 2005 02:24 PM

Katrina Roundup

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is far worse than we ever expected. On Monday after the storm passed, with reports of it missing New Orleans, I assumed the city would be spared. But then one of the levees broke and the water came flooding in. Like many others I question the state of readiness and slow action of our federal government. I stop short of blaming Bush for this mess, but it concerns me that he decided to continue with his planned appearances rather immediately kick the government’s resources into gear. It also concerns me that Condoleeza Rice, one of Bush’s closest advisors, decided to go shopping in Manhattan rather than stop her vacation to be by Bush’s side during this national emergency. Dick Cheney is still on vacation (he’s probably too busy counting his Halliburton money to be bothered with something as trivial as a national emergency).

Movies:

Articles:

I can’t help but think back a few months, watching a cheesy fake documentary (TV movie) on FOX called “Oil Storm” that outlined the aftermath of a series of disastrous events that disrupt the supply of oil to the United States. The first event in this series was a hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast reagion, destroying the oil refineries there. We’re already seeing the price of gas up to $3.00/gal with some experts saying it could be $4.00/gal by Christmas. I’ll bet all those Hummer H2 owners out there are slapping their foreheads right about now.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at September 2, 2005 12:35 PM

Katrina and Terrorism

Here’s what worries me about the terrible job our government is doing in responding to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Imagine you are a terrorist lying in wait to attack the United States, or perhaps you are one of the Al Qaeda masterminds organizing future attacks. Wouldn’t you be encouranged by the U.S. government’s failures to properly manage such a disaster? Wouldn’t it give you pleasure to realize that your upcoming terrorism attacks might have the potential for being on par with Katrina? With everyone distracted by Katrina, wouldn’t you think about moving your plans up and issuing the orders sooner?

Despite Bush’s tough-guy act, our country is no more secure from terrorism than it was five years ago. Our ports of call still lack strong security. Our mass transit systems in New York, Los Angeles and other cities are still vulnerable despite the recent show of force and random bag checks. Watching Bush respond to Katrina, I get the impression that he not a guy who is in charge. It’s more like he’s the puppet whose pupper-masters have been on the shitter while Katrina wreaked havoc, only to get caught with their pants down.

What I fear is that our country will suffer another catastrophic event sooner rather than later, which will only escalate our decline as a civilization. I’m afraid it wouldn’t take much to send this country into a backwards spin that would ultimately lead to almost complete suspension of civil liberties and widespread martial law. People in some states are already panicking about higher gas prices. Imagine what will happen when they realize another catastrophic event like Katrina could disrupt our fragile supply-chain of food, clean water and energy. At some point civility is lost and we devolve into anarchy, desperation and the chaos of survival. Watching how our government is responding to Katrina leaves me with little faith they can appropriately manage another such event. It almost makes me want to go buy a gun, because then at least I can protect myself and my loved ones since our government may not be able to.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at September 2, 2005 04:49 PM
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Too Busy to Blog

Holy crap have I been busy this month; too busy to blog. I need to get back into the habit of posting stuff every day. I’m sure it’s like riding a bike; you never forget.

Congratulations to the team over at Behavior Design, launching the new The Onion site. I had a series of meetings with them back in June to discuss the pros and cons of the various open source CMS solutions out there. I helped the tech team narrow the choice down to Drupal, Mambo Server or a home-grown solution. Happily, they ended up going with Drupal – and it looks freaking awesome.

More congratulations to the team over at Six Apart for releasing a major upgrade to Movable Type. I’ve been upgrading all of my clients that use MT (about a dozen) to MT 3.2, and the process has been mostly smooth. I’m very happy with nthe speed increase in 3.2, and look forward to see how well it will perform for my largest MT-based site WatchBlog, which has over 2600 entries, 130+ authors and over 65,000 comments.

Lastly, I’m headed out west in a couple weeks for some camping. Taking my city-raised girlfriend camping for the first time should be quite an experience, for both of us. Having never slept outisde in a tent before, it will be fun to introduce her to the joys (and aches) of camping.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at September 1, 2005 12:29 AM

Casting The Amazing Race, An Experiment in Blogging

BloggerTwins.com

I’ve been pretty quiet lately. Apologies for that. I’m swamped with freelance and consulting work, working feverishly on getting my new blog consultancy up and running, and auditioning for reality TV shows.

Yeah, you read that right. My twin brother Damien and I went to a casting call last month for season nine of The Amazing Race – in my opinion the only good reality TV show left on television. The odds are slim that we get cast, but we’re trying anyway. We decided to go one step further and build an entire web site to showcase our efforts to get the casting directors to notice us. They get thousands and thousands of tapes and only eleven teams of two people are ultimately chosen. We can’t even be certain that our tape was seen by a casting director, so we’re being pro-active about it and asking the blogosphere for help.

This is sort of an experiment as well. With all the media buzz about blogs, we’re interested in seeing how much effect we can have by asking the blogosphere to step up and lobby CBS and World Race Productions to consider us for the show. For them to cast twin bloggers would be a very good idea, because they can then use that fact in their marketing of the show next spring. And by casting one of the pioneers of the blog format gives them immediate credibility (and potentially many thousands of new viewers) within the blogosphere.

Feel free to link to BloggerTwins.com, email your friends, family and colleagues and ask them to help as well. Someone out there must be friends with the casting directors at CBS for The Amazing Race, or knows someone who is. Let’s see if we can get this guerilla marketing campaign to work.

Note: Should we achieve the near impossible feat of getting cast, we promise to blog up to the point they tell us we should stop. In that case, you won’t hear anything more about this until next spring when the show airs (it films in November).

Posted by Cameron Barrett at August 3, 2005 11:28 PM

London Bombings

As the world’s attention is focused on London in the aftermath of this morning’s bombings, I can’t help but put myself into a terrorist’s head and think that now would be an ideal time for a second attack on a major target like NYC or Paris. The local news channels in NYC have been running non-stop live footage of the subway system, tunnel entrances and bridges. From a terrorist’s perspective, all of these media cameras trained on their potential prime targets can only be a good thing since it helps them spread their message of hatred through the powerful imagery of a terrorist attack. Stop a moment and think about it. Can you imagine the kinds of footage these media cameras would catch should the terrorists do a one-two kind of attack? First, a smaller attack like what happened this morning in London to get the media’s attention, and then following that, a larger attack on one of the prime targets that’s being monitored by hundreds of television cameras — thus guaranteeing some kind of sensational footage.

The thought of something like this scares me but I know there is little I can do as an individual to prevent terrorists from succeeding in their plots. I subscribe to the practices put forth by the MTA and NYPD: stay alert, be aware of those around you, and report anything that might be suspicious no matter how silly it may seem.

My thoughts and concerns go out to those families affected by today’s bombings in London.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at July 7, 2005 01:13 PM

New Bike

About two weeks ago my $50 garage-sale-special crappy bike was involved in a minor bike accident that completely destroyed its ridability (it truly was a piece of crap bike). Being that there are several more months of nice weather left, I decided to splurge and get a new bike. After much research I decided that the Specialized Sirrus was the best hybrid for me. Everyone I talked to confirmed that the quality of components on the Sirrus are a good deal for its $500 price tag. It’s perfect for medium-length weekend rides and the occasional commute over the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan.

The local bike shop I bought from in Brooklyn had no red 2005 models left, but they checked their stack of recently delivered bikes and they had a brand new 2006 model in silver. So new that even Specialized’s web site isn’t updated yet with the 2006 models.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at July 6, 2005 02:24 PM