Katrina and the waves



Man, the news about Hurricane Katrina is quite devastating - 80% of New Orleans evacuated. That's the French Quarter above - deserted. Fingers crossed that its slight weakening wil save one of the world's most distinctive cities from being destroyed. Quotes like this are quite scary:

The head of Jefferson Parish, which includes major suburbs and juts all the way to the storm-vulnerable coast, said some residents who stayed would be fortunate to survive.

''I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard,'' said parish council President Aaron Broussard. (AP report, on the New York Times' web page)

Sometimes we are all pawns to nature.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Pretty devastating huh. But hey, the Southerners got who they voted for - global warming Bush!
29 August 2005 at 12:57
tscd said…
How do they name hurricanes?
30 August 2005 at 00:33
Anonymous said…
About names of hurricanes: I think the answer is on this page
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/basics/naming.shtml
30 August 2005 at 06:02
Anonymous said…
Terrible, wonderful, entry title.
30 August 2005 at 14:42
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More news bits

Quite funny: George W. Bush was caught without cash at church when the offering plate was passed around, and had to get help from his dad. I always forget to put cash in my wallet, actually, so I sympathise. (Via Esoterically.net .) Extremely sad: Italy's real-life Romeo and Juliet , this one set in Padua instead of fair Verona. Just plain strange: New Zealand gang steals dead member's body from his own funeral . Elv1s 4ever: Elvis has the 1000th UK number 1 single with "One Night". Quite a remarkable feat for a performer who's been dead forever. Although it's probably more due to a decline in the singles format. Spiralling downwards: Paris Hilton caught on tape shoplifting . Apparently, being a Hilton means you don't have to check out. The idea of catching P-Hilt on video has jumped the shark.
Read more

Verbal agreement

From a Grauniad Guardian article on James Dyson , inventor of the dual-cyclone vacuum cleaner: He still has one major ambition. To become a verb, in the same way that Hoover - or, as he puts it, "the alternative" - has done. I suggest to him that people are already using his product but still saying they are "hoovering". He smiles. "I don't think they'll be doing that for long," he says. That struck me as unusual - it's very rare for a firm's leader to say that he wants his product to become a verb. Lots of other companies like TiVo and Google have tried desperately to avoid their name becoming a verb, for fear of the name becoming so generic that the trademark gets diluted. But then, the Languagehat archives seem to show (see comment near the bottom) that Dyson's big on turning his name into a verb. *** Sadly, due to its distinct lack of vowels, the chances of "sng" becoming a verb seem close to zero, regardless of whate...
Read more