The first tool for analysing any catastrophe is a detailed timeline. Given the complexity of the Katrina disaster (and the curious myopia of local and federal government), it seemed to me that it was a classic case for an open-source effort. Now Josh Marshall is creating something very like that on his Blog. Brilliant!
En passant, there’s a beautiful piece of Mac software for creating timelines.
One of the most interesting companies around is Cachelogic. They’ve developed some technology for doing deep analysis of the data traffic passing through ISPs’ servers. Last year, they revealed the extent to which P2P traffic has come to dominate the Net.
Now comes a new presentation by company co-founder Andrew Parker on “Peer-to-Peer in 2005”. It makes for riveting reading. Some highlights:
Lots more. If you’re intrigued, it’s well worth viewing the whole presentation. Ed Felten has some interesting comments on all this.
If you want to know why VW is in trouble, look no further!
Each Bugatti Veyron 16.4 will cost an estimated $1.24 million, according to media reports. For that, buyers will get an all-wheel-drive two-seat sports car with a lightweight carbon-fiber body and 16-cylinder engine capable of producing 1,001 horsepower.
Oh, and according to Automotive News, this hideous vehicle still suffered from two major problems: The enormous engine tended to overheat and the car, capable of a top speed of well in excess of 200 miles per hour, was unstable at high speeds. Wouldn’t it be nice if Jeremy Clarkson bought one and then totalled it — and himself — thereby ridding the world of two excrescences in one fell swoop.
Lest we get carried away by that Bush speech about reconstructing New Orleans, here’s an extract from Paul Krugman’s column.
It’s a given that the Bush administration, which tried to turn Iraq into a laboratory for conservative economic policies, will try the same thing on the Gulf Coast. The Heritage Foundation, which has surely been helping Karl Rove develop the administration’s recovery plan, has already published a manifesto on post-Katrina policy. It calls for waivers on environmental rules, the elimination of capital gains taxes and the private ownership of public school buildings in the disaster areas. And if any of the people killed by Katrina, most of them poor, had a net worth of more than $1.5 million, Heritage wants to exempt their heirs from the estate tax.
Still, even conservatives admit that deregulation, tax cuts and privatization won’t be enough. Recovery will require a lot of federal spending. And aside from the effect on the deficit – we’re about to see the spectacle of tax cuts in the face of both a war and a huge reconstruction effort – this raises another question: how can discretionary government spending take place on that scale without creating equally large-scale corruption?
Update: Dead Ringers on BBC Radio 4 tonight had a lovely spoof Bush speech. It began: “My fellow amphibians…”.