March 2008 Archives

The "original" or "old" section of Metairie Cemetery has two parts. The first is the area that fronted Pontchartrain Blvd. (and the New Basin Canal, before the canal became an expressway), and the "race track," which still follows the pattern of the horse race track that occupied the property prior to the construction of the cemetery. The high-value locations in the cemetery were the plots visible from the street (and canal), and the "infield" of the racetrack. The inside street along the infield became known as "Millionaire's Row," because of the elaborate tombs built around the Army of Northern Virginia tumulus that occupies the western end of the infield itself. Of course, these tombs and memorials were all built between 1880 and 1900, so a person or family with the means to buy a modern-day "millionaire's" tomb couldn't fit in with the original ones. When the cemetery opened up the current main gate in the 1950s, they priced the plots near the gate and on that street according to its status as main entrance.

Al Copeland constructed the first tomb in this section a few years back for his family (and, as of today, himself). Others, such as Ruth Fertel (of Ruth's Chris Steak House fame), and Anne Rice (for her late husband, Stan), bought plots down the street a bit from Copeland, where they constructed lovely tombs worthy of the original Millionaire's Row. Just across from the Rice tomb is this one, for the Besthoff family.

The Besthoffs were the "B" in K&B Drugstores. Sidney Besthoff and his partner, Gustave Katz, opened their first store on Canal Street in 1905. The Katz family sold their interest to the Besthoffs in 1954, and the Besthoffs in turn sold the chain to RiteAid in 1997.

The current patriarch of the Besthoff clan, Sidney Besthoff, III, is well-known as a patron of the arts and a lover of sculpture. The Besthoffs financed the Sidney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, in City Park, behind the New Orleans Museum of Art.

The elegant lines and classic design of the Besthoff tomb reflect the good classy reputation of Mr. Besthoff and his family. Each of the four columns is topped with a replica of "King Solomon's Crown." If you take the six-sided star you get from two interlocking triangles (the Star of David) and bend the corners upward, you get this style of pointed crown. There are no names engraved on the tomb as of this writing, so it's unclear if that means it is unused or if the family has chosen to not inscribe details.

I'm doing some work on the servers, so if things are irregular tonight, please bear with me.

When the weekly market or bazaar opened in a town, the owners of the stalls who were selling their wares anticipated that people would come into town from all over the region, so they would have a large customer base. The last thing they wanted to do was to stand around and have coffee with the other stall-owners all day. It's the same thing with an online community. A NOLA community is not about a bunch of established bloggers reading and commenting on each other's blogs; that's going to happen anyway. A community site is like the market; the goal is to attract a wide audience.

A more modern metaphor to the bazaar would be the shopping mall. Even established stores with other locations will open up in a mall, because the concentration of options for the buyer means (hopefully) a lot of customers. Again, the store owners don't want their employees standing in the entrance chatting with the folks who work down the mall, they expect the location to attract a wide range of customers. A shopping mall offers a number of options for a business owner. You can open up a very small storefront, or lease enough space for this to become your primary location.

The "stall owners" in an online community site have the same options. They can maintain a minimal presence on the site, say one blog entry every couple of weeks. Perhaps they'll go further than that and post every few days, or even post the one-per-day blog entry maximum. Unlike the mall, there are no financial limitations here; everyone can post the maximum if they choose. The site's FP bloggers may even post more frequently, depending on scheduling.

Who will occupy the stalls in the bazaar? Initially established bloggers will share their content with the community. Think of this as the restaurant that opens up a small outlet in the mall food court. They cook everything up at their main location and bring it over for sale at the mall. If "business" picks up (indicated by the number of recommendations and comments received), a blogger will no doubt put more time and effort into the writing they do for the community.

The hope here is that others will come into the community to read and comment. There's nothing that says they have to blog themselves, just come in and participate. As a reader's interest level increases, no doubt they'll be inspired to start blogging. For example, if an established blogger does a post on Da Saints, a community member might realize that they have enough knowledge to chime in and be as credible as the blogger. Eventually we may even see Front Page bloggers who have "come up through the ranks" in this manner.

It's not about bloggers, it's about people. With a platform and structure that facilitate community participation, non-blogger users of Teh Internetz will discover that the community site is more attractive than the foulness of nola.com.

If you've ever worked on a group project, you know how difficult it is to produce a quality product when everyone is an equal. Even on a jury, someone is elected foreman, to facilitate communication with the judge. Successful developments in many fields are solo efforts, dual-partnerships at best. Development by committee rarely produces a quality product.

This project will be a sole proprietorship from a business standpoint. That doesn't mean this is will be a top-down dictatorship, mind you; I see two roles of the site owner. The first deals with the legal/financial aspects of any business. Because I'm using my bandwidth (seashell software's business account with Cox), and my server, initial startup costs are small. This is one of the reasons I can move forward quickly. I'm going to continue to lay out the vision I have for the site in more essays, but the short version from the business side is that I'd love to see it make lots of money from blogads/adsense/whatever, as well as contributions from the community. The ultimate goal here is to generate the revenue to be able to do what Markos does, sponsor paid fellowships for FP bloggers and have a paid tech support person.

The second role is the whole buck-stops-here thing. Again, I don't see this role as a top-down dictatorship, but rather as an ultimate arbitrator for the community. There will be times when decisions will have to be made, and I'll be the ultimate court of appeal in those circumstances. The goal here is for me to be the ultimate appeal; hopefully the decisions will work themselves out at the community level first.

To return to the bazaar metaphor, I'm the guy who owns the property where the bazaar is set up. You own your stall, and the contents in side it. The rules of the bazaar are worked out amongst the various stall-owners. They also (for the most part) set the standards for conduct amongst themselves. When they cannot work things out, they turn to the owner of the property.

In terms of site management, I welcome input. The process will always be transparent.

Comments are once again turned off; go to the Forums to discuss, please.

(x-posted to Keyboard Networking and YatPundit)

Since the NOLA Bloggers Bazaar project is definitely moving forward, I want to lay out some of my thoughts on, as Bush 41 would say, "the vision thing."

Initially, I thought it sufficient to say that I wanted to start a community for New Orleans that was based structurally like Daily Kos, MyDD, or RedState. I was surprised to see how many experienced bloggers did not understand what I have in mind.

One of the ideas being floated by local bloggers was to build a site that would serve as an aggregater to make it easier for folks to read and comment on the blogs participating. It's an ambitious and worthy project, but it's not a community. It won't give those coming to the site a sense of ownership. That's the goal here, a dynamic community where members feel they're part of something.

One of the things that makes a community like DailyKos so successful is that the platform, the Scoop software package, allows members to do several things:

Comment on the "Front Page" (FP) stories.
Create their own blogs (called "diaries" on Scoop sites), including their own online polls.
Rate the quality of individual blogs by "recommending" them.
Allow site managers to "promote" individual blogs to the FP.
Rate comments posted by users, positively and negatively.

There are many Content Management Systems that have the first two features, but the others are crucial to building a solid community. If the only people able to recognize the good work of a diarist are the site's managers, the hierarchy created discourages participation. Invariably, personality issues will pop up, accusations of favoritism, etc. When a blog entry is positively rated by the community, it goes on the "recommended list," and becomes featured. (That entry can still be promoted to the FP as well).

Allowing community members to rate comments is also crucial. The nola.com website now has a number of blogs, and comments there are often pretty nasty. The levels of racism and personal attacks on that site are some of the reasons that many bloggers won't participate there. This has created a divide, though, between the non-technical user and the more tech/blog-savvy users. A community that contains a policing function that will remove comments deemed inappropriate by the community will catch on fast.

That's basically my vision for the structure of the community. To this end, I'm going to set up both the drupal and Joomla Content Management Systems on YatBazaar so folks can offer feedback.

Blog comments for this post are closed, to focus the discussion of the Bazaar project to the Forums.

Dates are milestones for each task.

1.  Finalize domain name - 4-Apr

I set up yatbazaar.com so I could have something for the team to look at.  I'd like to have a consensus on this by next Friday.

2.  Acquire a dedicated server for the Bazaar. 4-Apr

Time for some eBay shopping for a 1U or 2U server that will host this thing.  I'm using my big, obnoxious 4U Proliant at the moment, and it's going to kill my Entergy bill.

3.  Choose a platform for the site.  11-Apr

I'm setting up drupal and Joomla so people can play with look-and-feel.  My gut says drupal with the add-on "karma" module is the closest approximation we'll get to the comment-rating format of Daily Kos, but there are options for Joomla worth exploring.  This project is more about the community and the commenters than the bloggers, frankly, so this is a vital issue.

4.  Finalize the editorial staff.  25-Apr

I'm thinking 3 people besides myself will have admin access to promote personal blog entries to the FP, as well as to create "Open Thread" entries on the FP.  The timing of promotions and thread creation is TBD.

5.  Customize platform. 25-Apr

Once the platform decision is made, customize the theme.

6.  Publicize site, solicit community members. 30-Apr

Solicit "charter members" to sign up before go-live date.  A lot of people like to be early adopters, gives them a sense of ownership.

7.  Go Live 1-May

I've disabled comments on this post.  Please comment and/or follow-up in the Forums.

In 1997, Eric S. Raymond wrote a fascinating essay entitled "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," describing his experiences managing an open source software project. Raymond postulates two models for software development, the Cathedral, where access to development is restricted to just the programmers between releases, and the Bazaar, where everything is always out in the open. CatB works for illustrating a development philosophy, but the two models also apply to developments other than software. Let's talk about CatB with respect to blogging.


We all have our own Cathedrals, where we write about those things that interest us. We've also found that there is a great deal of value in coming together as a community, either on an ad hoc basis or as a regular group. For NOLA bloggers, the e-mail listserv has proven to be a successful tool. Maitri originally suggested that we develop some sort of aggregated site for the group. I'd like to carry that one step further and suggest we form a Bazaar.


Unlike the Cathedrals that are our blogs, a bazaar would be a true community effort. I propose we do the following:


1. Choose a new "brand name" for the community. This will help promote a sense of ownership amongst participants.


2. Implement a proven community-blog platform, such as Scoop, Drupal, Slash, etc.


3. Each member of the community has their own blog on the site. Members will be allowed to make one blog post per day. Site editors will choose blog postings to promote to the site's front page. Set up a phpBB-style forum to discuss the mechanics of this.


4. The community will be as self-policing as possible. Use a system where blog posts can be recommended by other members, and comments to posts can be rated, either recommended or "troll-rated," when a comment is deemed by the community to be inappropriate.


5. Set up an implementation timetable and stick to it. If we're going to do this, let's do it. While having coffee today, it was mentioned that today was the second or third discussion of this sort that took place. I'm willing to take some of the initiative here to get things going.


What say you? Will y'all participate?

Karen was asking about who would succeed SeeRay if he were to "retire."  The only time that mayoral succession has kicked in since the city charter was changed to create a mayor-council government was in 1961.  Then-mayor DeLesseps Story "Chep" Morrison was tapped by JFK to be Ambassador to the Organization of American States. 

The charter (and I find no references to this procedure changing since 1961) called for the council to choose between the two Councilmen-at-Large.  At that time, Schiro was elected Mayor by a vote of 5-1 (he abstained).  There was no special election; Schiro was "Interim Mayor" until the next election, when he ran and won.

So, were SeeRay to resign, the council would have to choose between Fielkow and Clarkson.  The winner would hold office until the 2009 election cycle.

Rejected: 'Star Wars' Merchandise You'll Never Own

The end of the St. Charles Ave. streetcar line, at S. Carrollton and S. Claiborne Avenues. This photo is from June, 2002.

Six more weeks to go, and the St. Charles line will be 100% operational. As of now, the line is only running the length of St. Charles, turning around at Riverbend. NORTA has announced that they expect to finish the upgrades and repairs to the line on S. Carrollton Ave. by May.

The intersection of S. Carrollton and S. Claiborne Avenues has been the location of the end of the St. Charles line since belt service was discontinued in 1951. It is a double-track terminal with a double-slip switch. Several bus lines terminate either in front of Palmer Park (like the bus on the left side of the photo), or on the neutral ground on S. Claiborne (to the right, just out of the photo). This intersection has long been a transit hub, dating back to 1915, when the Orleans-Kenner Railroad began operations.

The streetcars in the photo are Perley A. Thomas cars 940 and 961, both vintage 1923-24.

two posts on YatTravel (http://travel.yatpundit.com), one today and one yesterday, and two new ones today on YatCuisine (http://food.yatpundit.com)

...after all, the home of Starbucks and grunge rock has much to answer for. But not this time:

The alleged supplier of some of the net's most hated malware titles has been sued by Washington state's attorney general. Ron Cooke, the owner of Scottsdale, Arizona-based Messenger Solutions, stands accused of violating Washington's Computer Spyware Act and Consumer Protection Act for marketing programs that went under names including WinAntiVirus Pro 2007, System Doctor, WinAntiSpyware and Messenger Blocker.

Now, can we get the Louisiana legislature to pass a similar law?

Stuff White People Like h/t to Alan for passing the link along.

My 120GB Passport drive is just fine, but this one is tempting:

An external hard drive with a "soft-touch finish" that's "easy to grip, comfortable to hold and fashionable to carry", anyone? That's what Western Digital is now offering, in the form of its WD Passport Elite. The drive will be available in two capacities: 250GB and 320GB. They have a mini USB port for data and power, but you'll need to buy a double-headed cable separately if your computer's USB port doesn't provide enough juice.

I still have about 15GB free on the 120, and could get more if I cleaned it up. I don't need this, but it's awfully cool. I should set a goal and hold out for the half-TB version that will no doubt come out at some point.

Fernando is such a prima donna, I don't know if that would be a foregone conclusion:

"I'm at Renault because I wanted to get back to winning, like in 2005 and 2006, if not this year then next year," Alonso told Spanish newspaper As. "But I have an option to leave so I can be in the best possible car, and it is clear Ferrari is one of the best."

It's hard to see Ferrari buying out Kimi or Massa just to get Alonso.

It may come back to haunt you like it has Hizzoner of Detroit:

The mayor of Detroit has been charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office, stemming from a sex scandal six years ago. Kwame Kilpatrick, 37, who says he will fight the charges, could face up to 15 years in jail if convicted. He was charged after sexually explicit text messages surfaced that appeared to contradict his sworn denials of an affair with a top aide in 2002.

As soon as your stuff enters the "telco cloud," it's no longer yours. Never forget that.

(clicky the image for a larger version)

Copeland family tomb, located at the "modern" entrance to Metairie Cemetery.

Al Copeland, of Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken, passed yesterday. Copeland was from Da Channel and later Arabi. His original chicken shop, "Chicken on the Run" opened in Arabi in 1971. That became Popeyes, and by 1977, he was franchising the concept.

Copeland also opened restaurants as well as fast-food chicken outlets, first Copeland's, which has expanded across the nation, then Straya, a short-lived "California-Creole" concept that had locations Uptown and in Metairie. The Straya locations were converted into "Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro" restaurants. In 1997, a hilarious public dust-up occurred between Copeland and author (and then-New Orleanian) Anne Rice. Rice publicly attacked Copeland's design and decor tastes, harshly criticizing the decor of the Straya's on St. Charles Avenue. Copeland sued Rice for defamation, but the suit was tossed out of court. Interestingly enough, Rice's late husband, Stan, is buried two blocks down from the Copeland tomb in Metairie.

The Copeland tomb is first on the left as you enter the main entrance of the cemetery. Prior to the filling-in of the New Basin Canal and the construction of the Pontchartrain Expressway (I-10), the entrance was located at the corner of Pontchartrain Blvd. and Metairie Road. The construction of an overpass at that intersection made it impractical for vehicular traffic to enter at that corner, so a new entrance was constructed two blocks up on Pontchartrain. The entrance is located just past the "racetrack" portion of the Cemetery.

Al Copeland was a true larger-than-life New Orleanian, and will be missed by many.

but it's an odd weekend, because the four English teams in the Champions League face off in two EPL matches tomorrow. Arsenal was the last team to beat Chelsea at home in a league match, so I have a $5 bet with my son on that one. I'm pulling for the Scousers, mainly because denial of three points to MUFC helps Arsenal's cause.

...that turns people into Teh Stoopit:

A 49-year-old New Orleans man pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on Friday to charges of sending threatening e-mail messages late last year to a federal judge and Justice Department lawyers in Illinois. Michael F. Henry, who could get up to six years in prison when Judge Sarah Vance sentences him in June, has been involved in litigation with the Internal Revenue Service over its effort to make him pay $6 million in delinquent personal income taxes, money he says he doesn't owe.

I can't imagine this guy is dumb enough to make these threats over the phone, or to an AUSA's face, yet he'll e-mail them?

It's important to keep in mind that both Steve Scalise and Tim Burns both have no problems with men like CAPT Mallard getting killed in Iraq.

Greenwald pointed to this post by John Cole, which Glenn describes as a real man's mea-culpa. He's right:

And I don’t say that to provide people with an easy way to beat up on me, but I do sort of have to face facts. I was wrong about everything. I was wrong about the Doctrine of Pre-emptive warfare. I was wrong about Iraq possessing WMD. I was wrong about Scott Ritter and the inspections. I was wrong about the UN involvement in weapons inspections. I was wrong about the containment sanctions. I was wrong about the broader impact of the war on the Middle East. I was wrong about this making us more safe. I was wrong about the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq. I was wrong when I stated this administration had a clear plan for the aftermath. I was wrong about securing the ammunition dumps. I was wrong about the ease of bringing democracy to the Middle East. I was wrong about dissolving the Iraqi army. I was wrong about the looting being unimportant. I was wrong that Bush/Cheney were competent. I was wrong that we would be greeted as liberators. I was wrong to make fun of the anti-war protestors. I was wrong not to trust the dirty smelly hippies.

Hat-tip to Mr. Cole. Not that his mea culpa is bringing any of the dead back to their families.

yeah, yeah, I know it's a vette. I also concede that I'd take it if someone gave it to me.

But yellow sports cars are still chick cars.

these are the lilies I ordered from FTD.com and sent to wife at her office yesterday...

Yeah, I know I blogged about this on Wednesday, but somehow I ended up clicking through to Greta's blog and some of her comments got me thinking about the issue again.

Miss Pathologically Positive deviates from her usual course and writes:

Are parents too trusting, too busy to care or has this always gone on and now we are just doing something about it? I think the latter. This has been going on forever and now we are taking action against those who prey on minors and children. Many may disagree with me on this one, and that is fine, you are entitled to your opinion. Yes, we expect schools to raise our children these days, but I personally do not believe that is the entirety of the problem. I think there have always and will always be people in positions of power that take advantage of children or those under them, whether children or not. There will also always be pedophiles and that scares the hell out of me.

Well, maybe y'all expect schools in Mandeville to raise your children, but the trend has swung back the other way, particularly in New Orleans. The pedophile priest scandals of the 1990s pretty much scared parents into not abdicating their parental responsibilities. I expect my son's teachers to teach him, not raise him.

She is correct, though, that there will always be pedophiles, but lumping the two teachers who were banging the sixteen year olds with the janitor who was playing with little boys clouds an already complicated issue. Greta makes it worse when she talks about college coaches:

When I was an athletic trainer for college students, I recall several cases of coaches having relations with players. The coach suddenly "left" their position and everything was brushed under the table (not going tabloidish on you here & will not give specifics). Even though these were 18-22 year olds, it still happened and it was WRONG!!!

It's difficult for me to consider the teachers having sex with sixteen year old girls as pedophiles, and certainly the coaches who are having sex with adults are not pedos. The age of consent is 17 in Louisiana, so doing a 16-year old is considerably different than the adult male trolling the mall for 12-year olds. What is so hard to determine here is the level of consent involved. While there are some who will argue that no minor can consent to sex with an adult, 16-year old girls are considered consenting adults in the UK and many other countries in Europe. The two high school teachers are going to get probation if they plead out.

What is more of a concern to me is the predatory nature of the behavior of the teachers, as well as the coaches Greta mentions. A case where we're talking about a one-on-one teaching situation that goes horizontal, it's all about intent. In the case of the Destrehan High band director, the story in Da Paper makes the guy out to be a predator, and predators have no business in schools. It's not about the sex, it's about the control.

Is the guy wired to be a predator? Now that's a tough one. If there's one thing I strongly believe, it's that we don't give Education majors much guidance as to what they're going to find when they're on their own in a high school classroom. My firstborn is currently a sophomore in Nuclear Engineering at Ga Tech. He's taking a very interesting ethics class that's raising a number of good issues for these kids. Prospective teachers need their ethics sharpened and challenged in the same way. Make it clear to teachers that they're not to treat students in their classes like low-hanging fruit, ripe for the picking. Whether they're 16 or 22, it's wrong to exploit the relationship. When the temptation is put before a teacher, s/he needs to be able to think back to the warnings about how they'll never work in education again if they get caught.

Of course, Greta manages to remove the nuance from the entire issue as she closes:

As for what should happen to these 3 sick individuals - I hope they get sent to the general prison population with a sign that says "I molested underage children." Unfortunately, that won't happen and we can all only hope that our justice system keeps them off the streets forever!

For openers, as I mentioned earlier, it's not likely that either of the high school teachers will do time if they cop a plea. The janitor is a different story. Certainly none of them will ever work in a school again, if the system's background checking works properly. Greta's characterization of what they deserve should they do prison time is a concern, however. It's time we all acknowledge that this conservative view of incarceration simply does more harm to our society than good.

is that a conservative would never screw big businesses like airlines so blatantly:

It's been a difficult time for the airline industry. The soaring price of jet fuel forced United to announce flight cutbacks. Delta also eliminated flights and plans to slash 2,000 jobs. Other carriers increased ticket prices, and that still won't be enough to offset what's expected to be another year of multibillion-dollar losses for the industry.

Then there's FedEx, which is both an airline and a trucking company. Talk about a double-whammy:

FedEx saw its profits dip last quarter. The overnight shipping company warns that the year ahead may be more of the same as it feels the pinch of an economic slowdown and high gasoline prices.

No doubt FedEx, are also huge GOP donors as well. If the airline PACs have any sense, they would concede that Democrats will regulate them and scrutinize them more than the Republicans will ever do, but still donate the cash to get the oil bandits out of office.

Fitzgerald's Restaurant at West End

Tomorrow is Good Friday in the Christian world. Many companies in New Orleans still take the day off, acknowledging the still-large Catholic majority in the workforce. Good Friday is still considered to be a day of "fasting and abstinence," where adult Catholics fast by eating only one meal while also abstaining from eating meat. In some parts of the world, abstaining from meat is truly a sacrifice, but for a city located in between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, a Friday evening in Lent means going out for seafood. For many families, the place to go was out to the corner of the city where the New Basin Canal meets the lake, West End. Of the restaurants out at West End, one of the most popular was Fitzgerald's. Fitzgerald's was located right over the water at West End for most of the 20th century. In 1998, Hurricane Georges sent waves crashing into the restaurants along the lakefront at West End, wiping out several restaurants along the lake, including Fitzgerald's. The insurance companies paid up, because the damage clearly was caused by wind rather than flooding, but many businesses at West End found it impossible to find underwriters after Georges. As a result, many of the classic restaurants in the area never re-opened. At the time, locals bemoned the loss of these fine eateries and nightclubs, but it was generally understood that building on the Lakefront was a huge risk. We're now two and a half years after the storm, and insurance is still an issue for way too many New Orleanians. It's estimated that there are still over 7,000 FEMA trailers in use in Orleans Parish as residents fight with the Louisiana Recovery Authority (the state agency overseeing the "Road Home" program), as well as home insurance carriers like State Farm and Allstate. The insurance companies always try to play the game of "it's not our problem" when claims are filed. Wind damage is covered by homeowner's insurance; flood is not. Many folks file claims against both of their policies. While the federally-backed National Flood Insurance program has settled most of their claims, the private insurers have dragged their feet to the point where numerous class-action lawsuits have been filed. Several of those lawsuits have made it as far as the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where Republican judges have backed State Farm like the dutiful conservatives they are. Without this insurance money, New Orleanians will continue to be stuck living in the poisonous FEMA trailers on their front lawns. This is why New Orleans wants and needs a Democrat as President. It's also why, for the most part, many of us really don't care which of the two Dem candidates wins the nominee. The short list of nominees for both the 5th Circuit and the Supremes for both candidates are likely to be quite similar. They're also more likely to be sympathetic to the legal battles that will be fought by New Orleanians for the next decade. For us, it's not about Obama vs. Clinton. It's about making sure McCain doesn't win.

The Beeb is a much better home for any sporting event:

The BBC has secured the television rights to show Formula One in the UK from the 2009 season. The five-year deal for an undisclosed fee marks F1's return to BBC screens 12 years after it switched to ITV. The contract covers all platforms and will see F1 broadcast on the BBC Sport website, as well as on TV and radio.

I'm looking forward to much better on-line/streaming coverage from BBC.

This is usually an extremely geeky subject, but this article from El Reg is more plain-english than most:

Zombie machines infected with Trojan horse malware can be used to relay spam or launch denial of service attacks. Compromised machines can be also be pointed to websites from which additional items of malware can be downloaded. The practice is normally used to update Trojan code, but it also creates a means for cybercrooks to make a "nice little earner". The income that can be earned grows with the numbers of installs, and varies based on the geographical location of an installation. For example, installing spyware on 1,000 machines in Australia earns $100 but only $50 in the US, and a measly $3 in Asia. A sample price list obtained by net security services firm sheds fresh light on the phenomenon.

The scope of botnets is growing. It's why i make Kev use Linux on the home system.

Liberty Place, August 25, 1963 (photographer unknown). A single Perley A. Thomas streetcar on the Canal line sits on the three-track layover, having just looped around the monument. This was the final step in the evolution of streetcar operations at the foot of Canal Street prior to the conversion of the Canal line to buses. The Liberty Monument was removed from the foot of Canal St. in the 1980s by the administration of Mayor Sydney Barthelemy, antcipating the development of a downtown casino. The three-track layover was re-constructed when the Riverfront line was expanded in 1997-98. Instead of the loop, however, the current configuartion in this area is a turn from the Canal tracks to Riverfront.

  (Liberty Place in 1906)

Prior to the erection of the Liberty Monument in 1891, the Canal trackage turned off onto N. Peters, S. Peters, Decatur, and Fulton Sts., with a simple semi-circle loop at the ferry landing. Because of of the construction of the monument and changes because of electrification, the city hired the engineering firm of Ford, Bacon & Davis to re-design the trackage from in front of the Custom House to the ferry landing. FB&D developed and constructed a huge terminal that was eight tracks wide at one point, all coming together to the loop you see in the photo above. As streetcar operations declined in the mid-20th century, the terminal tracks shrunk to the final three.

The Liberty Monument has been a sore subject in New Orleans for decades. The monument commerates the "Battle of Liberty Place," which occurred on September 14, 1874. Frustrated by the reconstruction government in New Orleans, The White League (a white supremacist organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan) attacked the police and supporters of the government in the French Quarter and at the foot of Canal. The Republican governor, William Pitt Kellogg, was forced to leave the city until he could marshal federal troops to return to the Quarter, push out the White League, and restore order. Kellogg was a career Republican politician from Vermont who was appointed by Lincoln to administer the Port of New Orleans after the war. When local (white) politicians took over control of city government in 1881, the locals named the area at the foot of Canal "Liberty Place." the obelisk followed in 1891. Originally, the monument was a commemoration of the White League's victory, and the names of the members of the League killed during the battle were carved on the obelisk. A parade was held annually on September 14 that ended at Liberty Place.

In 1934, two plaques were added to the monument, directly recognizing white supremacy in the city and state. It was these plaques that added insult to injury for black citizens of New Orleans. In 1974, Mayor Moon Landrieu (father of Senator Mary and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, and now an appellate court judge) ordered a brass plaque erected near the monument explaining that the "battle" was actually an insurrection led by white supremacists.

Mayor Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial tried to remove the obelisk outright in 1981, as part of the preparations for the 1984 World's Fair, but was blocked by the majority-white City Council. While the council would not let Morial remove the monument, they did authorize him to cover up the 1934 plaques. Even though the City Council agreed with Sydney Barthelemy in 1988 that the monument should go, allies of white supremacist and KKK leader David Duke sued City Hall in federal court. The racists argued that the city's action violated federal regulations concerning historic landmarks. Both sides worked out a consent decree, and Mayor Marc Morial (Dutch's son) took the Liberty Monument out of storage and returned it to a location near the Riverfront streetcar line, a block away from its original spot.

 

The current location of the monument, in-between Canal Place shopping center, the streetcar line, and the Aquarium of the Americas (background). Sen. Obama's campaign is certainly not the first time New Orleans has been forced to confront and debate the history of racism and race relations in this country. The Liberty Monument's strange tale shows that there are no absolutes in what is a very nuanced discussion. Even though many civil rights pioneers, white and black, wanted to throw the monument in the river, the feds forced New Orleans to strike a balance between historic preservation and working to end racism. Some reminders of where we are, where we came from, and why some like Rev. Wright have a right to be occasionally angry are a good thing.

NOLANotes tells a neat tale of how they respect the Lenten traditions at Liuzza's on Bienville that reminded me of a gathering on a Friday in Lent in the 1990s.  We were invited to a dedication of new facilities at the Port of St. Bernard down at the Kaiser Slip off of St. Bernard Highway.  There were a lot of political types there, including then-Senator John Breaux.  There was a lot of food and drink (it was a happy hour reception), but one of the things they ordered a lot of was cubed filet mignon served in hollowed-out loaves of round italian bread.  Of course, most of the guests were refusing the steak hors d'oeuvres when the servers offered them.  It got to the point where Msgr. Harry Thompson, S.J., who was at the time President of Jesuit High School, took the mic and offered the following prayer:

"Oh Father God,
Grant our wish.
Bless this meat,
And make it fish."

At which point, the filet mignon vanished in short order.  :-)

On NPR's "Morning Edition" this morning, Frank Deford discusses how American sports champions are becoming younger and younger, citing in particular , who is the US Women's Figure Skating national champion. Nagasu is not at this week's world skating championships because she's too young to compete internationally. The worlds in figure skating require that competitors be at least sixteen. Deford argues that it makes no sense to not allow Nagasu to compete, since she won her national competition. At face value this makes sense, but he hits the nail on the head for figure skating in particular further on in the commentary:

Not everybody is happy with this development. In particular, women's figure skating, which was once the most popular female sport on TV, has plummeted in the ratings as the tiny teens have taken over the sport, jumping about the ice but unable to display the grown-up grace and elegance once displayed by Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill and Kristi Yamaguchi.

Shorter Frank Deford: watching pre-teens in tiny outfits makes us feel like pedophiles, so we turn the TV off.

This is well and truly the bottom line, that pre-adolescents don't make for exciting athletic competition. Under-14 futbol is fun for the kids and the parents, but it's not something I'm going to get up and go to the park to see on a Saturday morning, and it's not going to be on the boobtoob. The problem we have here is a conflict between the leaders of the various sporting federations, who want to maximize the exposure and profitability of their sports, and the parents of young athletes, who want them to do their thing, win high-level competitions, then cash in and get on with their lives. In sports like women's figure skating and gymnastics, the pre-adolescents have a decided advantage over older teens and young adults. Mirai Nagasu is a classic example of this. She's 4'11" tall, and weights 78 pounds. She can do the triple jumps and such that make her a world-class skater because she has so little body mass to move around.

This philosophy is almost the direct opposite of our thinking in male athletics. We would never dream of assembling a team of 14-year old boys to play in La Copa Mundial or in Olympic basketball. Women's sports gives the advantage to the littles, though. A 16- or 17-year old post-pubescent girl is putting on weight and developing curves. She's no longer the toothpick that she was at 12-14. If she is, it means she's deliberately maintaining a practice schedule that is delaying puberty. The belief is that these girls can grow breasts and hips after they win gold medals and get on the Wheaties box. If a girl like Nagasu can't compete internationally until 16, that means she's got to keep up the pace she's on now for 2 more years. Private coaches, tutors, travel to competitions, etc., aren't cheap, and this is all coming out of her parents' pockets now. The payoff will hopefully come but no doubt they'd rather it sooner than later.

But it's just not all that enjoyable to watch these little girls. One of the only saving graces of taking your kid to a "Disney on Ice" show is the grace and good looks of the female skaters. They're adults, and they look like the Disney Princesses they are portraying on the ice. While the young skaters at least wear outfits that are at least a bit girly-looking, the gymnasts are the really scary ones. Some of these girls look like they should be in a "Save The Children" ad. I don't care what they can do on the balance beam, or how many flips and twists they can do in the floor exercise, they look like little boys. If you want to see gymnastics as it should be, watch the SEC women's gymnastics tournament one year. You'll see grace, skill, talent, and curves. The young women in a collegiate competition are dance students. They're musicians. They've been around a bit longer on this planet and put their life experiences into their competitive routines.

That's what we went to see at "Disney on Ice." Nobody wants to see a toothpick on "American Idol" or "Dancing with the Stars." We want to see adults. Women don't want to look at 13-year old boys in tight shorts on a futbol pitch, they want to look at Christiano Ronaldo's ass. You have to put adults front and center if you want a good product on the television screen or in the arena.

Pushing little girls to be world-class athletes is greedy and wrong-headed.

Deford's thoughts on high school athletics are interesting as well, and I'll respond to them in another post.

This definitely merits a full-scale examination:

The lack of offers to Barry Bonds will be examined by the baseball players' association as part of its annual review of the free-agent market. Less than two weeks before opening day, the 43-year-old home run king remains unsigned.

They should hire me to do this review. I'd print out the rest of this article and submit it along with my invoice:

Bonds was indicted in November on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice, charges stemming from 2003 grand jury testimony in which he denied knowingly using illegal performance-enhancing drugs. The seven-time NL MVP pleaded not guilty.

I'd feel justified in submitting the bill based on just this, because, you know, there just might be a tiny connection between a criminal indictment and the lack of interest among teams.

Yet the National Archives is going to release Hillary's first-lady records?

The National Archives announced on Tuesday that 11,046 pages of Senator Hillary Rodham’s White House schedules will be released on Wednesday. The records were the subject of a legal fight between Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, and the National Archives, which has been slow to comply with a request to release the records, arguing that the vetting process takes time.

The request should be denied because Hillary's records are not the same as The Clenis.

because it would work well for me personally. Delta is where I'm "Platinum Medallion" in terms of FF status, and Northwest is part of SkyTeam, the airline alliance to which Delta belongs, so I've flown NWA to get to Singapore and Japan. Still, I understand why the pilots are at odds:

Merger talks between Delta and Northwest — the nation's third and fifth largest airlines — could be over. Executives at the two airlines had hoped that their pilots would agree on labor issues before proceeding with a deal. But Delta's pilots just told their bosses that they reached an impasse with Northwest pilots over the critical issue of seniority.

The days when an USAF pilot or USN/USMC aviator could do their 6-8 years in the service and get a good job with a major airline are long gone. New pilots have to start out with regional carriers that pay less than $20K/year, then hope they move up through the ranks to get to the big leagues. The guys in The Show have seniority with their respective carrier. If you mix the workforces, clearly 50% of those folks get bumped down. Even though the merger would have made the largest airline in the world, there's no way they would grow their way out of the seniority problem. I don't know what can be done to convince them all it's a good idea, which is a shame. With NWA's Asian routes and DL's domestic flights, as well as the fact that NWA is affiliated with KLM (great for getting to Amsterdam), I'd be in really good shape.

here's a suggestion :

A 1937 first edition of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit has been sold at auction to an anonymous bidder for £60,000 - twice what it was expected to reach.

It would look good next to my 1st Edition Silmarillion.

My first year of teaching began in August of 1980. I was 21 at the time (I have a November birthday), and taught juniors and seniors. That meant I was teaching boys and girls who were not that much younger than me. Because of this, I worked hard on creating a huge mental block so I would not be tempted to take advantage of the teacher-student relationship. Even if the girl is above the age of consent, as most of my students were, if you get caught, you never work again. And goddess help you if you hit on younger girls:

The Kenner Police Department says it charged an Isidore Newman School teacher with five counts of felony carnal knowledge of a juvenile. Kenner Police said a 16-year-old female accused Michael Lyons of having a sexual relationship with him. Investigators said Lyons was the teenage girl's former school teacher and tutor, and that the criminal activity happened on several occasions in Kenner last year.

Maybe it's because I follow local computer-related stories closer than others, but of all the places in the metro area to commit a sex crime, Kenner is the worst. KPD has a robust internet sex crimes unit, so no doubt it wasn't that difficult for that unit to parlay their success in that arena to reel in this guy. But it's not just one teacher this week:

Destrehan High School Band Director Byron Toups has been charged with molestation, indecent behavior and simple battery with students according to St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne. According to a statement from police, Toups had sexual intercourse with a 16-year-old student at his home. In a separate incident, during the summer of 2007, police said Toups tried to kiss an unwilling 17-year-old student during Band Camp at Destrehan High School.

To me, this one is even more of a violation of trust than the Newman incident, because a band director spends a lot more time with students than the typical teacher. There's a simple moral to this story: Don't teach high school if you think you may not be able to resist banging your students. Hell hath no fury like a 16-year old scorned.

Looks like a car hit a light pole on Clearview betweek Kawanee and Veterans earlier this evening, knocking out the power in the neighborhood here for over 90 minutes. it's back up now.

When EMC made the $178m offer for Iomega last week, the only explanation I could come up with that made sense is that Iomega is sitting on some sort of intellectual property that the Evil Machine Company wants. Otherwise, this is like Cisco buying Linksys, where they just want to move into the mass market. Doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm convinced on the patents/intellectual property angle now:

Iomega has changed its tune over EMC Corporation’s approach to buy the company after its suitor upped the offer to $205.5m. The storage vendor, which last week rejected an unsolicited EMC offer worth about $178m, today said it considered the revised to be superior to a proposed all-stock transaction with a stockholder. According to Iomega, the new offer will push up the bid price to as much as $3.75 per share. A week ago EMC indicated that it was prepared to offer to acquire Iomega for $3.25 per share.

EMC is entering offer-Iomega-can't-refuse territory now.

Thank you, Republicans for that. First Harry Lee was blowing up frozen gumbo in the bathrooms of MSY, now Fort Wayne, IN is hosing down turnips:

Terror came to Fort Wayne, Indiana, late last week as a suspicious package arrived at the offices of a local law firm in a move that seemed to presage a deadly bomb outrage slaughter campaign. After a tense operation by robot and human bomb-disposal operatives, however, it was discovered that the infernal device was in fact - in the judgement of the local bomb squad - a potentially exploding turnip. ... According to remarks by Fort Wayne police spokesman Michael Joyner, as reported by Slutsky, the bomb technicians - having had a look at the X-ray - "were certain the package did not contain an [ordinary] explosive device". Nonetheless, they "opted to err on the side of caution and decided to try to detonate [the turnip] with a water cannon".

Of course, the Anthrax terrorists and anti-abortion terrorists who sent white-powder envelopes to abortion clinics in 2001-2002 are still at large while we blow up vegetables.

...but there are exceptions to every rule:

Notorious spammer Robert Soloway faces an extended spell behind bars after pleading guilty to fraud and tax evasion charges last Friday. Soloway, 28, from Seattle, has previously been found guilty of sending spam in several civil cases, most notably when Microsoft won a $7.8m judgement against him back in 2005. But he's always avoided paying fines. Now, however, the man authorities have described as the "King of Spam" (arguably one of the most overused phrases in computer security) is in far more serious trouble. As well as facing a maximum sentence of 26 years behind bars, Soloway faces the indignity of being questioned about where he's stashed his ill-gotten gains while being monitored by a lie-detector.

Now, put this clown in REAL federal prison rather than Club Fed for six months to a year. If he survives, parole him, making one of the conditions that he go around telling other wannabe spammers, phishers, and other assorted geek-criminals what it's like to be a prison bitch. Maybe that will stop some of them.

The New Basin Canal Monument, located in the neutral ground between West End Blvd. and Pontchartrain Blvd. in Lakeview, between Fillmore Ave. and Robt. E. Lee Blvd. This Celtic cross commemorates the work and sacrifices of the Irish laborers who built the canal. Here's the inscription:



The New Basin Canal was constructed in the 1830s to provide an additional water access to the city from the north. Prior to this time, boats on Lake Pontchartrain could approach the city via Bayou St. John and the Carondelet Canal, which terminated in a turning basin located, appropriately enough, on Basin Street in Faubourg Treme. The new canal terminated with a turning basin located near Rampart St. and Howard Ave., on the Uptown side of Canal St.

While this monument isn't in a cemetery, it is a memorial to the many men who gave their lives in the construction of the canal. In the 1830s, the path between Faubourg Ste. Marie and West End was nothing but mosquito-infested swamp. Hundreds of the laborers who worked on the Canal contracted yellow fever and died. The Irish were employed to build the canal because they were cheap labor. Slaves were expensive, and slave owners were not going to risk their investments on such a project. Better to let the Irish do it.

Many of those Irishmen are buried in St. Patrick's Cemetery at the head of Canal Street, two blocks away from the Canal they built.

Legislation was passed authorizing the closure of the New Basin Canal was passed in 1938, but World War II delayed the actual work, and the canal was filled in after the war. The Pontchartrain Expressway was constructed over the filled-in canal, running from Veterans Blvd. and West End Blvd. into town, eventually linking with the Crescent City Connection bridge when it was constructed in the late 1950s.

After the storm, the neutral ground between West End and Pontchartrain was used as a dumping area for the debris accumulated from the houses of Lakeview and Gentilly that were victims of the Federal Flood as they were gutted.  FEMA trash-hauling contractors would pick up the moldy drywall and other debris from in front of houses and dump it in the wide neutral ground.  By December of 2005, the hills of debris at this location, just a block from the monument above, reached heights well over 30 feet, and spanned several blocks.

We have this problem whenever there is a big sporting event on the other side of the world. The Olympics this year will be a complete pain in the rear for NBC once again, just like Seoul and Sydney. But the teevee audience on this side of the world shouldn't be the main consideration. If we are going to be a world community, we have to include Asia and Australia.

Of course, events like La Copa Mundial or the Olympics can call their own shots and tell the teevee people to make it work. Sports with smaller audiences don't have that kind of clout, and F1 is the latest to put squeeze on:

State officials have ruled out staging a night Grand Prix in Australia, despite Bernie Ecclestone saying the future of the race may depend on it.

Formula One boss Ecclestone wants a race under lights to satisfy European television viewers

Of course, with motorsport, there's more involved than just staging an event in the middle of the night to accommodate the European viewers. There are legitimate issues with holding a race at night. Daylight means a much safer environment for drivers, crews, and spectators.

Hopefully the safety issue will bring Ecclestone to his senses.