Home Depot Plywood Quality

May 25, 2007 192 Replies

All of them. New Orleans did not, of course, begin as a large city when the French established a trading outpost near the mouth of the Mississippi. I'm ignorant of the period in which New Orleans acquired "large city" status.

Let's begin with that point in time when we first knew for certain that the levees were inadequate to perform the function for which they'd been constructed, and work our way forward from there. Perhaps we will learn enough to do better when, for example, the "Big One" hits the Los Angeles area.

Let's enumerate the lessons (and there are /so/ many) without consideration of the political entities involved. The lessons to be learned won't be made any more clear by allowing their examination to devolve into finger pointing.

There are a lot of lessons (at least hundreds!) to be learned, and one of them is that when major interests are in conflict, /someone's/ ox is going to be gored, and wanting or not wanting that to happen is not necessarily going to affect what happens to the ox.

Another is that as long as we see life as a zero sum game, relying on stakeholders to prevent ox-gorings is only wishful thinking. Some stakeholders delight in seeing others' oxes gored.

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

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Where was this "almost to be" working environment? Would be bureaucrats aside, it would brighten my day at even the possibility of something like that within travelling distance from where I live.

Of course it was politics and people that got them there. Engineers told 'em over and over what fools they were. Not that N.O. is unique, of course. Most of the Yellow river and a couple of others in China are "elevated" too.

What we need is a good dictator to get the public transportation running on time and get those people out of the way of the river (and the woods, and the owls and the wolves...) so the greater good is served. Where's Joe when we need 'im?

cue ominous background music ...

crescendo

That's outlawed by the Geneva conventions, we can't do it to terrorists, but it's OK to subject regular taxpayers to.

... but the thing is, *he* doesn't care. It's not his building, he has no stake in it. It is the owners trying to get someone into those digs who are the real losers.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

I'm not sure how that relates.

The natural disaster of Katrina, turned the light of reality on blatant racism as well as complete government indifference and incompetence at all levels, especially federal; however, none of that relates to alternate energy pursuits, IMHO.

Lew

How different the aftermath of Katrina would have been had there been a pile of rublle to stand on top of...with a bull-horn. The image of minorities paddling for dear life makes for lousy photo- ops.

As someone once said to me, taxes are the price we pay to live in an organized society.

Simply for the sake of discussion, consider the following:

A locality spends $25,000,000/year to operate a public transit system that cost $10,000,000,000 to build.

During the year, only one person took one ride on that system.

You could make the argument that the cost of that ride was $10,000,000; however, there is a benefit to the local community of just having a transit system, regardless of it's usefulness that reduces the cost of that $10,000,000 ride.

How much? Who knows?

What is the value of having a convention in your town, or securing a business that brings new jobs, etc, etc, because the local transit system was available?

Who knows, but there are think tanks out there that can answer those questions.

The point is that good infrastructure investments usually provide great rewards over long periods of time that are best measured directly.

The last major bricks and mortar infrastructure project in the US was probably the interstate highway system that is now over 50 years old.

Eisenhower wanted a highway system built to quickly deliver military goods across the country.

The result was the interstate highway system.

Guess the military got some benefit; however, with out the interstate system, where would we be today?

Did the US make a good infrastructure investment?

You tell me.

Lew

ride cost the

7000 sq ft. Asking $ 440,000.00, Sarnia...about 3 hour drive.

Heh, good point. I had a friend who lived just outside of Portland for a while and sometimes, even having a car wasn't a good idea, you needed a boat. :)

Usually it means "bitch and whine about it, but in the end, ultimately accomplish nothing".

And the morons want to build it BELOW SEA LEVEL AGAIN!!!!!

Some people never learn.

The President has relatively little influence on the national economy. Congress, Big Business, Bis Labor, and the Federal Reserve all have more to do with it.

Yeah, suddenly we'd see millions of middle class families become poverty-stricken. Not to mention double digit inflation.

Brian Henderson wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Well, half or so of the Netherlands is below sea level. Yes it gives problems, but that's why they have engineers. Most of the time it works very well. Sometimes it doesn't (January 1953 was bad), and a new "plan" is instituted. Somewhere there is a lesson or two in that experience for New Orleans.

Lew Hodgett wrote in news:1UD6i.20077$3P3.11685 @newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net:

I can't tell you - it's a question of opinion. An improved railway system would have been a possible good alternative or addition.

Well, when half the country is at or below sea level, you don't have much choice. I submit that we do have a choice as to what parts of NOLA to rebuild.

todd

Enough with the railway system talk. Railways make great sense in densely populated areas. Eurpoe and Japan come to mind. If we had Europe's population density, we'd have over a billion people in the US. Christ, if we had Japan's density, we'd have over 3 billion people. When we reach a billion people or so, I imagine an interstate rail system will make a lot more sense. I live near Chicago, and the regional commuter railway system is pretty good, as long as you're going to/from the city. The east and to a lesser extent the west coast are good places to have passenger rail. Other than that, there isn't much point right now to have it anywhere else besides a few places.

todd

What's funny is that my commuting bike is named after Portland.

A very bicycle friendly city, even if the weather isn't. Rain isn't as difficult for cycling as many think.

Nothing difficult about it if you don't mind arriving wet.

Robatoy wrote in news:1180388902.863225.256740 @p77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com:

Nahh, it's just me !

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