Katrina & the Waves?

Dunno how many people in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, etc could claim that they are "walking on sunshine" though...

It's been dubbed the worst natural disaster in the U.S. since the 1906 quake in San Francisco... and probably the costliest to date, too! Thousands estimated dead, and the number is only going to keep rising...

Yep, talkin about hurricane Katrina...

Saw images on the news about places in Louisiana being totally inundated, and while just waiting for the flood waters to recede is going to take a while, the rebuilding of roads, etc, all point to many (most?) parts of the state actually being uninhabitable for AT LEAST three months!

Q: What's worse than reading about the floods?

A: Reading (and seeing on tv) about people who take this opportunity to break into houses and stores, and loot what they can. In New Orleans, several television networks reported 1,500 police from search-and-rescue missions had to be pulled out and reassigned to deal with looting and lawlessness in the streets.

I wonder how many lives that could have been saved were instead lost because of the looters?

Humans can be really ugly & selfish creatures, sometimes...

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on a related note: oh my did gas (petrol for my Malaysian readers) prices go up!! From USD2.40-ish per gallon a few days ago, it jumped to USD3.18/gallon yesterday (today it's 3.14, whoohooo!!). A Yahoo!News article on that HERE.

It's when things like this happen that people in Malaysia should be thankful for and appreciate the government's current policy of capping/controlling petrol prices at the pump. If my very rough math is correct, over here we are currently paying about double what you pay for petrol! And try comparing to gas prices in Europe.. even higher, trust me!!

While I certainly appreciate the "cap", I *do* have a problem with the Malaysian government's tendency to firstly deny rumours of a price hike, then, if you're lucky you may hear official announcement about it at the 11th-hour, otherwise you wake up one morning and ooops, it's 10sen more per liter, and everyone feels cheated out of a full tank of gas at the "old" price.

But with oil prices rising high due to Katrina's impact on the oil refineries down there in the Gulf of Mexico, be prepared for another hike, y'all...

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So, back to Katrina... here are some alternate reads:

1. a blog entry by a katrina survivor: the blog design makes the entry a bit hard to read, but it could be worth your five minutes to take a look HERE

2. a more political blog entry on the Bush administration, plus featuring a New York Times editorial on Bush himself HERE

3. snippets of news wrt effects of Katrina, as compiled by the Times Online UK HERE

4. I'm sure there are plenty of pix featured all over, but HERE's one run by Reuters AlertNet: good photos, with descriptive captions for each.

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Okay, that's it for now... will be leaving for an extended Labor Day weekend up in Chicago-land... may be able to sneak onto the net for some blogging, otherwise, I'll probably be silent till Monday... stay tuned!!