Learning English

The recent immigration reform discussion has focused much attention on the citizenship application and the need to speak English. The Senate has spent much time debating the need to raise the bar for illegal immigrants. This discussion by our so called leaders demonstrates their total ignorance of the immigration process. I recently became a naturalised US citizen.

First off the test is conducted in English. If you don't have fairly decent Englieh you couldn't pass this test. Notably older people (over 70 or so) are exempt from the English requirement and parts of the civics requirement. There is no need to require any higher degree of English in the current test format.

Secondly, they talk about increasing the civics requirement for the test. Here are the questions I was asked:

1. Who was President during the civil war?
2. How many seats are there in the US House of Representatives?
3. Who wrote the Star Spangled Banner?
4. How many states are there?
5. Who has the power to declare war?

Few American born citizens can score 5 out of 5 on this test (I challenge you to get these without looking up the answers). In other words, we already hold immigrants to a standard higher than the majority of Americans. We don't need to revamp this process.

This discussion by the dunces in the Senate is meant to distract us from the bigger issues of immigration reform which they will surely fail to address by the time a bill hits the Dunce in Chief's desk.

Being Angry

I am still angry about Katrina. I am angry because I live in NJ. Where we have forgotten about Katrina already cause, you know, its pretty far away, and it didn't affect us like 911 did. Where I have to talk to people who think that New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt. Where people ask how you are getting to New Orleans and when you say, flying, ask if there is still an airport there. Where they dont understand how a person like you could be bringing their kid to a naked orgy like Mardi Gras. Where they wonder why you still have a picture of a collapsed house on your wall - wasn't that last year's news? Where they ask if the city will come back and you say it depends on the government, and they say "well you cant really expect them to pay for everyone's house, we can't afford that. They knew the risks of living in that place and chose to stay there." Where they say, I never knew you were from New Orleans, you don't talk funny.

I don't want to have a civil discussion about seaports and culture and finances and the "soul of America". I just pray that an Atlantic coast hurricane comes this year and drowns their dog and wipes that smirk off their face. I think I live far enough inland to not be affected that much. I have batteries, water, canned goods, propane, and a couple N95 facemasks too. I am as ready as I can be. So I guess I dont have much of a choice as to what my opinion is when I read the discussion with .Suspect Device, Traveling Mermaid, and others about being negative vs. being self sufficient. Yes surely we need to take greater steps to be self sufficent. If Katrina didn't convince us of that nothing will. Of course people will "move on", its only natural. But I am still angry. When I am angry, sometimes I am negative too. I do want to do something constructive, and see positive steps. I think back to something I heard on TV where some congressman was asked why he visited New Orleans with the Women of the Storm sponsored group. He said, because they asked me to.

We need to be as self sufficent as we can. We need to ask for help. We need to be angry. They are not mutually exclusive.

Music in Exile

I dont get Starz channel so I guess I can't watch Music in Exile, but it sounds like well worth watching. You might want to check it out if you have the opportunity.

Election results and levees

We were surprised to see Ray pulled off his re-election bid. Our thoughts on the subject echo that of the po-boy regarding the influence of race on the election. We believe that race played a large role in whether or not you thought Nagin should stay or go. We knew it would be a close race, unlike most of the national audience, who thought Ray was toast.

"If you don't live in New Orleans and you're not from New Orleans, you really look at Ray Nagin as a failure, as someone who didn't know what he was doing," said Peter Burns, a political science professor at Loyola University New Orleans. "But when you come here and you listen to the discussion, you see that people really believe that the major problem was that the levees broke, and that was a failure by the federal government, which built them. People really do place the blame at other levels of government."

Ummm, yeah, the levees. What about them? New report blames
human error, and conclude it was everyone's fault, from the Corps, to Congress, to persidential administrations, to the Orleans Levee District and Sewerage & Water Board. They recommend steps to streamline the administration and prevent this from happening again.
Who would have been the better Mayor to work through this process while enabling the city to rebuild? I dont know for sure, although I had edged somewhat reluctantly into the Landrieau camp towards the end. It worries me every time I hear Nagin is in the pocket of the big developers. I do know that while Ray's re-election may leave some of the national audience shaking their head, those people gave us up for dead long ago. We need to keep the focus on the levees.

Pearlington on CNN Again

Post from Angela:

Dear All,

Thank you for your continued interest in the situation in Pearlington, Mississippi. I was just there again last month and there remains much to be done. There is still no grocery store, no school, no Post Office - no infrastructure. However, due to the press coverage, there are many volunteers doing what they can. Yet, families continue to fall through the cracks in the absence of any formal plan for Pearlington. So, the people - with the help of random volunteers - continue to fend for themselves almost 9 months after the worst disaster to hit US soil.

There are serious environmental concerns that remain, including concerns regarding the soil in which children play and the water which they drink. CNN joined me in Pearlington last month to address many environmental concerns. They taped 2 segments, one of which aired yesterday morning on American Morning with Soledad O'Brien. Given the quickly changing news cycle, I was not even aware of the air day and time until after it was shown. (I will soon have it loaded onto my website.) However, tonight, on Anderson Cooper 360, the Pearlington segment will re-air along with the other environmental segment which CNN filmed. "AC 360" is shown on CNN at 10:00 PM EST. Please watch and spread the word that the Gulf Coast is not OK. The people of Pearlington and so many other poor, rural, overlooked communities need as much of our support 9 months after the fact as they did 9 weeks after.

Continuing in Peace and Justice,

Angela

Angela J. Cole, MPH, RN

www.pearlingtonproject.org

Hot Towers

This article is interesting, I've never heard of a hot tower before.

Data Mining

What the government wants to do with your phone records is called data mining. It is related to statistics and predictive modeling but not exactly the same. It is also often closely related to decision rules and association rules.

Big Brother arrived a long time ago, there are already entities that track your every move.

1. Credit Bureaus. Do you have a credit card, a mortgage, car loan, student loan? Have you ever had a judgement filed against you for not paying a hospital bill, traffic ticket? All of this is tracked by the credit bureaus and the information is available for sale to any of the companies you do business with.

2. How about the IRS? They have your income details, SSN, investment information, name of employer, name of dependents, all sorts of information about you.

3. Warranty cards, magazine subscriptions, charitable contributions, survey responses can all get you on a special interest list available for sale to anyone.

4. Your phone company knows what numbers you have called, when, and in case of cell phones, where. This information is routinely used in criminal investigations

5. Ever searched on the internet? Google/Yahoo or whatever search engine you used has you computer IP address associated with your search terms and may have provided it to the government for a pornography study.

6. East coast residents dont forget about EZ Pass. This information can be easily analysed to determine how often you violate the speed limit and how often you are late to work.

I am sure there are others.

What is the difference between #1 (credit bureaus), #2 (IRS), #3 (vertical lists), and the rest of the cases? The first 3 have clear, enforced, laws and regulations that guide the usage of this data. The credit bureau regulations are enforced by the FDIC and guided by the Fair Credit Act and Sarbones-Oxley. The IRS will share your information with state and local authorities under some circumstances but it is highly regulated. There are various regulations that cover vertical lists and direct mail solicitations.

Now how about #4,5,6? I have to admit I am not that familiar with telco regulations so cannot speak to them. But Quest is familar and they seem to think that the governments request was illegal. It is clear that there is an expectation of privacy except when information is requested by court order. #5 and 6 are uncharted territory where the laws have not kept up with the available technology.

Can the government analyze your phone records and really catch terrorists? Probably not. In order to do so they will need to set up decision rules and compare terrorist phone records to patterns of the overall population. This is very, very difficult and probably a futile effort.

I may not know telco too well but I do know data mining. Very well. Here are some non-useful decision/association rules generated from a hypothetical phone records:

1. If receiving # = Dominos Pizza, mother of caller, sister of caller, best friend of caller, probability of receiving call is significantly greater than random phone #.

2. If sending # is located in Podunk County and # of out of state calls is greater than average for Podunk County and residents at sending # have no known relatives or business interests outside of Podunk County then probability that sending # is a terrorist is STILL no greater than average.

Here are some useful decision rules:
1. If receiving # is a known terrorist, probability that sending # is related to a terrorist sympathizer is greater than random.

2. If receiving # is located in Terrorist Junction, Saudi Arabia, probability that sending # is a terrorist sympathizer is greater than random.

You can see how much information would need to be appended to a list of phone numbers in order to construct the decision rules above. You can also see that in fact in order to get a useful decision rule for detecting terrorist no information is needed from non-terrorists. All you need is phone records for actual terrorists, an overlay of relevant terrorist tracking information, and construction of decision rules based upon # of terrorist calls and distinct terrorists matching a particular pattern.

Trying to compare patterns of terrorist vs non-terrorist is just going to give you a bunch of completely useless information. There may be some usefullness to extracting phone numbers of calls that meet one of the useful decision rule patterns and turning over that information to the government.

Data mining has 2 steps, build and score. You dont need everyones phone calls to do the build step and it is an invasion of privacy to do this. You do need it to do the score step. I think that most Americans would be comfortable with knowing that phone numbers that engage in suspicious activities would be investigated, and that their number would be turned over if certain triggers are hit. But maybe not. That is why we need to have specific guidelines laid out just like we do for the credit bureaus, so that everyone will know what they are signing up for when they pick up the phone. Will this let the terrorists know what we are doing? Not really. The actual decision rules remain proprietary, but the general concepts are known. Putting it out on the table that we are watching will also restrict terrorist ability to communicate for fear that our decision rules will trap them, providing a good deterrant as a bonus.

We need a National Privacy Act to cover internet and telephone communications given current technology advances, similar to the Fair Credit Act, in order to protect our rights and allow our data miners to do their job without violating the law.

Landrieu for Mayor

Mitch Landrieu may not be the best choice for New Orleans Mayor. However, we know that Ray Nagin is not the best choice. In the past we have defended Nagin's performance during Katrina, and are big fans of the now famous radio address. However, in the 9 months since then he has failed to provide the leadership New Orleans so badly needs.

New Orleans needs someone to lay out a road map to recovery. We need a timetable for opening the schools. We need to negotiate with insurance companies, federal government, the small business administration to set firm dates for providing pay outs; the uncertainty is driving people to not return to town. We need a timetable for trash pickup. We need a timetable for returning regular city services, such as street cleaning and towing illegally parked cars (people have been parking on the Esplanade neutral ground), and much, much more. The list goes on.

Mitch Landrieu may not be able to achieve all of this, but we can but hope that his political connections (albeit Democrat) may be able to get some of this done. He may fail as badly as Nagin has, but someone else needs to be given a chance. We endorse Mitch Landrieu for Mayor.

Around New Orleans

I spent some time cycling around New Orleans this weekend. Little has changed in the 10 weeks or so since Mardi Gras.

On Monday, I cycled up St Charles and out along the levee to the Huey Long Bridge. From there I cut across to the lake and along the lake. Coming down off the 17th Street Canal Bridge into Lakeview was surreal. I have been to some quiet places in my time... remote corners of the Serengeti, The Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Canyonlands. The great wild places while quiet exude some kind of life. Lakeview was different. It was dead. The emptiness was palpable. There were no cars, no people, not even a bird call. This most affluent area of New Orleans is not coming back.

Actually, while I was taking a picture of an overgrown basketball court I met one of the very few residents of Lakeview walking his dog. He told me that there was one guy living up the block and another across the way. Some people are coming in on weekends to gut their homes. No one is rebuilding. He had been turned down for a small business loan because one side of his structure was rented (not sure if he owned that or someone else) and is hoping to be able to apply for grant money to rebuild his home. Otherwise he can't afford it.

Right now he's living in a FEMA trailer. But he's getting sick of the squalid conditions and is getting ready to rent an apartment somewhere else in town. Once he leaves, one less person will be living in Lakeview.

Another day, I cycled through the Lower 9th Ward. I saw no evidence that much demolition (or any other progress had been made). The only thing I could see was that some of the houses that had floated into the street had been removed. More ominously, I spotted some areas of standing water with herons, egrets and terns standing near the waters edge. It made you wonder if this once vibrant neighbourhood was already reverting to the swamp that so many people had suggested it should.

Roast Beef Po-Boy Update

We have just returned from the Jazz Fest and had a great time. We heard Liuzzas was open now and tried to go for roast beef po-boys for lunch. But we were reminded of the no-Monday hours by the sign on the door. Current hours are listed as 3pm till close (except Monday) so I guess they arent doing lunch yet anyway.

Due to our travel schedule we had to settle for some Metairie po-boys during our trip and weren't disappointed. We enjoyed Parrans on Veterans and Giovanni's on the corner of Bonnabel and Veterans. Giovanni's excelled in both messiness and pure quantity although the Parrans one was darn good too. Now if only we had made it to Liuzzas. Yes we realize we could have gone to Liuzzas by the Track, but it will have to be next time.

By the way, who would have thought Jimmy Buffet had more fans than Paul Simon? Maybe I should have known but I didnt. Fortunately we didnt bring the baby to that one. The baby did go to Paul Simon and didnt seem very impressed, but we had a good time despite our disappointment over no Fats. Funny enough my mom heard a rumor that morning that Fats wasnt coming but we were probably the last to find out it was true. We didnt realize it till they announced Lionel Ritchie would be following Paul Simon in Fats place. Then mom says, oh yeah, someone said something about that but I didnt believe them......

Abandoned by America

Back in September we watched in horror as New Orleans poorest waited at the Convention Center for someone, anyone, to rescue them. The images stirred comparisons to the abandoned poor in developing world countries in Africa. The parallels are easy to make. In countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan the ruling class is doing quite well thank you very much, leaving the population at large to fend for themselves.

At the time we reminded ourselves that we were over-reacting and it really wasn't that bad. But this week we receive news that reinforces this image. The infant death rate in the US has been reported this week tp be the lowest of all industrialised nations (except Latvia). This is driven by the infant death rate amongst the poorest in the US, many of which we saw at the Convention Center in September. The infant death rate in this group was around 9 per 1000, more reminiscent of developing world countries.

In other words, healthcare for the poorest of the poor is similar to that in the developing world where the population has been abandoned by society. Healthcare is actually quite representative of a population's lot as a whole. We can but conclude that the ruling class in America has abandoned its poor. Katrina just put it front and center.

Is the Evacuation Plan Workable?

This site has discussed previously the practicalities of a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans (or indeed any major metropolitan area). We have defended Ray Nagin's decision to delay issuing a mandatory evacuation of the city before Katrina on the grounds it just couldn't be done.

At least today evacuating the city should be easier now that the population, especially the "poorer" population, is much smaller. Also, people are gun shy and will heed even an evacuation advisory. But the plan appears to be still unworkable. Let's consider the facts.

1. A mandatory evacuation would be put in place 30-36 hours prior to landfall. The mandatory evacuation for Katrina was issued on Sunday morning, around 20 hours prior to landfall. That means, if such a plan had been in place for Katrina the mandatory evacuation would have been issued no earlier than Saturday lunchtime. Many people were already evacuating New Orleans by then anyway. It would have been chaos if everyone in the city had tried to evacuate at the same time.

2. The new plan involves loading up Amtrak trains with the elderly and infirm, and presumably any others without transportation. A number of trains will be required to move a significant number of people. Where are these trains coming from? How many trains does Amtrak have available to send to New Orleans in time for such a mission? Amtrak will have to send trains down to New Orleans. These will obviously have to be available 2 days beforehand which means they will have to be dispatched at least a day or two before that.

3. The mandatory evacuation will be enforced by the police and National Guard. Again this means that the National Guard will have to be called up at least one or two days before the evacuation order is given.

So what's my point. According to this plan, a mandatory evacuation would have been ordered around noon on August 27th for Katrina. To put trains and National Guard on the ground at this time, you would need to put your contingency plan into operation no later than noon on Friday the 26th, and preferably end of day on Thursday 25th. On the Thursday night Katrina was just being upgraded to a hurricane in the Atlantic and was approaching the Florida coast. On Friday morning, she was moving off of the Florida coast and the first weather forecasts for the future path were just coming out. It will require a hair trigger to put a contingency for a Katrina like storm in place, and it would likely have made little difference. Except that there would have been no shelters of last resort. Even now there are only 80 buses available for the estimated 10,000 residents without transport.

This plan runs the risk of evacuating the city everytime it looks like a tropical storm is entering the Gulf. This would have required 5 evacuations in 2005. This will get very old very fast for a lot of people, despite the memories.

So we support Mayor Nagin's original decisions. Any effort to provide transportation for those who want it, is obviously welcome, but this plan will not prevent what happened last August 29th. The problems were those of poorly maintained levees and a disgraceful response when the call for help went out. Let's not think we can shift blame (yes, I'm playing the blame game) from the Dunce in Chief and Chertoff the Jerk off.

Thanks Bruce

Sounds like Springsteen was amazing at Jazz Fest, even for those who arent big fans. Thanks Bruce. Thanks for your support, thanks for your City of Ruins.

Jazz Fest on the Horizon

I spent this weekend doing not much in NJ, looking forward to next weekend at the Jazz Fest. It was, as a small consolation, a beautiful spring weekend here. But really nothing is better than a mild heatstroke at the Jazz Festival. I first went to Jazz Fest when I was in high school, and was dumbfounded that such a cool, great festival went on every year that I knew nothing about. Over the years I have attended when I could. Lately that has been not often, being out of town I generally come for Mardi Gras instead. But this year it was a must to hit both, so we will be wrestling the wiggly baby onto the airplane again soon.....