#MovieReview: Revisiting Spike Lee’s Documentary “When The Levees Broke”
Five years ago this week, Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Despite the fact that the worst of the storm was east of New Orleans (by about 100 miles), the largest city in the region received the worst damage when the inadequate levee walls were undermined by the storm surge the day after the eye passed the coastline.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
The Currents Of The Gulf Coast Beat On Beautifully, If Barely
This past week marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its devastating effects on the western Gulf Coast states, especially – and most infamously – on the city of New Orleans. Almost 2000 people died as the hurricane crashed into the Mississippi Delta and then overloaded the dilapidated and antiquated levees of The Big Easy. $81 billion dollars worth of damage, most of it to homes, local businesses, and schools, made it the most expensive natural disaster in US history. Arguably, the costs are still being paid, though, with further degradation of the wetlands (begun by development but, once thinned, sorely beaten by the storm surge) and the ongoing efforts to rebuild New Orleans.
Director Spike Lee went to New Orleans in the fall of 2005 to film “When The Levee Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” to document the devastation and give some voice to how and why such devastation might have occurred. He was to return this summer to film a sequel: “If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise.” He got more of a story than he planned.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
Fourteen Nonprofits Worth Following/Emulating on Twitter
The good folks at Socialbrite.org have recently posted a list of what they consider to be a ‘Top-Twelve List’ of social organizations and nonprofits that we all should follow on Twitter. The introduction gives you links to Twitter and how to become a ‘Follower’ of these organizations. It also includes links to individuals who might be worth following as well. It is worth noting that, though the number of ‘Followers’ for each of them is listed, the list is based on the work the groups do and the qualitative use of their Twitter presence, not merely their race to get X numbers on their lists (a quantitative benchmark that seems much more important to celebrities than to community organizations).
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
Housing Market Continues The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
The shocking number of foreclosed houses in July, over 90,000, has sent shockwaves through the economy – especially the Stock Market, as the Dow Jones Average has been near or below 10,000 the last few days (having reached highs just over 14000 a week ago). Investors worry about perceptions of future growth. The surprise of the number, which National Public Radio (NPR) reports is the second highest rate of monthly foreclosure since the crisis started, sent further ripples of fear of a double-dip recession through the markets.
And yet as NPR also pointed out in its report, “the number of homes in the early stages of foreclosure is down — more than 30 percent from the peak early last year.” This number suggests that the rate of foreclosures in the last months of 2010 and early 2011 might not be too high. What is driving the stock market down, then?
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
The Debate About Interest Rates And Opportunities For Growth
Economists are not known as a gregarious bunch (save Paul Krugman, perhaps). So it might not be much of a surprise to learn that the reports (eight per year) from the Federal Reserve are known as “The Beige Book(s).” The report takes on information from the twelve district Reserve Banks concerning the previous few months and how they are to be contextualized over the previous year. The report released in early August for the summer of 2010 argues that most sectors at least held their own, and that many have shown overall growth over the past year, despite some month-to-month downturns. The key term is “modest,” which is used at least once in each of the six sections of the summary of the July Report. But though the twelve presidents of the twelve district banks might agree on the modesty of the growth, they are sharply debating amongst themselves what to do about it (if anything).
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
Net Neutrality Debate Gets Infographic Treatment
Sometimes serendipity meets synchronicity on anyone’s social-network radar, and a few different views of the same issue materialize before our very eyes. We had a moment of such pleasure today as we were directed to an infographic entitled “15 Facts About Net Neutrality.” Over the last couple of weeks we have posted a number of stories about the debate over net neutrality – a debate that went white-hot when Google and Verizon announced a proposal for a neutral internet, unless companies saw the need to establish tiers of speed or service. Yesterday we posted a TED Talk about designing data to assist in comprehension and to allow statistical comparisons for the non-mathematical. And today we found a nice infographic on net neutrality!
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
Information As Data And As Pictures Can Make Learning Efficient (And Fun)
Earlier today the TED website (Technology, Education, and Design) posted a wonderful talk by David McCandless entitled “The Beauty of Data Visualization,” in which he spends about 18 minutes showing the audience the ease and pleasure with which some pretty arcane, humane, and controversial material can best be learned with a combination of ‘traditional’ data and ‘infographics’ that allow visual comparisons and opportunity for pattern recognition. The presence of the infographic is not new, of course, but Mr. McCandless shows a number of ways similar data sets can show different relationships in a clear and concise manner for the layperson. We have embedded it for your viewing pleasure:
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
Perspectives: Kevin O’Keefe of O’Keefe Communications
Kevin and Catie O’Keefe founded the eponymous O’Keefe Communications in Washington, DC in 1979. Over the next three decades they’ve watched the video and event-production industry change its technologies from bulky boxes of videotape to memory cards the size of a quarter. They’ve navigated the rise of social media and the demise of the synchronized slideshow presentation and have driven expectations toward finely crafted multi-screen presentations in light-sculptured spaces. Thriving through economic downturns by keeping the focus on the client and the client’s job security has given O’Keefe Communications a “big trust factor,” as Kevin O’Keefe put it when we spoke with him from his office in the nation’s capital. (more…)
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
Baseball Players Raise Their Philanthropic Stats
Baseball has a long and unique tradition of its players going out into the communities to raise money or the spirits of their less fortunate fans. Babe Ruth visited hospitals and children’s homes, for example. These activities were part of the expectations of owners and likely facilitated by the fact that many players came from poorer communities yet worked their way on to the local baseball team – where they played the bulk of their careers until owners dictated a sale. The link between ball and philanthropy was not broken, even as the game expanded and players’ salaries grew, a great example being Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who was killed when his plane crashed trying to bring relief supplies to earthquake-stricken Nicaragua. A recent trend to this tradition concerns the fact that some players are starting to work charity opportunities into their contracts by using the world-class facilities at their disposal.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
Double-Dip Recession Fears Continue To Mute Enthusiasms
The Unemployed Await Free Coffee (1934)
We don’t really want to brag about this. We wish we were wrong. But the MKCREATIVE blog was worrying about a double-dip recession before the three-foot-deep snows melted from the double-whammy of Nor’easters born by the eastern seaboard this past winter. The housing market, upon which so much of the US economy depends upon, was considered through the worst of the overextended subprime mortgage fiascoes that had flooded the market. Once the housing market stopped its freefall (leaving aside the political debates about government stimuli helping and/or not being big enough/too big…), the argument went, we could regroup and pick up pieces. Unemployment would also stop ballooning once people quit panicking about the housing market. And now that we are in the dog-days of summer?
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Written by: Christopher Gardner
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