voluntaryXchange

Local vs. Tourist Photo Density Maps

Very cool infographics by Eric Fischer. Obviously, this is San Francisco. The tourists are downtown, along the wharves, out to Alcatraz, and along the Golden Gate Bridge. The locals are further up Market Street, and out through Golden Gate Park, but also in downtown Oakland and Berkeley.

Less familiar is my old stomping grounds of New Orleans – where the tourists don’t leave the French Quarter, CBD and Warehouse District, except to go a little uptown to the Garden District.

Then there’s my hometown, Buffalo, where tourists dare not tread (and apparently the locals don’t post many photos either):

Everyone seems to be missing the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Delaware Park.

The information was derived from people who posted and geotagged their photos.

Via Information Is Beautiful.

Technorati Tags: local,tourist,photo,density,map

Only In New Orleans

I have a love/hate relationship with New Orleans. I lived there for almost 9 years, and loved it, but we moved to get away from it.

I hope I’m interested enough in New Orleans to pay attention longer than others, experienced enough to know that you have to be that way, and yet still as neutral as can be reasonably hoped.

In short: I’m not surprised by this little tidbit of news about the blackout at the Super Bowl.

Entergy told New Orleans City Council members that the company still doesn’t know why the device triggered …

…

But the relay’s manufacturer, Chicago-based S&C Electric Co., says it believes it knows why the problem happened: The relay, it says, wasn’t operated at the proper setting.

System operators essentially put the relay’s trip setting too low, S&C vice president Michael Edmonds wrote to CNN in an e-mail. The electrical load exceeded the trip setting, so the relay triggered, he said.

…

“Based on the onsite testing, we have determined that if higher settings had been applied, the equipment would not have disconnected the power,” Edmonds wrote. …

Asked whether Entergy agrees with S&C’s characterization of the problem, Entergy spokesman Mike Burns responded:

“Tests conducted by S&C and Entergy on the two relays installed at the Superdome shows that one relay functioned as expected and the other relay did not.

Let me read between the lines for you.

The local(ish) company responsible, Entergy, told the local poo-bahs that it’s not responsible. It’s the fault of the bad guys from out of town. You know … like FEMA.

The manufacturers (wearing black hats because they’re from out of town) note that the relay failed because a human set it at too low a level.

Both the local utility and the out-of-state manufacturer agree that “one relay functioned as expected and the other relay did not”.

Let’s parse that one. This is like saying you couldn’t make it to work because you’re car didn’t start; the beauty of that excuse is that it doesn’t say that you tried to start your car. In the same sense, Entergy’s excuse is completely consistent with the manufacturer’s explanation: that a human made a setting on one device that was too low, and a different one on another device that was OK.

In short, New Orleans screwed up its Super Bowl because New Orleans is a place where things get screwed up.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Technorati Tags: new,orleans,super,bowl,blackout,entergy

Isaac At Night

Such a cool shot:

Via bookofjoe.

Technorati Tags: isaac,night,city,lights

Isaac

For Love Boat fans.

Via TA, a student from way back when … who may have to live through this.

Technorati Tags: isaac,love,boat

Fade Out of the Times-Picayune

The Times-Picayune, the only traditional newspaper in New Orleans, is shifting from a daily to 3 issues per week. Sad.

I read this paper every day from 1992 to 2000. They even ran an article that featured me once.

Technorati Tags: times-picayune

Where Did People Go After Katrina?

Here’s a screenshot of what I learned from a very cool interactive map at Forbes.com that can show you immigration and emmigration by county.

Here’s Orleans Parish in 2006:

Doesn’t it just figure … the high plains boomed through the past decade, and more or less skipped the Great Recession, and no one from NOLA moved there.

Technorati Tags: katrina,new orleans,emmigration

Marry the Crook, It’s Important*

Edwin Edwards is out of the pen, and got hitched to a buxom blonde, 50 years his junior.

What an operator …

Hat tip to WH for telling me Fast Eddie walked a few weeks back.

* In 1991, the best Louisiana could come up with to run against David Duke was corrupt 3 time former governor Edwards. Fading bumper stickers saying “Vote for the Crook — It’s Important” were common through the 90s.

Technorati Tags: edwin,edwards

Louisiana Quote

From the Cook Report:

The renowned, late journalist A.J. Liebling, a fixture for many years in The New Yorker and a chronicler of then-Louisiana Gov. Earl Long, once wrote that the home state I share with Long was “the northernmost of the banana republics.”

About a year after I left Louisiana, I made a future valedictorian guffaw by describing Louisiana as a banana republic with frequently updated wallpaper.

FWIW: Lest anyone think I’m being mean, let me emphasize that the love part of my love/hate relationship with Louisiana is still going strong.

Technorati Tags: louisiana,banana,republic

Metairie: Train Derailment Video

Wow. The actions starts at around the 3:35 mark:

I used to drive by these tracks a couple of times a day in the mid-90s.

Via Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed.

Chicago Got Hit by a Category 3 Hurricane

The huge winter storm that came through the upper midwest last week recorded the lowest inland barometric pressure ever: the equivalent of a category 3 hurricane (like Katrina at landfall).

In fact, this storm bottomed out at 956 millibars, 5 points lower than Hurricane Georges – the big one that forced us to flee New Orleans for Hattiesburg in 1998.

Gongol linked to this map.

Serendipity: I surfed to this fact this morning, and then saw it on a week-old Gongol post this evening. I’d started by listening to Gordon Lightfoot, which got me to look up the Edmund Fitzgerald on Wikipedia, which lead to the Great Storm of 1913 (who cares), and then to Great Storms of the North American Great Lakes, which listed Chiclone of 2010. When you see a word like that, you just have to know what it is.

Technorati Tags: chiclone,barometric,pressure