Common sense is once again trumped by idiocy. The CD Hylton High School marching band has dropped the Charlie Daniels song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" from its play list, due to a complaint from a parent whose children don't even attend that school.

Details below the jump.

Apparently, there is an email making the rounds advertising thousands of high-paying jobs at FEMA call centers and in the destroyed Gulf Coast area. THIS IS BOGUS. Details below the jump.

This weekend I worked as a volunteer at Eyes Wide Open.

Eyes Wide Open is an exhibit put together by the American Friends Service Committee. It originally consisted of pairs of military boots, one for each American serviceman or servicewoman killed in Iraq.

The exhibit has been traveling the country since it started in January of last year, and is tentatively scheduled to end in March of next year, on the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. A date on which we will undoubtedly still be fighting "terrorists" in Iraq.

Yesterday, there was a diary about Jabbor Gibson
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/19856/62219
who hot-wired a bus and picked up people and took them to the Astrodome, at a time when FEMA was sitting there with their thumbs up their butts. Some  jackass apparently wants to charge him with looting. What idiocy.

But that diary included a number of comments -- including from me -- that we ought to get that young man a college scholarship.

Given events of the week, I've been re-reading Ghosts of the Titanic by Charles Pellegrino. It's a fairly decent book on the subject, especially if you're a geeky type (like me) who likes to understand the engineering aspects of how disasters happen. (I suspect that's because the human aspects are totally incomprehensible to me.) But he also gets into issues of leadership.

Given that it's almost inevitible that New Orleans is going to get flattened, and

Given that the National Guard isn't going to be able to help much, since they're mostly in Iraq, and

Given that I'm currently unemployed, and might as well do something useful rather than sit and wait for calls for interviews that aren't coming,

Does anyone know of any organisations that would accept volunteer labor in the coming weeks? I know that in the aftermath of Andrew, volunteers poured into the state to help clean up and rebuild. I don't know what organisations, if any, they came from, or if there is any structure in place for volunteers who don't know how to run a chain saw or heavy equipment, but still want to do something to help.

So -- anyone have any information on such orgs? Or does this sort of thing arise only ad hoc and we have to wait until disaster has struck to get involved?

Since permission has been granted . . .

What Paul Hackett was requesting was spam.
Maneuver Warfare