Monthly Archives: June 2007

Day 669: Where Crime Becomes A Loop

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Rising Tide and the dominoes falling with respect to the Public Schools administration have me happy, but for every step we go forward, New Orleans seems destined to move a large step backwards in the marathon towards Functional City Status. This latest setback has me in tears because, despite the glaring beacon that it is regarding our inability to prosecute violent crime, there will be no justice for a man who was a positive influence on this city before and after the storm and flood.

Charges Dropped In Dinerral Shavers Murder Case

The reluctance of the mother of a 14-year-old girl to allow her daughter to testify caused a high-profile murder case to fold and the district attorney to drop the charges Friday.

… The witness’ mother doesn’t deny protecting her daughter, but said she is upset that she and her daughter are being blamed for the case falling apart. “I was scared,” she said … “They should have went to the people that seen the whole thing. The people that was in the car.”

Whether the mother of the witness is afraid of retaliation or the district attorney’s job has done a poor job of lining up witnesses to this crime, we are left with charges being dropped against the accused due to the loss of the only witness. We continue the age-old New Orleans tradition of empowering the criminal’s sense of invincibility.

This takes us away from the DA’s office and back to NOPD. Riley’s staff has a 50% arrest rate; of every 100 people arrested, probably one is successfully prosecuted. So far, we’ve taken Eddie Jordan to task and rightfully so, but what else does his office have to go on besides the odd witness and alignment of stars? Where is the ballistic evidence? Was a gun in David Bonds’ possession matched with bullet(s) found in Dinerral Shavers’ body? Were Bonds’ associates and Shavers’ family adequately questioned? What prompted police to arrest this suspect other than the testimony of the aforementioned girl, in this case, a minor?

In the absence of detective work (hey, if the public wasn’t informed of any other form of evidence collection in this case, IMHO, it didn’t happen), what are we left with? As I mentioned to the NOLA bloggers in a recent email, I’m surprised, with the amount of “street justice” in New Orleans, that murderers, like Shavers’ killer, aren’t removed from the system in a vigilante fashion. A friend said, “With all due respect, if Mr. Shavers had no connections with the criminal world, no one is going to conduct justice on his behalf.” Adrastos responded similarly, “While it could still happen, NOLA street justice usually happens after criminal on criminal murders. Shavers was a civilian so it’s unlikely in his case.”

There are three solutions to this situation, and only one is optimal:

1. Shavers’ son and his buddies decide to conduct justice in the name of the father, in which case the young Shavers has blood on his hands,

2. The cycle of retaliation has to stop. We may want justice in Dinerral Shavers’ name, which the local justice department cannot deliver, but how long can people harbor vendettas and kill in the name of the Cosa Nostra, Bloods, Disciples, X, Y, Z or even the average citizen’s outrage?

3. Hold NOPD accountable – sit on the police department until they comb each major crime scene and provide airtight evidence to the DA’s office. It makes me more than a bit uncomfortable that the hope was to convict someone based on single-witness identification and testimony alone.

If law and order is inadequate in New Orleans, our protest of and demands on it should be that much more sophisticated. If this isn’t a kick in the tenders to NOPD, the DA’s office and everyone affected by the original crime and this subsequent one, perhaps a huge citizen outcry demanding better police work may be. Meanwhile, David Bonds, if he is indeed Dinerral Shavers’ killer, is free. Good luck finding the lad if he is let go.

Day 669: Venice Or New Orleans? You Decide.

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Here is a picture I recently took.  Without clicking on it (as it leads back to my tag-heavy Flickr site where you will find the answer), tell me whether it was taken in Venice or New Orleans, and why.  Soon enough, I will post something about the coincidence of port cities, Catholicism, cultural heterogeneity, the fusion of ethnic practises and the institutionalization of fun.

Day 669: Best Product Name Ever

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Alas, it has been recalled.

… Veggie Booty snack food products are being recalled by the manufacturer after the federal Food and Drug Administration warned consumers Thursday not to eat the treats because of the possibility of [salmonella] contamination.

Thanks to this article, my brain cannot stop coming up with things like Zucchini In My Booty, Turnip Humps and Mung In My Trunk.  God help us all.

Day 668: Announcing Rising Tide 2

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It’s time for the tide to rise once again! The Rising Tide conference will be held this year on Saturday, August 25, 2007 at the New Orleans Yacht Club. Those of you who attended last year’s gathering were part of a real-life demonstration against the conditions that almost destroyed this city. We came together to “dispel myths, promote facts, share personal testimonies, highlight progress and regress, discuss recovery ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels.”

While the conference’s mission remains the same, at the beginning of the third year since the Flood, we present the more dynamic themes of Action, Accountability, Corruption, Determination and Responsibility. Along with the traditional panels, this year will promote more audience interaction, with breakout sessions, increased audience participation, and more. We have not finalized panel topics and participants, so please be patient and check back over the coming weeks.

For the night before the conference, many of us suggested an event more substantial than the meet-and-greet held last year. The idea of a social event, while screening movie shorts, came up – 4 or 5 shorts made by New Orleans movie-makers are shown, after which each director briefly talks about the motivation behind the film, etc. This, we suspect, will be a big draw and are looking for a free venue where we can hold a social event for roughly 200 people and screen movies (with required AV, power, etc.) Ideas?

We hope you, especially those outside New Orleans, can make it to Rising Tide 2 this year! Your support made the conference a smashing success last year, and we hope the same for this time around.

Day 668: NOLA Recycling Event July 28th

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It’s not an event, wherein hors d’oeuvres and cocktails are served, but an opportunity to get rid of your recyclables.  Start saving up for July 28th Recycle Day!

The Jefferson Parish Department of Environmental Affairs, the New Orleans Sanitation Department, and the Recycling Foundation, Inc., of Baton Rouge will hold an area-wide recycling drop-off day on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 … Recyclables do not have to be separated by type. All commodities may be combined together in the same bag or cardboard box for drop off.  [Jefferson and Orleans Parish locations in the article]

MATERIALS ACCEPTED
Plastic containers 1 through 7, Newspaper, Telephone books, Magazines, Junk Mail, Shredded Paper (secured in plastic bags), Cardboard, Paperboard; such as cereal boxes, Aluminum and Steel food and beverage cans

MATERIALS NOT ACCEPTED
Glass, Plastic Bags (check local grocers), Household Hazardous Waste (motor oil, paint & pesticides)

That they will not accept glass and plastic bags is disappointing.  However, Newcomb Art School accepts all types of glass, scrap companies take aluminum and Whole Foods, WalMart and some Sav A Centers have plastic bag recycling receptacles.  Finally, the big pile o’ junk I’ve been saving since I recycled this time last year can be free.

Day 666: Irish Channel “Silence Is Violence” Walk

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This coming Thursday night, June 28th, “Silence is Violence” is sponsoring a City Walk through the Irish Channel. The walk will start at 7pm sharp and start at Sophie’s Ice Cream parlor, 1912 Magazine St. It will end at Rue de la Course Coffeehouse, 3321 Magazine St.
Transportation will be provided back to Sophie’s between 8 and 9pm. For the route and more information: silenceisviolence.org

Day 666: Apocalypse Yesterday

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Notice it’s been 666 days since Katrina made landfall and the levees broke? In our upside-down world, perhaps this is the day things start to look up for New Orleans. Or when Keanu Reeves falls out of the sky and buys a house in the French Quarter.

Speaking of movies, here are some I’ve experienced lately:

1. Pirates of the Caribbean 3 Some Disney-esque fluff for the kiddies, but mostly worth the price of admission. Much darker and funnier than 1 and 2 combined. Tests patience in spots (to the point where you want all characters double-triple-quadruple-crossed and killed). Jack the monkey, not the pirate, steals the show.

2. The Machinist Two hours of my life that I will regretfully never get back. The otherwise respectable Christian Bale lost copious amounts of weight for nothing, and should have advised the movie’s makers to wield a machete on the entire middle half of the tedious screenplay.

3. Barnyard Four words – Bulls don’t have udders. The entire state of Wisconsin should boycott this movie.

4. Babylon 5: The Lost Tales – Voices in the Dark Hey, Athenae, check this out! Movie coming soon – trailer here. Not enough no Mira Furlan and too much Peter Woodward from initial observations, but swoon, I say, swoon!

Day 665: Blogging Out Loud

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Like Loki, I suffer from a bit of blog burn-out and have considered simply shutting VatulBlog down and restarting another space dedicated to Project Gutenberg, geophysics and other assorted geekiness.  No, no, I’m not turning off the blog and the following tells you why.

The conversations here have been severely lacking since last fall really, and often it’s just me talking to a big electronic wall, while the real dialogue occurs over email and in real life.  Yes, this blog still gets a lot of hits and is a great place for media and lay visitors to come a-knockin’, but the discussions are elsewhere and/or most of us are just fatigued.  Plus, what am I going to report that you don’t already know?  All levels of American government suck, the schools suck, crime is on the rise and the justice system sucks, everyone wants to take you for a ride and Americans are too wrapped up in their warp-speed lives to care.  Ho hum.

Plus, if a paradigm exists that blogging mirrors one’s life, this blog doesn’t reflect it (well, except for the part about the trips I take).  Most of what I spend my time on — work, bringing New Orleanians with various resources together and taking the time to meet with them, finances for non-profits — I can’t blog about and don’t have the time to, so what’s the point?

The point is to extract head from ass and acknowledge that the problems of New Orleans are a lot larger than mine and different from America’s, and that a vast majority of this city has it much harder than I ever will.  Also, there is more going on here than the hopelessness of government, schools, crime, etc. with the occasional indictment or step forward.  The point is to publicize these hardships and hard-won victories, bring those email and in-real-life discussions into this blog and, in this second year after Katrina, remember that we’re doing rather than being.  We’ve identified the problems, now is the time we act rather than talk about them. 

It is also important to remember the 1990s, and that in this field, temporary separations are alright, but never outright divorces.  Between the years of 1993 and 1998, I took a hiatus from Internetland and concentrated fully on geology.  While my proficiency in technical computing and scientific data interpretation and visualization grew, my social computing knowledge declined.  Same with Web 2.0 as I entered the oil industry, although Web 2.0 to me is akin to putting Hello Kitty stickers on Web 1.0 technology, where the real work was done. 

I admit that the internet, especially this blog, is my playground and always will be, and I’ll rip my heart out before I destroy this space.  Perhaps the combination of a long meditation, realigning this blog to reflect what’s really being done in New Orleans, and creating another one for Project Gutenberg and technical computing purposes is the way to go.

Thanks for listening as I thought out loud.

Day 664: A New New Orleans Anthem

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Most of you already know that Rage Against The Machine will headline Voodoofest 2007, along with Smashing Mumkins, I mean, Pumpkins, Wilco, Sinead O’Connor and a host of other big names. I’ve decided to write Zack de la Rocha a letter asking him to create us a New Orleans anthem, what with our own rage against the machine. Result coming shortly – if we all send in the letter soon, the band may perform the song at Voodoofest. (You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.)

For, as Tom Morello said when RATM regrouped, “To me, it seems that the world needs songs of rebellion and revolution right now.” It seems that the world needs to keep hearing about New Orleans right now.

Day 664: Some Reassurance

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This post is a bit of navel-gazing that has nothing to do with New Orleans, politics, geoscience, copyright issues or travel. Ever since VatulBlog went from being a simple stump in my portion of electronic acreage to an über-public space, I’ve thought about starting another blog, a more personal one under an anonymous name that serves as online Dear Diary, but of a more private nature. Well, I do have one of those somewhere, but it now serves mostly as repository of quizzes, YouTube videos and conversations held within a select group of friends.

That is, however, the beauty of blogging, isn’t it? I don’t have to wear a Dolce & Gabbana suit and a ton of makeup to come to you with breaking news, analyses of New Orleans and scientific happenings, and internet roundups. By the same token, I’m not limited in any way by a holding company or publisher to speak only of certain ordained things. It is after all, heaven forfend, my blog. Subsumed, in a way, by the professionalism required to be a purveyor of often serious news, but still my blog.

What does this long preface lead up to? Yesterday, thanks to an online social networking site, I found an old friend from my Kuwaiti youth. Type-A and competitive youngsters, we didn’t always get along, but loved one another as kids do when they’ve known each other since kindergarten. Bad things happened to both of our families in 1990, we went our separate ways, and we never saw each other again … until I caught her grown-up face in a blurry picture, while surfing through friends’ friends lists. It brought back all kinds of memories and sixteen years of rumination.

There’s something I have come to realize in my years of reluctant adulthood: People are people. I don’t have to like all of them, and not one of them is obligated to like me — THIS IS OK. And that, yes, there are people who dislike me, but for each one who does, there are at least two dozen who have overwhelmingly positive or neutral feelings towards me. This is not a plea for “I like/love you” or “I despise you” comments, so don’t bother with them. Why not? It’s because no human is fully angel or demon; inter-personal relationships and attendant judgments are just not that black or white. There is no such thing as all love and all hate towards one person, and most of the time to our self-centered eyes, people just are. Coincidentally, D said something very profound to me yesterday, “No one is wholly a bitch, Maitri, they were being bitchy under those set of circumstances. This is why it’s best not to speak ill of anyone, for you will never know what they were going through at the time to prompt that awful behavior.” (I love this man, and his ability to be a sage and an impetuous sixteen-year-old at the same time.)

Thought I’d share.

Update: When discussing this topic with friends just a few hours ago, they said, “How could anyone not like you?” I rolled my eyes and said, “Very easily, it just depends on the set of circumstances.” Objectivity between friends is not guaranteed, hence the blog post.