The creators of Homicide, The Corner, and The Wire are at it again, this time in a city not wholly unfamiliar to readers of this blog: New Orleans.  Treme premieres on HBO this Sunday at 10PM Eastern. David Simon fans everywhere are working themselves into a tizzy, but keep in mind this isn’t The Wire: New Orleans edition. Simon and co-producer Eric Overmyer explain:

Unlike The Wire, Treme is not about drugs or rampant corruption among city officials. Instead, the series follows ordinary New Orleans citizens as they attempt to rebuild their lives following Hurricane Katrina … the decision to leave the grittiness behind in Baltimore was a conscious choice.

Is the show too much too late?

Almost five years have passed since Katrina and the Flood, we’ve proven in the last year that our government and economy are broken and Americans don’t give two shits about one another and, especially with the Superbowl win and Mayor Ray Nagin out the door, it seems that New Orleanians want to move past living in post-K PTSD. Kinda odd timing to bring back Late 2005 and to apply again the floodlines that had just faded away from walls and hearts, isn’t it?

Here’s the dirty secret: No one learned a damned thing from what happened. Up here in Ohio, I am sometimes asked, “Well, what did you expect would happen when a Category 5 hurricane hit a city 20 feet below sea level?” (To which all I want to do is torch my computer and blog and walk into the forest, away from the willfully, yet-underinformed troglodytes.) Down in New Orleans, many are not back in their homes FIVE YEARS LATER exactly because of rampant government corruption, the state government goes through great lengths to reduce much-needed physical and mental health and educational services and a second failure of the federally-built levees is still a very distinct possibility. Comprehensive flood protection a la the Dutch is only a dream. Outside, it’s America. Back in May of 2007, at a horrifyingly low point in the city’s recovery, my buddy Dambala presciently observed: “It’s not just New Orleans that is dying … I think it’s America in general. We are just the cynosure of the descent … the most photogenic example.” Enter the recession and the latest Grand Circus Of Democracy.

It’s not too much and never too late.

But, here’s the real secret: New Orleans is more than a warning, a cautionary tale. It just is, with a tale that can be told 50 or 500 years from now. The matter of how much and when thus becomes irrelevant. All the citizens of New Orleans have ever wanted since August 29th, 2005 is reoccupy their homes, their neighborhoods, their lives and to let the world know that what happened in New Orleans was not the result of a hurricane but flooding caused by the breakdown of levee protection and federal, state and local government. They don’t want your respect or sympathy on account of being mostly black citizens of an irreplaceable city chock full of historic architecture, rich food, tasty drinks and grand merriment. They want your acknowledgment that they, too, are people who have a certain way of going about their lives and that’s that. Treme tells us this story.

So, I will watch the show out of curiosity and expatriate pride … and cojones, an anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach and hope that they get it mostly right.

And blog about it. In anticipation of the show, I founded the Back Of Town blog and invited writer friends from the NOLA Bloggers/First Draft/New Package krewe to hold forth on the show there. And, gods love the internet, have they already brought it pre-premiere: Go check out the news and opinion posts and, starting Sunday, episode reviews. And please feel free to join the conversation or just bring the popcorn and enjoy the discussion and dissection. But come:

America needs to understand New Orleans, whether it wants to or not, whether it believes it needs to or not.  Whether Treme will help make that happen is anyone“s guess, but even without having seen it, I don’t think this story of New Orleans, of its value, is to be told as a request, with an open hand, with an aspiration, or a goal, other than that of verity.  It’s a story to stand on its own merits, for its own sake. It has value because it is. Some know that, others seeking to know will come to bear their own witness.

Iraq massacre leaked. “Why did the Pentagon stonewall FOIA requests? Shit happens during war. We understand. But covering up fatal mistakes only compounds the injustice. Whether or not what happened that day was criminal, what followed leaves no doubt.” When moral rectitude outweighs moral character and secrecy surpasses coming clean with the truth, we have lost.

FCC loses Net Neutrality case. Welcome to New Communist America, where the largest internet provider kills competition and development and decides what data you have access to. An NPR commenter cries, “A win for the consumer!” Some libertarians call for the abolition of the FCC. Pssst, when Customers become Consumers whose purchasing choices are greatly diminished, it’s no longer capitalism but legislation-mandated robbery.

Meanwhile, everyone from the national media  to the local news “is hard on the case of iPad sales and Tiger Woods’ f***crimes.” While the White House entertains the latest teen douche-sation and throws pitches to the nation’s collective catcher.

“In politics nothing is accidental. If something happens, be assured it was planned this way.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.” – Despair, Inc.

The Where2.0 conference this year was a great success for me. What The Hell 2.0 am I talking about? Read all about it here. If you still don’t understand, it’s an annual coming together of map technology geeks. I’ll write about the conference in a lot more detail over at VizWorld, so check there for the more techy bits, but now I talk about wicked cool stuff.

 Along with the regular talks, workshops and brainstorming sessions, there is also a Where Faire, in which “research, academia, and yet-to-be-discovered entrepreneurs” display their projects and we stand around and talk to them with a cocktail in hand. Tom Longson’s Open View Project really stood out this year because the concept is simple-brilliant and community-oriented at once. From the OVP site:

Seeing what [Google] had done [with StreetView] was inspiring, but I wanted to be able to annotate parts of the panoramas, to build my own services around it, and to take pictures of the places Google didn“t go. Instead of creating panoramas of asphalt, I wanted to capture places with people, create interactive panoramas of events, trails, beaches, ice skating rinks, the places where people actually go. The OpenView Project is just this, a way for anyone to create interactive panoramas, and share them to create a new way to view the world … if there’s anything I’ve learned in the 27 years I’ve been alive, it’s that being part of something is far more exciting than just being a spectator.

And how do Longson and his team accomplish this? With the Trike – a recumbent bicycle and a daisy chain of cameras – of course. It’s all Open Source with instructions.

Jay Longson (my brother), Brent Heyning, and I [have built a] panoramic camera on top of a recumbent tricycle, we“ll be able to cover a huge amount of distance, and get the chance to create interactive panoramas of bike trails, boardwalks, farmers markets, concerts … the Burning Man art festival. Instead of just using Google Street View as a spectator, we“ll be building a creative commons of snapshots in time of places all over the world. We“ll be publishing instructions to show you how to do it too, and building an open source service to act as a clearing house for the data.

These folks aren’t amateurs. They had to make the cameras work in unison and look at all this other heavy duty equipment they use to create panoramas.

Check out their posts and panoramas from Burning Man. Social Animal’s 360 HD technology and output for Hollywod is amazing, but their blueprints and methods aren’t open source. And SA’s booth didn’t have a fun-loving Scotsman in it called Haggis.

Can you imagine a better venue for the Open View Project’s Trike than the Krewe du Vieux or St. Anne’s parade? Or Jazzfest? Or any gathering in the city? We have to get these guys to New Orleans! Or, even better, start our own New Orleans Open View Projects. That’s what giving away technology is all about, right?

1. Finally, Wisconsin is recognized for something we’re really, really good at. Thanks to Nathan at Flowing Data for posting this FloatingSheep gem.

Flowing Data | Where Bars Trump Grocery Stores: “Red dots represent locations where there are more bars than grocery stores, based on results from the Google Maps API. The Midwest takes their drinking seriously.” Actually, it’s just Wisconsin that does. Central Minnesota, Chicago and southeast Illinois lightweights need not apply.

2. USA Today Science Fair | Tectonic Plate Model Lets Users Play With 3D Planetary Puzzle

Dubbed MORVEL, for Mid-Ocean Ridge VELocity (because much of the data comes from the mid-ocean ridges) it was created by University of Wisconsin-Madison geophysicist Chuck DeMets and collaborators Richard Gordon of Rice University and Donald Argus of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

MORVEL lets allows users model the relative movements of 25 interlocking tectonic plates that account for 97 percent of the Earth’s surface. It’s being presented in the April issue of Geophysical Journal International and is based on work the scientists have been doing for the past 20 years.

A dynamic three-dimensional puzzle of planetary proportions! Chuck was on my MS thesis committee and we used older versions of MORVEL in our graduate geophysics classes. Glad to see this great research and teaching aid get the attention it deserves.