Decius wrote:
Our cities may have grown up around shipping and transportation, but this isn't the 1700s anymore. Modern cities are successful due to an interplay between culture, capital, and educational institutions, not transportation routes.

I don't disagree with your larger point about New Orleans, but you go further than is necessary to make your case.

If you think shipping isn't critically important to the economic health of Los Angeles, you need to spend more time in Los Angeles. The transportation business brings more money into the city than the entertainment business does.

Take a look at this briefing:

Los Angeles is by far the most important city in the US for combined import and export activity. It alone is responsible for over 20 percent of all US container traffic and has seen that share expand steadily in recent years. The local economic impact of port activity in Los Angeles is also considerable. The Port of Los Angeles employs 259,000 people in Southern California and generates nearly $27 billion in industry sales annually. Long Beach is second on the list, which means that the combined LA/Long Beach area is responsible for an astonishing one-third of all container traffic in the nation.

There's a lot more to the report; it's worth a look. Keep in mind that the 259k jobs and the $27B is just for the Port of LA. The Long Beach port has numbers that approach those for LA. See also: liner shipping facts and figures.

As one point of comparison, BLS reports that "In 2002, there were about 360,000 wage and salary jobs in the motion picture and video industries. Most of the workers were in motion picture and video production." At the most, half of those jobs are in the Los Angeles area. As another data point, one source says that "In 2001, worldwide gross revenues generated by motion pictures in all territories and media (including music and ancillaries) amounted to over $40 billion." I don't know how reliable that number is, but it's a rough indicator.

On the Continuing Importance of the Shipping and Transportation Industries

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Behind the walled garden they go ...

Good Bye, Tom! Good Bye, Nick!

Call it viral Al Qaeda, carried by strongly motivated next-generation followers who download from the Internet's virtual training camp a perfectly adequate trade-craft in terror.

When it comes to the United States itself, the terrorists have their own "second-novel problem" -- how do you top the first production? More likely, though, the next attack, when it comes, will originate not in the minds of veteran Qaeda planners but from this new wave of amateurs: viral Al Qaeda.

In this new world, where what is necessary to go on the attack is not armies or training or even technology but desire and political will, we have ensured, by the way we have fought this forever war, that it is precisely these qualities our enemies have in large and growing supply.

Mark Danner has the cover feature in today's NYT magazine.

Taking Stock of the Forever War

If you're looking for rare, classic, vintage Blues, Jazz, Boogie-woogie, Gospel and Country music then you have come to the right place. Many call it the place.

A friend turned me on to this company. The volume of rare product on offer here is just amazing.

Document Records: Vintage Blues, Jazz and Afro American music

Found via Cafe LA; album review by Rhapsody:

This extensive collection of songs featuring the pioneering female guitarist and blues singer is highlighted by Memphis Minnie's distinctive guitar style and contralto vocals. Minnie sings about committing murder with enough conviction to make you wonder if she wasn't the biggest, baddest bad ass in Chicago in the 1940s.

This is amazing stuff. Check out "When The Levee Breaks" (iTMS URL, RealAudio clip).

Memphis Minnie: Queen of the Blues

What I Did on My Summer Vacation
By George W. Bush

Day One: Cleared some brush.
Day Two: Cleared some brush.
Day Three: Cleared some brush.
Day Four: Cleared some more &*$#! brush.

...

Day Thirty-One: Andy Card said something about "New Orleans" and "getting hammered." I told him I'm too old for that sort of stuff. Besides, it's time to get back to work.

In Crawford, the tedium is the message

Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash.

"The South is a spiritual place, a place where God is very important in people's lives. It's about the ritual of family and togetherness and of singing and storytelling. It's about giving back to the community, investing in other people's lives, caring about other people."

Sweet Home, Tennessee

NEW ORLEANS is battered and submerged today. But it will rise again because it is — and always has been — the single most important cog in the nation's economy.

What does historical social geography have in common with open-source intelligence? Read on ...

George Friedman, on New Orleans' raison d'être

This year, the phrase that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been putting forward is transformational diplomacy, presumably as opposed to the foreign policy that fails to transform hostile, tyrannical regimes into democracies.

The meme (myth?) of transformation is alive and well:

"We need every nickel, we need every innovation, every good idea to strengthen and transform our military. A new idea overlooked might well be the next threat overlooked. If we do not fix what is broken and encourage what is good and what works, if we do not transform, our enemies surely will find new ways to attack us." -- Donald Rumsfeld

Need a primer? Try this:

Transformation is foremost a continuing process. It does not have an end point.

Transformation is meant to create or anticipate the future.

Transformation is meant to deal with the co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology. Change in any one of these areas necessitates change in all.

Transformation is meant to create new competitive areas and new competencies.

Transformation is meant to identify, leverage and even create new underlying principles for the way things are done.

Transformation is meant to identify and leverage new sources of power.

Clear now? (Did I mention leverage?)

Neoreals

A lot of really good pictures in this series from someone who stayed in the French Quarter through the disaster.

Kodakgallery.com: NOLA Slideshow