Rita is Speaking to Us

Is there some sort of link between the evacuees from Houston, all fleeing town in their truck or SUV, and the imminent arrival of Rita? See NY Times photo. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/national/22cnd-storm.html?hp.

My NY Times Reading will Slow Down Now

The New York Times has launched "TimesSelect" which is a $50/year service to get parts of what they use to publish on the web for free. If you are a daily subscriber to the paper, you get "TimesSelect" for free.

When I lived in the USA, I was a daily subscriber to The New York Times. I read it every day. When I moved overseas for the first time in the 1980's I missed the paper – especially the Sunday edition – very much. I would pay extortionate costs from London newsagents, or at one point even had the Sunday paper flown over from the USA. I learned to wean myself by reading the International Herald Tribune. The IHT was jointly owned by The Washington Post and would tend to have the best of both papers plus its own original content which would reach the New York Times days or weeks later. During the late 1990's the web version of The New York Times arrived, again being in London, I became a regular reader. In recent years I even started reading (and paying for) a web subscription to The Wall Street Journal.

I'm still in the UK, but there is now so much to read elsewhere on the Internet. Blogs are often more intersting and informative. My recent discovery of the joy of listening to Podcasts while commuting to my centre-city job has caused me to have less time available for the New York Times on the Web. "TimesSelect" will push me away further.

I'm not angry they are charging for what as previously free. Some may be angry. However, I understand that it's inevitable and I support the idea of a free economy. It's just that I won't be buying.

New Orleans Disaster Forseen by Many

Nicholas von Hoffman summarises the article in the Oct 2004 issue of "National Geographic Magazine" which outlines in great detail a "story" of what would happen for real in 2005.

His final comment is:

Never has an unpredictable event been so widely predicted; never has an unforeseen catastrophe been so clearly seen; never has an unanticipatable disaster been so often anticipated.