An update! How quaint.

Yes indeed, it is officially less than one month since I last posted, which makes this blog officially not dead. I've been on the road, spending most of my summer back in Goddess's Constitutional Monarchy on Earth (The Kingdom of God is an old and smelly neighborhood), also referred to as New York State. I'm currently staying in the best hotel yet on this trip for the lowest rate yet, which proves Disorder can be awesome.

It's nice here, 'cause I can go outside at high noon without needing to put on a protective radiation suit. Pretty much everything looks nicer here, what with the older buildings. Also, real estate is a fair bit cheaper (than Hawaii, I mean), and therefore I suspect that people here aren't as tempted to put value on the land they purchase as fast as possible, so they put a little more thought (and money) into making buildings not look like crap. The city of Honolulu, where real estate purchases will break the bank unless one can start making money fast, is a maze of concrete and steel, and the whole thing looks like the god of architecture inhaled burning tires and sneezed all over the island.

*Ahem* With that out of the way, I'd like to comment on... um...

One moment...

SiCKO! Yeah, there we go. I saw it a few weeks ago, and I rather liked it. Politics are an unavoidable part of the health care controversy in the U.S., but I was pleased that Micheal Moore avoided getting too political. It dealt mostly with the fact that America's system of "health insurance" as a business is completely contrary to the ideal of preventing misery and death on the part of people who go to see a doctor. As a capitalistic venture, health insurance companies have no interest in paying out for the medical needs of their valued customers, and since a national health plan would spell their financial death, they fight tooth and nail against any government measures in that direction.

It also doesn't help that so many Americans are complete nimrods when it comes to socialized medicine. Bring it up, and everyone will tell you that they've "heard about" the terrible health care system in Canada. Bullshit. They've never asked a Canadian, and never stop to consider the fact that there are other countries we might model our system after. Hell, our military has a sort of socialized health care system, and it works pretty damn well.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be a doctor, knowing that the person in your examining room needs medical help–which the hospital is perfectly capable of providing–but can't pay for it, and also knowing that if you treat that person without the approval of the insurance company you could lose your job for fulfilling the Hippocratic Oath. Like a proper, trust-your-life-with kind of doctor ought to. Yet doctors need to make a living (and get health insurance, ironically) just like the rest of us.

But all of this has been said before. Ignorance, wealthy lobbyists, and politics. Reason and compassion have no greater foes. America, this land of amber mountains and purple waves of grain, from sea to rising sea, seems to have gotten its head quite lost up its bum. Angry and cynical on the outside, weeping on the inside: that's me.

Maybe I'll move to Canada.

Finally, some honesty... sort of

This New York Times article describes the US Army Corps of Engineer's plan to survey the New Orleans area and determine which neighborhoods and blocks are at the greatest risk of flooding in the future. They've admitted that New Orleans is still at a big risk of flooding and could suffer substantial hurricane damage even after the levees have been rebuilt.

Basically, the Corps of Engineers is tactfully saying: "We're doing the best we can, so don't come bitching to us if Mother Nature decides she doesn't want people living on the Louisiana coast." I've always felt kind of sorry for those guys, seeing as they're charged with building coastal protection against things that no human being could ever hope to fully defend against.

I don't blame residents of New Orleans for wanting to rebuild and continue living there; it's human nature to resist displacement. Although I question the wisdom of a city planner who places stuff below sea level right next to an unprotected coast, that's up to the people who live there.

The people who really irritate me are real estate developers. I've got nothing against building homes, but it's downright dishonest to encourage people to live in an area that will most likely be destroyed within 50 years. I see it as long-term profiteering. People like the idea of ocean front property, since 99% of the time it's beautiful and a great place to live, but a developer only gets paid to build up an area once. If a single company develops areas all along the coast, then they're pretty much guaranteed a new contract for the same area every few years. And the government (i.e. taxpayers) have to pay to make the areas seem safe to the people who actually live and work in the developed areas.

Basically, development along the Gulf Coast is a drain on taxpayers and ultimately results in catastrophe every time a big hurricane shows up (which will be all the more frequent with global warming). Has anyone considered growing mangrove forests along the coasts, and putting limits on how close towns and cities can be built to the shore in certain areas? Our generation probably won't get much thanks for it, but the next major hurricane will kill fewer people if we do.

Hopefully this risk-evaluation project by the Corps of Engineers will at least sow the seeds of caution.

In other news: I'm flying back to New York for the summer! Five whole weeks in the state (yes, New York is also a state) I adore above all others. Once a Yankee, always a Yankee, and I don't even like baseball. I love it because I've lived there for almost my entire life, I have relatives and friends there, and also because of my totally overinflated opinion of the place and its greatness. Money, the biggest state park in the entire USA, one of the greatest cities of all time, money, bagels, real pizza, what's not to love?