Archive for June, 2008
WordCamp Portland
Save the date; WordCamp Portland will be held on September 27th, 2008 at CubeSpace.
WordCamp is a gathering of WordPress folks. Whether you consider yourself an enthusiast, developer, designer, marketer, or writer, WordCamp is for you. The event organizers are currently working out the details of the conference format and schedule; stay tuned to the WordCamp Portland site for more information.
I hope to attend the Portland, Oregon WordCamp. I will proudly post at WordCamp Portland on my WordPress-powered blog while wearing my WordPress t-shirt whilst drinking java out of my WordPress mug 
via Silicon Florist
Flooding + Southeast Iowa Satellite Photos
Satellite photographs of flooding in Southeast Iowa from the Des Moines Register show the differences in river water levels from 2007 to 2008. Specific satellite imagery is available on the DMR site for Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.
via the Des Moines Register
Flooding + Iowa + Potential Cause
Iowa Flooding Could Be An Act of Man, Experts Say
Kamyar Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa, suspects that this natural disaster wasn’t really all that natural. He points out that the heavy rains fell on a landscape radically reengineered by humans. Plowed fields have replaced tallgrass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood plains have been filled and developed.
“We’ve done numerous things to the landscape that took away these water-absorbing functions,” he said. “Agriculture must respect the limits of nature.”
[S]ome Iowans who study the environment suspect that changes in the land, both recently and over the past century or so, have made Iowa’s terrain not only highly profitable but also highly vulnerable to flooding.
via the Washington Post
Bloglines is offline
It is moments like this when I contemplate using an RSS client instead of a web-based service like Bloglines. “Bloglines is down temporarily. We will be back shortly.” They have been offline for quite a while now. Bloglines is not yet at the same level of unavailability as Twitter, but my RSS feeds are far more important to me than my tweets. Bloglines’ “Twister on drugs” background image is fun to look at, but only for a couple reloads.
Iowa flood roundup
- Iowa Hydrologic Predictions update
- Cleanup begins at Mother Mosque of America
- Rents rising in Cedar Rapids
- Race, Disaster and Comparative Suffering
- University of Iowa flood update
- Cedar Falls, Iowa + flooding
- Columbus Junction, IA flooding photos
- Recovery efforts in Columbus Junction
- Iowa as “God’s country”
- Oldest U.S. Mosque is in Iowa
- Flooding in Burlington, Iowa
- Police shoot hogs to save levees
- Flooding + Road Damage in Iowa
- Comparing Iowa to New Orleans
- Columbus Junction – flood recovery
- Aerial photos of Iowa flooding
- Iowa Road Closures
- Iowa floods
- Flooding + University of Iowa
- Photos + Flooding + Columbus Junction
- Columbus Junction flooding news
Iowa Hydrologic Predictions update
The Advanced Hydrologic Predictions Service is terrific source for hydrologic information. Water levels in several Southeast Iowa communities are still higher than flood stage, but the floodwaters are receding.
Hydrologic prediction data from the Iowa River gauge at Columbus Junction, Iowa. The river waters are predicted to be above flood stage until June 26th.
Hydrologic prediction data for Iowa City, Muscatine, Wapello, Ottumwa and Burlington after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »
Cleanup begins at Mother Mosque of America
Cleanup up from flood damage at the Cedar Rapids Mother Mosque from Richard Pratt.
Volunteer crews lent a hand Saturday, June 21, 2008, to clean up flood damage at the Mother Mosque of America in northwest Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Numerous books and artifacts at the mosque were destroyed when the Cedar River left its banks earlier this month. The Cedar Rapids center is the oldest mosque in the United States.
Rents rising in Cedar Rapids
Some owners of rental properties in Cedar Rapids, Iowa are citing supply and demand as a rationale for raising rental prices. Disgusting. The soul of capitalism is revealed within the midst of a tragic situation. Cedar Rapids, Iowa flood survivors’ need for housing is turned into the “market’s demand”. Heinous.
A post-flood housing shortage in Cedar Rapids is driving up rent for everyone as displaced families look for places to live.
Some 3,900 homes in town were damaged by the flood. Many continue to be uninhabitable. In Iowa City and Coralville, about 800 homes were evacuated.
Josh Pierce and his wife and three children had been looking for a house to rent for about a month. They’ve outgrown their small apartment in northeast Cedar Rapids, where they’ve lived for about a year.
A home at 938 38th St. SE caught their eye and on June 9, the Monday before the flood, it was listed at $645 per month by Equity Realtors, a company owned by Bob Miell.
A week later, the same house was listed online at $845 per month. Pierce called Miell’s office.
“‘Supply and demand’ — that’s all they said,” Pierce said.
Miell did not respond to requests for an interview.
Race, Disaster and Comparative Suffering
Tim Wise has written a new essay that critiques the racist rhetoric that’s being furiously spread around the interwebs in the wake of flooding in Iowa – “Adding Insult to Injury: Race, Disaster and the Calculus of Comparative Suffering.” It’s a deeper analysis that is very similar in context to my post on “Comparing Iowa to New Orleans.”
Disasters bring out the best and worst in people.
On the one hand, millions of folks respond to the suffering of their fellow human beings with compassion, concern, and even significant financial assistance when needed. Be it a hurricane, an earthquake, tornadoes or the recent massive flooding in the Midwestern United States, the hearts, minds, and often wallets of large numbers of the nation’s people are with those in need.
And on the other hand, there’s Rush Limbaugh, who has decided to use the flooding in Iowa not to demonstrate compassion, but as an opportunity to make derogatory statements about poor black folks: specifically those caught by the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005.
This week, as folks in Iowa, Indiana and parts of Illinois have watched flood waters rise ever higher, Limbaugh took to the air to contrast these supposedly good and decent people who have joined forces to help each other, with the presumably evil, lazy and violent folks of New Orleans, who we are told, did nothing but foment criminality and wait for the government to save them during flooding there in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
University of Iowa flood update
The Iowa Memorial Union on the campus of the University of Iowa is currently closed due to extensive flood damage. Floodwaters were 5 feet deep in the IMU. The university is pumping air into the building to help dry it out.
From: University of Iowa Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Lola Lopes -
Although the worst part of the flood seems to be abating we are still in crisis mode regarding utilities (steam, chilled water, and electricity). This means that even though we are resuming classes, research, and other university operations on Monday, this is not a return to normal. We have beaten back a major catastrophe and should be proud of ourselves, but it will be many, many months before we return to full functioning. Until then, we need to continue to work as a team and always keep the functioning of the entire enterprise in mind.
From a utility point of view, the east and west sides of the campus are no longer connected. This means that conditions are different on the east and west sides of the river.
via the UI Flood blog.
