Day 241: Asian Food for an American

 

August 29th, 2011Half of the day was pretty lackluster in that I simply went to work in the morning and proceeded to Price Center afterwards. Geetha graciously bought me some lunch from Croutons, and after consuming it and spending roughly an hour at Price Center, I went back home, where I continued my everlasting quest to conquer the Facebook realm of games: Sims & Farmville were my primary targets. After a few tedious hours of harvesting crops, Tran Tran picked me up at La Regencia, drove us to TapEx, where we picked up a few more people to go get some delicious end of the summer dinner. We went to BBQ Chicken with Pauline, Tran, David, Grace, Kevin, Agnes, Chris, Seungeun, and a few other people. The food was pretty decent, although not enough for all of us to share a family meal, and the service was way too slow. I snapped a picture anyway for the day, as we proceeded afterwards to a Crepe/Shaved Ice place. Only Pauline, Tran, David, Grace, Kevin, and Seungeun and I would participate in getting dessert afterwards. We settled for shaved ice while all playing an intense long round of Jenga (me somehow surviving every time, and Tran nearly losing every round). When the night was over Seungeun attempted to buy GPS from a stranger at La Regencia and opted for him to drive her back to Costa Verde. Me and Pauline both thought it was extremely dangerous so we walked her back before I ultimately went home and called it a night.

Hurricane Katrina makes landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana, as a Category 4 hurricane on this day in 2005. Despite being only the third most powerful storm of the 2005 hurricane season, Katrina was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. After briefly coming ashore in southern Florida on August 25 as a Category 1 hurricane, Katrina gained strength before slamming into the Gulf Coast on August 29. In addition to bringing devastation to the New Orleans area, the hurricane caused damage along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, as well as other parts of Louisiana. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city on August 28, when Katrina briefly achieved Category 5 status and the National Weather Service predicted “devastating” damage to the area. But an estimated 150,000 people, who either did not want to or did not have the resources to leave, ignored the order and stayed behind. The storm brought sustained winds of 145 miles per hour, which cut power lines and destroyed homes, even turning cars into projectile missiles. Katrina caused record storm surges all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The surges overwhelmed the levees that protected New Orleans, located at six feet below sea level, from Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. Soon, 80 percent of the city was flooded up to the rooftops of many homes and small buildings. SAD STORY.

It’s hard to tell if the idea that Ron Paul cannot win in 2012 is more ignorant, in its complete lack of historical sophistication, or more arrogant, in its claim to certainty amid all the complexity of 300 million lives and the myriad issues that affect them. Sometimes, perhaps once in a few generations, a nation can undergo what a mathematician or physicist would call a “phase change.” The classic example of such a thing is a pile of sand. Every grain you add makes the pile slightly steeper and slightly higher without moving any of the other grains inside the pile, until eventually one grain is added that causes an avalanche of sand down the sides of the pile, moving thousand of grains and changing the shape of the pile. Such behavior can be exhibited by all complex systems, and a nation — it should be obvious — is much more complex than a pile of sand. RON PAUL WILL BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME. <24

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