Get this: New Orleans DirectNIC is still up! For now, at least, until the backup generator for their UPSes runs out of fuel.
Their front page weblog is still being updated. Go have a look.
"corbusier" has a line-by-line refutation of the dreck being peddled by, of all people, the French. But hey, their elderly last year at least didn't drown ;-)
Hero of the day: a whole bunch of school buses were standing unused (making you wonder about the competence of the city 'government'). One Jabbar Gibson 'borrowed' one of them and drove about 100 people off to safety. Jabbar of course means 'hero' in Arabic (as does its Hebrew cognate 'gibor')...
The images I am seeing of refugee reception in Texas are rather heartwarming, I must say. Of course, preparation counts for a lot in massive relief operations like this, and the Gulf Coast of Texas has historically offered plenty of motivation for disaster preparedness...
The jury is still out on whether this will be the greatest natural disaster in US history, or merely among the top three. The other two contenders are the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fires that nearly leveled San Francisco, and a 1900 storm in Galveston Bay that killed about [UPDATED: 8,000] people.