Emergency housing

[Spencer W Hunter]

   RoConroy at aol.com [4]RoConroy at aol.com
   Fri Oct 14 19:19:08 PDT 2005
writes:
[...]
>On the news tonight I saw this lady with crocodile tears crying about her
>house being washed away in New Orleans.  Give me a break, if you build
>your house 20 feet below the level of the adjacent lake, and have a
>notorious corrupt local government having input about the care of your
>levies, you might come up to the plate, and admit that a day of reckoning
>might be sometime in your future.  And by the way, that crocidile lady
>was driving a brand new Cadilac, but at the same time, asking for the
>government to give her a new home, and by the way, she wanted the new
>home to be in New Orleans. Hopefully no one is stupid enough to give out
>any more building permits on ground below the level of the lake.

>If you want to be charitable, give to those children in Pakistan, who
>didn't make unwise choices, and who didn't have 3 days notice of disaster
>coming, and have lost everything, and have winter a week away.

>Bob

I wasn't going to respond to this--one of the self-disciplines Bucky had
that I don't was to steer clear of political issues for the most part--but
I have to say that no one lives anywhere in the world that is free of
risk.  Surely the parents of "those children of Pakistan" must have known
they were living in a major earthquake zone.  Where I am, we're going to
make the citizens of New Orleans look very wise indeed when the water
supply goes... and I'm not sure I want to read your screed about my
"crocodile tears" when it happens, either.  As for the woman in New
Orleans, I hope she does get her home back, and that it's an autonomous
flood-earthquake-hurricane-resistant geodesic dwelling on a pontoon
foundation with anchor line-feeds.

Gandhi once said that an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind,
and I think by analogy that the I-can-fend-for-myself-so-screw-you
attitude will leave us all ultra-dependent... and you are *not* going to
like the entities you'll have to rely on.

Spencer Hunter, Tucson, AZ
gopher://www.u.arizona.edu:80/hGET%20/%7Eshunter