Earthshine

This morning, I saw the brightest earthshine on the Moon I think I ever have, so bright that the mare were visible in the shade. And further south, Orion shone bright. It was a beautiful fall morning in The Holler.

Paging Dr Freud

Dreams about flying are really about sex. "So what does it mean when you dream about sex?" asks the old chestnut. And I ask, "What does it mean when you dream about having hot-rolled bangs?"

Fenway South

Kerry and I attended the Boston Red Sox's shellacking of the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yard on Sunday afternoon with Maia, a fellow SAIS alum, and Grant. At least the tickets and the signs said Camden Yard; the crowd said Fenway Park. It was like going to a UT or A&M football game at Rice: you may not have to travel, but the crowd was wearing all the wrong colors and cheering for exactly the wrong things. We had a good time, tho. Both of us like going to a baseball game at least as much as watching a game. We got to talk a lot with Maia and Grant, and with 12 runs scored, there was plenty for the baseball non-afficianado to appreciate.

All-in

This afternoon, I calculated the all-in cost of some loans. "All-in" means that you take all the loan disbursements, all the fees, all the interest, all the repayments, and mash them all into a single number, to get a simple way to describe the cost of the debt. Well, that's what "all-in" means to a true financier. To me, it still means as much poker as finance, so I get this mental image: One of the bankers we work with, sometimes with a dealer's shade on, sometimes with the big shades and old-school track suit, sits at a conference table. With both arms, they sweep together all the project documents and lending covenants and lean slightly forward, pushing them to the center of the table. Then, without a word, they sit back, eyes never leaving the borrower, and wait.

Welcome to London Hold 'Em at the World Series of Banking.

"No matter how cynical you get, it's nearly impossible to keep up."

Thus spake Lily Tomlin.

So according to the President, emergency planning is now a "national security priority". Indeed. One might have thought that putting FEMA in the Department of Homeland Security would have been a sign that emergency planning was part of security. (Whether it makes sense to couple flood-fighting with anti-terrorism is another issue.)

I don't know, perhaps I'm disproving Ms Tomlin's claim and I've overshot the proper levels of cynicism, but I'm not impressed by the latest responses (re-responses, really) to the disaster in New Orleans. Don't get me wrong, the week following the storm was awful and a shame for the country. I'm certainly glad to see Michael Brown get canned from FEMA, a rare show of accountability (and more meaningful than the President's acceptance of responsibility). But now the race seems to be on to commit as much money as possible ($200 billion from government, and counting) to rebuilding, never mind where or why.

Poor action at multiple levels of government turned a natural disaster into a humanitarian one, and those mistakes should be addressed. But the natural disaster, the flooding of the city, wasn't caused by poor action; it was caused by having a city below sea level, guarded by levees. (Yes, I know that the budget for levee maintenance was cut, and that was poor action, too. But the strength of the levees relative to the depth of the city and the expected sizes of storms was a design decision that, one day, would have come up short.)

Among others, New orleans Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of the re-building after Katrina as a historic opportunity to reshape the city, to change some fundamental elements of the city's physical and social shape. Yet when Dennis Hastert suggested that every part of the low-lying city shouldn't be rebuilt just as it was, the howls of protest came from all corners. With the floodgates of money open (sorry) and the President now desperate to regain popularity, it seems less and less likely that there will be much thinking about how and why the rebuilding of New Orleans will proceed. And with all this energy devoted to building as fast as possible, I'm less hopeful that there will be real consideration of what went wrong in the emergency response or what the implications of the immediate and long-term responses are for other high-risk cities (eg, LA).

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that I underestimate the ability of the City of New Orleans to simultaneously move fast and move smart. I hope I underestimate the ability of bureaucrats in DC to act, not without compassion, but with a national perspective that looks beyond the next 12 months in Louisiana. For the good of the people who've lost so much and need their hope, I hope I'm too cynical.