5:08 P.M. - (AP): President Bush is warning Americans about the nation's gasoline supply, saying everyone must understand that Hurricane Katrina has had a significant effect.

about rebuilding (from WWL website). goes w/o saying: cereal.

An astonishing phenomenon -- the drowning of New Orleans -- leads to a mind-boggling question: How to rebuild a city? Some are already considering the challenge.

Officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimate it will be weeks before all the water that flowed into the city through breached levees can be pumped back out. After that, it will take several years -- and many billions of dollars -- to rebuild homes, offices, streets and highways.

It is the decisions people make as they go through that process that will determine what New Orleans eventually becomes, disaster recovery experts said. From the major political battles over how to spend public funds to each family's deliberation over whether to return to a city where there's not much to go back to, the choices people make in the weeks and months ahead will determine the Big Easy's fate.

"It will reveal a lot about the power structure of New Orleans," said Lawrence Vale, a professor of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Federal, state and city government will need to make big investments in infrastructure -- especially flood protection -- to entice businesses back to the city and reassure insurers that nothing like this is going to happen again any time soon. They will also have to convince people that the city is a safe place to live.

The owners of single-family homes are usually the first to rebuild after a hurricane, said Walter Peacock, director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. But because fewer than 50% of New Orleans homeowners have flood insurance, many of them probably won't have financial resources to rebuild at all.

You can have your playoff hopes. We have King Felix. Two years from now, we'll have King Felix AND playoff hopes.

From your mouth to the sportsgods' ears.

(God save the King and his labrum!)

Interesting on many counts...

In a high-tech hunt for hooligans, Dutch police sent 17,000 text messages Wednesday to mobile phones of fans who attended a soccer match between rival clubs Ajax and Feyenoord in Rotterdam last season.

...

The phone companies did not give individual names to police, and police sent a standard message asking people to come forward if they had information.

But some suspects apparently thought they had been fingered. Four suspects contacted police Wednesday, and a fifth turned himself in directly

Happy Birthday +1, le nubian.

I am sad, because I can no longer see the Brokeback Mountain trailer at Kat's link. The othe picture=pretty, though, so there's that. OK, trailer's got to be out there somewhere... off I go.

Oh, and cake freezes well, in my experience.

Okay, someone who got that trailer needs to reshare it. Hopefully while I'm still at my computer.

Hmmm... it's not there, Jen? try here: [link]

It's good. Lori's watching for a second time in 2 minutes.

Map of UNflooded parts of New Orleans in the Marigny. Basically the areas closest to the river.

Where JZ and I spent our honeymoon? Not flooded.

Oh, yay - that worked. Thanks!