It's great to hear from you, -t. And stop thinking about it as ranting or whining, Heather.

Damn, I lived in New Orleans for a grand total of 5 months, and I'm totally freaked out -- the both of you (and Dana) are handling this with more grace and less hysteria than I'd have thought possible.

-t, I'm glad you're safely with family. America West is hateful.

I knew they weren't whales! I swear! I just had them filed as "random other cool things" instead of specifically under "dolphins."

My classification system might need work, I admit.

Strega and Billytea, aren't dolphins, orcas and whales really all the same order? Cetaceans, I think?

-t!! Honey! and Heather, well and truly ranted.

-t, so glad to hear from you. I hope you have a safe day of driving! Heather, you can rant as much as you want here. That's what we are here for.

Killer whale: orcinus orca of the delphinidae (oceanic dolphins) family and the cetacean order.

While looking that up, I learnt that river dolphins have their own family (phocoenidae) and can be found in the Ganges, Amazon, and Orinoco.

-t, I'm so glad to see you! And I'm glad your folks were able to get through to help you out.

Heather, it's great that your office is able to help. I'm sorry going to Shreveport fell though, but at least you're in a position to do things closer to Dallas.

My office has a lot of medical folks in it (I work with one of the National Institutes of Health, albeit as a contractor) and we got a call for MDs and RNs. Apparently they're heading south to help out with the medical situation. I can't do much of anything with that personally, but it's great to see my coworkers going all "Hey, we can help!"

It's like they need to make it the victims' fault because then it couldn't possibly happen to them or something.

Yeah, something like this. The way I see it, some folks find the images of all that destruction upsetting. By blaming the victims those folks can turn the channel and forget about it. "What do I care about some idjit who's too dumb to get out of the way of a hurricane?" They can rest assured that cosmic justice was served, their upset is gone, and they can go back to bitching about taxes. And everyone's happy, except for the folks who were too poor to escape the forces of nature. And the folks who recognize that poverty can interfer with hoping in a Land Rover and road tripping to Oklahoma. And the folks who have, you know, active brains and souls.

Strega and Billytea, aren't dolphins, orcas and whales really all the same order? Cetaceans, I think?

Yes, but there are further divisions into different families. So a killer whale is a cetacean but not (strictly) a whale.

Are the Chinese River Dolphins separate from those ones?

Or do they not count becaue they are on the verge of extinction?

And I hear that they are pink

Also - - lovely to hear from you -t, I'm so glad that you and the critters are out of there. I hope that your dh gets to join you soon.

ita has earwormed wme with Enya, and she may need to be hurt for that.

Other than that I git nuthin.

It is a short day, I have a few tons of work and yet no motivation to do any of it. hrm.

Kat, that thing? get it worked out or do I need to make a call?

My office has a lot of medical folks in it (I work with one of the National Institutes of Health, albeit as a contractor) and we got a call for MDs and RNs. Apparently they're heading south to help out with the medical situation.

Go team your coworkers! The looniversity hospital is sending a contingent of docs and public health types as well -- one of my fencing buds, a doctor who spent a lot of the last year on leave founding a clinic in Indonesia post-tsunami, got the call in the middle of practice last night to go help organize the team.