Cyrus Farivar

I was catching up on some The Party Line reading this morning when I caught the links to two articles from the East Bay Express written in February 2005 about the possibility and aftermath of a massive quake in the Bay Area. Remember the FEMA 2001 report that said that the three most likely disasters are a terrorist attack on NYC (check), and a hurricane on New Orleans (check) — and a massive quake on SF? Uh oh. What trenching…

From Channing Joseph, a New Orleans native, and classmate of mine from the Class of 2005: I’m in New York, and most of my immediate family was able to evacuate before the storm hit. They are now scattered across the country but physically unharmed. Not all of our homes fared as well, though. The house I grew up in is beyond repair, and my uncle lost one of his dogs (whom he had left behind, thinking it would just be…

Oh yes, it is mine! And in case you were wondering how I’m going to fund this operation, I have two items for sale: Ericsson T610 cell phone ($50) iPod 10 GB 3G ($150) A few things that I noticed: iTunes recognizes that it’s black, but yet the registration page doesn’t know that they exist yet. Also, even though I bought the black one, they gave me white cables. Huh. As Paul Boutin reminded me, they’re supposed to come with…

Wired News: By Cyrus Farivar 02:00 AM Sep. 08, 2005 PT On the morning of Sept. 3, Rich Kyanka set up a PayPal account to raise money for Hurricane Katrina victims, with the intention of donating the money to the American Red Cross. Kyanka runs the popular Something Awful web community, which is based in New Orleans, and donations came in quickly. Within nine hours, Something Awful readers had donated $27,695.41. Kyanka donated an additional $3,000 from his own pocket.…

Macworld Podcast #8: ROKR phone, iPod nano By Cyrus Farivar The Macworld editors were out in force today at Apple’s press event, just a few blocks from our offices in San Francisco. True to form, Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn’t disappoint. Apple announced two new major products — the new iTunes phone, the ROKR, from Motorola; and the new iPod nano, packing up to 4GB of music into a tiny portable player. We’ve got nearly 25 minutes of audio, including…

Macworld Podcast #7: Tiger Secrets By Cyrus Farivar Tiger has been out for a few months now, and the Mac OS X update packs quite a punch. And while many of Tiger’s major new features have been extensively profiled, there’s still plenty to OS X 10.4 that remains hidden from all but the geekiest of Mac users. Our October 2005 cover story—arriving on a newsstand near you within the next week—exposes some of Tiger’s secrets, from new Widgets to slick…

AmericaBlog has two gems this morning: HED: Bush says today he will investigate himself That’s nice. Bush is going to investigate his OWN bungling of Hurricane Katrina. That’s nice. Will he be investigating why he remained on vacation until the 3d day AFTER the hurricane destroyed New Orleans? Will he be investigating why Condi Rice went on vacation to NYC for most of the week? Why Dick Cheney and Andy Card STAYED on vacation even after the hurricane struck? Why…

LA Times So many refugees now live in the Astrodome that the U.S. Postal Service has issued the 77320 ZIP Code to the former professional stadium. The move makes it easier for refugees to receive letters and care packages.

Dave Winer points to four times in the last four years that major media outlets have predicted a major disaster if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. Time Magazine, July 10, 2000: If a flood of Biblical proportions were to lay waste to New Orleans, Joe Suhayda has a good idea how it would happen. A Category 5 hurricane would come barreling out of the Gulf of Mexico. It would cause Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, to overflow, pouring…

The more I read about the fallout from Hurricane Katrina, the more riled up I get. I want to help, but there’s not much that I can do from the other side of the country. I’m sending $140 to relief efforts (the money that I will be paid from the piece that I filed yesterday to Wired News). Half of it is going to my journalistic bretheren down at The Sun Herald, where my Columbia classmates Michael Keller and Josh…