Saturday, August 29, 2015

Today in American History: Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans 08/29/2005

 Today in American History, August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina officially makes landfall in New Orleans.  This is the 10th Anniversary.  What would follow over the next few days would go down in history as one of the worst natural disasters and one of the most questioned series of events in American history.  Did the government react appropriately?  Was FEMA prepared for a disaster of this magnitude?  Questions such of these will be asked and ruminated over for a very long time.
Hurricane Katrina just before landfall in New Orleans
Katrina originated over the Bahamas on August 23rd and quickly intensified from a tropical depression into a tropical storm.  It made landfall in the east coast of Florida by August 25th and tore a gash into the state, moving quickily into the Gulf of Mexico by August 26th and towards its fate in New Orleans.  Over the next two days, what had been a category 3 hurricane intensified to a category 5 hurricane over the Gulf.  Although it seems ironic to say it, thankfully, Hurricane Katrina weakened back to a category 3 hurricane before it made landfall -- striking the city of New Orleans with the full force of its power on at 7:10am on August 29th, 2005.

Louisiana's hurricane evacuation plan calls for local governments in areas along and near the coast to evacuate in three phases, starting with the immediate coat 50 hours before the start of a tropical storm and then moving inland in 10 hour increments.  When Katrina started making its way across Florida, nothing happened in New Orleans.  Many people criticize the local authorities because the private care facilities relied on private companies to move people -- as did many other areas in the city.  And because the evacuation wasn't signaled on this schedule, it was too late by the time heavy winds and rain hit the city.  As early as August 26th, the city was considering the potential for a major event to hit the city -- but they waited.  It was not until 10AM on August 28th, less than 24 hours before Katrina would hit the city with its full force, did New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin order an evacuation of the city's almost 500,000 people.  When you consider the surrounding area of New Orleans, that number of people to be
Superdome Refuge Center
evacuated in less than 24 hours climbs to 1.3 million.  An impossible task.  The city recognized that there simply was no practical way to evacuate everyone, so in an effort to combat their error a number of refuge sites were set up within the city.  As great as this "best effort" was, the city made little to no effort to help people get to these refugee sites.  As an example, the Superdome is estimated to have sheltered 26,000 people, giving them food and water at the same time.  The Superdome seating capacity in 2005 was just under 70,000 people for a football game.  And since there was no power or water pressure during the storm, there were no working bathroom facilities.  It is also worth mentioning that the Superdome itself sustained substantial damage from Katrina, with sections of the roof pulling off and exposing the field area to the elements -- and 10% of the roof structure was considered unstable.


By 7:40am the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans had every window blown out.  The major issue in New Orleans stemmed from the fact that the city actually sits below sea level.  The federal government had constructed a series of levees that were built to protect the city from storms just like Katrina.  These were built to move water quickly around the city to locations in the surrounding wetlands to absorb water, and reduce the impact of flooding.  However, because of the decimation of the wetlands surrounding New Orleans by the federal government, and the rerouting of the levee system -- the system was woefully inadequate for a storm of this magnitude.  Katrina's storm surge cause 53 levees to breach in the system surrounding New Orleans.  And ultimately, the 40 Arpent Canal
40 Arpent Canal in 2010
levee which led to the flooding in the Saint Bernard Parish and swept through some of the worst devastation in New Orleans.  By the time all was said and done, nearly every levee in the metro New Orleans area was either breached or ultimately failed.  One of the worst was the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet levee system which breached in 20 different places, allowing the water to flow directly from the gulf into the city.  Most of the major roads were quickly not navigable, and seriously damaged including portions of the I-10 heading east completely collapsing.  Within hours only the westbound Crescent City Connection and Huey P Long Bridge were the only ways in and out of New Orleans.  


Deaths began to be reported before landfall, just after midnight on August 28th.  Nursing home patients died during transit in an attempted evacuation to Baton Rouge, most likely from dehydration.  While hundred thousands of others struggled to find safe haven or evacuate, there were large reports of death at the Superdome.  However, officially only six people died at the Superdome -- one of which was confirmed as a drug overdose and another a suicide.  Four other deaths were reported at the Convention Center -- one of which was a homicide.  Among those who are not counted were prisoners in the prison.  There is compelling evidence that prisoners were simply abandoned in their cells as guards ran for safety.  Almost one thousand prisoners are listed as "unaccounted for" -- but not listed as dead.  None of what I've detailed speaks to those who never got out of their homes.  Those who were left to die by the local governments because of their bad decisions, and poor planning.  It is estimated that up to 40% of dog owners refused to leave their canine companions behind when the city said that their pets could not
I don't think I need to caption this...
be evacuated.  However, many more dogs were left by their owners.  It is estimated that thousands of dogs were abandoned and ultimately died.  By 2010, the city was overrun with wild dogs because of the storm.  Here is a great article by Modern Dog Magazine about the Dogs of Katrina.  I could go on about the misery of the residents of the area... this part of the story never ends.  But search the web for it, many others have done a much better job then i could ever do on the subject.


The failure of the New Orleans levee system resulted in over 80% of the land area in the New Orleans Metropolitan area being under water.  Hurricane Katrina left 1,245 people officially dead (not accounting for many others who likely died and were unknown), making it the deadliest hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane.  Katrina left an estimated $108 billion dollars in damage, roughly four times that of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.  It is considered the worst civil engineering disaster in American history and prompted a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who designed, built and maintained the system.  The storm that formed on August 23rd, 2005 and ultimately dissipated on August 31st -- lasted 8 days in real time, but impacted the lives of millions forever.

The Devastation of Katrina...

A look at the flooding...
Below this text are links to some sources on Katrina... I highly recommend these three to learn more about the storm, its impact on New Orleans (and Mississippi and Florida) and Dark Water Rising is a compelling documentary on the dogs of Katrina.



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Bruce holds a degree in Computer Science from Temple University, a Graduate Certificate in Biblical History from Liberty University and is working towards a Masters Degree in American History at American Public University.  He has worked in educational and technology for over 18 years, specializes in building infrastructures for schools that work to support the mission of technology in education in the classroom.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  

Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel -- with a new book, Learn the Basics: Digital Forensics, due soon. 

Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!
 

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

History 101: A Brief History of The Crusades of the Holy Roman Empire



In 1095 Pope Urban called upon Christians to take up arms against the invading Turkish Muslims to free the lands that were overtaken, specifically Jerusalem.  His call was seen as a call to faith, a call to duty and a call to serve Jesus by the people.  People by the thousands picked up the banner of the Roman Catholic Church and rode off to the Holy Land which held no promise of return for them, but they did so to preserve their faith and the safety of Christians throughout the land.  One of the motivating factors behind Pope Urban’s call to service was that after the Turkish invasion force moved through Jerusalem, Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos asked for a show of force in order to protect his lands from further incursion by the Muslims.  This can been be seen as the pope reaching out to increase the power of the Church and force the re-unification of the eastern and western factions of the Catholic Church.  By coming to the aid of the Byzantines the pope could be seen as the powerful one who came and bailed out the less powerful side of the Church.  If this angle had worked out, Pope Urban II would have had the momentum to fold the eastern and western factions back together into one church that spanned the majority of the European continent, and history would have seen him as the great uniter.  As history records it, Pope Urban II was the one who’s call to action started what was (at least) a two hundred year war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Christians and Christians alike.  And each successive Crusade after the First Crusade became less about protecting Christianity and more about holding land and furthering power.

While the world may not know the name of the pope who started the Crusades, they certainly know that the Crusades happened.  What many in the world remain unaware of is the scandal that some say the Crusades served to cover up.  That scandal is the Investiture Controversy.  The Investiture Controversy was a major dispute between the church and the kingdoms about the role that the local authorities had in the appointment of bishops and abbots within the local churches.  In 1073, Pope Gregory VIII declared that that the church itself would be responsible for appointing and confirming those into the roles of bishop and abbot.  Before this, the local church lay people had the power to appoint local church leadership.  The kingdoms did not like this power grab by the pope and resisted it at every turn.  The resistance stemmed from the idea that those who were able to appoint church leaders would control those leaders.  And if you had some degree of control over the church leaders, you would have their favor.  Over the next two decades this fissure between church and state continued to grow until Pope Urban II felt that it had to be pushed aside and made less important.  Many scholars surmise that Pope Urban II’s rush to the First Crusade was partially to draw attention away from the Investiture Controversy.  However, it wasn’t until the Concordat of Worms in 1112 that this issue was laid to rest.  It was decided that all bishops would still be approved by the church, however the local authorities could select the candidates.


The Second Crusade was launched by Pope Eugene III and was lead by the nobility of Europe.  Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany took up the cause and marched to reclaim County of Edessa from the Zengi.  After the first crusade, four crusader states had been established: Kingdom of Jerusalem, Antioch, County of Edessa and later the County of Tripoli.  The County of Edessa had been the northern most and least populated of them but represented a spread and power base for the church.  When Edessa fell, Pope Eugene responded to take the crusade state back because he did not want to lost any territory.  This crusade seemed to lack any real spiritual backbone and did not accomplish anything that moved in the direction of a Christ-centered goal.


The Third Crusade, also known as the King’s Crusade, was a direct response to Saladin’s rise in power.  The Muslims had been in-fighting for a long time, but Saladin came along and united them into a single power that began taking back the land lost to the Christians in the First Crusade.  After the Second Crusade failed to displace the Zengi, they continued to control the area of Syria and their forces were eventually assumed by the armies of Saladin.  In 1187, Saladin marched the same armies of the Zengi into Jerusalem and continued to take Christian held cities and states throughout the area.  These incursions were said to have caused Pope Urban III to have a heart attack and subsequently die.  The next pope, Pope Gregory VIII then called for a Third Crusade in 1187.  This Third Crusade would be lead by King Richard I of England, King Phillp II of France and Emperor Barbarossa of Germany.  While the armies looked strong at first, they were immediately beset with problems and political strife that ended up with only King Richard’s forces actually reaching the Holy Land to do any real fighting.  What is most interesting about the Third Crusade is that most scholars see it as successful because the Crusaders drove the Muslims from Acre and Jaffe, and Saladin failed to score a decisive win against King Richard, but at the end of it all Jerusalem remained under Saladin’s control with only a treaty that allowed Christians safe transit to Jerusalem.





When Pope Innocent III assumed papal power in 1198 he made it clear that he wasn’t pleased with the treaty that ended the Third Crusade when he launched the Fourth Crusade with its stated goal of recapturing the city of Jerusalem.  However, the execution instead was to invade and take the city of Constantinople, which is seen as the last great act of the Great Schism in the Catholic Church.  The Crusaders established the Latin Empire within the Byzantine states at that time.  This only lasted from 1204-1261 because the disparate sections of the Byzantine empire would not be ruled over and fought back eventually destabilizing the Latin Empire and eventually liberated their capital city.  The ramifications of this reverberated through Europe for some time.   For centuries experts have debated what the goal of the Fourth Crusade actually was.  Was it to conquer Constantinople?  Or was it to take back Jerusalem and things just shifted?  Constantinople was seen as a haven for Christians, and defended Christianity throughout the Crusades.  By sacking the city the Crusaders sent a message that they really weren’t out to defend Christianity and the cause of Christ, but instead to wield power and extend their reach.   It was nothing more than a stab in the back that has been felt for centuries and has stood as a bigger division within the Catholic church than the Great Schism itself.


Summing up the Crusades is a difficult task.  So many actions were taken, battles were fought and lives were lost that the root causes and goals become less clear as time goes on.  While the Catholic Church stated reasons and goals that were pure and sought to defend Christianity at its roots, there is still question about how much of it was true and how much was a power play.  However, as we continued to look over the reasons and actions that lead to the other major Crusades it become more and more clear that they became about no more than who controlled what land, when and how in order to facilitate trade and – in the end – create more wealth through real estate.  And in the end, the sacking of Constantinople can’t be seen as anything more than a back-handed action that sought to deal a death blow to the western church, but instead revealed the eastern church for what it truly was: an organization that had started out to spread the word of Christ, but got lost along the way and instead of using its power to spread the good news, they used it to control lands and people in the guise of evangelizing to the world.





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Bruce holds a degree in Computer Science from Temple University, a Graduate Certificate in Biblical History from Liberty University and is working towards a Masters Degree in American History at American Public University.  He has worked in educational and technology for over 18 years, specializes in building infrastructures for schools that work to support the mission of technology in education in the classroom.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  

Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel -- with a new book, Learn the Basics: Digital Forensics, due soon. 

Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!




Sunday, August 16, 2015

The Benefits of Installing a Good Parental Control Software

They say parenting adolescents is mostly about retaining a tenuous balance between being aware of what your kid is up to and giving him or her a fair amount of privacy and independence. Since the Internet age is very much here, conducting a discreet form of surveillance on your kid's activities should be much easier.


However, as the Internet evolved to become increasingly complex and all-encompassing, so did its user's abilities to conceal a great deal of their activities online. Kids and teenagers have become particularly adept at getting around websites with restricted content while hiding the said activity from their parents in the process.

So, with all the assorted toxic content floating around on the Internet just waiting for kids to seek them out or stumble upon them, how can a parent protect his or her children when they won't always be around (or when kids choose to hide their online activities)? 


The answer possibly lies in the installation of a good parental control software.  One type of parental control software is known as keylogger. One of the benefits of such software is that it provides concerned parents is that it can be installed remotely and that it is generally undetectable once in place. The kid would know that such a software is in place, of course, but they would not know when it is functioning. (This then serves as an additional deterrent against visiting websites with inappropriate content or engaging in cyber bullying.)


Some of the other crucial benefits that a good keylogger can provide also include the following:

  1. Keystroke logging. Some of the best keylogger software out there can even track your child's keystrokes and show you the sort of keywords or text that commonly pop up when your kid uses the Internet. If some of their keyword searches also turn out to be particularly suspicious, the program can track that too and give you a heads-up.
  2. Screenshots. A lot of busy parents often don't have the time to check in with the program as much as they would like. Fortunately, they can set their parental control program of choice to take and keep screenshots of their child's online activity so that they can peruse them when they are ready.
  3. Some keyloggers also automatically generate reports so that parents can get timely updates on their child's online activities even when they are away from home for long periods of time.
  4. Recording of chat transcripts or emails. Perhaps the scariest thing about cyber bullying is that it often goes undetected until it's too late. This is because a great deal of the bullying occurs behind computer screens, where insults are lobbied behind the safety that distance and anonymous usernames provide. Parental control programs can help nip things in the bud since it picks up on suspicious chat transcripts or email exchanges and keeps a record of them. That way, it can be easier for a parent to notice any disturbing patterns of behavior being made towards their kids. Another advantage is that the records can also stand as proof in case the parent might need to take further action against the bully.

    See related posts:  Stop!T! - Stop Cyber Bullying in its Tracks at Your School

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Bruce holds a degree in Computer Science from Temple University, a Graduate Certificate in Biblical History from Liberty University and is working towards a Masters Degree in American History at American Public University.  He has worked in educational and technology for over 18 years, specializes in building infrastructures for schools that work to support the mission of technology in education in the classroom.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  

Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel -- with a new book, Learn the Basics: Digital Forensics, due soon. 

Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!