Thankfully…..no major problems here, a little wind, some limbs down, and sadly no rain. Sadder for some here, Ike’s arrival on the weekend meant no time off work, or as one colleague put it, no ‘hurrication’ this time, even if UT canceled the football game but allowed classes to go on. The media seemed to outdo themselves to show they could have people on the ground in Galveston and Houston so you could view the event like a live sports contest, man v. nature, complete with live scores on wind speed, wave height and power outs. Galveston and Houston both took a battering and the damage estimates, as much as one can believe them, speak of $100bn, and we’re told to anticipate a jump in gas prices immediately. Colleagues in other countries emailed me regularly to say they were watching the news and following the trackers from as far away as Switzerland and Canada, global village that it is we all live in now. For all the coverage, it is proving difficult to know how many people died or were injured, but then, how many of you know the cost in lives of Katrina? All that info and sometimes so little data…….
V.M Daniel Regents Professor of Information