KATRINA & THE LOST CITY OF NEW ORLEANS by Rod Amis New Orleans is the Lost City of America. New Orleans has disappeared as surely as the lost city of Atlantis or the lost city of Pompeii, which former mayor Marc Morial and Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA.) have compared us to in their statements. That New Orleans, the New Orleans I mean to tell you about, that will never, ever, exist again--that city of love, lust, death and sex--will never exist again. A portion of the proceeds of this book will go to the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Fund. The cooks, servers and restaurant workers of New Orleans have provided fabulous times and memories for millions. Now we must remember them in their time of need. Buy the book or get a downloadable PDF Copy now! To order on Amazon.com, go here! A small, independent and outspoken magazine like this one can't reach you every week without the support and patronage of its readership. As our way of thanking those who have committed to keep your World's Magazine here on your desktop through their generous donations, we feature their names and cities here in our Roll of Honor. SUSTAINING PATRONS RON DIENER, Wendell, NC, USA DARHL STULTZ, Largo, FL, USA TIMOTHY MEADOWS, Anaheim, CA, USA CHERYL HILL NATION, West Fairlee, VT, USA DRAGAN & DRAGANA VICANOVIC, Belgrade, SERBIA LESZEK MICHAELWICZ, New Orleans, LA, USA MARIE SINSABAUGH, Granville, OH, USA TERRY TERRIAN, Sebastopol, CA, USA BECKY ALTEMUS, Houston, TX, USA Supporting Patrons BARBARA ATWELL, Berkeley, CA, USA MATT STOWELL, New Orleans, LA, USA LARS KEFFERSTAN, New York, NY, USA MEREDITH TUPPER, Tampa, FL, USA NGOZI RAZAK-SOYEBI, Jos, NIGERIA NICK ALLEN, New Orleans, LA, USA RIC WILLIAMS, Austin, TX, USA ROBERT PURVIS, Montclair, NJ, USA IAN CRYSTAL, Ph. D, New Orleans, LA, USA STEVE VIVIAN, New York, NY, USA STUART ALTMAN, ESQ., New York, NY, USA We encourage you to add your name to this Roll of Honor. GENERATOR 21 cannot continue and thrive without your support. Thanks in advance. To support G21, please send checks or money orders to: G21: The World's Magazine Attn: Rod Amis 1116 Crestline Road Wendell, NC 27591-9245 USA To donate by credit or debit card, please go to the Western Union website by following the highlighted link. Should you donate via Western Union, please notify us via e-mail. Please make all remittances payable to Rod Amis. Again, thanks. CURRENT MOON lunar phases G21 at FeedBurner

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SMOKE & MIRRORS: BASIC RULES OF LIFE - ROD AMIS's looks at the "cartoon controversey" prompted by a Danish newspaper and its destablizing influence in the Middle East, reports on this edition of the World's Magazine and shares more his "Basic Rules of Life."

SMOKE

"Where there's smoke, there's fire ..." Popular Adage.

4 February 2006: There is an apocryphal tale about the actor Anthony Quinn being approached about starring in a biopic about the prophet Mohammed. The thinking was, being an international star who had already hit it huge with "Zorba the Greek," he could make another smash - and bring in a large, untapped audience by portraying the prophet on the screen. That's how publicists, particularly American publicists who know bupkiss about other cultures, tend to think.

Quinn was pulled aside by a more cosmopolitan friend and told that only someone with a death-wish would do such a thing; rather than gaining fans, he was informed, he would be the object of extreme hatred for violating one of the core tenets of the Islamic faith, that the prophet must never be depicted or portrayed in any form. Quinn, being a wise man, took the advice of the latter individual.

European embassies are burning all over the Middle East as I write this. People are marching in the streets and angry. The controversy is over a series of cartoons. These cartoons and caricatures portray the prophet Mohamm ed and were published by a newspaper in Denmark. You can read a backgrounder on the cartoon series itself and view the offenders at the Stuff site in New Zealand.

For a series of articles about how this imbroglio has evolved and what the world is saying about it, I recommend this collection created by new crew member NATASHA TYNES and her husband over at her Blog.

You would think, or I would, that anyone who was alive during the controversy over and subsequent fatwah against Salman Rushdie because of The Satanic Verses years ago would have A Clue about how offensive publication of those cartoons would be.

I understand and, in some senses, sympathize with the basic argument posited by the editor of the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten that a certain level of self-censorship of an unhealthy kind obtains and should be resisted. But the "special treatment " argument seems a bit disingenuous to me. It smacks of the same position taken by neo-conservatives here in the United States when they say they are pushing back against attempts by gays (most often) and others to achieve "special rights." That's coded language for saying, "Have the same rights and privileges as we do and we ain't gonnah tolerate that, for sure."

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I've spent the last week reading from several of the Usual Suspects among my leftist colleagues about the non-news story of the Bush "State of the Union" address. Ho-hum. There were the usual complaints, counter-points, et cetera, that seem to obtain in that echo chamber. I commend Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow! for not wasting a lot of time on this claptrap and instead covering the second Al-Jazeera Forum on the media in Doha, Qatar. Been reading various blogs and comments from that event and have found it very encouraging. We need to know more about the other half of the world, in my view, before the conflagration gets worse.

ABOUT THIS ISSUE

You'll find this edition smaller than most recent ones because, now that I'm writing columns elsewhere for a living again AND I'm competing in the Contagious Festival over at the Huffington Post and need to keep that site fresh, too, I've decided to pace myself just a bit. Nonetheless, I've got some very exciting things in queue for you for the next few editions which lead up to our gala Tenth Anniversary Special Edition in March.

In this edition, I'm very excited to bring you an interview with Natalie Davis of ALL FACTS & OPINIONS, a Blog that I enjoy and hope you will, too.

Also, in this edition, we bring you the first two of the series of articles we mean to do on our 2006 Focus Issue, WATER. You'll find those in G21 AFRICA and RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT.

ON AN UNSERIOUS NOTE: You've probably read that the latest Internet craze is facts and stories about Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris is everywhere! So-o-o, in a blatant bit of pandering to fashion, on our HOUSE OF CARDS page this week, A.J. shares a slough of Chuck Norris humor with you. Enjoy!


MIRRORS

5 February 2006: As March rushes toward me, I've been planning and plotting and trying to figure out if I pull off making it to California for the Online Journalism Review conference and if I can ALSO swing dropping down into New Orleans for this year's Mardi Gras. Both things are priorities. Both have the benefit of being able to see old friends again, with the former providing the added benefit of seeing good, true friends who I haven't seen in about a decade, instead of simply a few months.

Making it to New Orleans, considering the "Katrina" book and getting a first-hand chance to see and report on that devastated city from today's perspective, would seem to be a natural thing for me to do. Who knows, I may decide to write a second book about the Crescent City when I get some spare time.

The thing is, adding a stop in New Orleans to my itinerary will certainly add to my expense. Besides adding a minimum of $120 to my airfare for this country-country, multi-stop hejira, there's also the costs of lodging and the over-indulgence that are part and parcel of Mardi Gras and the place. So I'm beginning to become a bit torn about stopping in New Orleans, at allä

Making it to California again, after all these years, on the other hand seems equally - if not more - important. The money saved by going straight there, the fact that there would be no hotel costs at either of my Cali stops, the opportunity to network with other independent Web publishers at the FREE conference and that I'd have less of an incentive to squander the hard-earned ducats I make writing, all recommend that journey no matter what.

I can't make final plans until I see how my paychecks roll in, anyway, so I suppose I shouldn't even be worrying myself over the final plan now.

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In the background of all this, the juggling game still continues. I managed to pound out and file three more freelance articles this week, a good thing. I launched my entry in the Huffington Post Contagious Festival, It's Only Smoke, which I hope you'll encourage ALL of your friends, colleagues and family to visit. It will be a frequently updated Blog that I hope you find thought provoking and informative. Please let me know. I'm lagging about mid-field right now, since I'm not very funny and don't have animations or stuff like that but I can always hope that the judges' or the People's Choice results will look favorably on me.

With any luck, I'll even get this edition of your World's Magazine out on schedule this week. That would mean that I'd gotten my prayer of getting all the agenda items for this period completed on time. I love retiring my lists.

I've decided to run short here this week, so I can keep my record of completing things intact for now. I hope you understandä

More of Rod's BASIC RULES OF LIFE

1. At the Commitment Point in any conversation, the salespeople tell us, the person who speaks first always loses.
   
2. People desperate the fill the silence are usually afraid of what they might otherwise hear and have little interest in learning anything that might alter their own beliefs.
   
3. There is a huge chasm between intentional provocation for its own sake and "brutal honesty."
   
4. When you find a good listener, beware. You are dealing with a person with a great deal of power and self-discipline.

Thanks for coming back this week. Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.

THINGS ROD WANTS THIS WEEK

1 - Finalize the itinerary for the proposed multi-city tour I mean to do at the end of February/beginning of March, insha'Allah.

2 - More book sales.

3 - A decent shot at the HuffPost Prize.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "

Love,
Rod

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ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at the (U.S.) Public Broadcasting System (PBS's) WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote on Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS Internet magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, r eaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

In 2002, he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. He did stints as the Resident Philosopher at three separate gin mills in that city in the French Quarter and the Marigny, earning his stripes during two successive Mardi Gras seasons. Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. When he's not busy here, he writes technology columns for IT Manager's Journal. Rust never sleeps.

Our Resident Philosopher has exchanged his legend mobility for a means of keeping your World's Magazine. Now he must become earnest about gaining a financial underpinning for this enterprise. (Read: Buy back his freedom and then go home.}.

In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.