November 2, 2012

1776 map of Manhattan vs evacuation zones...eerie

Manhattan’s Sandy Evacuation Zones Match Up With the Island’s Original Coastline

By Leslie Horn

Look at the http://updates.gizmodo.com/post/34784175229/manhattans-sandy-evacuation-zones-match-up-with
two maps above. On the left is Manhattan in 1776. On the right is the Hurricane Sandy evacuation map. If your apartment’s in Zone A in 2012, it would’ve been in the ocean in 1776, before the island was built up by landfill.

On the evac guide, red is Zone A, or the lowest lying area with the highest flood risk—in fact much of it is still under water. Greenwich Street, the eastern line of Zone A is on the edge of the Hudson River. ManhattanPast explains the correlation:

The eastern line of Zone A along the Hudson River runs along Greenwich Street, which was at the waterfront in 1776. The old slips on the East River extend inland to Queen Street, now Pearl Street, which is near where Zone A runs along the East River. Also notable on the 1776 map is Bayard’s Mount, the high land rising in the area marked “Marshy Ground” north and northwest of the old Collect Pond. The pond was drained in the early 19th Century and Bayard’s Mount was leveled to fill it in, but as can be seen in the evacuation plan, the pond and the marsh left their mark on modern Manhattan in the form of a hook-shaped low area delineated by the border of Zone B.

I guess once a flood zone, always a flood zone. [ManhattanPast]

h/t Adam Rogers, Tim DeChant

November 1, 2012

Republicans are adamant about their distrust of "the polls"..here's why

Their "on the ground", and "in the counting rooms" helpers MUST have "close" numbers in order to work their voo-doo magic with some degree of believability.

At the heart of it, they really don't care how it "looks", but they may just fear the tenacity of those "Chicago campaign masters" who might not just "move on" and send out the president for an early and polite concession speech (see Kerry '04)

This is so important to them that they (Karl Rove, for one) actually STARTED new polling operations this election, since the aggregated-averages style polling seems to be more trusted these days, so they had to have more right-skewed polls to drag down Obama's numbers....does anyone really think we actually NEEDED more poll takers?..or that THAT many people really like Romney enough to have his numbers gaining for no apparent reason?

I think they were hopeful that enough media types would buy into the Romney surge to help them at the end, but Sandy took away a lot of the air time they counted on, and it may be too late for them now.. (hoping it is)

November 1, 2012

How ironic it is that Chris Christie's Mom's name was Sandy

He called her Sandy yesterday in the press op.. Her given name was Sondra, but apparently was nicknamed Sandy..

There's a lot of detail in this article from a while back..she was a lifelong dem

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/christie_a_need_to_lead_honed.html