I know some of Highends regular posters are from the Big Easy, so I hope all they are alright and hope to see them online sometime soon.

Why has this made it on to a 2d/3d website?<br /><br />Seems a bit strange... especially when much poorer countries have much larger catastrophes and they&#39;re never given a mention?<br /><br />s.

Just like when we posted relief effort links for the tsunami we are making the world aware of this human tragedy. 3d/2d whatever, we are all humans and these people need help. This is possibly one of the worst disasters in US history.<br /><br />This site, myself, and many of the users of this site are in the US. Many of OUR users from this region are probably directly affected as well. <br /><br />I personally give to many charities most of which have been for other county&#39;s disasters. In this case the US citizens in this region need our help. Whoever can help, should. <br /><br />Will

one other suggestion regarding giving - if , like a lot of people, money is a problem for you [can anyone ever give enough], the one thing everyone can do that would make a huge difference, especially in the immediate sense, would be to give blood. yes, the stuff from your arm. that is always necessary, especially in emergencies like this.<br /><br />this matters even more for those of you with types O, AB+ and AB- &gt;&gt; these are the rarest types.<br /><br />and for your trouble, the red cross gives you some cookies and some orange juice. so if you want to help save lives, here and overseas, give blood. so that&#39;s what i&#39;m doing next week.

I sent an email to Russel a few days ago. I hope that he is alright. I know he hails from there.<br /><br />Giving blood is a great idea. I think I too will donate next week.<br /><br />And to Silkster, that is a rotten thing to say. Where is your compassion for your fellow man?<br />

Needs no justification admin. The comment by silkster doesn&#39;t show any insight. It&#39;s like saying why are you helping your own family when people in the next town are hurting? Pretty dumb really.

I think your wrong, it does show insight and poses a reasonable question, plus there&#39;s something called free speech.<br /><br />But first let me say that I do have the deepest sympathies for those affected,<br />really I do, but as a Europeen looking in from the outside it seems wrong to try a compare this to the Asian Tsunami like some people are doing. The only link to the Christmas Tsunami that I can see is that it&#39;s victims were mainly the poor.<br /><br />My statements may have been insensitive but what about the tens even hundreds of thousands that have recently been dying in Niger through drought and famine, while floods in Bangladesh have been killing just as many.<br /><br />I was just trying to put some perspective on things.<br /><br />s.

Well, not to get into something lame here...but a few things..<br />this site is based in the USA, so theres some perspective for you as to why, perhaps, the person who owns the site would put something up, if you look around the web, almost every large web community is doing so.<br />... the majority of the cg industry is based in the USA, like it or not, and a chunk of our user base, regestered users, are from the areas directly affected.<br />Hell, I believe Digimation and Turbo Squid are based right downtown.<br />Siggraph has been held a few times in the New Orleans convention center.<br /><br />So as there is free speech, there is just as much free speech to say that you didn&#39;t have to post that comment and you don&#39;t have to contiune doing so. If you are not interested then don&#39;t press the line of text that would bring you into this thread. Its really that simple. On a side note, as an american I am disapointed in the responce for our own citizens in a time of crisis. I am sad to say that I think the rescue is motivated by how much money they have, and who these people are.<br /> I just heard they got the rich tourists stuck in the hotels out within a few days while people at that dome were left with no water or food. So not everyone was treated equally in this rescue and I think that will be apperent as the stories come out. <br />Amazes me that Tv crews got into the city while our national guard could not. Maybe from now on we should equipe the US army with Sat trucks and News vans since they don&#39;t seem to have any trouble getting to areas that ared deemed inaccessable by the powers that be. Anyway, I&#39;m disgusted.

this just actualy goes to show ho vurenable we are. The infra for thiskind of relieve operations should be put up asap, GLOBALY. I mean the relief shouldbe able to reach any part of the globe within hours. Not weeks or days, just goes to show that if even the rischest country in the world can get it working hoiw the hell do the rest of us have anything to hope for.<br /><br />But hey no one has the meoney to do this... RIGHT in the en not dointg things is what cost more then putting the maney away in firstplace. IUts thiskind of immideate look ahead for fae months thinking thats our biggets problem.<br /><br />THis si not going to be an isolated incident, it WILL happen again, somewhere else when we dont expect it.<br /><br />Ps. Yes the buzz does talk about anything and it should. being a community is jsut not about 3d stuff. Its about what we deem discussable, be it amarican tragedyt or whatever. But yeah the forum is a bit polarized.

I agree with you. As an american, you&#39;re just made to feel like this sort of thing can&#39;t happen here. Not like this anyway.<br /> Odviously we&#39;re all wrong, and I just hope someone up there learns from this, if not, we need new people who do.<br />Its not that we can&#39;t do it, it almost feels like we do as little as possible for our own people.<br />This does show how vanurable EVERYONE is. IF we&#39;re considered near the top with our ability for rescue, then this shows how far away we really are. As americans we need to start to realize we&#39;re closer to everyone else in this world than we seem to think we are.<br />A lot here seem to have an elist feeling when it comes to what happens else where, some say..oh they weren&#39;t prepared, those poeple don&#39;t know how to build...<br />well well well.. anyway, I&#39;m just bitter that I&#39;m seeing the things I&#39;m seeing a week later only 9 hours away from me. They seem to finnally be doing the things they should have been doing days past.

What up fellas. I&#39;m alive and well. I got out of dodge saturday evening. I was still close enough to the storm though to get hit with a nasty power outage. All of southeast louisiana is essentially a communications black hole unless you happen to have a functional land line. Mobile phones are utterly useless. <br /><br />I&#39;m currently in houston where my office moved me off to. Anyone with pictures of uptown/garden district if you&#39;d post them I&#39;d be greatly appreciative. I have no idea what my house looks like. I&#39;ve heard everything from 9 feet of water in it to everything is all good.<br /><br />It&#39;s good to see an outpouring of help though. New Orleans has a lot of good things about it. There&#39;s a lot of people who&#39;ve lost everything and will need help getting back on their feet.

Awsome Russ, glad to hear you hit the road and that your company is still alive. Some other folks I know don&#39;t seem to be as lucky.

&quot; , plus there&#39;s something called free speech.&quot;<br /><br /> Well apparently your sense of &quot;free speech&quot; does not extend to the *admin* who saw fit to create this thread on what is essentially a website he played a central role in creating , maintianing, and evolving . So please don&#39;t even presume to play the &quot;free speech&quot; card in the way you just did. It&#39;s quite the sterile argument to pipe up.<br /><br />&quot;But first let me say that I do have the deepest sympathies for those affected,<br />really I do, but as a Europeen looking in from the outside it seems wrong to try a compare this to the Asian Tsunami like some people are doing. The only link to the Christmas Tsunami that I can see is that it&#39;s victims were mainly the poor.&quot;<br /><br /> Well bravo for your professed empathathic understanding , but as a *European* you&#39;d have to<br />make that further leap of understanding known as the &quot;walk a mile in someone elses shoes&quot;<br />and imagine if/when a day comes when someplace European , like Venice , finally sinks.<br />And you missed the most *obvious* parallel between Katrinna &amp; the Asian Tsunami ; the fact that you&#39;re ,as you say , from the safe *outside* perspective , European-wise.<br /> One major difference between the 2 events was that the world response to help in the Tsunami emergency was far more timely than the New Orleans response. That&#39;s this present administration&#39;s fault and there&#39;s time enough for when they will answer for it and a host of other occasions of gross mismanagement.<br /><br />&quot; ...I was just trying to put some perspective on things.&quot;<br /><br /> Being an avid follower of world events on practically a daily basis ( recent floods in Switzerland , USGS *global* earthquake reports , Sudan , shall I go on? ) I find that the only *value added* perspective you&#39;ve managed to offer is the self-same *it didn&#39;t happen in my backyard* detachment that allows you the luxury of pointing the finger from one&#39;s armchair at us for<br />sharing a moment&#39;s solidarity in a nationally felt disaster ; the drowning of a major city.<br /><br />So forgive us for expressing solidarity for our own as regular citizens.<br />Sorry it ain&#39;t quite ideologically correct enough for the European perspective.<br /><br />Free speech cuts both ways , now don&#39;t it