Occasionally, when it comes to playing the Six Degrees game, I'll pull out a fun trivia tidbit. I'm only three degrees away from Mobutu Sese Seko, the former dictator of Zaire. Via, of course, Pat Robertson.

It's good for a chuckle -- albeit a nervous one -- but it's true. Many many moons ago (think the 80s), I published a zine. I did this before I'd ever heard of a zine, and thought it was just called a publication or perhaps a news magazine. It involved lots of work with paste-up boards and an old daisy-wheel printer, scamming interviews with interesting people, and convincing publishers to send me 'review copies' of books. What a life!

Eventually, the 'Awww, kid publishes magazine! How cute!' angle got some publicity and there were about 300 or so subscribers around the country. At its peak, I was asked to co-host an episode of The 700 Club, a well-known Christian news/talk show hosted by now-infamous Christian televangelist and political personality Pat Robertson. Pat wasn't there that day (alas -- I'd only be TWO degrees from Mr. Seko) but the results are still... curious.

Now, thanks to the wonder of Google Video, you can witness it, too. Hilights include me with a scarily fluffy mullet, news clips about Michael Gorbachev's new vice president, the awkward interrogation of a black child on live television, and The World's Most Morbid Interview Ever.

Bonus! For the truly curious, my childhood encounter with bodybuilder Jake Steinfield. Don't Quit!

EDIT: Where Are They Now links for Rachel Saunders, Gabrielle Carmouche, and Sheila Walsh, my erstwhile cohosts.

So Catherine and I are out grocery shopping last night. Strolling thruogh the produce section at Jewel I see a product carefully tailored to peg my geek-o-meter. What is it?

A Grapple. Looks like an apple, tastes like a grape! The only way this could be improved, IMO, is by carbonating it. Science moves slowly but surely, though, and I'm not about to complain about the interim steps. I point excitedly and gesture to Catherine.

"Jeff, what possible purpose can there be for a grapple?"
"To defy nature! To spit in God's eye! Mad science needs no reason!"

I hold a package of grapples aloft and wind up for a maniacal cackle. She sighs and shakes her head and makes her way to the citrus section.

Sadly, the guys at MAKE magazine have unmasked this particular mechanical turk. Grapples are not, in fact, an unholy application of dark majick and bioengineering. They're just apples injected with grape juice. How pedestrian.

Sleep deprivation, defect fixing, and the Katamari Damacy soundtrack do not go well together. I feel like I'm living in a Hunter S. Thompson article.

Hurricane Katrina has been and continues to be a punch to the gut. It's horrifying and tragic -- if you have anything to spare, donate to help.

My good friend Doctor Chuck has posted a couple of pieces on the hurricane and the country's reaction to it. I think I'll probably be livid soon, but for now it's a little numbing.

For now, I'll pause to reflect on this gem from TechCentralStation, the net's own little cross between The Cato Institute and Engadget. It springboards off of Katrina coverage, and bears the happy little title, "Three Cheers For Price Gougers." I'm not sure what free-market libertarians love so much about hurricanes, but every time one hits, they seem to crawl out of the woodwork to squawk Randian tripe about the inherent wisdom of the market.

If a gas station owner has gas, someone has to decide who gets it. If the price remains at pre-hurricane levels, many will fill their tanks, because they can afford to do so... Many will do so even if they have no immediate need for it. But after the first few people do this, the gas will be gone, and none will be available for those who come after, because it's now tied up in the gas tanks of those who didn't really need it.

This is certainly true, but he takes a bold step by stating that price gouging - boosting prices dramatically in areas where critical resources are scarce -- is a great solution. That works fine, as long as you live in a happy fantasy world of classroom abstractions. "Bob has $100, and Jane has $100. How will they choose to spend their money?" The reasoning goes. "Their decisions are what makes the free market run!" That's a fine way to determine the price of plasma TVs and ice cream -- it ensures that the people who REALLY want them will get them, rather than just the early-birds. The writer of the article isn't talking about plasma screens and ice cream, though. He's talking about how to best distribute critical resources like fuel, water, and food in the wake of a natural disaster. Just in case we misunderstand, he clarifies:

If ice prices rise to the market, the man who needs to keep his insulin cold for his diabetes treatment will place a higher value on it than the man who wants to keep his beer cold, and will have a better chance of getting it.

The writer, in his wisdom, seems to have overlooked the system's critical flaw. What if the man with diabetes has $50, and the man with a warm beer has $200? No amount of price-gouging will help the man with diabetes as long as our hypothetical beer drinker really wants some ice. The 'value' that the diabetic man places on the insulin is infinite, but the resources he has can't match the value. Tough luck for him -- that's the way the market works!

This is not to say that a free-market economy is somehow inherently bad. It's simply how things work when people can buy and sell goods freely. To pretend, though, that The Invisible Hand of capitalism is some sort of inherent moral force is a disgusting and crass insult to the victims of Katrina. According to stories coming out of New Orleans, Katrina's worst-hit victims are people who were simply too poor to leave when the storm approached.

"Let them know we're not bums. We have houses. Our houses were destroyed. We have jobs. It's not our fault that we didn't have cars to leave," Shatonia Thomas, 27, said as she walked near New Orleans' convention center five days after the storm, still trapped in the destruction with her children, ages 6 and 9.

Money and transportation -- two keys to surviving a natural disaster -- were inaccessible for many who got left behind in the Gulf region's worst squalor.

"It's a different equation for poor people," explained Dan Carter, a University of South Carolina historian. "There's a certain ease of transportation and funds that the middle class in this country takes for granted."

They had no cars, no money to hire transportation, and obviously state and federal evacuation plans offered them no help. The Market, in its infinite wisdom, left them high and dry. Or, more accurately, low and drowned. By the reasoning of TechCentralStation's article, though, they didn't "value" escape highly enough.