Podcast for 10 September 2017

[MrBogosity]

[mp3]http://media.blubrry.com/bogosity/s/podcast.bogosity.tv/mp3s/BogosityPodcast-2017-09-10.mp3[/mp3]


News of the Bogus:

• 0:48 - Charlie Hebdo May Now be Criticized Because They Mocked White Texans Rather Than Muslims https://theintercept.com/2017/09/01/charlie-hebdo-may-now-be-criticized-because-they-mocked-white-texans-rather-than-muslims/
• 5:40 - No, Flooding in Houston Was Not Caused By a Lack of Zoning Laws http://reason.com/blog/2017/09/01/no-flooding-in-houston-was-not-caused-by
• 8:45 - Feds Have Been Warning State and Local Cops About Antifa Violence for More Than a Year https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/09/01/feds-warning-antifa-violence-year/

12:17 - Biggest Bogon Emitter: Laura Dunn http://reason.com/blog/2017/09/06/lawyer-in-campus-rape-disputes-the-accus

16:25 - Idiot Extraordinaire: CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/28/devastating-storm-may-actually-boost-us-gdp-and-push-inflation-higher.html

This Week's Quote: "The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are." —Henry Hazlitt
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[evensgrey]

There's still lots of land-use regulation in Houston, just not in the basically useless form called 'zoning'.  (Zoning is useless because there's really no way to stop the municipal government from giving variances, and there are invariably people with enough money to buy those variances.  Once again, a government regulatory power is merely an avenue for the corruption of government.)

The type of regulation in place in Houston isn't going to stop people building on the flood plain because the whole damn city is on a flood plain.  Dump vast quantities of water on it, and it's going to flood.  If you did effectively restrict construction on lower terrain, you'd end up with a city that looks like a Soviet-era city with billboards, where almost everything is apartment blocks and other high-rises.  And it would STILL flood in this kind of storm.  It might even flood more severely, because a higher proportion of the surface would be impermeable.  Then there's the horrific effects on winds that can occur from carelessly cramming together lots of tall buildings.  There are some places in cities around  the world where winds get channeled to hurricane-force gusts year round.  What's going to happen to those wind speeds in a hurricane?  (We can actually check, since Japan, which is subject to seasonal typhoons, has a few of those places.  I don't know if anyone has actually tried to measure the wind speeds at those locations during major storms.  They're hard enough to operate at in normal weather.)

[Ibrahim90]

Well, at least I'm consistent: I despised them back in 2015, and despise them even more now. But I don't want Charlie Hedbo shut down, nor do I advocate for violence: why do so, when you can refute it, mock it, and in some cases, sue it for libel? The fucks there are nothing but worthless provocateurs, and should be treated accordingly (i.e. with contempt). They're free to be assholes, and I'm free to make fun of them.

Anyways, I lived in the Houston area: the real reason has nothing to do with lack of urban planning indeed. It's due to the low sea-level (as you and evensgrey say), and what you describe is actually an understatement: some areas are BELOW sea level. The whole location is beyond hope in the event of a flood from a hurricane--zoning or no zoning. Galveston was fucked in 2008 from Hurricane Ike, even after they started heavy urban planning after the big one in 1906. Why? not because the didn't zone--they did--but because they're on a glorified sand bar; it'll get flooded no matter what. Zoning is to this what a bandaid is when a dude gets torn in two: it's pointless at best.

[evensgrey]

There IS something that can be done, but it isn't a zoning thing, it's a building code thing:  Require a lot of types of buildings to be done the way a lot of homes are (or, at least, WERE, when I was last there over 30 years ago) on the Texas Barrier Islands:  Build them on stilts to keep them above both overland flooding and storm surge.

As for Galveston, anyone who thinks Galveston is a good place to build anything as a dumb ass.  Ibrahim is quite right, it's built on the northernmost of the Texas Barrier Islands, which are really little more than big sand bars.  If you try any sort of conventional design on the ground in Galveston, you're going to get what you deserve.