Sunday digest

A brief listing of this week-end's miscellany.

• Endymion Grand Marshals announced

  Parade officials have announced this year's Grand Marshals of the Endymion parade.
  
  Those Marshals will include: CNN's Anderson Cooper, talk show host Kelly Ripa, actor Mark Consuelos, singer Pat Benatar and the musical group Train are expected to ride in this year’s Endymion as grand marshals.

  Surprised to see Cooper snub Thoth and Cleopatra this year. It's bad enough that Pat Benatar is there to remind of being hit with someone's best shot.
  
  Meanwhile, NYT: In New Orleans, Early Mardi Gras Parades Are Family Fare
  The article actually means well but this constant attempt to separate Carnival from "family fare" in the non-NOLA media is still distorts the fact that, aside from the tourist frat party on Bourbon street, the whole thing is a "family fare" type of event.



• Speaking of Egypt, it is often the case in mildly xenophobic America that political narratives spawn very quickly out of ignorance or indifference. The best defense against such for most of us is to just shut the hell up and read more. Here are a few links through which one can learn some context quickly.
  
  Unrest in #Egypt: Not new, just reaching a tipping point
  
  Why Mubarak is Out A primer on police, military, gender and capitalist dynamics behind the Egyptian uprising
  
  
  Always always more to the story than you think there is.



• Ray Nagin. The real Ray Nagin, it appears. Is now in the Tweeter Tubes. Actually he's been there for some time but people only started noticing just this week when he demonstrated full capacity with the medium by picking a fight with Fletcher Mackel which is, of course, what Twitter is there for. While the former mayor's tweets might prove to be every bit as diverting as the now-defunct @mayornagin satire account, we can't imagine they'll be any more profound. Many overloaded Twitter users might save themselves some time by just buying one of those "Da Mayor in your pocket" thingies.



• Crawfish prices up in Louisiana
  
  

  Small, expensive and hard to find is no way for Louisiana's beloved delicacy to kick off boiling season. Yet local merchants, harvesters and scientists say if you move fast, you might be able to scrounge enough to make do on Super Sunday.
  
  A fall drought and a cold winter have conspired to keep the mudbug population down. And that low supply, coupled with higher prices at the gas pumps, have crawfish costing about 50 cents to a dollar more per pound than this time last year.
  
  A pound of live crawfish is going for about $3.50 to $4, and boiled fetches anywhere from $4.25 to $5 in the New Orleans area. Once the weather gets above 60 degrees, supply will increase, typically dropping prices by a dollar per pound.

  
  
  Food prices up everywhere
  
  

  What’s behind the surge in food prices? The usual suspects have made the usual claims — it’s all about the Fed, or it’s all about speculators. But I’ve been looking at the USDA World supply and demand estimates, and what stands out from the data is mainly that we’ve had a huge global harvest failure.




• This week in the Gulf. Drake Toulouse summarizes the eventful week in oil spill news from Barack Obama's indifference, to Ken Feinberg's newly defined status as a BP employee, to the growing criticism of Feinberg's "two to three year" Gulf recovery estimate.
  
  Two additional items of note regarding all of this.
  
  The Pensacola News Journal published an editorial today noting the size of the fee Feinberg collects from BP.

  "For instance, the AP reported that Feinberg's law firm "was paid $850,000 a month for its work through the middle of January, and now Feinberg is discussing with BP how much he should be paid going forward. Well, given that BP has an interest in Feinberg paying out as little as possible, is it unreasonable to suspect that his pay will be linked to that goal?"

  
  
  And then there's this.
  
  

  Months after diving in Gulf waters fouled by BP crude oil and the oil dispersant Corexit, a man in his 40s has more than five times the normal amount of ethylbenzene in his blood.
  
  The bloodstream of a 3-year-old, exposed to the oil spill when his family visited the Gulf Coast, contains at least three times the normal level of the same organic hydrocarbon, which is toxic in certain quantities.
  
  Such numbers, according to Wilma Subra, a New Iberia biochemist and environmental activist, are increasingly common in a region that continues to grapple with the consequences of the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
  
  And, Subra said Saturday at a forum in New Orleans, they are just one indication that the human health effects of the spill are greater -- and will linger far longer -- than either the oil industry or the U.S. government has acknowledged.
  
  "The effects will be felt for generations," she said, ticking off a wide range of symptoms she said result from exposure to crude oil and Corexit. "This is what we have to look forward to."

  
  
  Feinberg defines "generations" as roughly 2-3 years.
  
  

  The blood tests were performed on people of varying ages, gender and exposure levels. All of the individuals tested displayed some physical symptoms typical of exposure to crude oil or Corexit, Subra said. Immediate symptoms include skin irritation, nausea, headaches and vomiting. Longer-term maladies can include liver and kidney damage, cardiac arrhythmia and chronic respiratory problems. Benzene also is a cancer-causing agent.
  
  Test results consistently showed elevated levels of chemicals -- among them benzene, ethylbenzene and Xylene -- that are found in either crude, dispersant or both, she said. Results were similar on oysters and other Gulf seafood.

  
  
  Meanwhile I continue in my personal pursuit to ingest as much of this poison as I possibly can with varied results. On Friday night, Menckles and I wandered in to Casamento's where I had some of the most disappointingly cakey and greasy fried oysters I've ever encountered. They came on a full loaf of big thick buttered toast. Properly fried seafood is one of life's greatest pleasures. Poorly fried seafood is quite the opposite of that. These were nasty. I ate all of them anyway.
  
  Last night we joined a large party at Pascal's where I ordered these.
  
  
  
  They were exquisite. I ate all of them. Obviously, I am far from the only person in South Louisiana who eats copious amounts of Gulf Seafood despite the continuing flow of ambiguous reports as to its safety.



• Neighborhood level Census 2010 data is now available. More on this later but one conclusion we can draw is that the flood accelerated the demographic trend of a shrinking New Orleans already in progress. It also enabled the demolishing and abandonment of poorer neighborhoods while encouraging the development of ritzy condos. The net effect is a smaller city geared more to serving an upper class population. None of this was inevitable, of course. But none of it was at odds with what policymakers thought of as an optimal outcome either.



• Finally, today is Super Bowl Sunday. It's something of a let down in New Orleans, of course. But as I said at the very beginning of the football season, nothing that happened last year can ever be taken away now. Or to put it another way, it will always be Lombardi Gras in our hearts.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Meanwhile, today I and every sports fan with any kind of a conscience will be rooting for the Green Bay Packers. Here's a passable explanation why that is.

  Simple: They’re the only major team left that’s not owned by an oligarch. The only one that’s not just a business run by some tycoon with his eyes on the bottom line.
  
  They’re still, effectively, owned by the town of Green Bay, population 102,000

  
  
  In truth, every professional sports franchise rightfully belongs to the city off of whose identity it trades, whose taxpayers build its stadiums, and whose citizenry invests so much time, money, and emotional capital in supporting. The billionaire "owners" of these franchises are really just unnecessary leeches who have attached themselves to a decent racket. At least the city of Green Bay figured a decent way to get around this. (I'd actually go farther than they do with regard to collective ownership but that's another story for another day.) In this sense, a win for the Pack is a win for all of us.