random linkage

This article is very long, but I found it made for fascinating reading. (Pair with these images to get a sense of what's going on in the vicinity of Old River Control.) I've known for quite a while about the whole "the Mississippi changes its bed" thing, but I didn't realize that it is very specifically trying to do so right now, and has been for several decades, and furthermore the article gives me a very clear sense of both what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has done to stop it, and what the costs of those attempts are.

It isn't cheerful reading; you walk away with a realization that it isn't just New Orleans, it's pretty much all human habitation in the Mississippi River Delta that just maybe, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, shouldn't be there. And I don't know what we can do to fix that, short of throwing our hands up in the air and saying bye-bye to the region. But it's very interesting stuff.