For those of you in the US, use your 37 cent stamps by Saturday so you don't have to hassle with those 2-cent auxillary stamps. The standard postal rate in the US goes up to 39 cents on the 8th of January.

My family and I just returned from a great trip back home for Christmas. My wife and I both grew up in Louisiana, and were a bit anxious about what we'd find back home after all the nasty stuff on TV about New Orleans and its post-Katrina, post-Rita craziness and despair.

The news is still bad down there...

Make no mistake about it - things are still bad back home. People in New Orleans are still without power and basic infrastructure in lots of areas. They are still living in campers and tents on their front lawns because they can't get into their mold-tainted, toxic houses. They're still finding bodies fairly regularly.

We visited my friend Paul last week while we were in Louisiana and got lots of first-hand reports. He knows families in his area that have an extra dozen or so people living with them because they have no place to go, no place to work, etc.

Paul maintains a blog -- check it out for some unvarnished, local perspective on what's happening in Louisiana.

And it's not just New Orleans - the bad news spreads across a huge portion of the Gulf Coast.

...but it's not all bad

But the news is not all bad. People are bouncing back and they are doing a lot to help each other. Christmas toy drives were going strong down there, people were giving like crazy to the local charities (and the national charities that help local people, like the Salvation Army), and churches and local service organizations are pitching in all over the place. In general, people are doing what they can to help each other regardless of race, religion, or whatever.

And it's not just New Orleans - the good news spreads across a huge portion of the Gulf Coast.

They sincerely appreciate the help they are getting

By the way - food, money, and other types of aid are still coming from all over the place. Up here in the greater Portland, Oregon area I've learned about (and participated in) all kinds of grass root projects to gather useful items and send them down south to people that need some help right now. And it's not going unnoticed down there, even though CNN seems to have moved on.

The people in Louisiana who are getting help from strangers around the world appreciate it very much. Really. So, even though the news coverage has died down a lot and is focusing on politics, the blame game, etc. -- there are a lot of people across the Gulf Coast who can use any extra prayers, charity, and good works we can spare.

If you're looking to drop in a last-minute donation while there is still time to take advantage of it on your 2005 taxes, check out my earlier post about how to make sure you're giving to a reputable, efficient charity and not a bunch of con artists.

Related Posts:

• Katrina: Email from the front lines
• A blog from a friend in Louisiana
• Helping with the hurricane

By the way - for those of you who like data, I read an interesting article from Knight Ridder's news service today about the myths and realities of who was affected in New Orleans. It talks about how the death statistics just release are inconsistent with claims we've been hearing that Katrina's death toll was racially biased against minorities. Turns out, it was actually older people who died in disproportionately high numbers. Maybe Kanye West will start saying "George Bush hates old people," now.

A couple of articles have come my way this week, which highlight one of the challenges of open information sharing: people sometimes lie. The articles I've read are about a false bit of "history" created on Wikipedia, defaming a gentleman that used to work for Bobby Kennedy.

If you know your source is subject to subversion, you can look for third party verification - but people want to trust things like Wikipedia because they very good, and they make research much easier. Encouragingly, my 12-year-old's school is educating their students on the cautions of using Wikipedia as a reference source. In fact, the first I heard about this Wikipedia false history incident was from them via email. This, from the school librarian:

Wikipedia, an online "encyclopedia," is being used heavily by students. They need to be aware that it is not always accurate. Here is an example: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm 

My solution: use it if you must but verify the information in at least two other sources that have established reputations for providing reliable information. That might mean looking in a book!

My daily CNet News.com alert contained a perspective piece on "Wikipedia and the nature of truth," which offers additional perspective on the article above.

Lying is nothing new, of course. But access to lies gets easier with the internet.

When people lie in a credible venue, how long can the venue remain credible? It depends on whether you take action to rectify the lie, and implement controls to reduce the possibility that future lies will be tolerated.

One solution is to use some kind of verification process to assure you of the credibility of the source. Professional research organizations and commercial encyclopedias ostensibly have fact checkers to vet this out.

I'm not sure if Wikipedia's structure allows a fact checking process, or if it simply relies on peer review and "let us know if you see something wrong" vigilance. That's fine, but it seems there should be some sort of authentication for content providers, at minimum, so we could avoid the "we don't really know who made this false claim" situation outlined in the USA Today piece. I think that's reasonable for a resource like Wikipedia, which is emerging as an authoritative reference source.

What do you think?

Related Posts:

• Wiki, wiki. Smooth and sticky.

I've noticed a trend in advertising that bugs me.  What trend?  The depiction of men as stupid.  For example:

• I just saw a Home Depot commercial on TV where a woman buys some tool called a "MultiTasker" and asks the store employee, "Does that mean I won't need him?" and points to her husband who's busy sticking a plunger to his forehead.
• There's another commercial on the radio where a woman is advised to treat her husband like a dog to get him to use a household cleaning product more often.  The announcer says things like, "When he uses the product, praise him by saying 'Good boy!' and pat him on the head."

In a society where we are supposed to respect others and not denigrate people based on sex, I don't think this is a good thing.  If the same commercials were made with women as the stupid one, how would the public react?  They tend to shy away from casting a black man as the stupid man, too.  But when the "stupid man" is just some white guy, it seems that's OK.

Some stereotypes are just wrong, and certainly shouldn't be promoted in mainstream advertising campaigns.  For example, portraying blondes as dumb, successful women as bitches, southerners as toothless idiots, many ethnic and nationality-based stereotypes, etc.  The list goes on, and I think it should include the "all men are stupid" stereotype.

I'm all for free speech, but  I don't think promoting that kind of thinking is doing anyone any good.