Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

The wife IMs me a bit ago and says “hey, my boss has two Peach Bowl tickets for you if you”re interested.”

I”ve been an LSU fan going on 30 years now. I was at the Sugar Bowl two years ago. I was at Sugar Bowls in the 1980s when we got the shit kicked out of us by Nebraska, too. I was at the SEC Championship Game two years ago - and the one last month.

Last year I flew back to Atlanta from L.A. overnight and got in my car at 5:30 in the morning to drive down to Baton Rouge for a game. I was at the “earthquake game” in 1988. I even drove down for the North Texas game this year.

I have a game-used LSU helmet, a signed Matt Mauck mini-helmet, a framed Advocate (the Baton Rouge daily, not the national gay newspaper) front page from the 2003 National Championship and an LSU Peach Bowl pennant from the 1960s, among other Tiger memorabilia. My mailbox has an LSU flag instead of a standard red one, and my car has two LSU decals and an LSU license plate frame.

LSU is 10-2, ranked No. 10 in the country and is playing the No. 9 team three miles from my house tonight.

My answer to the wife - only if they”re great seats and only if they”re free.

That is what Leslie has done to my enthusiasm about LSU football.

Enough said.

P.S. They”re first-row club level seats on the 45 yard line, and they are free. So I”m going.

I have to take Carol Costello to task for something she said on CNN”s American Morning today. Following a story on credit card spending this holiday season, she made this statement:

“It”s always good when people don”t use credit cards.”

What a load of horseshit. I have to assume that her statement comes from the incorrect belief that the typical American household is drowning in credit card debt. If you”re one of the poor saps who carries a high level of credit card debt in relation to your income (36% of households who owe more than $10,000 in credit card debt have household incomes under $50,000. Ouch), obviously adding to your debt load is a bad idea. But routine and heavy use of credit cards can be a very smart thing if managed properly.

Consider:

- If you pay off your credit card balance each month, the credit card company is giving you an interest-free short-term loan. The money floating on your credit card can be put to “work” elsewhere. If you”re really gung-ho, you could move that money to a brokerage account and try to turn a quick profit. If you”re like me and just let it sit in your bank (you do have interest-bearing checking, right? If not, see NetBank or others) you can earn a tiny amount (with today”s interest rates). But still, it”s a net positive, and if interest rates go up, you”ll make more on the float and still pay no interest to the credit card company.

- If you have a “rewards” credit card (and why wouldn”t you?), each dollar you run through the credit card pays you back in some way. After earning 100,000 SkyMiles from credit card charges, I”m back using my cash-rewards card, which pays me 1% on all charges and 5% at grocery stores and gas stations. Again, free money if you pay off the card every month.

- A lot of people use Visa-branded debit cards tied to their checking account, and while that”s good if you”d otherwise turn purchases into credit card debt, it”s not a smart decision. If your Visa debit card is stolen, you”ll get your money back, but it”ll be your money the criminals are using until your bank sorts things out. Having a couple thousand dollars disappear from your checking account for a week might not be such a good thing if that mortgage payment is due today. When a real credit card gets stolen, it”s the credit card company”s money that”s being stolen, not yours.

- A good credit card also provides 90 days of purchase protection, so if you buy that Video iPod today, pay for it in 30 days and lose it in 60 days, the credit card company will buy you a new one. Not a bad deal when you”re not paying anything for the protection.

- Cash sucks. Cash in your pocket costs you money. A $20 bill would earn me a penny per month if it sat in my checking account (hey, a principle is a principle). Many people pay money in the form of ATM fees to get cash, which is the worst idea ever. And cash is a bad thing for the businesses who get it. The labor and capital costs of counting cash, securing cash, moving cash, etc. is pure waste, especially when you consider the same costs exist to get the money to you. I can”t find good stats on what it costs to move physical money around between banks, customers, retailers and back to banks, but it”s a horribly inefficient thing when an electronic alternative is available. I think the fact that smart retailers like Starbucks and QuikTrip encourage even small purchases to be made by credit cards (they don”t make you sign for things under $25) speaks to it being better for business.

This year, The Wisdom household will run about 1,500 transactions through credit cards for everything from a $2.50 iced coffee to a $2,000 insurance payment. About 30% of our gross income will pass through our credit cards, which means through the interest float and cash-back rewards, we”ll increase our gross income by about 0.6% with zero cost. That”s about an extra day and a half of pay for doing nothing but being smart.

So please don”t tell me “it”s always good when people don”t use credit cards.”

This ain”t the New York Times books section, so I”ll spare you all a review - but if you have a real interest in understanding how New Orleans came to be the city it is (or was), I highly recommend New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape.

The in-laws had a little Christmas night gathering Sunday in which the topic of conversation finally rolled around to Katrina damage on the gulf coast. The wife and I talked about our trip through Waveland and the unimaginable level of destruction there.

But instead of the standard “yeah, it was really bad” stuff, I got this from a know-it-all, Miami-centric transplanted Yankee co-worker of a family member:

“I can”t believe Mississippi didn”t have stricter building codes. Of course wood houses aren”t going to survive a hurricane.” She went on to explain how houses in Miami are built to withstand 250-mph winds.

It wasn”t wind, I told her, that destroyed the Mississippi coast. It was the massive storm surge that literally washed away everything from the beach to the railroad tracks - a half-mile inland.

But the hurricane-code houses can take a flood, she said. The interiors have to be re-done, but you don”t see houses destroyed like in Mississippi.

Sure, I said, rebuilding in Mississippi will be to modern code. But these houses had survived a lot of storms - including Camille - and Katrina was just on a scale never seen before. These places weren”t even built on the beach.

Miami, she said again, sees a lot of flooding in hurricanes but not the kind of damage that happened in Mississippi. Her house - five miles inland - has been damaged but never destroyed.

At this point, the wife jumped in: “Not flooding - a 35-FOOT WALL OF WATER.”

In the spirit of Christmas, we let the conversation die. And I figured it best to ignore the side conversation I heard the wife”s father starting:

“If those people [read: black people in New Orleans] were too stupid to leave, they deserved what they got.”

So Comcast has jumped on the “family-friendly” programming bandwagon. This trend (Time Warner cable announced a similar thing last week) bugs the crap out of me, but not because I think kids should watch more porn.

What bothers me is what this says about parental responsibility in the U.S. It”s very easy, of course, to lock out “offensive” channels, block programs by ratings and do the other tricks made possible by the V-Chip and parental controls. Or - believe it or not - it”s possible for parents to simply tell their children what they can and can”t watch.

But those options would require some sort of action on the part of the parents. It”s much easier to just tell the cable company “only send me things my kids can watch.”

Such as The National Geographic Channel - part of the “Family Tier” - which features one of our favorite shows: Seconds From Disaster. What could be more family-friendly than the episode about a gas explosion in Puerto Rico that killed a mother and buried her two young daughters under a huge pile of concrete while they were shopping for shoes?

Or “Killer Dogs”, which airs tonight and is described thusly:

Some of them live among us, lounging benignly on our hearths and couches. But deep in their genes lies a killing communion with both their wild and ancient cousins. The canines are among the earth”s ultimate survivors, honing their killing perfection over millions of year. While the cats are ambush hunters, the great canines are built for endurance; their easy long-legged strides eat up mile after mile as a hapless victim tires.

“Gee, honey. Little Johnny hasn”t been playing with Sparky much since we watched Killer Dogs. It can”t be because of that show - it”s Family Friendly, after all.”

There”s word out today that Katrina was “weaker” than first thought when it struck the Louisiana / Mississippi border. The final analysis showed it came ashore as just a Category 3 hurricane. Measurements in New Orleans showed peak winds of just 95 miles per hour.

The initial reaction from this revelation has been that it shows how inadequate the hurricane protection system in New Orleans was. Quoth Sen. Mary Landrieu:

“This news further highlights the need for a full federal commitment to build the highest level of protection through levees and coastal restoration for New Orleans, South Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.”

It”s an easy equation on the surface: New Orleans was supposed to be protected against a Category 3 storm, but the levees failed when the city was on the weak side of a Category 3 storm - therefore protection against a Category 3 storm isn”t enough.

But the real story here is how useless the 1 to 5 rating system for hurricanes really is. Hurricane Charley made landfall in Florida last year as a Category 4 storm. And as bad as the damage was near Tampa, it was very localized destruction caused primarily by wind - which is typical for hurricanes.

Katrina, on the other hand, was anything but typical. I”ve written before about the unimaginable scope of damage in Mississippi (10-foot surge 2 miles inland). When we drove down to Louisiana for Thanksgiving, we stopped in Mobile to eat at the relocated Original Oyster House and we took pictures of the destruction there.

This is what used to be a gas station next door to what used to be the Original Oyster House across the channel from the U.S.S. Alabama in Mobile Bay:

Katrina”s surge simply washed away all but the concrete frame of the buildings there - about 100 miles from where the storm made landfall. If this is a “Category 3″ storm”s effect, Hurricane Andrew (a solid “4″) should have wiped out the Florida coast from Homestead through Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and up to Jupiter. But it didn”t.

And New Orleans should have been safe from a “Category 3″ storm. But it wasn”t.

That”s the problem Katrina exposed. Assigning a 1 to 5 rating to a hurricane really tells us nothing. Hurricanes cause wind damage, surge damage and rain-based flood damage. Yet the wind speed is all that goes into the rating people use to gauge their reaction to the threat.

Katrina was a “5″ at one point, and that”s what prompted the evacuation of New Orleans and caused people in Mississippi to pay attention. And surely the intensity the storm reached out in the gulf had a direct effect on the ultimate destruction. Had it carried much of its surge without stretching beyond a “3″, however, a lot more people would have stayed put - and died.

And now people will say the New Orleans protection failed even when the city was on the backside of a Category 3 storm. And they”ll say that means they need Category 5 protection.

The engineers who designed - and will redesign - the New Orleans protection system surely don”t just think “Category 3″ when they”re drawing up plans. They design for water height, pressure and other forces. They may be told “we need Category 3 protection”, but they translate that into what the forces are likely to be in those conditions.

The National Weather Service also tracks much more information about storms than just wind speed. They measure barometric pressure, ocean wave heights, etc. They know how big the storm is and how fast it”s moving, which forecasts localized rainfall and the potential for flooding. Yet the headline term that most people pay attention to is the category rating.

And considering the Hurricane Center folks always have to remind people that even a Category 1 hurricane is dangerous, it”s clear too much attention is paid to the wind-speed number.

So as the U.S. looks at the legacy of Katrina, one change should be a more informative and precise storm categorization system. Getting the public, FEMA, local officials and relief agencies to look beyond the wind number would help everyone better prepare for storms and make relief and recovery more focused and effective.

Maybe what we need is a multi-number system that rates wind, surge and rain. Katrina might have been a 3-5-2 storm in such a system, and nobody would be surprised at the destruction.