rita has the potential to be as bad as katrina

Houston's perfect storm would feed on late summer's warm waters as it barreled northward across the Gulf of Mexico, slamming into the coast near Freeport.

A landfall here would allow its powerful upper-right quadrant, where the waves move in the same direction as the storm, to overflow Galveston Bay. Within an hour or two, a storm surge, topping out at 20 feet or more, would flood the homes of 600,000 people in Harris County. The surge also would block the natural drainage of flooded inland bayous and streams for a day or more.

Coastal residents who ignored warnings to flee would have no hope of escape as waters swelled and winds roiled around their homes. Very likely, hundreds, perhaps even thousands, would die.

Meanwhile, as the storm moved over western Harris County, its most dangerous winds, well in excess of 120 mph even inland, would lash the Interstate 45 corridor, including Clear Lake, the Texas Medical Center and downtown.

... [Roy Dodson's engineering firm Dodson & Associates] modeled more than 100 storms of varying power, speed and landfall. It concluded that a large Category 4 or Category 5 -- a storm only moderately larger than the four that struck Florida last summer -- would cause as much as $40 billion to $50 billion in damage. That's 10 times the cost of Tropical Storm Allison and approximately the city of Houston's entire budget for the next 15 years.

from Models show 'massive devastation' in Houston (posted in poor_planning)

Hurricane Rita is heading for an area much more densely populated than the Louisiana/Mississippi gulf coast area devastated by Katrina. The metro areas of Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas/Fort Worth have a combined population of 11-12 million people. Inland cities would not see the worst of the storm of course, but would suffer flash flooding, heavy winds, tree damage, and lingering power outages.

They have two benefits over New Orleans: the first, is an excellent transportation system. Texas has what is probably the best set of highways in the world. They also have the hindsight of Katrina. Property damage might be unavoidable, but there is time to create a better solution for the poor of Texas' coast.

Forecasters said Rita could be the most intense hurricane on record ever to hit Texas, and easily one of the most powerful ever to plow into the U.S. mainland. ...[O]nly three Category 5 hurricanes are known to have hit the U.S. mainland — most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.

All of Galveston, low-lying sections of Houston and Corpus Christi, and a mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders, one day after Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys as a far weaker storm and caused minor damage.

from Rita Swirls Into 165-Mph Monster in Gulf

Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis: a fictional examination of oppression

cowgrrl loaned me the first two books of Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, Dawn and Adulthood Rites. She does not have the third book Imago, so this review is based on the first two books alone. The third book may contain points that argue against this interpretation, but i don't anticipate that.

( analysis with major spoilers )