Back on July 11, I attended an engineer's lecture examining the reasons the levees and floodwalls failed in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Professor Michael Duncan, the one with the eyepatch, is an excellent speaker and he discussed his findings and research and explained a few of the differences between his and the UC Berkeley team's conclusions. I had asked him only one question regarding his confidence in the depth to water table on the landside of the floodwalls before (and during) the storm for use in his analyses. He stated he was relatively confident, and I believed him.

Note: The guy with the bottle of water was sitting in front of me and was a classmate of mine while a graduate student at Berkeley. This is also one of those cellphone photos I have been wanting to "get out" and now you see why.