New Orleans: Katrina
Then Professor Haralick tried adding the key word Katrina with the spelling קתרנא. The results were more significant. Later Rabbi Glazerson related that the spelling of Katrina with a ק instead of a כ is the way the Israeli newspapers spelled it. But they use a ה rather than an א for the last letter. He said that there is a precedent for using the א as the last letter since Germany is spelled both with an א and with a ה as the last letter, although with the ה is the common spelling. Professor Haralick made a note to try the alternate spellings after he finished his experiments.
Then the date of August 29, the 24th of Av, was added as a key word. This was the date that hurricane Katrina made landfall as a category 4 hurricane. The resulting table was not significant. But because there were important related events that happened some days earlier, August 28, the 23 of Av was tried. This was the date that Mayor Nagin issues the first ever mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. This too resulted in a not significant table. Then August 27, the 22 of Av was tried. This was the date that Governor Blanco asked President Bush to declare a federal state of emergency in Louisiana. The resulting table was statistically significant. This is the table we show here. The probability that a monkey text from the ELS random placement population would have a table as small as the one produced by the Torah text is 3.5/10,000.
