There were a lot of video store owners and managers out of work, once pornography became more about streaming and downloads. But the other thing is that there are a lot of people who make money by finding a place to stand and add almost nothing. It's particularly ironic if your job title is pimp. On some level, in a healthier world where sex work could be rationalized and the risk reduced, your whole job title would be extraneous anyway. It's not exactly a point of great grievance if you're a pimp that suddenly your prostitutes don't require the same level of reliance.

All stress is ultimately related to loss or the fear of loss.

The rest of America, with some small exceptions, has been bulldozed and rebuilt and then bulldozed and rebuilt again. Our places have become interchangeable. Here in New Orleans, everything from the architecture to the way in which people eat, the way in which they talk, the way in which they do business, the way in which they dance, the manner in which everything is set to a parade beat, they're all from here. There's no place like it.

In the wake of Katrina, what you're witnessing and what we are very careful to depict is a form of patriotism.

Lawrence Gilliard Jr. is a fine actor and I've always felt some residual guilt that we killed him so early in The Wire. It was always planned that way; we didn't kill him because of anything he did, we don't kill off actors just to do it.

Life is too short to carry the burden of a heavy heart. It does not serve you or anyone else. Free yourself through the power of forgiveness and compassion.

Our future can't be separated from the fact that we are all going to be increasingly compacted into urban areas, though we're different in race and culture and religion. And what we make of that will determine the American future.