Much to my amazement, last night I saw a report that hurricane victims housed temporarily in the Astrodome were offered space on cruise ships, but that there were very few takers. Today I see a report that actually, there were no takers:

Houston - A plan by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to relocate evacuees from the Astrodome and other shelters here to luxury cruise ships hit a snag Tuesday: Residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina don't want to move again.

"We had no immediate takers for the option," Ed Conley, head of FEMA operations in Houston, said of the proposal to turn cruise ships in Mobile, Ala., and Galveston into storm shelters.

FEMA announced Sunday it had leased three ships for six months as a way to move as many as 6,000 people out of shelters and provide them with beds, private rooms and hot meals.

The agency was so confident the cruise liners would prove popular that it established a priority system to determine who could board the Ecstasy, the Sensation and the Holiday, leased from Carnival Cruise Lines.

But FEMA workers found that evacuees were reluctant to move and further risk not finding relatives, jobs and schools. Officials said the computer networks established by the Red Cross and other agencies to reunite families would be available aboard the ships.

Perhaps there's something wrong with me, but if I were cooped up in a public stadium in a sea of people with only a cot to call my home, and a cruise ship offered me space, I'd jump at the opportunity.

(Like, "Get me outta here! ASAP!!")

EDITORIAL NOTE: My abnormal reaction might be grounded in my agoraphobia, but I can think of few things worse than having to live in a huge stadium filled with people, even assuming things like cleanliness and safety.

The reaction of the Astrodomers didn't make any sense to me, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered about all those buses. The ones that Mayor Nagin is criticized for not using to evacuate people.

I'm wondering whether Mayor Nagin knew something. Might it be that he knew that even if all the buses had been dispatched offering free evacuation, very few people would have gotten on them?

The conventional reason we're given for why people stayed behind is that they lacked the means to leave. Yet none of the people refusing the offers of cruise ships lacked the means. The ships were free; they just didn't want to get on them.

There's no way to make people want what they clearly do not want. I'm just wondering....

Had the cruise ships not been offered, would it have been fair to blame those who hadn't offered them?

And on the other hand, would it have been fair to force people onto cruise ships?

Honestly, I don't know. Engineering questions involving levees and canals are complicated enough. I'm afraid I don't have the answers for all these stubborn questions of social engineering.