wiped back on the map

Remember those Farmers Insurance commercials where things ran in reverse, as crashed cars reassembled, houses undecayed, and a son returned from the dead to rap at the door until the father wished him away and threw the shriveled monkey's paw in the fire?

Something.

Anyhow, Google Maps is now the place to see New Orleans as it was, not as it is or will be.

In the images available Thursday, the cranes working to fix the breach of the 17th Street Canal are gone. Blue tarps that covered roofless homes are replaced by shingles. Homes wiped off their foundations are miraculously back in place in the Lower 9th. So, too, is the historic lighthouse on Lake Pontchartrain.

In all fairness, not everything is shiny and new; the Lower 9th Ward is still largely destroyed, casting doubt on any sort of Orwellian Google conspiracy.