Lightning Strikes

Lightning Strikes, originally uploaded by swamysk.

*I didn't take this picture. It's actually in Mumbai (fmr. Bombay), India.*

Last night I was getting some late night reading in when my bedroom window went electric blue with the photonic power of a nearby lightning bolt. My first thoughts were that this was some oddity of reflection. I knew that rain had been falling for a while, but I wasn't concerned.

Then it came. A shockwave of thunderous compressed, supercharged air assulted my house. At first the windows didn't rattle, the walls didn't creek and tremble. The noise was not stopping, five, ten, twenty, fourty seconds passed and still the sounds of shaking persisted. Had the frequency of this thunder matched the resonant frequency of my house? would the tremor accelerate, amplify, multiply... would it shake the house apart? was this really just a storm?

Thoughts started racing. Stealth bombing campaign that simulates lightning to "pinpoint" targets, an alien probe being deposited/recovered from earth, a late-night Cyclotron experiment gone terribly wrong. Who knows.

The house survived, and I'm pretty sure it was just a regular old electric storm.

Stormy Lansing Sunset

CIMG1766, originally uploaded by Helmers.

Rebuild New Orleans

The city needs two new features to ensure its continued existance.

First: The city needs to be hardened against another natural disaster of this scale. This is a massive task that goes far beyond rebuilding a few levies. Serious and unprecedented infrastructure improvements will be needed to rehabilitate the area.

Second: The city needs an economic base other than tourism. While the charming districts that have kept the city on life support largely survived the storm - they should not become the only reason to visit New Orleans in future decades. My magic wand: sustainable energy development.

Now that the nation has seen how fragile and expensive our energy habits are - we should honestly work to building large-scale solutions to oil dependence. The city can be reformatted - re imagined and eventually transformed into a model of energy independence. This would have to be in spite of the massive oil industry prescience to the south (drilling in the Gulf) and west (Houston) near New Orleans.

The benefit of rebuilding New Orleans this way is three fold. First, a cultural and historic American city would be saved for future generations. Second, the current residents who now face unemployment as a result of the hurricane would have opportunities in the reconstruction efforts. Third, the process of economic and physical transformation would draw in professionals and capital from the most cutting edge industries in the world. (After all, everybody wants a slice of the New Big Easy.)

The tough question is always how.

A few links:
A Daily Dose of Architecture
Wall Street Journal
New York Times Infographic
Slate - Don't Refloat
"The Control of Nature" - John McPhee, excerpt

Spyros Capralos [and so much more]

is about to become either synomous with a development catastrophe of world-scale proportions or coming a hairsbreadth away from said catastrophe. [link].

"Tackled by Face the Facts presenter John Waite, the general secretary for the Olympic Games, Spyros Capralos, admitted he had no idea how many workers have died constructing the games."

Now for today's news. [a whole lotta links from all over the place]

More from the B. Blogging the DNC is hot now [link]. Revenge of the Sith [link] has been chosen as the title for the next Star Wars film.

Silly Duke, giving iPods to freshman isn't going to make them better students. Oh, wait. Did you say iPods? Really! Well, where do I apply. [link]

I've been half-heartedly tracking the stories about the marshes in Iraq. Well, here's some news, apparently the UN is going to get involved [link].

"The wetlands were drained as punishment after the Marsh Arabs gave sanctuary to rebels fighting the Saddam regime. About 250,000 Marsh Arabs now live in refugee camps and Iraqi cities. It is estimated that during the Saddam period, around 95% of the marshes dried out, largely due to the deliberate diversion of water."

At a loss for words: [link]

"At least 46 children in Peru have died during one of the coldest spells in the Andes Mountains in 30 years."

I saw this on CBS this morning [link]. A little historic preservation, a little peacekeeping, a little religous tolerance. Voila.

How can you read this and not laugh. [link] below.

"INDIA'S railways minister has absolved himself of blame for accidents plaguing the world's largest train network, saying the fate of its 13 million daily passengers rested with the Hindu god of machines, Vishwakarma."

Holy Cow [no pun intended], India has over 100,000 kilometers of rail lines [nearly 60,000 miles based on the rough 100km/h = 60 mph conversion I do in Canada]. They better get on their knees cause apparently it's all in Vish's hands now.

On the topic of leadership: What President Bush is Not. [You can google search any of these quotes and find where they came from.] Here are my picks, but you really have to read the whole list [link]. via Harpers.

"The President of the United States is not a fact-checker... I’m not a very good novelist... I’m not an emailer... I’m not an Iraqi citizen."

It doesn't get any easier than this. Censorship doesn't always come from the government: List of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks [link].

Quite possibly the most interesting single post I've read from Defective Yeti. The Pioneer 10 Plaque [link].

Fuel Cell Breakthrough in Houston [link]. 60+mph jet powered go-kart for sale [link].