Archive for the ‘news’ Category
Energy conservation prediction
June 2nd, 2008
Later this summer, newspaper editors across the country will dust off those “women will love Sex and the City, but their boyfriends/husbands will refuse to go” feature articles we’ve been seeing lately. They’ll strike out the discussion of shoes, change all the title references to Mamma Mia, and head out for a drink to congratulate themselves on a job well done.
Yes, this should have been a Tweet, but I couldn’t squeeze it down to 140 characters.
Minneapolis bridge collapse
August 1st, 2007
It is, of course, too early to know what caused the I-35W bridge to collapse. Based on the traffic density in the approach spans, it seem unlikely that the bridge was heavily loaded at the time of the collapse. I’ve heard that the bridge is 40 years old—unless the photos and videos on the news are very misleading, it has almost certainly had higher loads earlier in its life.
There’s been some attention given to the construction work being done on the bridge, because a failure during or shortly after repair work is always makes the repair work suspect. But repairs seem to be limited to the bridge deck, not the steel structure under deck, which is what collapsed. I’m pretty sure this document (PDF) describes the work that was being done. It’s described on the first page as “CONC CRACK & JT REPAIR, CONC PLANING, SURFACING, BRIDGES ETC.” “CONC” is “concrete;” “JT” is “joint,” which refers to the expansion and control joints in the concrete bridge deck, not the bolted and welded joints in the supporting steel structure; concrete planing is a grinding operation that removes the high spots in a concrete slab.
Although the overall impression is that the bridge went straight down, some of the views suggest a sideways or twisting motion of the deck at one of the banks of the river. My initial guess is that that will be important in determining the cause.
Again, everything is a guess right now, but those are my initial impressions. And this is a topic I deal with in my non-blogging life.
I was cured all right
July 30th, 2007
I read this article about using classical music to drive away undesirables after seeing it linked on Technocrat. I was beginning to think I was the only person who was reminded of A Clockwork Orange until I saw a droogy quote in the comments on an old Bruce Schneier post.
Oh, Domino!
September 2nd, 2005
Continuing my musical theme this evening, I was happy to read that Fats Domino survived the flood and is now out of New Orleans. It’s not that he’s more important or more worthy of surviving than tens of thousands of others, but I think it’s natural in overwhelming tragedies like this to focus on things and people that you’re familiar with. When last month’s bombings in London were in the news, my wife and I looked at the list of Tube stops that were hit and tried to remember whether we had been in or through them. Stupid, I suppose, to concern yourself with some small, tenuous connection with a distant event, but human.
This passage in the Washington Post article about Fats must be representative of hundreds or thousands from New Orleans whose friends and family have been in limbo, waiting for some word, hoping for the best and dreading the worst:
His agent, Al Embry, reported him missing earlier this week, and concern about his fate grew until his daughter, Karen Domino White, said Thursday that she had recognized her father in a picture taken Monday by the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
If you read the whole WP article, you’ll see that Fats went on quite an odyssey and is pretty tough for a 77 year old. Van Morrison could have told his daughter not to worry:
And if you never hear from him
That just means he didn’t call