Back to the future?
A short 25 hours ago, the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi bridge collapsed, sending 50+ cars into the river and landscape below, amazing that more were not killed, although the missing are still not full accounted for.
It is certainly outrageous, and no terrorists to blame on this one, although perhaps the war on terror helped direct government money away from infrastructure, but the irresponsibility of government spending is so great, we certainly could have borrowed MORE if we were serious AND we could have raised the gastax to cover funding of "Roads and Bridge" maintenance.
Mostly for me, I'm not too much interested in the blame game, but the perception that our carefully controlled and engineered world is not always as safe as we pretend, AND I imagine in times future, when our wealth and affluence diminish with fossil fuels and a time will come when buildings and bridges DO come down unpredictably, not by enemies, except our own distractability and inability to agree on sharing the costs of our complex society.
No, I do think bridges are extremely valuable and will generally be maintained as best we can. BUT they are vulnerable, and not trivia to maintain or defend AND take a long time to replace.
It is curious to ask how things SHOULD be built. I mean on one side we have much greater power to destroy than to build, and so how much should we invest to build what can be so easily destroyed? (thinking more on the order of war)
And there's fighting over a new "Stillwater bridge" to replace the single-lane lift bridge now there. I reject the new bridge because it'll encourage more sprawling development across the natural boundary to the metro expansion. A river is like a "moat", protecting land from development.
Perhaps in the future "eco-terrorists" will blow up bridges? Certainly I imagine if the Amazon rainforests have ANY chance against humanity, it will be through destroying the easy roads. Maybe that's not enough, but it's something. Roads are pretty quickly repaired, but at least bridges take time.
The recent news of skyrocketing metal prices and thiefs stealing copper tubing worth a few hundred dollars by salvage yards - that's astounding. Of course it'll be solved by cracking down on savage purchases, demanding proper paperwork, BUT it also reminds me the nature of policing in the future may be more literally "Soldiers" standing around bored guarding stuff. Maybe cameras can do a lot, in a tight metro area, but if you have money to invest, perhaps a good security company is a place you'll make your money grow.
And lastly, when all our nice roads are at last too expensive to maintain, at least MOST, and we refocus our efforts on a smaller and smaller subset, what will all our speedy cars be doing, assuming there's any fuel for them?
All this from one falling bridge? No, but if I wanted "a sign" that I'd better get more serious and get my shit in order, maybe I should listen once more, at least for a while, just in case...
It is certainly outrageous, and no terrorists to blame on this one, although perhaps the war on terror helped direct government money away from infrastructure, but the irresponsibility of government spending is so great, we certainly could have borrowed MORE if we were serious AND we could have raised the gastax to cover funding of "Roads and Bridge" maintenance.
Mostly for me, I'm not too much interested in the blame game, but the perception that our carefully controlled and engineered world is not always as safe as we pretend, AND I imagine in times future, when our wealth and affluence diminish with fossil fuels and a time will come when buildings and bridges DO come down unpredictably, not by enemies, except our own distractability and inability to agree on sharing the costs of our complex society.
No, I do think bridges are extremely valuable and will generally be maintained as best we can. BUT they are vulnerable, and not trivia to maintain or defend AND take a long time to replace.
It is curious to ask how things SHOULD be built. I mean on one side we have much greater power to destroy than to build, and so how much should we invest to build what can be so easily destroyed? (thinking more on the order of war)
And there's fighting over a new "Stillwater bridge" to replace the single-lane lift bridge now there. I reject the new bridge because it'll encourage more sprawling development across the natural boundary to the metro expansion. A river is like a "moat", protecting land from development.
Perhaps in the future "eco-terrorists" will blow up bridges? Certainly I imagine if the Amazon rainforests have ANY chance against humanity, it will be through destroying the easy roads. Maybe that's not enough, but it's something. Roads are pretty quickly repaired, but at least bridges take time.
The recent news of skyrocketing metal prices and thiefs stealing copper tubing worth a few hundred dollars by salvage yards - that's astounding. Of course it'll be solved by cracking down on savage purchases, demanding proper paperwork, BUT it also reminds me the nature of policing in the future may be more literally "Soldiers" standing around bored guarding stuff. Maybe cameras can do a lot, in a tight metro area, but if you have money to invest, perhaps a good security company is a place you'll make your money grow.
And lastly, when all our nice roads are at last too expensive to maintain, at least MOST, and we refocus our efforts on a smaller and smaller subset, what will all our speedy cars be doing, assuming there's any fuel for them?
All this from one falling bridge? No, but if I wanted "a sign" that I'd better get more serious and get my shit in order, maybe I should listen once more, at least for a while, just in case...
posted by Ares Olympus at 5:13 PM
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