Posts Tagged ‘disaster’
“Many a person will forget the past for a present”*…
… and many won’t, as Benjamin Errett explains…
… Do consider where many gifts end up: The fulskåp, defined in The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning as “a cupboard full of gifts you can’t stand to look at, and which are impossible to regift. Usually these are presents from distant aunts and uncles that you put on display when the giver comes to visit.”
The perfect gift for the person who has everything is either penicillin or a burglar alarm, as the old jokes have it. So there’s always the option of deliberately flubbing the gesture with a gag gift, which is what the British royal family reportedly does. Prince Harry once delighted the Queen with a shower cap that read “Ain’t life a bitch.”…
You shouldn’t have: “The Wit’s Guide to Gifts, ” from @benjaminerrett.
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As we wrap it up, we might recall that it was on this date in 1946 that UNICEF (the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) was launched. Among the most widespread and recognizable social welfare organizations in the world, with a presence in 192 countries and territories, it provides immunizations and disease prevention, administers treatment for children and mothers with HIV, enhances childhood and maternal nutrition, improves sanitation, promotes education, and provides emergency relief in response to disasters (most recently, e.g., the COVID epidemic and the invasion of the Ukraine).
“By preventing dangerous asteroid strikes, we can save millions of people, or even our entire species”*…
The probability of an major asteroid strike on earth at any given moment is low, but the consequences could be catastrophic… and the odds of it happening at some point grow frighteningly large. Happily, the B612 Foundation and Asteroid Institute has developed a way of identifying potentially dangerous asteroids so that they can be deflected by NASA…
Protecting the planet: The Asteroid Institute, @b612foundation.
* Rusty Schweickart, astronaut and co-founder of B612
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As we dodge disaster, we might recall that it was on this date in 1957 that the space age– and the space race– began in earnest: Sputnik 1 was launched by the Soviet Union into earth orbit.
“Managed retreat is not just a last resort. It is not a failure to adapt at all. It is actually an active decision to adapt.”*…
The town of Valmeyer, Illinois relocated decades ago after devastating floods. It may have lessons for communities forced to consider a managed retreat from climate impacts today…
In the summer of 1993, the southwestern Illinois town of Valmeyer took the brunt of a massive flood when, not once but twice in a month, the swollen Mississippi River topped its levee system. The village was engulfed in up to 16ft (5m) of floodwater that lingered for months, damaging some 90% of buildings.
Faced with either rebuilding the town and risking yet another disaster, or simply scattering to other towns or states by themselves, the 900 residents of this tight-knit farming community made a bold choice: to pack up everything and start over on new ground.
In the years that followed, hundreds of people moved out of the floodplain as the entire town was rebuilt from scratch on a bluff a mile uphill. In doing so, the town has become an early example of one of the most radical ways a community can adapt to a warming world: moving people and assets out of harm’s way.
Known as managed retreat, or planned relocation, the approach is often framed as a last resort to be pursued only when no other alternatives exist. But as the effects of climate change intensify, exposing more and more people across the globe to the risk of catastrophic flooding, devastating fires and other calamitous natural hazards, the concept is increasingly making its way into the mainstream as a viable – and necessary – adaptation strategy…
When one can’t resist the effects of climate change (e.g., with a sea wall to hold back rising water levels), or accommodate it (e.g., using air cooling and “greening” to combat rising temperatures), the remaining option is retreat: “The Illinois town that got up and left,” from @BBC_Future.
See also: “Managed Retreat in the United States.”
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As we rethink relocation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1913 that rain storms led to floodwaters from the Great Miami River reaching Dayton, Ohio– causing the Great Dayton Flood, which lasted another five days. The volume of water that passed through Dayton during this storm equaled the monthly flow over Niagara Falls; downtown Dayton was submerged up to 20 feet.
More than 360 people died; 65,000 were displaced; nearly 1,400 horses and 2,000 other domestic animals died. 20,000 homes were destroyed and buildings were moved off of their foundations. Property damage to homes, businesses, factories, and railroads was estimated at more than $100 million in 1913 dollars (more than $2 billion in today’s dollars).
“The highly motivated people in society are the ones causing all the trouble. It’s not the lazy unmotivated folks sitting in front of a TV eating potato chips who bother anyone.”*…
Americans consume about 1.85 billion pounds of potato chips annually– around 6.6 pounds per person. A history of our favorite snack…
When Covid-19 forced people to stay home, many of us found solace in a snack: potato chips. The crispy treats enjoyed around a $350 million increase in sales from 2019 to 2020. When the chips are down, it seems, Americans gobble them up.
Any search for the origins of this signature finger food must lead to George Crum (born George Speck), a 19th-century chef of Native and African American descent who made his name at Moon’s Lake House in the resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York. As the story goes, one day in 1853, the railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt was eating at Moon’s when he ordered his fried potatoes be returned to the kitchen because they were too thick. Furious with such a fussy eater, Crum sliced some potatoes as slenderly as he could, fried them to a crisp and sent them out to Vanderbilt as a prank. Rather than take the gesture as an insult, Vanderbilt was overjoyed.
Other patrons began asking for Crum’s “Saratoga Chips,” which soon became a hit far beyond Upstate New York. In 1860, Crum opened his own restaurant near Saratoga known as Crum’s House or Crum’s Place, where a basket of potato chips sat invitingly on every table. Crum oversaw the restaurant until retiring over 30 years later; in 1889, a New York Herald writer called him “the best cook in America.” Crum died in 1914, but today’s astounding variety of potato chips, from cinnamon-and-sugar Pringles to flamin’ hot dill pickle Lay’s, are a tribute to the man American Heritage magazine called “the Edison of grease”…
A fussy magnate, a miffed chef and the curious roots of the comfort food we hate to love: “How the Potato Chip Took Over America,” from @SmithsonianMag.
* George Carlin
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As we try to eat just one, we might might recall that it was on this date in 1965 that a storage tank ruptured and three million gallons of soybean oil flooded streets in Mankato, Minnesota, then flowed in the Mississippi River.
Stan Eichten was working in the office of Honeymead Soybean Products [the largest oil-processing facility in the world at the time]… when one of the biggest environmental disasters in state history hit.
“There was a roar, like an explosion,” said Eichten of the rupture of a soy oil storage tank that sent millions of gallons into Mankato streets and the Minnesota River. “It was almost like a tsunami. There was oil 2 or 3 feet deep all over.”
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“Speed is carrying us along, but we have yet to master it”*…
A call to contemplate the potential negative effects of internet technology along with its promise…
Conversations about technology tend to be dominated by an optimistic faith in technological progress, and headlines about new technologies tend to be peppered with deterministic language assuring readers of all the wonderful things these nascent technologies “will” do once they arrive. There is endless encouragement to think about all of the exciting benefits to be enjoyed if everything goes right, but significantly less attention is usually paid to the ways things might go spectacularly wrong.
In the estimation of philosopher Paul Virilio, the refusal to seriously contemplate the chance of failure can have calamitous effects. As he evocatively put it in 1997’s Open Sky, “Unless we are deliberately forgetting the invention of the shipwreck in the invention of the ship or the rail accident in the advent of the train, we need to examine the hidden face of new technologies, before that face reveals itself in spite of us.” Virilio’s formulation is a reminder that along with new technologies come new types of dangerous technological failures. It may seem obvious today that there had never been a car crash before the car was invented, but what future wrecks are being overlooked today amidst the excited chatter about AI, the metaverse, and all things crypto?
Virilio’s attention to accidents is a provocation to look at technology differently. To foreground the dangers instead of the benefits, and to see ourselves as the potential victims instead of as the smiling beneficiaries. As he put it in Pure War, first published in 1983, “Every technology produces, provokes, programs a specific accident.” Thus, the challenge becomes looking for the “accident” behind the technophilic light show — and what’s more, to find it before the wreckage starts to pile up.
Undoubtedly, this is not the most enjoyable way to look at technology. It is far more fun to envision yourself enjoying the perfect meal prepared for you by your AI butler than to imagine yourself caught up in a Kafkaesque nightmare after the AI system denies your loan application. Nevertheless, if Virilio was right to observe that “the invention of the highway was the invention of 300 cars colliding in five minutes,” it would be wise to start thinking seriously about the crashes that await us as we accelerate down the information superhighway…
The work of Paul Virilio urges us to ask: What future disasters inhere in today’s technologies? “Inventing the Shipwreck” from Zachary Loeb (@libshipwreck) in @_reallifemag. Eminently worth reading in full.
For a look at those who don’t just brush aside Virilio’s caution, but actively embrace speed and the chaos that it can cause:
Accelerationism holds that the modern, Western democratic state is so mired in corruption and ineptitude that true patriots should instigate a violent insurrection to hasten its destruction to allow a new, white-dominated order to emerge. Indeed, some of the foremost exponents of accelerationism today were at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. They included: the Oath Keepers, whose grab-bag ideology states that “paranoid anti-federalism envision[s] a restoration of ‘self-government’ and ‘natural rights’;” QAnon adherents, who remain convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that former President Donald Trump was thwarted from saving the world from a Satan-worshipping pedophilia ring run by Democrats, Jews, and other agents of the deep state; and, of course, Trump’s own die-hard “Stop the Steal” minions, who, against all reason and legal proof, seek to restore the former president to office.
The objective of accelerationism is to foment divisiveness and polarization that will induce the collapse of the existing order and spark a second civil war…
Read the full piece: “A Year After January 6, Is Accelerationism the New Terrorist Threat?“
* Paul Virilio
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As we practice prudence, we might recall that it was on this date in 1854 that Anthony Fass, a Philadelphia piano maker, was awarded the first U.S. patent (#11062) for an accordion. (An older patent existed in Europe, issued in Vienna in 1829 to Cyrill Demian.)
“Music helps set a romantic mood. Imagine her surprise when you say, ‘We don’t need a stereo – I have an accordion’.” – Martin Mull
“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.” – Tom Waits
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