My dad reminded me of this awesome joke:

US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.

CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!

US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA*, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!

CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

baby blue eyes, your head on my shoulder

Comment! (3) | Recommend! (1)

I think even though we are usually always really nice to each other on Nutang, I think we should be especially cognizant of how important it is that we are so nice to each other, because I don't think anyone here needs (or in some cases can afford to have) any more places where they go and people are mean to them.

Comment! (4) | Recommend! (4)

I've been walking home from work again now that the weather has turned, it's very nice. Yesterday I focused on the "texture" of the walk home. That is, I just ran my hand along everything at the side of the sidewalk to see how it felt against my fingertips. The rough bricks, the prickly junipers, the soft banks of magenta flowers, the smooth metal pole, the waxy leaves of the bushes- my fingers drank in all of these textures and yearned for more.

It reminded me of an old habit of mine back when I had cacti- that is, I used to have this cactus sitting by my desk and I would just run my fingers over it while I was thinking. When I no longer had the cactus I took to running my fingers through a little box of tacks. A box of tacks, a box of tacks, I always made sure to have lots of tacks so I would have enough to actually use to tack things up but also enough so that my box of thinking tacks would always be full.

What can I say, I like having texture in my life.

Comment! (3) | Recommend! (1)

So you thought I was done talking about the river, didn't you?

No, I thought I'd say a bit more. You see, the combination of hydrological engineering, the development of Germany's coal industry, industrialization and its ensuing influx of pollutants into the river... all these things combined to cause the near collapse of the river's natural ecosystem. The ecosystem is important, and not just for people who like to wax on about environmental purity and other quixotic notions.

The fish in the river provided a livlihood for many people-- some of these families had been fishermen for hundreds of years, and now their fish were disappearing. People had always relied on the river to take away their waste products, and for the most part it did... it took them downstream, where they affected other cities and people. In time, the pollutants in the river seeped through the groundwater and into the crops, so that the farmers turned out products that were full of poison. Then there are the normal things people like to lament, like the nesting areas for birds and the drop in species diversity, which from a purely humanistic standpoint might not be as important. The poetic or perhaps inherent, philosophical value of these things, if it could be calculated, should perhaps be introduced into the equation, weighted by the number of people who care about them.

Nevertheless, this series of ecological disasters and disasters like them have been cited as reasons against damming and hydrologically modifying other world rivers, such as the Yangtze (the Three Gorges Dam was completed in 2006, though lots of peripheral construction remains to be completed). So what do you think? The Yangtze has long ravaged the valley with unpredictable flooding. There are many problem with navigability that makes the Yangtze a dangerous and unreliable shipping route. With the damming of the Yangtze, the Chinese have displaced over a million people, flooded several cities (including some with ancient burial grounds, relics, and noteable archeological sites). They have also put the Baiji, a nearly blind freshwater dolphin found only in the Yangtze [more] in danger of extinction, as the dam's presence has increased ship traffic, which can kill the dolphin and disturb its prey. There haven't been any sightings of a wild Baiji since 2004. (10 years from the start of the dam project)

In my humble opinion... the Americans and the Europeans have lost sight of their own history in this matter. Too many generations have gone by for them to remember what it was like to live next to a wild, unpredictable river. None of their family members ever died of typhoid, cholera, dysentery, or malaria. Yes, it is a shame that there aren't as many salmon in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest as there used to be. I applaud the efforts working towards a remedy to that problem. But it makes it really hard to work on a problem like that while you are starving, dying, or living in abject poverty. It's much easier when you are independently wealthy and you live in Portland, Oregon.

Think of Africa here. How disasterous would it be for the Africans to drain all the wetlands in Africa? Pretty disasterous. Well... probably not to the many savannah animals that everyone likes so much- they don't live in the swamp, they live in temperate grasslands. But to the "swamp ecosystem", it would be pretty bad. Ok, especially for the mosquitos. And tse-tse flies. And for the flatworms that cause schistosomiasis. Maybe those adorable hippos, the most deadly of all African mammals, would lose a little habitat. Crocodiles, perhaps.

But how much better would it be if you could free sub-saharan Africa from the yoke of the "tropical" diseases?!?! How liberating would it be if you could free China from the ever-present fear of devastating floods? Here's Africa, brimming with natural resources, unable to get them to market because of horrible roads and hippo/crocodile/disease-filled rivers and you're saying, "Here, lads, here's some money. Don't use it for anything useful. Here's a scrap of food, it will last you until the next time we come by with the charity wagon."

How can you sit there in your house on the former flood plain, watching millions of dollars of increased GDP float by you on the Rhine or the Elbe or the Mississippi... sit there with your rivers tamed, dredged, channelized, and dammed, and lecture the rest of the world on the importance of eco-system conservation?!!?

Comment! (1) | Recommend! (1)

As the old century gave way to the new, the river was alive with steam ships chugging product against the strong Rhine current. The Great War came. In the Treaty of Versailles, France was awarded Alsace-Lorraine. They began work on a series of hydro-electric plants, diverting water from the river's main bed into a series of loops. The Germans protested--- such removal of water from the river would destroy the water table in the fertile state of Baden and ruin the livlihood for the farmers there. The Germans had no bargaining power, and the French proceeded with their plan, dismissing the fears of the Germans. World War II came as the German people bucked under the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles and allowed Adolph Hitler to come to power. The recurrent dream of "returning the Rhine to the Germans" was reawakened. The Rhine became a Nazi river.

At the end of World War II the borders drawn once again left Alsace-Lorraine in possession of the French. American money in the form of the Marshall Plan came pouring into Europe to rebuild the war-wearied countries. The French took some of this money, shook the dust off the hydro-electric plant plans, and started where they left off, building a series of power plants and a canal to connect the Rhine to the French River Rhone to increase their own commercial success. The German states had no negotiating power. The water table in Baden fell just as feared, drying up the once-fertile farmland in Germany.

The engineering changes made to the River Rhine have boasted many successes: The eradication of cholera, malaria, typhoid, and dysentery in the Rhine Valley. These measures were so successful that these diseases are now considered "tropical diseases" and some people don't even realize that these diseases were once common in Northern Europe before the draining of the marshlands. Huge amounts of farmland was made available. The navigability of the river was increased, turning the Rhine into an artery for commerce into Northern Europe. As a result of the river's navigability, the Rhine Valley became an industrial center for Germany, developing its coal resources; and Switzerland, connecting an otherwise land-locked nation to the sea.

Of course, these improvements came with trade-offs: namely that flooding was not alleviated (only relocated), that the water table was lowered, affecting cropland, and the river's orginal ecosystem was completely destroyed. Popular and delicious fish like salmon were replaced by tough, hardy varieties; the softwood forests disappeared; birds that nested in the marshlands died out; the species diversity dropped down to dangerously low levels. The Rhine once described by the Romans and the Romantic poets was gone. The products of the Industrial Revolution turned the river from a thriving ecosystem to slimy, near-dead canal. However, since the 1970s, efforts have been made at environmental restoration, and in 1997, three years ahead of schedule, salmon returned to the river.

A change made to the river never fails to have unforeseen consequences, and every act (or failure to act) eventually requires remediation down the road. Despite continuous efforts to "perfect" the Rhine River, the river will always be changing, as rivers always do.

Comment! (5) | Recommend! (1)