Today, someone just decided to spill his/her Slurpee on State College. The roads were so horrible that my 9am music prof AND my SRA prof both cancelled! w00t. It's amazing that even with the technology today, we can still not defeat mother nature's forces. We use satellites and emergency systems only to be pwned by Hurricane Katrina. The cover of a TIME magazine actually emphasized how we have not improved our natural disaster technology since then. Although there is not much to do about the forces of nature, I find it fascinating how we can build hybrid cars and super computers but still cannot find a way to counter-act nature.
It may seem impossible to completely block a storm from affecting a population, but technology these days can do so much better to clean roads and transport commuters faster. However, I am not complaining. I didn't go to a single class today!
Comments (3)
It really makes you realize how much we're at the hands of mother nature and not the other way around.
Sure we've made our own advancements to try to prevent normal effects like the cold, but the extremes really still slow us down.
Posted by Josh Hepworth | December 14, 2007 3:18 AM
Posted on December 14, 2007 03:18
Totally in agreement with technology's failure to combat natural emergencies. However, one of the things that I am interested in is open-source. Dr. Tapia talked about this in class a little bit. Open-source and the overall availability of important information is vital. For example, with the snow storm, all snow plow drivers should be able to communicate with each other and a database that shows which areas are in most need of treatment. The more access that people have to key information, the quicker we are able to recover from disasters.
Posted by D. J. Lingelbach | December 14, 2007 10:16 AM
Posted on December 14, 2007 10:16
It was EXACTLY like a slurpie too, except it was ugly ang grey instead of a bright, fun color and it definitely wasn't delicious. Most of my friends were really bummed that it wasn't bad enough for classes to be cancelled, but they were all whiny babies with papers due.
Posted by Abby Assetto | December 14, 2007 3:16 PM
Posted on December 14, 2007 15:16