Tales Of Brave Ulysses

So how about a quick highway construction update: After months of inactivity, International Bridge Construction finally laid down the top layer of non-skid asphalt about two weeks ago. This final section down to the Ylig River Bridge is ready for striping, but the construction crews are once again nowhere to be found. It’s like they don’t want to finish working on this project. Apparently DPW has finally decided to start fining this lackadaisical construction company $1,400 a day. Apparently they missed their completion deadline of last week, and IBC is now liable for these fines.

That’s just great, but I am pretty damn sure the original timeline was for this construction to end in November 2003. That’s almost two years ago, at $1,400 per day… I think I’ve just solved the government’s budget crisis! That’s well over a million dollars in late fees right there!

Just about two weeks ago now there was a water main break underneath the new highway. This happened about a quarter mile up the road from my house. Of course GWA tore open a huge hole in the road bed and since they have made it amply clear that they are not in the business of fixing their gashes in Guam’s roadways, there is a large, dangerous, gravel-filled hole in Route 4. Or actually, they placed a wobbly iron plate atop the gravel a couple days ago, so I guess that means it is fixed.

Looking at the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (the guys that maintain the Doomsday Clock), I found this chilling map prepared by FEMA. It shows the amount of radiation expected to fall on the continental United States after a Soviet attack, by county. Look at how almost my entire home state of Missouri would have been reduced to a glowing cinder. Almost the entire state was classified as a Very High Risk area with exposure to over 15,000 roentgens. A dose of 500 roentgens for over 5 hours is lethal for humans.

In fact, the entire continental United States would have been subject to dangerously high amounts of radioactivity:

If the fallout levels that characterize a Low Risk Fallout area should occur, debilitating illness and possible death are certain for resident populations without adequate shelter.

I love this painting…

VAN GOGH, Vincent
Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum
September 1888
Oil on canvas
81×65.5 cm
Rijksmuseum Kroller-Mueller, Otterlo

Found a couple interesting sites with document archives.

• Albert Einstein – digitized archive of Einstein’s manuscripts.
  
• British Library Turning the Pages – Keeping the digitized manuscripts meme going, here is a link to the British Library’s digitized manuscripts, including the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci.