Sunday, June 16, 2013

New Ooze

 People got a bit of a scare last week when what looked like radioactive ooze rose from a sewer in Philadelphia:


Unlike the Chinese ooze from last May, though, this one had an official explanation:
This sinkhole, which has reportedly now been boarded over, is filled with water tinged with some fluorescent dye that official-agency types apparently use to trace water flow. That kind of thing is useful in studying sinkholes, since they can be much larger than they initially seem.
I just find it odd that sinkholes are just now appearing out of nowhere, remain largely unexplained, and yet no one is putting forth the proposition that it could have something to do with how fallible, profit-hungry human beings may have built shit over land that couldn't sustain it without having previously tested said ground sufficiently.

Of course, I'm saying that after having predicted that building 120 stories of fucking condos over downtown Montréal ground that passes over two separate underground subway lines won't last a decade, so it's kind of in my interest of ''winning'' that it all goes to shit. Though I wish no one any harm. But folks have been cutting corners in all walks of life since the 1950s (and probably earlier too, but the gangrene has been systemic in North America only relatively recently compared to, say, History).

Or maybe I'm just a cynical asshole.

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