A map of the world with current “actual events” is viewable here.
Event categories include power outage, vehicle incident/accident, flash flood, cold wave, snow storm, explosion, biohazard, epcidemic…but I did not see “cyber” anything.
The closest might be “Technological Disaster“, but even that seems to be caused by weather.
Sixteen people are believed trapped in an Australian cinema after the roof partially collapsed after heavy rain…
The new SSD 310 drive advertised by Intel is said to be 10 times less weight than the standard 2.5-inch model. Marketing seems to be centered around performance, claiming a 60% boost in system speed. Although some might think of this in terms of future devices and improvements to tablets, it also changes the threat model for data.
It now is more easy than ever to physically steal data — remove and hold a drive undetected in the palm of one’s hand.
With coins, asset value is clearly written on the outside.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has a White-Nose Syndrome (WNS) information page that reveals American scientists are struggling to stop this serious health crisis:
In February 2006 some 40 miles west of Albany, N.Y., a caver photographed hibernating bats with an unusual white substance on their muzzles. He noticed several dead bats. The following winter, bats behaving erratically, bats with white noses, and a few hundred dead bats in several caves came to the attention of New York Department of Environmental Conservation biologists, who documented white-nose syndrome in January 2007. More than a million hibernating bats have died since. Biologists with state and federal agencies and organizations across the country are still trying to find the answer to this deadly mystery.
We have found sick, dying and dead bats in unprecedented numbers in and around caves and mines from New Hampshire to Tennessee. In some hibernacula, 90 to 100 percent of the bats are dying.
Since then the Forest Service has said that they are initiating severe counter-measures to stop humans from spreading the fungus Geomyces destructans.
The U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region has issued an emergency order closing caves and abandoned mines on national forests and national grasslands in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas for one year in response to the spread of WNS.
However, the problem continues to get worse and some experts say it soon may lead to American bat extinction.
“We are now at the front line in fighting this disease,” said Dave Redell, DNR’s lead bat ecologist. “The next three to four years are crucial. If white-nose syndrome reaches Wisconsin, we are looking at potentially losing almost all of our cave-dwelling bat populations.”
Bats play an absolutely essential role in pest control as well as other areas of environmental stability that affect humans — their loss will lead directly to much higher risks of crop loss and disease from insects. Yet WNS seems to be an example of a real virus crisis that gets very little attention in the media compared to mostly theoretical low-risk events like the Stuxnet computer virus.
Craig Thompson is interviewed by Sailing in Marin. He discusses how two factors are influencing the location of the event: poor and unsafe state of the city piers and proximity to automobile parking.
It just happened that piers 27-29, 26-28 are in better shape than some of the piers being considered further south, which will help speed things up as they wont require as much work or environmental assessment work allowing us to up and running a lot quicker. As is well documented, pier 30-32 which will be part of the new plan is going to require extensive rebuilding. It’s not in good condition. It’s not so busy in the southern part and there’s not as much foot traffic. Being in the northern part has other benefits – it’s much better from a public standpoint as this is where the people are anyway. It’s phenomenal and doesn’t get much better. How often can you come into a city like San Francisco and stage an event right there in the center of everything? And then having the course running along the waterfront like it does so that people can actually come out, park their car, walk down to the beach and watch the racing. It’s a very unique opportunity.
That is a strange statement. No one who lives in the Bay Area is going to say people should come park their car at the piers, given that parking is impossible even on a regular day. Maybe it is a plug for an automobile sponsor like BMW?
However, trains, trolleys, cable cars, subway (BART), and buses all run directly and within walking distance to southern piers. There also is no beach at any of the southern piers that he mentions, so he must be hinting that races will happen further north.
I understand the benefits to use piers in better shape but the city is wise to recondition and make use of the piers that are in the worst shape like 30/32. Wind and water conditions are more favorable at the southern piers also, further away from the nuclear gusts that fire through Golden Gate to Angel Island.
Development to the south is great news for the city and improving the safety of the waterfront. South Beach / China Basin is the most exciting area for commercial development. It helps shore up public use of these areas, while providing excellent views from both sides of the Bay. The northern piers make sense for tours, parades and photo shoots when the weather permits but public access and transportation options are limited. Hopefully the focus of events will be southern…and hopefully no one will drive a car.
It is notable that Thompson is from Southern California, which allowed the automobile companies to back-stab and murder mass transit systems in order to boost car sales. Although San Francisco also was threatened by the same situation, much of the infrastructure has been able to survive.
San Francisco was a city without much surplus land to use for roads and depended on its cablecars and its Key system, a system operating 230 electric trolleys and trains. Immediately after acquiring controlling interest in the parent company of the Key system, National City Lines announced its plans to replace the entire system with a fleet of—you guessed it—General Motor’s buses. The Key system owned rights of way across the Golden Gate Bridge; these rights of way were paved over to make way for cars and buses. San Francisco’s recently developed light rail system, (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, generally known as BART,) had no right of way across the Bay Bridge and was forced to tunnel under the bay at a cost of $180 million.
The right of way issue is essential to the success or failure of a transit system in America.
Once we had a mass transit system, a system that was the envy of the world. This system was almost entirely a private enterprise. What began the demise of mass transit was the loss of rights of way. When trolleys are forced to compete with the more mobile cars and trucks for space, the trolley loses time. This reduces the number of passengers per mile a trolley can carry. It plays havoc with the transit schedule. It also means that it can be quicker to get somewhere using your own car than taking a trolley.
It may be quicker for a few, but less efficient and more harmful overall. So, again, hopefully the development groups working on the next America’s Cup think about the inefficiency of the automobile and discourage people from driving. After all, the America’s cup is about technology and efficiency — using a set amount of input (wind) — so modern and clean public transportation options should be integrated into thinking about the event.