December 14, 2004
On {time,budget,spec}
The bridge's construction costs amount to 300 million euros, with a toll plaza 6 km north of the viaduct costing an additional 20 million euros.The project required about 127,000 m2 of concrete, 19,000 metric tons of steel for the reinforced concrete, and 5000 metric tons of pre-stressed concrete for the cables and shrouds. The builder claims that the bridge's lifetime will be 120 years.
It's a damn sight better than Sir Norman Foster's Millennium Bridge.
Compare to the Bay Area's ongoing difficulty rebuilding a bridge damanged in 1989.
Where wheat begins and where wheat ends
Deborah Koons Garcia screened her documentary, The Future of Food over a meal yesterday evening; she's been showing it around the country -- and the world! -- to political activist groups, food-action collectives, and at the Castro Theatre, as a benefit for Slow Food.
(The lovely and many-talented Sara Maamouri narrates, produces, and did much of the video research for the film.
Andy mentioned that a Native American group would once consider all of their decisions unto the seventh generation.
Deborah said that the US Congress recenlty passed, by virtue of a quiet rider attached to another bill, legislation subjugating Iraq to US patent law. Having destroyed their crops (isn't the Fertile Crescent where homo sapiens first cultivated wheat?), we will now destroy their nutrition.