Tsunami

Here's a really interesting article about all the web responses to the Tsunami. Especially worth checking out are the relief blog and wikipedia entry. (as a side note, I think wikipedia is the best thing to happen to the internet in a long time....I'm old enough to remember Lynx and Gopher and when the Net was an information source rather than a porn machine...I been blogging for 3 weeks now and can safely say that blogging is closer to masturbation than journalism)

My dad and sister are in Bombay (Mumbai) right now. They are fine, and the city seemed to have been spared because its on the West Coast and there is a sea wall that shelters the bay. Unfortunately, an aftershock or whatever caused ocean levels to rise enough to flood a slum on the other side of the island. My grandparents cook lived there and her house was completely destroyed. Its scary to me because whenever you see those reports on global warming, Mumbai is always top of the list as far as cites that will no longer exist when the ocean's rise.

Here's a decent map of Mumbai, with links to Lonely Planet blurbs about the sites. My grandparents and aunt live a block off the water in between where it says "Gateway of India" and "Colaba." The slums that were flooded are on the Arabian Sea near where it says "Colaba Woods," I think. The part labeled "Back Bay" with "Marine Drive" "Nariman Point" and "Malabar Hill" are the heart of what is South Bombay...where most of the tourist attractions are. Here's a bigger map so you can see that the place is actually much bigger. Mumbai today sprawls almost as far as the Tri-State NYC Metro Region with probably twice as many people. Rents are actually really high...most people still pay for their homes under rent control, but the commercial office space market has been liberalized, leading to Mumbai now being ranked the 4th costliest city for office space in the world.

WOW, this is the coolest internet map, EVER. No joke, its a fully zoomable map of the entire world. I didn't even know that the Lena River existed before randomly zooming in on the sleepy Siberian town of Yakutsk. And to think, I just wanted to travel the Volga River...what the hell was I thinking. Places on maps are fun cause sometimes you get to go there and it really fucks with your mind....like when I was in Punta Arenas and got to dip my hand in the Straits of Magellan (yes, its cold!). I don't know why, I saw some amazing stuff in South America, but the Straits of Magellan really did it for me more than anything else cause it really resonated with the 12-year old nerd inside of me. Its like in fifth grade when you spin the globe and stop it with your finger to find out where you'll live one day. Too bad from now on I'm just going to be a shitty lawyer.