simply beautiful

This is a picture of the soon to be completed railway tunnel that they are building under a part of the Swiss Alps. They just recently completed their main drilling and will probably be spending several more months turning the rough passage into a pristine concrete wormhole.

So far, I have rarely posted images of conventional architecture. They have magazines for that. (How much longer will we have magazines, anyway?)

This month has marked some interesting engineering achievements. They got the Chilean miners out alive, they completed the Tillman Bridge in Arizona near the Hoover Dam, and they did this. I wonder what else happened that we don't know about. Construction worldwide took a beating in the recession, but every day we're probably building more than we're tearing down. On a collective basis I wonder by what percentage the sum total of human construction edges up each year. We produce about a yard of concrete per person per year, which yields a very big number. How many miles of dimensional lumber, structural steel shapes, and reinforcing bar are produced and used? How many acres of drywall, plywood, sheet metal decking? Ah, to ride in triumph through Persepolis! ( My first Marlowe reference in a post--mark that)