meanwhile on the skagit river

Just as towers of ilium was getting all smug about the superiority of American engineering, a bridge decides to quit working on a blessedly quiet stretch of highway in the state of Washington. Like the I-5 bridge failure a few years ago, incidents like this point to the fact that we've been leaning too heavily on older infrastructure. The problem with old bridges and old buildings, however, is not that they were built poorly, but they were built very well, and with maintenance can exceed expectations of service life. But, this quiet  reliability fosters complacency among taxpayers and politicians, and a general lack of appreciation for the concept of redundancy results in dumb stuff happening. This is not an "Aw shucks, these things happen moment." There's no reason to die of scurvy and there's no reason for a bridge to collapse anywhere on the planet earth.