Cool engineering

This is a Cool Thing. A water bridge across the River Elbe. It connects two canals, one in each of the former East and West Germany. It's nearly a kilometer long and they've been trying to build it since 1919, but a couple of world wars and partition of the country kinda got in the way.

It's got 24,000 metric tons of steel and 68,000 cubic meters of concrete, and took a mere 500 million Euros and six years to build (after the 80-year planning stage, of course).

It's just the idea of it that excites me- we've got two very convenient canals, but there's this unpredictable river smack dab in the way. I know, let's build a bridge!

Yay

1) I may be writing an article on the perl debugger for beginners; more on that if it goes ahead.

2) the chocolate-chip peanut-butter cookies I made last night are better on the second day than the first.

3) First appearances can be deceiving. Just because somebody sends me a photocopy of a document that looks like it came straight from an Underwood typewriter, does not mean I can assume anything about the sophistication of the sender. (Taking another look, I'm pretty sure it is an Underwood...)