Slashdot Mirror
Using R44 And A PowerBook To Bust Illegal Seawalls
Sylvestre writes "Ken Adelman, founder of TGV and Network Alchemy, is using a digital camera, helicopter, and a Power Book to take a high resolution photograph every 500 feet down the California coast. The goal? Busting people putting up illegal sea walls. The catch so far? One golf course covered the beach with boulders. Also of note: the website has 44 gigs of photos so far, runs on solar power, and is Microsoft Free. Best use of technology I've seen all month!"
Question... why would making a "sea wall" be illegal?
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I'm assuming any golf course that has "field of boulders" as a hazard is pretty damn hardcore.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
But what the heck are they doing using Microsoft FrontPage 4.0 as the HTML editor ???
If you talk the talk, please walk the walk
It would be way cool to have a panoramic photo of the entire California coastline (or at least a significant chunk of it) from stitching all those photos together. Set it up as a movie, perhaps, offering a sort of virtual fly-by of the coastline.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
If I have photos proving you did something illegal, then the burden of proof is still on me as the accuser. Its just I already have proof.
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
holy crap, you can see my house!
Meanwhile, in an attempt to one-up Ken's website californiacoastline.org, photographer J. Smiley has published a new web site: jennascoastline.org in which he promises to photograph every 500mm of Jenna Jameson's body. Environmentalists hope they can use this new data to finally settle the "are those real" debate.
44 gigs of images has nothing on some socially impared guys I know.
After thinking about my post above... Seems like it would be much easier to just take a decent digital camcorder and fly down the coast at a moderate rate of speed. Better continuous coverage, much much faster, and if the real purpose IS to look for breakwaters or illegal rockpiles, certainly a digital camcorder image would work for that.
I wonder if there isn't some other motive here, requiring high-res images.
(Like getting free publicity on Slashdot for using exclusively non-MS technology for a cool task, perhaps.....? Naaaaahhhh....)
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
It's the coastline after all. The guy isn't breaking into buildings or anything. What he is doing is similar to a very successful group called the Riverkeepers. This group patrols the Hudson river and watches for people dumping illegally. They are the major reason that the Hudson is no longer the utter cesspool it used to be. The government has neither the resources nor the inclination to enforce its environmental laws and so it is up to citizens to do so.
I don't know but when i read
No Microsoft products were used in creating this web site.
My first thought when I read this was the disclaimer
No animals were harmed in the making of this film that always appears at the bottom of movie credits.
I stole this Sig
Um
Perhaps you ought to look into fuel consumption for a R44 before you go spouting off.
If you were to look at the R44 Spec Sheet you'll see that the standard fuel capacity is 30.6 US gal. with a max range of 400 miles.
A little simple math shows us that 400/30.6 is equal to what kids? That's right, 13.07 mpg. Now, let's take a look at the gas economy on your SUV..... hmm... Comparible, is it?
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
and I quote:
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"> <meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
Go visit some place where industrial development has existed without enviromental concerns. Like China, the ex-U.S.S.R, or East Germany. Is that what you want to live in? I don't think so.
If you want to piss in your bathtub, go ahead, but if I catch you pissing in _our_ bathtub.....
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
This is wrong twice over:
What gets me about this is how old (and obvious) this advice really is.
Whatever one's religious beliefs, it's generally agreed that Jesus know how to make a point. In Matthew 7:24-27, he tells a story about a foolish builder who builds his house on sand. His audience would have laughed about that.
Two thousand years later, people with degrees in architecture and engineering build houses (and even gigantic hotels) out on the beach, and then try to get the government to spend tax money on beach replenishment when the ocean comes to take away their buildings.
People who put up seawalls should have to pay to remove them, and people who build on sand shouldn't get one penny of my tax money for beach replenishment. Building on sand is so obviously stupid that anyone who does it doesn't deserve any help from anybody.
Good on this guy. If the government won't pull their finger out it is the obligation of the citizens.
Seen a lot of comments here about why seawalls are bad and the only explanations given are legals ones. Not suprising given most people here are americans.
The reason is one of basic physics, the legal arguments have to take second place.Unless you think you can legislate against nature. Please ignore this if you think you have a right to destroy other people property and public property and the general environment to protect your own interests.
If there is a rock, a wall, a washed up spare tyre, anything that is a hard object on the beach, then when the water hits it during normal wave action, the wave will retreat back to sea at a higher speed because it's energy hasn't been absorbed. Normal beaches (with sand) absorb the wave impact. If the water is going faster, it removes sand as it returns to the ocean and thus erodes the beach, much faster than natural movements. Even a small hard object on a beach can show this, one season I saw the tire I mentioned above, a tractor tyre, chop a gully about 0.5m deep and about 6-7m wide, just from wave action on this one small object. A wall will destroy the beach.
Remember beaches ARE NOT FIXED in the earth, they rise, fall and move around on a seasonal basis. Beach nourishment is not to replace sand that is lost, but to re-build the natural shoke absorbing action of an already eroded one.
Sydney residents please visit http://www.realsurf.com/nowall/ and please think about supporting this cause, we know what private interests have f**ked up in the states through ignorance and greed, lets not let it happen at home.
phil
When asked why they go through the trouble of reclaiming the sea, the Dutch are said to answer: "We had two choices for expansion: invade Germany or reclaim land from the sea. We took one look at the Germans and decided taking on the sea was much easier" or words to that effect.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney