Friday, April 10, 2015
It's smart to know that you're stupid
The 20th Century destroyed most knowledge in most subjects. The best we can do now is to recover the intelligence of earlier times, and perhaps build on it, without understanding any of it.
Water engineers in Peru have done exactly this, on a much longer timescale. Earlier civilizations in the Andes had figured out a remarkably clever system to balance out seasonal water supply. Along with dams and ponds, they intentionally recharged aquifers. Just like using a big electrolytic capacitor to smooth out pulses in electric flow.
Lima, like many other Southern cities, has grown far beyond its original infrastructure....
Now Lima's water utility company, Sedapal, has decided to invest in conservation projects in the Andes to keep the rivers flowing and taps running. And researchers have discovered that the most cost-effective way is to revive a system of ancient stone canals, known locally as amunas, that were built in the Andes by the Wari culture between AD 500 and 1000, centuries before the rise of the Incas. The canals captured water from rivers in the mountains during the rainy season and took it to places where it could infiltrate rocks that fed year-round springs further down the mountains, so maintaining river flow during the dry season. The amunas fell into disrepair long ago and had been largely forgotten. In most places, their water now quickly returns to the rivers. But hydrologists such as Bert De Bièvre of Condesan, a Lima-based non-governmental organisation behind the project, say re-grouting the lined stretches of the canals with cement would allow them to resume their original purpose. SEDEPAL has now decided to fund the plan by taking 1 per cent from its water charges for the next five years. The costs are estimated to be $23 million.Note the cost: $23 million. Compare that to the $300 million that Spokane's genocidal lunatic monstrous "city" "government" is spending to create mosquito-breeding swamps, solely to keep the EPA Terrorist Army from attacking. Real engineering is always cheaper than paying off blackmailers, but when the blackmailers are COOOOOOOOOOL, gross idiotfairies joyfully use other people's money to pay off. = = = = = Meanwhile, the Brits accidentally proved the efficiency of 1000AD technology by failing to realize their own stupidity. Demonstrating a massive fire-flinging trebuchet for some kind of historical re-creation, they burned down an 1896 boathouse which was itself a re-creation built to resemble a 1000AD thatched cottage. The trebuchet was supposed to aim beyond the boathouse, but the aimers stupidly failed to account for wind-blown sparks. Hoist by their own petard!
Labels: 20th century Dark Age
¶ 3:24 AM
