The South is currently being hit by a huge hurricane. It’s Cat 5, which is the 4th category 5 to the hit U.S. in the history of hurricanes. (Acutally it’s a 4 now) The news stories were pretty meaningless to me, but reading the message boards on sportsshooter.com (a photojournalist website) and reading how people are telling others to get out of the New Orleans area, or reading how journalists are scrambling to be safe, and then document the aftermath made me realize the severity of it. This is on the scale of a major California earthquake (like loma prieta or northridge). The last line of the latest discussion out of the NOAA SE louisiana forecast office reads “good luck and godspeed to all in the path of this storm.” Indeed.

The Shinkansen. Japan’s high speed train. Looking out the window going 190mph feels very wrong at first.