Re: Daylighting

1

I would like a river, please.

Sorry, is the obesity thread any good? Should I be reading it?


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 11:17 AM
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And right here in Bump City.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 11:17 AM
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Lincoln opened the bit of Salt Creek that was buried. Too bad it's such a small creek.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 11:21 AM
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Sorry, is the obesity thread any good? Should I be reading it?

We should have thread ratings to help busy members of the commentariat decide which threads to read.

A++++ WOULD READ AGAIN!

D- DON'T WASTE YR TIME--TOO FEW COCK JOKES


Posted by: MAE | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 11:24 AM
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If you're looking for tips on little girls' hair or little girls' cavities, then it's the thread for you!


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 11:28 AM
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The Viele map of Manhattan. Some day.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 11:38 AM
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A couple decades ago I helped uncover part of a river that had been buried for something in the neighborhood of 2,500 years. It was fairly awesome, but was canalized far too narrowly at the point in question to actually spend time in it.


Posted by: potchkeh | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 11:43 AM
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6: Someday they'll rotate the whole island 90 degrees.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 11:46 AM
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6: Alternatively, consider the opposite extreme.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 11:52 AM
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I think potchkeh wins the thread.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 12:12 PM
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Someday they'll rotate the whole island 90 degrees.

JUST YOU WAIT AND SEE!


Posted by: OPINIONATED TECTONIC PLATES | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 12:18 PM
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12

Down low, too slow.


Posted by: Opinionated Cumbre Vieja | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 12:25 PM
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10: Me too.

Within the last 60 years, our city buried a creek that ran through several neighborhood backyards, including ours. They routed it through a storm sewer (a manhole to the storm sewer is in our back yard). An older neighbor told us that when she was a young girl, she canoed on the creek, which I find hard to believe. But there may be some springs or at least some leaks along the course of the lost creek, because our backyard is slightly lusher and cooler than our front yard, with no help from us.


Posted by: bill | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 12:32 PM
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My street covers what was a small creek and the shared portion of my driveway* covers a yet smaller tributary of same. Neither creeks nor roadways are the better for it.

*It is actually an alley with uncertain rules. But as of last weekend it is covered with $300 of JP paid for stones on it**.

**To the disgust of the neighbor I share it with, which is a whole 'nother story.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 12:46 PM
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$200 of the cost was having "my neighbor is a slutbag" printed on the stones.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 12:50 PM
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No, but we do seem to be caught up in a downward spiral of hostility and miscommunication so it might come to that.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 1:07 PM
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The River Fleet is arguably the most famous of these in London. We gave a departing colleague an 18th century print of it, from when it was still above ground, as a leaving gift (our office was on Fleet Street).


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 4:13 PM
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This blog has a lot of really interesting content on where the covered up, channelized and culverted waterways of LA are/used to be.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 4:16 PM
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In Berkeley, supposedly, Strawberry Creek would flow a bit more forcefully around halftime of football games. until they redid how the plumbing worked.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 4:18 PM
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In the recent disturbances here, underground streams (and reclaimed riverside land) were key indicators of ground liquefaction and building failure.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 7:52 PM
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We have some buried streams here, but the big underground surprises come from forgotten coal mines.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 8:07 PM
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Despite being incredibly unadventurous in real life, I enjoy reading sprawling manifestos on the art of drain exploring.


Posted by: torrey pine | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 8:45 PM
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Wow, that sounds really pretentious.


Posted by: torrey pine | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 8:50 PM
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not pretentious so much as obtuse


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 9:33 PM
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how y'all feeling tonight?? I am in favor of rivers and constructing habitations near them. I think peeing in the sewers is ok.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 07-31-13 9:35 PM
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Yeah, lots of covered streams in London. In Reading we have the Holy Brook, which you can walk along before it hits the town and then just see tiny stretches of it around the place.

Our big underground surprises are chalk mines. A street about half a mile from us was evacuated for about a year whilst the holes and caverns beneath them got dealt with.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 1:23 AM
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London's great for that because lots of the streets and districts are still named after the buried rivers that everyone's forgotten about. Like the Westbourne.
(Obligatory book: "Rivers of London", Ben Aaronovitch.)


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 1:34 AM
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21. Checking for old mine workings is part of the standard searches your lawyer makes if you're buying a house round here. Sometimes an informed guess is the best they can do.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 5:17 AM
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There's an insurance you buy for it here. Lots of unrecorded mines because people used to just dig into the side of the hill on their own.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 5:28 AM
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Yeah, same here. But you still don't want to buy a house on top of a mineshaft if you can avoid it, unless you plan to open a club there.

Back to about 150 years ago, it's mostly on record. Before that, you're on your own.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 6:29 AM
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In San Jose California, the construction of a soccer stadium is being delayed because they've just found unexpected obstacles from a previous tenant.

Not a mine, but perhaps, mines--they've apparently found old munitions bunkers!


Posted by: Annelid Gustator | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 7:06 AM
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re: 30

One of the most advanced big-scale digitisation shops in the UK, apparently, deals most with mine maps. They need massive overhead scanners to shoot them as they are so huge, and then the data goes through georectification and so on, so that it can be overlayed onto O/S type maps.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 7:32 AM
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30: I think they generally know where the shafts are here. The issue is the gradual collapse of galleries and tunnels.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 7:34 AM
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There used to be (and still may be) a great mine tour* not too far NE of Pittsburgh. You did not go in very far on the tour, but the map of how of the extent of that one mine's tunnels went was sobering. Here is a map (pdf) of areas of Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) which are "undermined." A lot of the NE part of the county was from that one mine. And did not realize that the National Mine Map Repository was located here (but it makes sense).

*You can adjust this for geology enthusiasm, but I must say that mine tours almost never disappoint--the underground part is always fascinating. The museum and grounds at the one I mentioned are somewhat mickey mouse , but once you get in the mine it is quite something.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 8:42 AM
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34.*: Especially recommended for kids.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 8:47 AM
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34: CMU's Hamburg Hall used to be a Bureau of Mines building, which I always thought was odd but I guess it makes sense given the area's history.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 9:05 AM
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The Carnegie Museum has the Stratovator, which is a simulated (with the very best technology available in 1982) ride down into the rocks below Pittsburgh. Sponsored by a former head of Consul's predecessor. My son loves it, I think because it's basically a TV show. Maybe I'll try a real mine with him.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 9:17 AM
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The Big Pit (Welsh National Coal Museum) is fantastic. At the moment, all the guides are ex-miners, from that mine or others in the area, and it really adds to the experience.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 9:35 AM
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Ground-penetrating radar for mine checks? I always hope for some peace dividend.

The mine museum at the Empire Mine in, hm, Nevada City, CA is good, although when there we couldn't go very far in the mine. (Tours elsewhen? Creaky knees in our party? I forget.) The above-ground machinery and the astounding mine-centered wealth is fascinating itself, and they have a 3D model of the mine which is *huge* and explains sneaky things they did to neighbor competitor mines, e.g., use them as drainage. There's a `bunkhouse' for visiting engineers that reminds me of my (geophysical engineer) grandfather's very nice travelling life; it would make a nice hotel as is, and it's built around a dancefloor and bar.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 11:24 AM
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I was in a gold mine in Cripple Creek, CO. I don't know if you can still do that. They probably just re-started mining once Glenn Beck told everybody to buy gold.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 11:27 AM
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Just this week I was reading about the Knox Mine Disaster, and what happens when you dig your mine too close to the underside of the Susquehanna River. Turns out, it involves dropping railroad cars into a whirlpool.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 9:07 PM
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Also deprecated: Digging out too much clay from the banks of the Hudson.

That's the contemporary coverage from the Times, which uses the blunt and cynical subheadline "Brickmakers Will Profit" and includes more discussion of their culpability than the Web's most prominent modern retelling.


Posted by: joyslinger | Link to this comment | 08- 1-13 9:46 PM
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Ground-penetrating radar for mine checks? I always hope for some peace dividend.

Limited range, I think. Ground penetrating radar only really goes down about 15m at best. So it's good for finding graves, not for finding mines (of the coal variety). Seismic exploration might be better, but there are good reasons why you shouldn't set off patterns of explosive charges in urban areas. At least they tell me there are good reasons.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 08- 2-13 2:23 AM
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