Advance planning that leads to the security of the citizens of the country is always welcomed, more especially if it is something related with the natural catastrophes. These natural disasters are simply unpredictable and dealing with them looks like an insurmountable task.

Though hugely expensive, but it is worth taking over, for the millions of people residing in the realm of such dangers. Best example is regarding the inhabitants of the metropolitan city of Saitama, Japan, who had been facing the water calamities very often.

The technical engineers in Japan had come up with an extra-ordinary storm water management solution in the year 1992, which is the amazing underground system that effectively deals with the flood water and prevents the area from the massive damage to lives and properties.

It is called The Metropolitan Area Outer Discharge Channel, constructed to minimize the damage caused by heavy rainfall or typhoons. Since 1979, the city had faced six major floods, two of which were from typhoons. So this particular underground system has been set up with specific responses to an above ground occurrence. According to experts, this sewer water discharge channel is set to minimize the flood effect by 80%.

The overall design of the system is outstanding, standing tall at 25.4m (83 feet), 78m (255 feet) wide and 177m long (580 feet). The total structure appears to be more of a set erected for English blockbusters, as if taking us into those James Bond movies, etc.

Although it was completed years ago, this amazing system has not been used yet for the said purpose, but is surely an attraction for the tourists.

<Taken from World of Technology Blog>

A spite house is a building constructed or modified to irritate neighbours or other parties with land stakes. Spite houses often serve as obstructions, blocking out light or access to neighboring buildings, or as flamboyant symbols of defiance. Because long-term occupation is at best a secondary consideration, spite houses frequently sport strange and impractical structures.

Spite houses are much rarer than spite fences. This is partially attributable to the fact that modern building codes often prevent the construction of houses likely to impinge on neighbours’ views or privacy.

Probably the most famous spite house was the Richardson Spite House in New York City at Lexington Avenue and 82nd Street. Built in 1882 and demolished in 1915, it was four stories tall, 104 feet long, and only five feet  wide. Joseph Richardson, the owner of the plot of the same dimensions, built it after the owner of the adjacent plot, Hyman Sarner, unsuccessfully tried to purchase the land. Sarner considered the plot useless by itself and offered only $1000; Richardson demanded $5000. After the deal fell through, Richardson had an apartment building constructed on his land. It was a functional (albeit impractical) apartment building with eight suites, each consisting of three rooms and a bath.

In 1716, Thomas Wood, a sailmaker, built a home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, which subsequently received the sobriquet of The Old Spite House. One theory has it that it was inhabited by two brothers who occupied different sections, would not speak to each other, and refused (out of spite) to sell to the other. In another explanation for the presently occupied ten-foot wide home, which is just tall enough to block the view of two other houses on Orne Street, the builder was upset about his tiny share of his father’s estate and his revenge was a house built to spite his older brothers’ views. The Old Spite House is still standing and occupied.

In 1874, two brothers in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts, got into a dispute. Each had previously inherited land from their deceased father. While the second brother was away serving in the military, the first brother built a large home, leaving the soldier only a shred of property that the first brother felt certain was too tiny to build on. When the soldier returned, he found his inheritance depleted and built a wooden house at 44 Hull St. to spite his brother by blocking the sunlight and ruining his view. The outside of the house spans 10.4 feet and tapers to 9.25 feet in the rear. The Skinny House is still standing and occupied.

At the turn of the 20th century, the city of Alameda, California, took a large portion of Charles Froling’s land to build a street. Froling had planned to build his dream house on the plot of land he received through inheritance. To spite the city and an unsympathetic neighbor, Froling built a house 10 feet wide, 54 feet long and 20 feet high on the tiny strip of land left to him. The Alameda Spite House is still standing and occupied.

In 1908, Francis O’Reilly owned an investment parcel of land in West Cambridge, Massachusetts, and approached his abutting land neighbor to sell the land for a gain. After the neighbor refused to buy the land, O’Reilly built a 308-square-foot building, measuring 37 feet long and only 8 feet wide to spite the neighbor. The O’Reilly Spite House is still standing and is occupied by an interior decorating firm as of mid-2009.

Wooster Collective (“a celebration of street art”) has an article about “The Pink Lady of Malibu,” which appeared over a tunnel in Malibu Canyon Road in 1966.

One Saturday morning, on October 29, 1966, a massive 60-foot-tall painting of a nude pink lady holding flowers suddenly appeared as you headed into the tunnel on Malibu Canyon Road.

As word of the massive pink lady spread, and the traffic on the highway grew to a halt, city officials decided “The Pink Lady” had to be removed. Firefighters were called to hosing her off the rocks. It didn’t work. Buckets of paint thinner were thrown on the rocks. It only made her pink skin pinker.

As county officials worked on figuring out a way to remove The Pink Lady, a 31-year-old paralegal from Northridge, a woman named Lynne Seemayer, suddenly showed up on the road and admitted that she was the artist who did the piece.

Seemayer said that she was annoyed by the graffiti that was all over the canyon wall (“Valley Go Home” was a memorable slogan) and so, over a 10 month period, she started to secretly climb up under the moonlight and suspended herself by ropes to remove the graffiti.

At 8 P. M. on October 28 Seemayer painted the Pink Lady using ordinary house paint. By dawn it was done.

Snopes has more about the story.

The Story Of “The Pink Lady of Malibu” (Via Little Hokum Rag)

Punk Rock before Punk Rock was cool!

The Torquays were a totally obscure cover band composed of five American G.I.’s, all of whom had been stationed outside Frankfurt in 1961. They were discharged from the Army in 1964. And then, just as the sixties began to get weird, they turned into the weirdest — and most wonderful — of sixties bands.

Instead of returning to the States, the Torquays dressed up like medieval friars, shaved tonsures into their hair, and rechristened themselves the Monks. They wrote brilliantly simple songs, played with locomotive intensity, and released just one album, Black Monk Time, in Germany, before their 1967 breakup. But time was on their side: Out next week on Light in the Attic Records, this welcome reissue of Black Monk Time includes testimonials from members of forward-looking groups like Radiohead, Faust, Nirvana, and the Stooges. “The Monks are right up there with Little Richard,” Jon Spencer writes. To which we say, “Amen.”

Theo Jansen is an artist and kinetic sculptor living and working in Holland. He builds large works which resemble skeletons of animals which are able to walk using the wind on the beaches of the Netherlands. His animated works are a fusion of art and engineering. In the current BMW commercial Jansen says “The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds”.

From his website:

Since about ten years Theo Jansen is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventualy he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.