"Along with the now-familiar candles, downed trees across the driveway and the thawing hamburger meat taken from the freezer and tossed in the trash, the region’s latest freak storm, which left three million people without electricity, has left something else in its wake: increasing unease about just what is going on and what it means for the vast majority outside the relative stability of an underground urban power grid. No one can know for sure if this is just the eternally unpredictable chaos of weather on earth or it is something more ominous; call it the new abnormal. But in recent years, suburban and rural residents have found themselves facing [...]

"Wi-fi internet access and other communications are at risk from global warming unless measures are taken to protect them from rising temperatures and stormier weather, a government report warned on Monday." This is Britain, but hopefully the problem is universal, so that we might actually do something about it. Because if I can't stream my movies on Netflix things are gonna have to change.

"In the country’s 102 largest metro areas, one in nine bridges is structurally deficient. That translates into more than 18,000 precarious structures. Americans drive over bridges in need of repair, replacement or maintenance about 210 million times daily, according to the report. In California alone, that translates into 396 people every second. Put another way, each day the volume of travelers who use deficient bridges in the United States far outnumbers the customers served by McDonald’s worldwide."

"Mexico's state electricity company on Wednesday started supplying electricity to Texas, where cold weather and power shortages forced rolling blackouts across the state. Mexico's Federal Electricity Commission issued a statement saying it 'was determined to support Texas with electrical energy' as its neighbor to the north scrambled to deal with its power woes."

Anxious about the possibility of a Fukushima-style nuclear calamity in the event of another earthquake here on the East Coast? You should be! But save some shelf space in your cabinet of concerns for our deteriorating dams:

In 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers released a survey of the state of infrastructure in the U.S. The group found that dams are, on average, in terrible disrepair. Of the more than 85,000 dams, more than 4,000 are unsafe or deficient, and nearly 1,800 of those are located where a breach would cause severe damage to life or property. With so many dams, it is hard to [...]

Some day you will tell your children about how you used to be able to get hot water from the tap. Of course they will be too stupid to understand, because of all the lead poisoning, but the soothing tones of nostalgic reverie will at least calm them down.