By the time this issue hits stands, the East Coast will be recovering from one of the craziest storms in recent history—one that might have been played up by media outlets centered out that way, sure, but still huge.
After all, New York City by itself has a population of more than 8 million in an area of fewer than 470 square miles. For reference, that's the entire population of Arizona, plus the population of San Diego, all in a place that's smaller in size than Phoenix.
And, as of this writing, all those folks (and millions of others along the East Coast) are facing what's been dubbed "Frankenstorm."
The lone good thing about this is the fact that we're technologically able to respond to these crises nearly instantaneously. As posted on Monday, Google has maps set up to track the storm, with informational overlays to give people as much information as they need, in real time. Twitter, which has increasingly become the pulse of the Western World, is constantly updating with people's information and experiences from the storm. And thanks to the democratization of technology, we're seeing photos of flooded areas pour in already—including one I'm staring at as I write this of rivers of water flowing through the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn.
It's scary out there, and we have no idea how much property will be damaged and how many lives may be lost by the time it's all said and done. Hopefully, this will be yet another over-hyped weather crisis, played up by a media that's worn out from covering an election season nearing its end. More than that, however, the losses will hopefully be trivial and few and far between.
But if that's not the case, at least we're able to watch over each other, even from thousands of miles away.
The Week on our Blogs
On The Range, we watched a great response to a man griping about the effects of menstrual cycles; ate some flowers; saw the effects of war on the faces of young Marines; looked at the future of data storage on cassette tape; got hyped up for the forthcoming joy that is the Tucson Coffee Crawl; previewed the final presidential debate; talked comics with Heroes and Villains; looked into how Twitter has changed debates; wondered who on earth (aside from the Weekly's own Linda Ray) eats pickles and peanut butter together; talked about skewed perceptions of rape that some politicians have; considered wearing brightly-colored balaclavas on Halloween; discussed the insanity of an NYPD cop who may or may not have been plotting cannibalism; got excited for Calexico; made fun of Donald Trump; shouted out the opening of Black Crown Coffee Co.; gave you a handy, cat-based Web solution to those political Facebook posts you're so tired of; and more!
On We Got Cactus, we asked Ron Heathman 10 questions; enjoyed a revision of Baby Got Back; watched Red Fang's new music video; listened to the ladies of Silver Thread Trio as they Folked the Vote; laughed at a bad publicity shot; continued the adventures of the Modeens; and read Al Perry's take on the recent John Fogerty concert.
Comment of the Week:
"Everyone already knew how to eat a 'tri-tip.' Jeez. The hard part is getting the triceratops to hold still. And seasoning it? Don't get me started."—TucsonWeekly.com user Erin Rose O'Haver, on the difficulties in preparing to properly cook a creature that went extinct somewhere around 65 million years ago ('Nature' Shows Us How To Eat a Triceratops, The Range, Oct. 25).
