Google releases satellite images of China quake damage

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

04/19/2010

Google releases satellite images of China quake damage

WASHINGTON — Google released satellite imagery on Monday of the devastation from last week's earthquake which killed more than 2,000 people in northwest China.
The imagery, available on Google Earth, the Internet giant's online mapping product, included a before-and-after picture of a city heavily damaged by the 6.9-magnitude quake in Qinghai province on Wednesday.
Google said in a blog post that it had worked with satellite company GeoEye to obtain the high resolution post-earthquake pictures.
Read more at Google News

Apr 19, 2010 5:32:53 PM | Current Affairs, Media, Photography

The comments to this entry are closed.

Love is in the Beijing Air? It's a typical night out at the pub. A girl from Kazakhstan sits with her American boyfriend while a Danish guy and his Chinese girlfriend toast their beers. Next to them, a Libyan and his Korean girlfriend. How does Beijing bring these polar opposite cultures together? Beijing is definitely the place to be these days, hence the thousands of foreigners flocking to China's dizzying capital. Other cities are multicultural too, but the groups aren't necessarily mixing and dating, so why here? Natalie is from Kazakhstan and has watched the expat community here transform over the last seven years. China would...

A Clear-Eyed Look at China’s Climate Target In the lead-up to Copenhagen, and again in its submission to the UNFCCC in January, China announced a target to lower its carbon intensity, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of GDP, by 40-45% by 2020 compared to a 2005 baseline. Now, while U.S. legislators deliberate the details of a much-needed climate and energy bill, Chinese leaders have already entered into in-depth discussions on their national plans, policies, investments and enforcement mechanisms for achieving this target. Just last week, a senior Chinese climate statesman, He Jiankun, made news when he and other energy experts recommended that China should...