Re the link regarding cane-reinforced adobe construction above: fascinating. One of the points they make is that unreinforced adobe walls tend to fall outward, allowing the roof to come straight down and crush everyone inside. Even if all the canes do is make the walls fall inward, they'll save thousands of lives, because then there would be some crawl space in the rubble. The other, much more depressing point, is how consistently solutions to problems are ignored. Somebody said after the New Orleans disaster that we don't really have *natural* disasters anymore. We know how to mitigate their worst effects, and if we haven't, they're less acts of God than man. (Gender-specific term intentional, because I'm feeling angry.) Well, the bright side, I guess, is that we do know what to do, at this point. I wonder whether we'll ever go and do it, or whether the madness of Michael Crichton and his ilk will have us grunting in caves and sticking straws in our hair because the real problems are never dealt with.