Cleaning the Augean Stables

Commenter juvat asked the other day if it was possible to redirect the Potomac to wash away DC. Turns out they’re already on it. When they were building the African American Museum in DC, they broke through a subterranean barrier and unleashed hydraulic forces that threaten to destroy the Federal district. 

No really. It’s the lead story in the Washington Post. 

8 comments:

  1. This seems almost mythic in its appropriateness.

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  2. That is exactly what I thought.

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  3. raven8:56 PM

    Hope-springs-eternal.

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  4. It would be a shame to lose the Air and Space Museum. Perhaps they can rescue that.

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  5. Oddly, it reminds me of the Turkish MP who recently declared in a public speech that Allah would punish supporters of Israel, then immediately had a heart attack and later died.

    https://www.newsweek.com/turkish-mp-heart-attack-condemns-israel-hasan-bitmez-1851707

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  6. Anonymous6:53 AM

    I should add that the building is known locally as "the swamp cooler", due to its location and the decorative ("decorative") mesh surrounding the otherwise cubical building... which makes it look remarkably like an evaporative cooler.

    https://www.si.edu/museums/african-american-museum
    https://www.truevalue.com/side-draft-duct-evaporative-cooler-6500-cfm

    -- Janet

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  7. Anonymous5:19 PM

    Back when I was in grad school, a colleague went to DC to do research ... and was quite nonplussed to discover that he could not get into the National Archives building housing his records because their moat had filled with water (tropical storm something-or-other had visited.) The rest of us agreed that it seemed appropriate, both for his personal luck (amazingly bad in strange and unique ways) and for the federal government.

    LittleRed1

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  8. Sort of like the IDF bringing the sea to the river, via tunnels.

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