Interesting Timing for the UIUC CEE Newsletter About Safer Skies

Despite most of my post-college career being spent as a web and software guy, I graduated from UIUC with a degree from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Somehow, no matter where I move, their seasonal magazine finds its way to my house (as well as the magazine for the dorm that I lived in).

Today, the Winter UIUC CEE magazine arrived and I found the cover to be interesting considering the birds that caused the double engine failure that downed the U.S. Airways plane into the Hudson River yesterday:

I haven’t read the article, but the picture of the bird and the plane with the headline “Safer skies” is quite the coincidence. The article is titled “Safer skies – Research by Professor Ed Herricks is accessing technology that promises great protection from bird strikes and foreign objects”. Not the kind of stuff that you normally think about when you think “civil engineering”

That reminds me of another UIUC-related coincidence. The morning of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the Daily Illini ran a cartoon that featured a panel relating to blowing up the WTC. I don’t think that one was a coincidence though, as they handed it out for free to everyone in the dorms on campus late morning after the bombings … I think that the folks at the DI were pulling some hijinks … but that’s probably not a smart thing to be joking around about … well at least it seems a little less smart these days. I just looked for my copy of that cartoon but couldn’t find it (but did find lots of interesting college-era junk).

That’s the end of my rambling for tonight.