Sunland residents Michael and Susan Schaafsma watch the hills near their home burn at twilight on Tuesday. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)(Click for larger version.)

A towering cloud from the super-heated Station fire in Angeles National Forest billows into a blue sky behind downtown Los Angeles on Monday. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)(Click for larger version.)

Newhall residents Will Moriarty and his son Max, 2, keep an eye on the Station fire along Aliso Canyon Road in Acton on Sunday. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)(Click for larger version.)

The LA Times is doing a great job covering this disaster. Here is a page of hi-res photos from the fire zone.

A sailboat makes its way through the harbor in Marina del Rey against a backdrop of smoke from the Station fire. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times / August 29, 2009)

Palos Verdes fire: Residents of Cartier Drive in Rancho Palos Verdes watch as a helicopter, right, makes a water run at a brush fire in the Portuguese Bend area. (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times / August 27, 2009)

Los Angeles Times fire photo gallery.

Sadly, the two pilots were both killed; fortunately, nobody else was killed or injured. [Source: YouTube, via Gizmodo]

An undersea volcano erupts off the coast of Tonga, Tuesday, March 17, 2009.

An undersea volcano erupted on Wednesday, March 18, 2009, off the coast of Tonga, tossing clouds of smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet into the sky above the South Pacific ocean. The eruption occurred  at sea about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the southwest coast off the main island of Tongatapu, an area where up to 36 undersea volcanoes are clustered.

Image sources:

• San Francisco Chronicle
• Associated Press
• Xinhua News
• Stuff.co.nz
• Reuters
• MSNBC
• Toronto Sun

Saginaw Bay, Michigan -- ice from Lake Huron is on the move.

The last few days have seen a strange and rare occurrence in Saginaw Bay, Michigan: wind-driven walls of ice coming off Lake Huron and plowing into beachfront homes. Apparently, this strange phenomenon occurs every few decades. Here are some vintage photos of a 1946 event that Life magazine published on March 25, 1946:

Life magazine published images of the 1946 ice damage in its March 25, 1946 edition under the headline "Terror on the Bay: Weird Michigan ice mass runs amok."

[Source: mlive.com]

Nah, on second thought, better take the bus. C’mon Japan, WTF? Hentai as a form of city planning, or just trying to “cute up” old Godzilla’s image? For those of you who are (even more) confused, Wikipedia can bring you up to speed:

Hentai (変態 or へんたい) is a Japanese word that, in the West, is used when referring to sexually explicit or pornographic comics and animation, particularly Japanese anime, manga and computer games (see Japanese pornography). In Japan it can be used to mean “metamorphosis” or “abnormality”. The word “hentai” has a negative connotation to the Japanese and is commonly used to mean “sexually perverted”.

Yep, I think that about sums it up. No idea where in Japan this is from, or even if it still exists (or ever did, for that matter). Still, if you see it, run for cover, and report back to us. [Source: BuzzFeed]

UPDATE: Here are a couple more images of this oddity.

To actually read what’s going on in each of these incidents will cost you $99/year for a subscription. But at least there are free options to view US hazmat, forest fire and Amber Alert incidents.

Traditionally, analysts have cautioned that Chinese growth figures should be greeted with skepticism, but, according to one school of economic thought, there may be something to the idea that the quake served as a brutal stimulus. In fact, some economists argue that hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, ice storms, and the like, despite the widespread destruction they leave behind – indeed, largely because of it – can spur economic growth.

Rebuilding efforts serve as a short-term boost by attracting resources to a country, and the disasters themselves, by destroying old factories and old roads, airports, and bridges, allow new and more efficient public and private infrastructure to be built, forcing the transition to a sleeker, more productive economy in the long term.

Because of this upgrade in technology and efficiency, disasters might actually spur innovation:

Studies have found that earthquakes in California and Alaska helped stir economic activity there, and that countries with more hurricanes and storms tend to see higher rates of growth. Some of the most recent work has found a link between disasters and subsequent innovation.

There are critics of such findings, who point to the negative effects of diverted human energy and natural resources lost, but there are numerous striking examples of the long-term value:

The research on longer-run effects, its supporters argue, is less vulnerable to this criticism, because the key factor is not merely new stuff but better stuff. In this model, disasters perform the economic service of clearing out outdated infrastructure to make way for more efficient replacements – Mother Nature’s contribution to what the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter famously called capitalism’s “creative destruction.” The economy, as it recovers, actually becomes more productive than it was before, and some economists argue that the effect can be seen decades after the disaster.

Of course, those individuals who are killed by natural disasters, or their friends and families, might have a different opinion about the value of capitalism’s and Mother Nature’s “creative destruction”, but chances are good that many of us living today are better off thanks to horrible disasters endured by our predecessors. Which should make you feel better about “taking one for the team” by living through our current economic disaster, if it helps to improve the future prospects of our children and grandchildren.