On Monday, all signs of Irene were gone from the sky and it was clear and sunny again. Indeed, it was quite warm and much less humid than before the hurricane, and I decided to go to Manhattan and walk around a bit to get a feeling of the city. I first went to visit Jens in his lab and together we went to Bryant Bark for some lunch (falafel wrap and an iced tea) and Jazz and to Grand Central to look at the roof. After that I went to Times Square on my own. There’s a horrible amount of lights and displays, and I had to sit down to not get epileptic because of them. In fact their homepage is almost as ugly and over-colored as the real thing 😉

After that, I went to the Rockefeller Center, from which you have an amazing sight over the city. The pictures I took there show all of the hugeness of this city, but do not even come close to reality.

Looking at all this, I really was wondering if I should admire this as a sign for the creative power of mankind and their attempts to structure the world, or if this is rather a sign of sheer decadence and a megalomaniac’s dream come true. Only when talking to a colleague about my thoughts and impressions and after some more thinking, I found the right words to give it a name: Squares without control!