Jaunted

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Bring on the Sun

Long gone are the days when people just let nature take its course. There are artificial reefs and wave pools for swimmers and surfers who want to control how the swell works, and those nifty machines that make snow when the clouds fail to provide it.

So it was never going to be long before someone decided to manipulate the sun. The residents of the small village of Viganella in the Italian Alps were basically pissed off that they never got to see sunlight between November and January, since the shadow of the Alps kept them in the dark. Perhaps that was one of the reasons that the village rarely saw tourists.

So some bright spark decided to install a massive mirror on the side of the mountain to reflect sunlight into the town square. Computers control the angle of the mirror as the sun moves, and the Viganella villagers are now guaranteed six hours of sunshine a day: providing, of course, the sun comes out at all. Now how could they guarantee that, we wonder...

[Photo: crnphoto.com]

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