Hurricane Sandy

The big news of the last couple of days has been the encroaching chaos of Hurricane Sandy as it approaches the great cities of The United States' Eastern seaboard.

Our cousins from across the water have a long history of exaggerated hysteria; a recall a very similar set of circumstances last year when I myself was visiting New York. Citizens were told to batten down the hatches as an approaching storm threatened to apparently devastate the city. Thousands were evacuated. For those that remained, mass terror raged for several hours as every good American panic bought everything in sight, and sat down in front of their television to watch live HD pictures of the storm as it gained pace, from a distance of course.

In the end, all they had to withstand was a a day or so of heavy rain and a wind amounting to little more than a light breeze.

Of course, this storm is slightly worse than that case. The subways have already been flooded, and large chunks of the New York are without power for the foreseeable future after the flooding short-circuited several of the city's power relays (with an appropriately dramatic explosion, of course).

Still, the typical hysteria has swept across the East Coast for the last few days, and it is always refreshing to see some people maintaining their sanity and trying at least to continue on with their lives.

Which is exactly what these joggers in Manhattan have been doing. Despite the closure of Central Park and most of their other frequent routes, they have braved the slightly grey skies to continue their exercise regimes.

The police, rather than enforcing these closures, to their credit, seem simply amused by the efforts of the runners as they all wait for the hurricane to spin on into the concrete jungle.