why I don’t bike in Philadelphia
I’m a huge believer that bicycling should be the second most common form of transportation in cities, after walking. Walking is the perfect way to run errands in a residential neighborhood. Some people are lucky enough to be able to walk to work, but not everybody wants to live in the central business district, so the nicest neighborhoods are often a few miles from the center, a little far to walk but perfect for biking. Biking promotes the perfect city layout, and the perfect city layout promotes biking. It also saves time, promotes exercise, physical and mental health, saves energy, promotes cleans air, and is good for business. So I’m a huge believer. But I don’t bike very much. Occasionally on the weekend for recreation, but almost never on weekdays to get to work, and absolutely never to take children to and from school. Here’s why:
On a bicycle in Philly, I’ve been spit on, cussed at, honked at, clipped by rearview mirrors, and told to do things to myself that can’t be written in any respectable publication. More times than I can count, I’ve had vehicles clearly try to make a point by speeding by me way too closely … only to be stopped at a red light half a block away. And all for riding my bike in a legal, responsible way…
But what about all those scofflaw bikers, blowing through stop signs and weaving through traffic with their devil-may-care attitudes? Bikers just don’t follow the rules of the road! …
But, I’ve also got some top-secret info: Cars in Philly break traffic laws, too. In fact, you might think that sliding through a stop sign perfectly, pulling a fast U-turn on Broad Street, driving down a one-way street the wrong way, and texting while driving, steering with your knees, are all on the PennDOT driving test. (Swerving around potholes and deciphering parking signs is probably on there too.) Because we’ve all seen cars do these things, and more, in Philly. All the time.
And the fact is, when drivers do these things surrounded by two tons of steel, it’s a whole lot more dangerous for everyone on the street and sidewalks than when a bicyclist does the same with a 20-pound bike.
Recently, City Council President Darrell Clarke said, “This is Philadelphia. People drive to the corner store. This is what we do.”
Sigh.
“This is what we do,” sounds a whole lot like “This is the way we’ve always done things.” And “this is the way we’ve always done things” has got to be the laziest, worst excuse for doing anything ever…
Those are appalling statistics. Philly’s got a problem. And it has to do with cars hitting bicyclists.
What’s best for the city is not the status quo. What’s best is more protected bike lanes, real progress toward Mayor Kenney’s commitment to Vision Zero, and more access to modes of transportation other than private vehicles.
I couldn’t agree more. One thing the article doesn’t mention is that the police openly state that they don’t enforce the traffic laws because they are busy fighting violent crime on our city’s streets. Well, how exactly is the murder of pedestrians and bicyclists on our city’s streets by illegal driver behavior not considered violent crime on our streets?
Enforcement could help in the short term, but human behavior should be taken mostly out of the equation by better street design in the longer term. Safe street designs have been nearly perfected in Northern Europe and are slowly coming to U.S. cities, even including our cousins over in Pittsburgh. But in Philadelphia, supposedly a leader on progressive policies, our political and bureaucratic leaders seem to believe that what is common in sister cities is crazy or impossible here, because they have apparently never left the county. People are dying as a result of these ignorant cowards.
I would love to see Mr. Kenney show real leadership and appoint some real leaders instead of the same old ignorant, cynical, can’t-do bullshit that has held Philadelphia back from being a world-class city for decades. It seemed like we were finally turning the corner under Mayor Nutter, but it seems to me that we are backsliding now. Please prove me wrong, Mr. Kenney!
Lake Powell
from the Arizona Daily Star:
a new study warns that the lake [Lake Powell] could virtually dry up in as few as six years if the region gets a repeat of the dry spell it experienced from 2000 to 2005…
During the 2000-2005 drought, Lake Powell lost 13 million acre-feet of water and dropped almost 100 feet.
Today, the lake has about 13 million acre-feet left, said Eric Kuhn, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, which is helping to oversee the study.
writing and thinking
This 2012 article in The Atlantic talks about the connection between writing and thinking. I think it’s spot on – the exact reason I write this blog is because that is how I think things through (well, this hasn’t been the greatest sentence structure ever, now has it?)
Fifty years ago, elementary-school teachers taught the general rules of spelling and the structure of sentences. Later instruction focused on building solid paragraphs into full-blown essays. Some kids mastered it, but many did not. About 25 years ago, in an effort to enliven instruction and get more kids writing, schools of education began promoting a different approach. The popular thinking was that writing should be “caught, not taught,” explains Steven Graham, a professor of education instruction at Arizona State University. Roughly, it was supposed to work like this: Give students interesting creative-writing assignments; put that writing in a fun, social context in which kids share their work. Kids, the theory goes, will “catch” what they need in order to be successful writers. Formal lessons in grammar, sentence structure, and essay-writing took a back seat to creative expression.
The catch method works for some kids, to a point. “Research tells us some students catch quite a bit, but not everything,” Graham says. And some kids don’t catch much at all. Kids who come from poverty, who had weak early instruction, or who have learning difficulties, he explains, “can’t catch anywhere near what they need” to write an essay. For most of the 1990s, elementary- and middle-school children kept journals in which they wrote personal narratives, poetry, and memoirs and engaged in “peer editing,” without much attention to formal composition. Middle- and high-school teachers were supposed to provide the expository- and persuasive-writing instruction…
Some writing experts caution that championing expository and analytic writing at the expense of creative expression is shortsighted. “The secret weapon of our economy is that we foster creativity,” says Kelly Gallagher, a high-school writing teacher who has written several books on adolescent literacy. And formulaic instruction will cause some students to tune out, cautions Lucy Calkins, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. While she welcomes a bigger dose of expository writing in schools, she says lockstep instruction won’t accelerate learning. “Kids need to see their work reach other readers … They need to have choices in the questions they write about, and a way to find their voice.”
I had a lot of formal instruction in how to diagram a sentence in both English and Latin, and how to arrange an argument in a very structured way. I don’t always write that way now, but I am glad I had that because it was essentially instruction in thinking and communicating in a logical way. I had essentially no instruction in creative writing, and that is actually something I regret and would like to try in the future.
meatless grilling
From Meatless Monday, here are a bunch of ideas for grilling vegetables and even fruits.
Court the usual suspects. Traditional candidates for the grill are peppers, carrots, beets, turnips, zucchini, corn, green beans, asparagus, tomato (firm ones), onion, eggplant, garlic (whole cloves), potato, squash, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, and turnips. For fruits, consider peaches, apples, pineapple, and figs.
But also try the unusual. Avocado, artichoke, romaine lettuce, portobello mushroom, and watermelon are just some of the new grillees that are becoming trendy.
Oil down first. Many vegetables need just a light brushing of olive oil before grilling. For extra kick, add spices and marinate overnight,
I also like the idea of marinating tofu. Let’s be honest, chicken is kind of bland, and it is the wonderful marinades and sauces we put on it that makes it so delicious. So if it is the sauce we really want to taste, we can try dropping the chicken.
Finally, grilling pizza is an interesting idea that had never occurred to me before.
the basic plots
the G20 and “green finance”
According to this article, the G20 is making a commitment to “green finance”.
The conventional economic-development model viewed environmental protection as a “luxury good” that societies could afford only after they became rich. Such thinking explains why the dramatic growth in global income, 80-fold in real terms during the last century, has been accompanied by a decline, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, in natural capital in 127 of 140 countries…
But China is already taking concrete steps in the right direction. On August 30, President Xi Jinping presided over a decision by the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms to transform China’s financial system to facilitate green investment. The so-called “guidelines for establishing a green finance system” adopted at the meeting represent the world’s first attempt at an integrated policy package to promote an ambitious shift toward a green economy.
According to the guidelines, China will have to develop a wide range of new financial instruments, including green credit, green development funds, green bonds, green equity index products, green insurance, and carbon finance. It must also introduce a host of specific policies, regulations, and incentives, including innovative use of the central bank’s relending operations, interest subsidies, and guarantees. And it must establish a national-level Green Development Fund, much like the United Kingdom’s Green Investment Bank.
algebra, what is it good for?
This New York Times opinion piece (sort of) argues against teaching algebra.
Making mathematics mandatory prevents us from discovering and developing young talent. In the interest of maintaining rigor, we’re actually depleting our pool of brainpower. I say this as a writer and social scientist whose work relies heavily on the use of numbers. My aim is not to spare students from a difficult subject, but to call attention to the real problems we are causing by misdirecting precious resources…
What of the claim that mathematics sharpens our minds and makes us more intellectually adept as individuals and a citizen body? It’s true that mathematics requires mental exertion. But there’s no evidence that being able to prove (x² + y²)² = (x² – y²)² + (2xy)² leads to more credible political opinions or social analysis…
I WANT to end on a positive note. Mathematics, both pure and applied, is integral to our civilization, whether the realm is aesthetic or electronic. But for most adults, it is more feared or revered than understood. It’s clear that requiring algebra for everyone has not increased our appreciation of a calling someone once called “the poetry of the universe.”
I think everyone is capable of and needs to learn math, logic, critical reasoning and system thinking skills. I think there is some merit to the idea that the way math is taught is a turn-off to so many people. There is also some merit in the argument that teaching people to manipulate symbols on a page is not really logic or reasoning or system thinking. A more ideal way to teach math (and reading and writing, for that matter) would be to integrate it into more interesting subjects like science, economics and history. Students could be gaining an intuitive feel for the world we live in through those subjects, while at the same time understanding how reading, writing, and arithmetic (and algebra and calculus and statistics and physical and mathematical models of various types) are powerful tools that can help increase the depth of that understanding.
anti-aging pill
This MIT professor thinks he has discovered an anti-aging pill.
The product contains a chemical precursor to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD, a compound that cells use to carry out metabolic reactions like releasing energy from glucose. The compound is believed cause some effects similar to a diet that is severely short on calories—a proven way to make a mouse live longer…
Scientists have shown they can reliably extend the life of laboratory mice by feeding them less, a process known as “caloric restriction.” That process seems to be mediated by biological molecules called sirtuins. NAD is important because it’s a chemical that sirtuins need to do their work and is also involved in other aspects of a cell’s metabolism. In worms, mice, and people, NAD levels fall with age, says Guarente, so the idea is to increase levels of the molecule.
“NAD replacement is one of the most exciting things happening in the biology of aging,” says Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who has coauthored scientific papers with Guarente but is not involved in Elysium. “The frustration in our field is that we have shown we can target aging, but the FDA does not [recognize it] as an indication.”
more on human footprint
This study attempted to map the human footprint on the earth on a fine scale back in 2002.
The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild
There is little debate in scientific circles about the importance of human influence on ecosystems. According to scientists’ reports, we appropriate over 40% of the net primary productivity (the green material) produced on Earth each year (Vitousek et al. 1986, Rojstaczer et al. 2001). We consume 35% of the productivity of the oceanic shelf (Pauly and Christensen 1995), and we use 60% of freshwater run-off (Postel et al. 1996). The unprecedented escalation in both human population and consumption in the 20th century has resulted in environmental crises never before encountered in the history of humankind and the world (McNeill 2000). E. O. Wilson (2002) claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if every human consumed at the level of the average US inhabitant. The influence of human beings on the planet has become so pervasive that it is hard to find adults in any country who have not seen the environment around them reduced in natural values during their lifetimes—woodlots converted to agriculture, agricultural lands converted to suburban development, suburban development converted to urban areas. The cumulative effect of these many local changes is the global phenomenon of human influence on nature, a new geological epoch some call the “anthropocene” (Steffen and Tyson 2001). Human influence is arguably the most important factor affecting life of all kinds in today’s world (Lande 1998, Terborgh 1999, Pimm 2001, UNEP 2001).
Yet despite the broad consensus among biologists about the importance of human influence on nature, this phenomenon and its implications are not fully appreciated by the larger human community, which does not recognize them in its economic systems (Hall et al. 2001) or in most of its political decisions (Soulé and Terborgh 1999, Chapin et al. 2000). In part, this lack of appreciation may be due to scientists’ propensity to express themselves in terms like “appropriation of net primary productivity” or “exponential population growth,” abstractions that require some training to understand. It may be due to historical assumptions about and habits inherited from times when human beings, as a group, had dramatically less influence on the biosphere. Now the individual decisions of 6 billion people add up to a global phenomenon in a way unique to our time. What we need is a way to understand this influence that is global in extent and yet easy to grasp—what we need is a map.
Until recently, designing such a map was not possible, because detailed data on human activities at the global scale were unavailable. The fortunate confluence of several factors during the 1990s changed this situation. Rapid advances in earth observation, using satellite technology pioneered by NASA and other space agencies, meant that, for the first time, verifiable global maps of land use and land cover were available (Loveland et al. 2000). The thawing of the cold war and calls for efficiency in government meant that other sources of global geographic data, for example, on roads and railways, were released to the public by the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA 1997). Improved reporting of population statistics at subnational levels enabled geographers to create global digital maps of human population density (CIESIN et al. 2000). Finally, advances in geographic information systems (GIS) have provided the integration technology necessary to combine these data in an efficient and reproducible manner. Although the datasets now available are imperfect instruments, they are of sufficient detail and completeness that scientists can map the influence of humans on the entire land’s surface.