Bike Shed Ideas?
My office is exploring the possibility of a free standing structure in the parking lot for bike parking. If you’ve been part of such a project, I’d love to hear from you (comment, email or facebook).
This structure would want to hold six bikes, have cable locks, and a structure. Probably both the options for upright and horizontal locking. The structure should not penetrate the tarmac (no concrete bolts or staples), and it will not be touching the existing office structure. It would want to be tall enough to hang upright a cargo bike or a long wheel base recumbent, so that puts a hook as high as 72-74 inches, iirc.
The approval process involves presenting plans to building management and HR, et al. Ideas welcome!
Programming with peoples names is tuff
Falsehoods programmers believe about names. Yeah, the simplest things can be the most difficult.
Economics of Coal
Coal Economics. Also, if a normal person wants less pollution and a quieter neighborhood…they are now considered religious fanatics by the coal industry.
Typical Industrialist Marginalization
Are Apple Stores, like WallMart, just Dickensian work-houses? Really tough to sell an upscale product when your floor staff openly resent their employer.
Coal trains won’t bring in 1bn to Bham
Coal doesn’t help the tourist and bike economy.
http://www.grist.org/biking/2011-06-06-the-grand-tour-how-bike-tourism-helps-local-economies
Bottled Water: Vastly Wasteful
I am amazed at the amount of resources bottled water consumes.
Bike Lanes on Northwest (Bellingham)
This was forwarded from Dan who organized the recent meeting at city hall:
Good day, here’s a little update on what’s happening around getting bike lanes on Northwest Ave., Elm St. and Dupont St. and three simple things you can do to help make it happen.
The short version of how you can help:
- Send an email to the four addresses below. Let them know you support cycling in Bellingham and want to see the Northwest/Elm/Dupont corridor improved THIS YEAR.
- Spread this email far and wide. Get as many people as possible to do item 1 at least, and hopefully item 3 as well.
- If you can make it, come to the open house that Public Works will host at Shuksan Middle School, Wednesday, March 23, 7-9pm. Tell someone from PW why you’re there.
That’s it. So simple. Please, send one short email to these four addresses. Let your desires be known to our local policy makers. We need to impress upon them that there is a large constituency of citizens who want this. They need to hear the message in big numbers.
Send your message to: mayorsoffice@cob.org; ccmail@cob.org; tcarlson@cob.org; bbaldwin@cob.org
And use the subject line: Northwest/Elm/Dupont Bike Lanes
The long version (’cause I just love to type):
Bellingham City Council has proposed installing bike lanes on Dupont St., Elm St. and Northwest Ave from downtown to I-5. This could be one of the biggest bike projects ever in Bellingham. But it is not a done deal. You can help make it happen. Mayor Pike and Public Works would prefer to put the project off until 2012 and expand the scope and cost of it significantly beyond bike lanes. Details of what else they want to include are not yet available, except that Public Works is seeking $20,000 for the design work alone. I can only speculate that additions might include bus pull-outs, cross-walks, and bulb-outs at intersections. Those would be good additions in the long run, but striping bike lanes thissummer does not preclude building these other elements next summer. And, most importantly, I think, is that there is no guarantee that following this fall’s election we will still have the relatively bike-friendly mayor and council that we do now. I hope we do, but as they say: elections have consequences. Putting this off for another year may mean it doesn’t happen at all, especially as the price grows to a politically unpalatable scale in tight times. A different mayor and council next year may say “Too big, too expensive” and cancel the whole thing. The bike lanes alone are very inexpensive and easily engineered. This much can be done this year without limiting what can be added next year.
A few other random talking points:
- $4/Gallon.
- The only viable cycling route from downtown to Whatcom Community College, Bellis Fair, and Cordata. Give Northside residents an alternative means to come into town finally.
- Some say the climate is changing.
- Six schools along this route and childhood obesity.
- Good for the local economy (gas money leaves the community immediately, money NOT spent on gas is more likely to stay local).
- Good for NW Ave businesses (cyclists are statistically more likely to stop at the businesses they pass than to go out of their way).
- It is in the city’s Comprehensive Plan.
- Approved by the Birchwood and Columbia Neighborhood Associations
They need to hear the message. In big numbers. Send the emails. Please. And have a great ride today. Thanks -Dan
Bicycling Keeps Cash in the Local Economy (Grist)
Money paid for petrol doesn’t stay in the local economy. It doesn’t really even stay in America. This Grist article describes how riding a bicycle instead of a car helps improve the economy. Not just from reducing petrol purchases, but by bolstering local bike mechanics and shifting the trend away from drive-thru fast food to local food-cart. Check out rad graphic at the end.
Inverviews on Peak Oil
Below is a 20 minute video featuring interviews with Noam Champsky and Bill Mckibben and others on why the US seems legally bound and why CEOs may be too frightened to honestly confront peak oil and climate change.
Actuary Report: Obesity costs $300BN
Actuary Report, quote from the summary:
…the total economic cost of overweightand obesity in the United States and Canada caused by medical costs, excess mortalityand disability is approximately $300 billion per year. The portion of this total due to overweight is approximately $80 billion, and approximately $220 billion is due to obesity. The portion of the total in the United States is approximately 90 percent of the total for the United States and Canada.
No wonder our insurance is going up. How long before insurance companies give serious plan incentives for companies to hire employees that have a spouse at home cooking organic meals and live car-lite?
Expect $5 gas in 2012 (Salon.com)
Former oil executive: Expect $5 gas in 2012 – Trending – Salon.com.
And expect the fight for “gas tax” to be contentious. Too bad lobbyists buy our politicians to make them profit from a unsustainable system of transportation. Prices like these begin to reflect the real cost of petrol to the consumer — long shrowded by subsidies. The subsidies haven’t disappeared, however…this is just capitalism.
Are Workplaces Incentivizing the Ride? (Commute by Bike)
I’d like to think that bike commuting would be that much more obvious for businesses to encourage.
http://www.commutebybike.com/2010/12/01/how-workplaces-are-incentivizing-the-ride/
Kathy Sierra talks about making better users (IT Conversations Gov 2.0)
I like this talk about how making passionate users. “Don’t make a better [widget], make a better USER of [widget].” This distinction enables enthusiasm and engagement.
IT Conversations | Gov 2.0 Summit from O’Reilly Media | Kathy Sierra.
Is Living Simply Anti-Modern?
My wife was tentatively offered a Kindle for Christmas, with the added note that, there are plenty of public-domain works you can download for it.
“Why would I want a Kindle when all the books I do read are in the library?” was her response.
Walking to the library is a healthy activity. It keeps the kids active and occupied. It supports and validates our right to have libraries in general. A Kindle keeps you at home, distracts you from the kids, and teaches your kids that owning a gadget is more important than visiting the library or going for a walk.
A decade ago, I would have loved to have a Kindle, because I read avidly, especially technical publications that I really now should give away to people and resent having to store on my book shelves. A lot of these technical books are not appropriate for libraries or even book stores because they are essentially obese technical periodicals typically lacking enduring value. I’d rather not buy technical books any more, I’d rather be part of an online technical community like StackOverflow that maintained living knowledge of these technologies.
Is refusing a Kindle being a Luddite? Luddites objected to textile industrialization and its exploitative child labor practices. Modern Luddites refuse to give up the value of traditional means where gadgets rear up. Do Kindles, iPads, and other electronic book substitutes erode literacy? Probably not. Erode community? If you consider that if e-books are cheap enough to lull people into not to funding their libraries…yes. Did we see the same with cars? The value of parks, sidewalks, and downtowns across America all changed when we started driving every where, and considered that convenience more important than funding the simple safety of sidewalks.
People who live with gadgets end up throwing the gadgets away. People who have Internet tend to stay home instead of go out, or get less sleep to use it. Cars are an example of a gadget that people make you fat, pollute and kill people regularly. Most of us own lots of gadgets and they probably don’t make us healthier. They also tend to isolate you from your community. We are fools for technology. I know I’m one. As I age, I find that technology shows me what a sucker I have been, too. Staying healthy and living more simply does not require much technology. Biotechnology isn’t necessary for simple food.
If we don’t end up with a Kindle, that’s fine with me. Some gadgets are pretty handy, I admit: smart phones rank in my book…I appreciate those technologies which allows me to be active and social.
Social Bicycles (SoBi)
This is a remarkably sophisticated idea for bike hire without dedicated docking stations. With phone-app integration. You find a bike using your phone app, rent an access code over your phone, unlock, and lock up to whatever’s handy at your stop.
US: Last in Public Transportation (Huffington)
Seventy years of letting big auto and big oil shape public policy about public transportation has left our very language about paying for civic transportation crippled. We have the best government money can buy. Let’s vote with our dollar differently if we can.
Corporations Do Not have Personal Privacy Rights (PublicCitizen)
Corporations are not a person. They need to be treated as organizations accountable to their employees and their regions.
More Reasons to Trust Dow, Monsanto
Do they think that somehow they are not polluting themselves?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Would-You-Care-for-a-Side-by-Meg-White-100506-484.html
2010-05-17 Web apps should be fast
Have I worked on any applications that have all 10 of these concepts? It’s an interesting read. It mostly speaks towards building software that has charisma. I don’t think I’ve ever really worked on a product that has charisma. I’ve certainly helped speed sites up, and helped make them more useful. Many products I’ve worked on had a pile of features, most never looked very simple, and a few had web APIs.
I say charisma not because online media should display contemporary styles, but point 10 is “playful.” Most software won’t play a joke on you, or say anything funny, or not present itself as anything but entirely serious. I write shell scripts that are playful. If they die, or fail an assertion, they say “YOU FOOL!” and quit…but I’ve never made a web application that much slap-and-tickle.
If I had the time, I’d point out some of the Microsoft online help I’ve seen that’s really funny. For a while at least, they hired some characters that really made rather lighthearted help documentation. That’s an interesting example of playful.
