“Anyone who’s stared long enough at a map knows the experience: eventually, your eyes settle on a feature so strange that you immediately rush to the history books for the back story. And nothing gets a border-watcher going quite like a salient.” http://dlvr.it/zK0jM
The NY Times has an interactive feature today on Bike Lanes, 1894 to Now, claiming that nation’s first bike path was located in Brooklyn. Wrong. Two years earlier, in 1892, the Smithville Bicycle Railroad opened near Mt Holly in South Jersey. It’s an absolutely fascinating story.
"So maybe it’s true that talk is the reason having a sister makes you happier, but it needn’t be talk about emotions. When women told me they talk to their sisters more often, at greater length and about more personal topics, I suspect it’s that first element — more often — that is crucial rather than the last."
The archive is the second cache obtained by the independent organization WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations. The Iraq documents shed new light on such fraught subjects as civilian deaths, detainee abuse and the involvement of Iran
"Certain numbers have magical properties. E, pi and the Fibonacci series come quickly to mind — if you are a mathematician, that is. For the rest of us, the magic numbers are the familiar ones that have something to do with the way we keep track of time (7, say, and 24) or something to do with the way we count (namely, on 10 fingers). The “time numbers” and the “10 numbers” hold remarkable sway over our lives."
Wow, this is the coolest thing I’ve seen in awhile: the “Straddling Bus”:
Though it is dubbed the “straddling bus,” Huashi’s invention resembles a train in many respects — but it requires neither elevated tracks nor extensive tunneling. Its passenger compartment spans the width of two traffic lanes and sits high above the road surface, thanks to a pair of fence-like stilts that leave the road clear for ordinary cars to pass underneath. It runs along a fixed route. (NYTimes)
I’ve often wondered why there’s no creative public transport happening. Can’t we find ways of making light-rail pillars en masse to put them along roadways? But this Hong Kong train makes the on-the-ground infrastructure more minimal, takes up almost no space on the street and doesn’t create the blight of the ever-darkened valley under a elevated rail line.
The only thing I’d worry about is terrorism. It seems like it’d be easy to take one of these down. What if that SUV in the picture was full of fertilizer? This thing is set to carry 1200 passengers. That’s a big target indeed.
The New York Times thinks Tumblr’s some new site and that we’re all early adopters. Egads.
Since Tumblr is currying favor among a young crowd, it could prove valuable for traditional companies and media outlets that are trying to build a relationship with that audience. And those companies are no doubt aiming to win points by being early adopters of a site that is on the rise.
Today when a patient comes with memory problems, doctors might say that the person has a chance of developing Alzheimer’s in the next decade, a chance of not getting much worse for several years, and a chance of actually getting better. Tests like brain scans, Dr. Petersen said, “will allow us to be much more definitive.” If the tests show changes characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease, a doctor can say, “I think you are on the Alzheimer’s road.” That can be a difficult conversation, but it can allow patients and their families to plan. “At least it’s a conversation the physician can have with the patient,” Dr. Petersen said.
Apple Acknowledges Flaw in iPhone Signal Meter - NYTimes.com
“Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong,” Apple said in the letter. “Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”
Apparently this is true for older models and has “gone undetected for at least two years if not more.” Apple, the obsessive Apple, hasn’t noticed that it’s gimmied the signal meter for years to make it look like reception was better than it really is. Yeah right.
"It’s hard for them to share each others’ views on what’s going on. These older people grew up in largely white suburbs or largely segregated neighborhoods. Young people have grown up in an interracial culture."
Demographer William H. Frey, in A Generation Gap Over Immigration (NYTimes).
The article talks about how generations have had different exposures to immigrants. In 1970 only 4.7 percent of the country was foreign born and many grew up in segregated suburbs. Immigration is now at the level it was from the 1860s to 1920—the new normal is the old normal, creating a generation gap of expectations. Fascinating.
From GetReligion, The Church of the New York Times:
There are two kinds of people in the U.S. zip codes that really matter. There are people get up on Sunday morning and head off to church. Then there are people who arise and settle down to consume a different sacrament — a cup of coffee (or two) and the Sunday New York Times. Yes, there are people who do both. But, even then, which sacred rite comes first? Which rite defines and informs the other?
Is religious certainty a sin? Where’s the dialog and crossover between the “Sunday activities” of church and informed news reading? Here’s Kenneth L Woodward’s article in Commonweal that started the discussion.
Sounds like the oil could do more damage than Katrina. Is the Mississippi Delta doomed? Just a few days ago I was reading quotes from experts were saying that oil rig disasters are rare. But like nuclear accidents, just one “rare” accident can create catastrophic effects.
The imperiled marshes that buffer New Orleans and the rest of the state from the worst storm surges are facing a sea of sweet crude oil, orange as rust. The most recent estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20 and sank days later, was gushing as much as 210,000 gallons of crude into the gulf each day. Concern is mounting that the flow may soon grow to several times that amount. The wetlands in the Mississippi River Delta have been losing about 24 square miles a year, deprived of sediment replenishment by levees in the river, divided by channels cut by oil companies and poisoned by farm runoff from upriver. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita took large, vicious bites. The questions that haunt this region are how much more can the wetlands take and does their degradation spell doom for an increasingly defenseless southern Louisiana?
In the NYTimes:
Nowhere in the letter did Benedict address the responsibility of the Vatican itself. Many victims’ groups have criticized the Vatican for not recognizing the depth and scope of the abuse crisis sooner. Nor did he use the term punishment, or spell out any consequences for clergy or bishops who had not upheld canon or civil law. Indeed, he laid blame firmly with Irish Catholic leaders.
It’s hard to believe anyone’s sorry and anything’s changed while people like Boston’s former Cardinal Law are given cushy jobs in Rome. How many people have lost their faith? And how many churches have been sold off to cover the lawsuits and settlements? Hasn’t the Vatican learned anything?
The Shrine Down the Hall: a look at some of the bedrooms America’s war dead left behind. Link.
"I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again."
