But did it see it’ s shadow?
6 Likes
If it did, we’ll have six more weeks of winter.
If not, spring will be here soon. In about a month and a half.
12 Likes
As someone who walks a lot, I’ve always wondered why we do it that way. If you cross in the middle of a block, cars can only be coming from two directions, and they’ll be at least half a block away, giving you time to react. At an intersection, they’re going 8 different directions, some turning, some not, with or without turn signals, and they’re right there, no time to react. Plus the drivers are having to look in every direction instead of just forward, so they’re more distracted.
Why aren’t crosswalks in the middle of the block, where they would be much safer?
11 Likes
On January 25, in light of the increasingly dangerous back-and-forth rhetoric between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists made an announcement. Their Doomsday Clock — so named because it represents humankind’s shifting proximity to apocalypse — had ticked 30 seconds closer to our own proverbial midnight.
Since 1947 the Doomsday Clock has been a symbolic warning about nuclear war, but for the past decade the Bulletin has also considered modern factors like climate change and cyber warfare. Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist and chair of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Board of Sponsors, talks to Bob about how the symbol works, how to grab public attention, and whether the clock represents more than the gut-level dread of a squadron of scientists.
http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm020218_cms831151_pod.mp3
In 1983, 100 million Americans watched an ABC made-for-tv movie called The Day After, which depicts the immediate fallout from a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union. Tensions between the two powers were high, with President Ronald Reagan calling the USSR an “evil empire” and building up the country’s nuclear stockpile. Just weeks before The Day After, NATO war exercises were nearly mistaken by Soviets for a real attack.
The movie wasn’t very good, but what it showed was so horrifying that it inspired a national conversation about US policy. Following the broadcast, Ted Koppel hosted a panel debate on deterrence and disarmament with prominent thinkers like Carl Sagan and Robert McNamara. Schools organized discussions for classes, ABC distributed a viewer’s guide, and psychologists warned that children under 12 shouldn’t even watch the movie. Marsha Gordon, professor of film studies at North Carolina State University, recently wrote about The Day After for the website The Conversation. She and Brooke talk about the public debate sparked by the movie, and what it might mean for a new generation to see a remake.
http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm020218_cms831172_pod.mp3
1983’s The Day After imagines the immediate effects of a nuclear attack on the world and the remaining society. But what would that society look like a decade later? Or a century? In Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, playwright Anne Washburn imagines a world that has been devastated by a nuclear incident and how the remaining civilization would process the destruction over time…by retelling an episode of The Simpsons.
Brooke talks to Washburn about her play, about what the episode’s evolution over the decades says about society’s need for stories and about the role of comedy in the face of tragedy.
3 Likes
That’s some Netherlands level city planning right there.
8 Likes
Because car drivers don’t want to stop mid-block. Car-centric infrastructure sees pedestrian amenity as a trivial concern.
15 Likes
Which is also why it allows right-turn-on-red. And why thousands of people die each year.
5 Likes
My current wish-list of half-measures:
-
Walking and wheelchairing should be encouraged.
-
Crosswalks should not be at blind corners.
-
Crosswalks should be farther from intersections.
-
Crosswalks should lead to the protection of cuts in median strips, where available, instead of remaining several feet away from the protection.
-
Crosswalks should be wheelchair-accessible.
-
Where crosswalks rely on buttons, extra buttons should be available in median strips.
-
Bicycling should be encouraged, to reduce driving, on the roads and on the sidewalks.
-
Where left-turn lights rely on metal detectors or pressure plates, these should be sensitive enough to detect bicycles.
-
Buses should be available and accessible.
-
Build noise barriers along busy roads, preferably, though with gaps, between roads and sidewalks.
-
Strobe lights and “Bucha effect lights” should be banned from the road and from sidewalks.
-
Set a maximum brightness for headlights on the road in populated areas.
-
Set a maximum contrast and maximum frequency for new flashing lights on the road or on sidewalks in populated areas. I’d like less than 1/10 Hz, but even less than 1 Hz would be an improvement.
-
Improve ear protection. Research eye protection.
4 Likes
Apparently, the greek plural is octopodes. https://www.etymonline.com/word/octopus
(I had thought that it was octopedes, but, alas, that’s wrong, too)
7 Likes
More on the war; a lot of other articles are paywalled or are Erdogan’s propaganda. If the Turkish forces really have killed 950 people, most of the dead will be civilians, not “terrorists.”
Gotta run… cleaning fluid…
P.S.
4 Likes
Because even pedestrians don’t want to detour half a block to cross a cross-street? I mean, if you wanted to walk four blocks straight, you’d be walking eight if all the cross-walks were located between blocks because of all the detouring you’d have to do (or you’d be jaywalking a ton).
4 Likes
But for safety, we already have to, and that’s considered jaywalking.
1 Like
I’m as pro-Kurd as anyone, but in Syria the US needs to stop interfering. So far all the CIA seems to have achieved is to fund “friendly rebels” who then once they’ve got weapons turn out to be ISIS supporters, and there are practically no US reporters on the ground to tell people the truth. Reports from the few Western reporters say that the US intervention has brought chaos to part of Syria that had been untouched by the war.
The US is self sufficient in oil and could be self sufficient in gas, it’s high time it left the ME alone. I really think there is some level of apocalyptic thinking in there along with the gut reaction to control oil that led to the Shah in Iran and all that followed.
4 Likes
Considering the track record with the Viet Minh in Vietnam, the Ba’ath party in Iraq, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the messing around in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Guatemala, etc., the U.S. can’t give up now. That would be to admit failure. We just have to keep on trying until eventually one of our little adventures doesn’t blow up in our face creating massive problems that last for decades and resulting in hundreds of thousands or millions more deaths.
7 Likes
Well, frankly, I think cutting ties with the Viet Minh and supporting French reconquest was a mistake, and cutting ties with Rojava and enabling Erdogan’s conquest would be a mistake.
3 Likes
And, while on the subject of the US, there’s always lots continuing the gradual apocalypse around us.
(Washington Examiner seems to animate on its own; I think the others don’t.)
4 Likes
Washington Examiner has also been known to publish slurs as their top front-page headlines.
2 Likes
Okay. When National Geographic mentions the US President in anything more than a cute by-the-way photo, things are seriously fucked up.
Glad to see their purchase by Fox hasn’t obliterated the editorial quite yet.
3 Likes
I’m sorry to hear it, but thank you for mentioning it. For the most part, this was passing on stories where I’ve seen them mentioned; I often don’t in part because I don’t usually know which sources deserve such an endorsement. So learning ones worth avoiding is helpful.
(National Geographic has been demoted to caution, but as gadgetgirl says, this seemed a case where it hasn’t abandoned all values yet.)
4 Likes
6 Likes