Raymond Learsy reports on one aspect of post-oil: Renault Nissan, and California-based Project Better Place, are working together with the government of Israel to make the country oil independent by 2020. Denmark has already signed on to implement the sinews of this major electric car initiative. In broad outline, Renault…
My bicycle is not shifting smoothly. The problem has developed over many months. I’ve adjusted the cables repeatedly, without success. I received some not so bad news today. I took my bicycle into a neighborhood bike shop. The crank teeth are worn down, as are the back sprockets and the chain. This will…
On Feb. 28, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. submitted House Congressional Resolution 305 for consideration to the House of Representatives: “Recognizing the importance of bicycling in transportation and recreation.” I assume that this resolution is a perfectly valid reaction to this boneheaded statement by one of Bush’s appointees.
I don’t think Blumenauer’s resolution has any chance of passing, because it suggests that some money now going for highways should actually be used to encourage people to use bicycles for their transportation needs. God forbid that we actually encourage such a perfectly sensible mode of transportation. You know the arguments, prevents obesity, uses no fossil fuel, cheap, is perfect for urban commutes. I’ve previously posted on some of the many reasons to use a bicycle for commuting. There are, indeed, many reasons for doing so, especially in an urban area where many commutes are fewer than five miles. BTW, what would a bicycle-friendly city look like? Here’s one version.
I learned of Bluemenauer’s resolution by reading Andrew Leonard’s article in Salon.com, “Life and death and bicycling.” Just because you use a bicycle doesn’t mean you are “green.” Leonard includes a Sierra Club test to see how “green” you are. I am a rather cool 92 out of 100, a very green cyclist!
I do want to publicly thank Representative Blumenauer for bringing some much-needed attention to bicycles as a serious mode of transportation. His resolution is chock full of statistics that should (but likely won’t) wake up those who don’t …
We do many inefficient things. Why don’t we simply do those things differently, in a more efficient way? Often, we don’t change things because we’ve done them a certain way for so long that it would take too much time and psychological effort to do them in new ways, even though the new ways would be easier and more inefficient in the long run.
The QWERTY keyboard is a great example. We could rearrange our keyboards, which would cause us to struggle with our new configurations for a few months or years, but then we’d all be better for the change. We don’t do this, however. It would take too much initial effort.
Scientific theories are quite often strained by the discovery of new evidence that doesn’t fit the theory, yet we cling to the old inadequate theories. This is another tendency toward path dependence. For example, until the 17th century, “epicycles” were used to explain the perceived retrograde motion of planets and stars. Epicycles were finally discarded in response to Kepler’s work. Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn pointed out that scientific progress does not occur smoothly, but rather in the form of periodic revolutions that that he termed paradigm shifts. The fact that scientists tend to hold onto old unworkable theories longer than they should can be seen as another manifestation of path dependence.
It would make a lot of sense to simplify the spellings of many words used in the English language. We don’t do …
On Bill Moyers' Journal, Bill Moyers discussed this multifaceted issue with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. This video is well worth watching for many reasons. The introduction includes a clip of John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech to Southern Baptist…