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Hamilton, S.: Trucking Country: The Road to America's Wal-Mart Economy.
Trucking Country is a social history of long-haul trucking that explores the contentious politics of free-market capitalism in post-World War II America. Shane Hamilton paints an eye-opening portrait of the rural highways of the American heartland, and in doing so explains why working-class populist voters are drawn to conservative politicians who seemingly don't represent their financial interests.
Could Dutch-Style Roads Save 22,000 Lives Each Year In the US? » INFRASTRUCTURIST
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Eric Dunbaugh of the Texas Transportation Institute has looked at the fatality rates on “livable streets”–broadly speaking, those that aren’t mini freeways–in the US and found that they are considerably lower (pdf). Apparently, using street design to wean drivers from highway-style driving habits really does save lives.
The rub, however, is that involves slower diving speeds. As Dunbaugh puts it: “The more basic problem appears to be that safety and livability objectives are often in direct conflict with the overarching objective of mobility, and its proxy—speed.”
Open Left:: Obama Ate the Left, And We Shouldn't Blame Him At All. But What Do We Do Now?
...to the question, in my opinion, is because Obama effectively ate a huge chunk of the left. And really, Obama didn't eat a huge chunk of the left, celebrity did.
OnBoard Midwest
On Board Midwest is our opportunity to support a new high-speed rail connection between Saint Paul and Chicago that will improve passenger transportation in the region and invest billions of dollars in Minnesota’s future.
Open Left:: Blended Spaces--Making Sense of Partial Perceptions Of Obama
There is, I think, a very good argument to be made that Obama should be seen as similar to Tony Blair. Blair's argument was that Labor could do a better job of implementing the Tory agenda than the Tories could themselves. This was actually the same argument that Eisenhower made regarding the New Deal. And while Obama's political ideology makes him almost Blair's doppelganger, it's the example of Eisenhower that is most revealing, because Eisenhower was a Republican President in a Democratic era, who was elected as a war hero, not for his politics.
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The exact opposite is true of Obama. He is the first Democratic President of what promises to be a new Democratic era-unless he blows it, which he very well could do if he fails to deliver some of the very needed change that the nation has been clamoring for. He was elected specifically on the premise of a need for change, and specifically in opposition to the politics of George W. Bush. So everything he does to accommodate, ala Blair or Eisenhower, is an undermining of his mandate.
Why does he do it? The reasons are no doubt multiple and complex. But one over-riding factor is that he has come of age politically during a period dominated by conservatives waging hegemonic warfare, while progressives have not even woken up to what is happening. And one result of that is that Obama accepts as given the way that conservatives have framed a great many issues. Locked into their ideological framework, he then tries to do some warm-and-fuzzy things within the confines of that framework. But their framework necessarily limits those warm-and-fuzzy things to mere gestures at best, if not deceptive packaging for genuinely evil policies.
My point here is simple: One does not have to buy into Obama's worldview at all to see some truth in him having progressive instincts. What's lacking is a progressive intellect--or even just an independent critical one. Instincts are important, of course. But they're not enough. Especially when you're talking abuot the President of the United States. We already learned that with George W. Bush.
Urban retrofits: How to make a city green {ndash} without tearing it down - The Boston Globe
This Woman Is Redefining Public Transportation » INFRASTRUCTURIST
Robin Chase, founder ZipCar and GoLoco (for ridsharing).
SpringerLink - Journal Article
Increasing urban albedo can reduce summertime temperatures, resulting in better air quality and savings from reduced air-conditioning costs. In addition, increasing urban albedo can result in less absorption of incoming solar radiation by the surface-troposphere system, countering to some extent the global scale effects of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Pavements and roofs typically constitute over 60% of urban surfaces (roof 20–25%, pavements about 40%). Using reflective materials, both roof and pavement albedos can be increased by about 0.25 and 0.15, respectively, resulting in a net albedo increase for urban areas of about 0.1. On a global basis, we estimate that increasing the world-wide albedos of urban roofs and paved surfaces will induce a negative radiative forcing on the earth equivalent to offsetting about 44 Gt of CO2 emissions.
Huh?! 4 Cases Of How Tearing Down A Highway Can Relieve Traffic Jams (And Save Your City) » INFRASTRUCTURIST
One example is reducing traffic congestion by eliminating roads. Though our transportation planners still operate from the orthodoxy that the best way to untangle traffic is to build more roads, doing so actually proves counterproductive in some cases. There is even a mathematical theorem to explain why: “The Braess Paradox” (which sounds rather like a Robert Ludlum title) established that the addition of extra capacity to a road network often results in increased congestion and longer travel times.
The Toaster Project
I'm Thomas Thwaites and I'm trying to build a toaster, from scratch - beginning by mining the raw materials and ending with a product that Argos sells for only £3.99. A toaster.
Megaprojects and Risk - Cambridge University Press
Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multi-billion dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media in order to get projects approved and built. It shows, in unusual depth, how the formula for approval is an unhealthy cocktail of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. This results in projects that are extremely risky, but where the risk is concealed from MPs, taxpayers and investors.
Ming the Mechanic: Immaculate Telegraphy
I find this kind of thing tremendously interesting. What is real knowledge? Knowledge that you can take it with you and that actually will be worth something? Lots of people are experts in stuff that would be completely useless if it weren't for a whole bunch of other things that would need to be in place. I'm a computer programmer - that'd do me no damn good if nobody would be able to manufacture computers.
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