Clark:
The Onion gives a sage warning about the dangers of wind power.
Switzerland is getting big into traffic calming—which served as fodder for a somewhat annoying “debate” in The New York Times opinion pages. I confess that 350-word opinion essays don’t do much for me anymore…but perhaps others like that sort of thing more than I do.
Yellow pages vs. the internet.
News from far away, but possibly relevant to toll-road debates here in the Northwest: the Maryland Department of Transportation has resorted to advertising to attract drivers to an underused toll road. The advertising alone costs about as much as 3 months worth of toll revenue. It seems weird to see state government shilling for drivers.
Eric dP:
I’ve got four completely unrelated good reads this week.
At the NYT’s Dot Earth blog, Andrew Revkin has heart-wrenching coverage of the world’s vanishing frogs.
At The Tyee, Jon Beasley-Murray has one of the more thoughtful and insightful pieces about the Vancouver hockey riots.
Also up north, Pembina Institute’s Matt Horne unpacks the and/or questions around BC’s carbon tax versus Western Climate Initiatives’s cap-and-trade program. It’s inside baseball for climate policy wonks, but it’s good.
Finally, on the recommendation of Charles Mudede, I bring you a poem that’s in part about urban gentrification. Here’s an excerpt from “The Swan” by Charles Baudelaire (scroll down for several different English translations):
— Old Paris is no more (for cities change
— alas! — more quickly than a mortal’s heart);only my memory sees the capitals,
the shafts unfinished once, in pools of rain,
the slimy marble blocks, weeds, market-stalls
with old brass gleaming through each dusty pane.
Anna:
Taking the “wonk” out of transportation ideas…Streetfilms recently released a set of videos that explain pioneering street improvements in a way that the general public can get behind. If I love these videos, does it make me a new foot soldier (excuse the pun!) in the War on Cars?
This guy moved to New York City and lost 80 lbs! A real success story for how policy solutions that promote dense, walkable communities with excellent transit options and access to information about your food (Bloomberg’s 2008 law requiring restaurants to list calorie content on menus) can make you healthier.
