Legos!

Lego has an architecture collection!  It's pretty interesting and there are pamphlets for each building with information about the architect and the building and it's impact on the world.  They even have the Sydney Opera House!
This collection has been around as an educational promotion since the 1960s.

S

New Year 2013



This is also how happy I plan to look every time I'm flossing...

As the new year rang in, everyone started wondering what resolutions to settle on. I have always struggled with that, breaking my lifelong habit of picking my nails (S has this problem as well) or eating healthier, or setting up an actual workout plan (not that I am not fairly healthy and not active, but just getting organized with it) are my normal ones. This year, like any other year, I still have not fully decided what my resolutions are. I think they need to be measurable, and I need to have some way to account for them. One of my recurring resolutions that I am sticking in there again this year is to floss at least 4 times a week. I downloaded an app called habit streak, so I'll be able to see if I actually flossed 4 times a week, and hopefully that helps, but more importantly I need to get on my willpower train and start believing in myself. There are many articles about fulfilling New Years resolutions out there, but I do agree with this one about how willpower is really your most valuable resource, but it isn't depleted unless you THINK it's depleted.

Basically, I'm just letting everyone know they should believe in themselves (and not make COMPLETELY unachievable goals) and they should be able to keep their resolutions strong!

Now.. just to decide what my resolutions should be, suggestions anyone?

R

Hurricane Sandy

Hurricanes are one of the most interesting weather patterns to me. Comparing them to Tornadoes is like comparing a painting done with a fine brush and a large brush, they will never been the same, both interesting, but never the same. When I first moved to Austin, Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, leaving behind devastation, sadness, loss, and a really interesting urban planning project. Should we rebuild New Orleans *knowing* it is below sea level and seeing exactly what that means?

With Hurricane Sandy in New York recently, we have another interesting and challenging urban planning issue. I have read many blogs about whether or not FEMA is actually holding us back, because cities would be forced to upgrade to prevent these types of disasters or would be eliminated all together if they knew they could not depend on the federal government at all. This sparked my government major side in questioning just how independent a country is. Without FEMA and other disaster relief type of assistance, would cities even want to be associated with the national government or would this country turn into a big conglomeration of little governments with no over-arching government connecting them? (probably not, but it would be interesting to see how far cities are willing to go to maintain their connection to the county, state, federal levels with diminished funding).

What really amazes me about disasters like this is not the government, but the individual people. People have gone around saving others, working tirelessly to help others, and finding new strength in themselves to provide for someone else. One man waded into the flood waters to save a cab driver from drowning during the storm. It is people like this that make me realize the world has so many good people in it. I would never expect to be saved in a situation like that, but I sure hope someone would be there to help me out. There are also heart breaking stories though, one that many people have heard is the story of the woman who lost her two young boys in the storm surge and ended up spending the whole storm outside on a porch because no one would let her into their house. However, one older woman, was able to help her neighbors by carrying water and supplies up their 21 story building. I hope I'm as strong and alive as she is at that age!

There are still so many ways to help, either donating, or volunteering, or acting as moral support for people who have lost so much.

But let's get back to urban planning. When the storm surge came in and the winds picked up, the New York subway system began to flood, and there was no way to stop it. Post Sandy, only part of the system was operable, (see the image for post-Sandy operations) and the city began getting buses together to shuttle the people across the Brooklyn Bridge and around town, borrowing buses from nearby cities that could spare them (CTA sent some from Chicago to New Jersey) and working with whatever they could to get people around the city. Gas was in short supply and many buses and some trains were ruined in the storm. With such an amazing sudden loss of access, and I'm sure personnel (at least I would assume not everyone was going to work that morning, hopefully not to a more permanent loss) it would be difficult to operate a transit agency. This is why agencies need to have a disaster plan in place. When Katrina came through and everything flooded many buses were lost because bus drivers were home evacuating their own homes. This is not to say that the public good is more important than the private home, but transit agencies should take into account a dramatic reduction of personnel when planning evacuation plans, or should evacuate much earlier than would be necessary. Just looking at the subway map without many routes on it, one can begin to imagine how many buses would be needed to move people to and from all of those now empty from public transit areas. Not only do these buses need to be there to move people, the agency must figure out how to get them into these areas across devastated roadways and must begin to figure out where people need to go. Many people will be not going to work but rather to hospitals, evacuation locations, and to take advantage of resources out of the norm for a regular day. Transit routes will be dramatically different in this area during the time of recovery, and MTA is now responsible for producing a temporary plan in less than a day. I applaud the people working at MTA who were able to respond do this disaster quickly and who tried their hardest to still make sure people were able to get to work, home, friends' homes, and to assist with disaster relief. It isn't every day you must dramatically change how transit in a city works and I hope that New York residents are able to appreciate transit much more after this disaster.

I don't know what I would have done to deal with this as a transit agency, I think there really is no time to think of it, as you never know what the situation is when a disaster hits. When Chicago had the Blizzaster last year people were forced to play roles they usually did not, workers from the headquarters shoveled bus stops and helped give information to riders, and everyone was doing their part to help out. The most essential part of a transit agency being able to address the needs of customers during a disaster is having flexible employees. I think both Chicago and New York were able to respond to the changed needs during their disasters because everyone was willing to step in. I guess I should get my bus driving license to when the time comes I will be really valuable!

 

Also, watch this video, it almost made me cry. 

And this one about Breezy Point and the fire that tore through the neighborhoods there even during a huge flood.

R

Biking

I started biking regularly about a year ago. People who know me now might not believe me if I told them that, I went from thinking 2 miles was ridiculously hard to not shirking when I decided biking the 15 miles for work was going to be so much faster than busing it. Not only did I NOT stop myself from biking that 15 miles, I actually revel in it, the view of the lake with the sun rising over it, or setting on the other side of the city and the wind through my helmet are all things I enjoy and actually miss every day now that I'm not biking down to the south side of the city at least once a week.

Though I now love biking and bike almost everywhere, I still remember what it felt like to be a new, out of (biking) shape biker, and when I read this article I quickly realized that many people feel the same way I felt. I wasn't sure how to ride in traffic, or what to wear, nor was I comfortable signaling. But, with more education I learned that it's actually safer to bike in the roadway than on the sidewalk, and it's not too bad to just bike in normal clothes (though.. on those really hot summer days I just wore my running shorts and a t-shirt) if you want to. Not only that, with lights and a helmet, it's not unsafe to bike on the roads really at all, as long as I am alert for the whole ride and can be ready to yell loudly if I think someone is going to hit me.

I do still need to winterise my bike (ie: fenders!) and I want to find a back rack that works on my bike, but overall I think it's important to know you CAN bike almost anywhere in my city, and I think in any city. Drivers are not out to get you (except maybe a couple of them) mostly they just need to know what you're doing and what to expect from you. I always signal, unless it's not safe for me to take one hand off of the handlebars and I usually wear my helmet, but most importantly I look at the cars around me, and make eye contact with drivers when I think they aren't sure what I'm doing, that way I know they see me, and they know that I know they see me. I also always smile and thank drivers for doing the nice and safe things on the roadway. Not all bikers are evil drivers out there to kill drivers, and if a smile at a friendly driver will help reinforce that, it doesn't hurt me to do it.

I think that bikers in many cities, new and experienced, need to learn as much as they can about safety in the city on a bike, and need to be prepared. Chicago has a lot of really wonderful resources through the Department of Transportation and through Active Transportation Alliance, but there are many blogs, articles, and forums where people discuss all the different types of safety that can be taking into account for cyclists in a city.

Get riding!
R

Transportation!

Everyone knows I'm a huge transportation geek; and lately I have found so many exciting transportation opportunities that I can't keep them all to myself. I'll address three here, but there are so many more, I feel that the opportunities for transportation how you want it, when you want it, are all over, and we just have to learn how to take control of it!

First, let's talk about road trips. Most people in America take at least one road trip in their life (this is a generalized statement based on conversations with my friends, I did not use any data to come up with this). As I have gotten older though, and gotten rid of my car, the idea of a road trip seems so expensive and like such a hassle. I love driving on the open road, but I'm not going to rent a car to do that, nor would I want to own a car just for the purpose of the occasional desire to go on a road trip. This website (Auto Driveaway) provides a way around all of that. It does require a deposit from drivers, but it would be very interesting to drive someone's car from their current home to their new one through a semi-safe system. I was reminded by a friend that this is also an option through Craigslist, but that seems a little bit sketchy for me. This company could provide the safe middleman feeling not provided by Craigslist, and I think they must provide some sort of roadside assitance/solution for breakdowns that Craigslist definitely doesn't supply. There aren't too many people on the site yet, but once (or if) it takes off this could be an awesome way to get a cheap vacation in. You would still have to pay for gas and put down a deposit in case you break something major in the car, but that is a lot cheaper than renting a car and paying for all of those things, especially for the duration of a cross-country trip. And you wouldn't have to drive the car back home as you would if you owned the car, so it solves the problem of only having one week for vacation but wanting to get somewhere interesting on a road trip. I think this is something I will definitely have to try!

Second, who doesn't love the idea of bike share? It's a good way to have a bike in the city, but not have to deal with maintenance of your own bike or worrying about the bike getting stolen (I recently had a friend lose her bike this way) and so many other things. It's also an awesome way to see a city you're vacationing in. In Chicago the system doesn't totally work yet, but it's getting there soon. Washington, DC has a good version, and many people use it to travel around the city. However, there's a new innovation in San Francisco that might be a good option for hilly cities (or lazy people maybe?) and longer distances. Scooter share!  A group of young city dwellers decided they wanted to provide the freedom of bike share with the excitement of riding an electric scooter! Scoot Networks allows members to rent a scooter for $10 per hour with a $5 per month membership fee. They do require that you wear a helmet (California Law) but you don't need to have a motorcycle license, so most people could participate in the activity. I definitely think I want to try this out next time I go to San Francisco. The hills there might make me shy away from a bike share option (I'm used to biking on the flat streets in Chicago, almost to the lazy point of hating an overpass over a major freeway because it's too much of a hill for me) but this could be really fun!

Third, I'm going to look a bit into the future, at self driving cars. I know a lot of people have seen the video of Google's self driving car and, if they are like me, have imagined the simplicity of combining the freedom of a personal vehicle with the relaxation of a transit system (yes, I think it's relaxing to not have to think about traffic all the time and read or space out on public transit). This article is a really interesting point about it, these cars will probably not replace the traditional car, and why would they? If I had a driverless car I wouldn't ever want to pay for parking, the car could go find free parking by itself, or park back at home, or could be used by someone else while I don't need the vehicle. These vehicles could start replacing taxis, and paratransit, and possibly even low-ridership bus routes. Further, once these are easy to access and are able to provide affordable transportation to people around the country or world, more people may opt to use them instead of their own personal vehicles. These vehicles provide the exclusivity of a personal vehicle, by enclosing you in your own space and not forcing you into the public, but would not have to be privately owned. The opportunity for carpool companies to spring up also arises as these cars could return to a central location after taking many workers into their offices and for overnight storage as well as maintenance. I think there really is something to driverless cars, not to mention that they can follow much closer to each other allowing for more vehicles to use the same roadway space, but that wouldn't start being obvious until they are more widespread!

That's my transportation inspired rant for the day, so if you need to ship a car use Auto Driveaway and if someone asks you to help support driverless car research, please do!

R

How good is your sense of smell?

From Cosmos Magazine: The Science of Everything

Apparently, psychopaths have a worse sense of smell than other people. A group in Australia did a study and found that people with less empathy and higher scores on the psychopathy scale cannot discriminate smells as well.  They used people from a university, who got course credit for doing the study and ranked them on smell sensitivity, scent identification, and scent discrimination as well as empathy and a psychopathy scale.  They used people who ranked on the psychopathy scale who were non-violent members of society, so one person was disqualified for having a criminal conviction. 

The authors suggest that the front part of the brain (the orbitofrontal cortex) is involved in olfactory (smell) processing, and in human interaction (empathy, etc).  This article suggests that this could be a way to help determine if people are psychopaths even if they lie or learn what to answer on the tests.  This may not work, because many of these people may also have done drugs or smoked or been injured or experienced some other thing that would damage their sense of smell, unrelated to their processing center.  Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and other neurodegenerative diseases or neural trauma may also cause this same result.  That being said, maybe we could test kids, before they have all of these olfactory insults, to see if they might have a tendency to be psychopaths.  We'll have the hearing, vision, and smelling tests in schools from now on! (side note: I don't actually think this is a good idea)

On another note.  Women tend to have a heightened sense of smell during the early stages of pregnancy (google it, it's everywhere). Maybe women become less psychotic during pregnancy, to fight the hormones making her seem like she is MORE psychotic.  Women do seem to be overly-empathetic while pregnant... 

Another thing to think about: women tend to have a better sense of smell than men, and be more empathetic, even when they're not pregnant.

S

Buses are cool

Everyone is talking about this, sharing it, and posting it, and damnit, I want to too!!

R