| |
 |
Tuesday, June 01, 2004 |
The Earth Is Not Getting Any Warmer
The Poor Man writes a great send up of a Tech Central Station ("Where Scientific Ignorance Meets Industry Lobbying") review of The Day After Tomorrow:
Six hours ago in LA, it was 85ºF
in the shade. Now, as the Sun sets, it is starting to dip below 75ºF.
In Iraq these days the mercury can break 110ºF, while six months ago in
North Dakota, the temperature regularly went below -20ºF. How can
anyone say the Earth is getting warmer when the temperature varies so
wildly all the time?
But that's not all. People can't even agree on what the
temperature is! What is the temperature? Well, depending on whether you
use the Farenheight or Celsius scale, you can get completely different
answers to this seemingly simple question. And that's not even
considering the Kelvin scale! What temperature is that glass of ice
water? Well, it's 273K; or maybe it's 0ºC; no, wait, it's 32ºF. In such
a confusing and uncertain subject, there are bound to be charletans who
try to take advantage of the non-expert.
Great stuff! But the San Francisco Chronicle published a much better parody of this kind of reasoning on their editorial page this morning, now at SFGate:
Humans are depicted strictly as the
Earth's inhabitants, a means to the end of Earth as God. "The Day After
Tomorrow" trivializes people by stripping them of any claim to interact
with the environment in which they live. Wolves attack, trees are holy
shrines, the air must never be altered. The environment can never be
changed, shaped, altered -- except for man, who must serve as Earth's
lowest slave. The cast of "The Day After Tomorrow" are barely
recognizable as humans: They are sacrificial lambs for Mother Earth,
paying for the sin of driving an SUV.
It's either great parody or a new candidate for the dopiest piece of writing I've read lately.
1:42:33 PM Permalink
|
|
Tables Vs. CSS - A Fight to the Death. Talk is cheap, especially where tables and CSS are concerned. Sergio puts his money where his mouth is as he creates the same design twice - using tables, then CSS - in this action-packed, hands-on battle to the death. [SitePoint.com]
12:22:37 PM Permalink
|
|
Abuse Scandal, Continued. From USA Today yesterday:
More than a third of the prisoners who died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan were shot, strangled or beaten by U.S. personnel before they died, according to death certificates and a high-ranking U.S. military official.
The military official, who has direct knowledge of ongoing Pentagon investigations of the deaths, said that 15 of 37 prisoners who have died since December 2002 appear to have been killed or put in grave danger by U.S. troops or interrogators. In some cases, the immediate cause of death was listed as a heart attack, but that was in turn caused by a beating.
Some of the cases have been cleared. Four of the 15 deaths occurred when guards shot detainees in Iraq during a prison riot at Abu Ghraib prison in November 2003; the shootings have been ruled justifiable homicides.
In another case, a guard who shot a prisoner to death for throwing rocks at him was demoted and dishonorably discharged.
But other cases remain in limbo. The military is investigating eight deaths as "suspicious." The numbers don't appear to add up, but the Pentagon has not yet provided a detailed list of all the cases. Many of the deaths that don't seem to have been caused directly by U.S. personnel have been attributed by medical examiners to natural causes.
The details of those 15 deaths are recounted here. [Hit & Run]
11:35:13 AM Permalink
|
|
A close call
Yesterday evening, around 7 or so, while riding my bike through a complicated, bad intersection at Gilman Street and Eastshore
in Berkeley, I was struck by a car, a small Nissan. The intersection
was unusually empty. I was riding West on Gilman, and in the crosswalk
crossing the entrance ramp to the freeway.
This is a real bad intersection. To the west of Highway 80/580 is
Frontage road which runs along the water, and just to the west of that
is the Bay Trail, which I
ride frequently. Gilman crosses under the freeway; off Gilman are
entrance and exit ramps to the freeway, and immediately to the east of
them is the old Eastshore Highway, now a two-lane street. Gilman is
wide, and gets a lot of traffic. It's always a trick to ride through
it, but I'm more comfortable riding through it than my other access to
the trail, the one at Buchanan and Eastshore; there's a traffic light there, but that just seems to give everyone -- cars and bikers alike -- a false sense of security.
Anyway, there was very little traffic. A white Nissan was across Gilman
on Eastshore. I started into the intersection, and as I always do, made
sure I could see the driver's eyes as she started out. The sun was
apparently shining in them, and she wasn't going very fast, so I
figured she would slow down and stop and wait for me to get out of the
intersection. But she didn't; she kept coming at me, in slow motion, or
what felt like slow motion, she hit my leg and knocked me down. It's a
scary sitght -- and one I can still see in my mind's eye -- that car
bumper hitting my lower leg.
Dang, was I upset. She stopped and asked was I OK. Of course I hollered
at her, but could see how bad she felt. I called 911 on my cell, and
almost immediately a CHP motorcycle unit stopped. I was talking to the
Berkeley dispatcher who was sending a car and asking me if I wanted an
ambulance. I was pretty het up, she asked me if I might be in shock.
Maybe I was. I was pacing back and forth, I could tell my heart was
beating pretty hard. I didn't even notice a goodsized hematoma on my
right leg, below the knee that was getting bigger and bigger.
So the ambulance came, the paramedics asked me questions, and could see
that I wasn't seriously injured, or at least there wasn't anything
seriously wrong with me in the short term. They said they'd give me an
ice pack, but left before doing so. The Berkely cop took the girl's
report -- she was young, I'd guess in her very early 20s, and was quite
upset with what she'd done. Then I talked to the cop, and he said we
told the same story, and I said I could tell she was upset. He said
it's actually rare in his experience for him to get the same story from
both parties in something like this, and that lots of times the driver
doesn't even stop. So I'm fortunate that she did. I talked to her a bit.
I called Margaret, she came and got me in the car, The bike is pretty beat up, the rear tire is pretty tacoed, and the rear Derailleur is pretty bad, and probably some other stuff as well.
The hematoma was pretty big last night, the size of a softball. I iced
it (alternating ice and no ice for 20 minutes), took a lot of
Ibuprofen, and it's much smaller this morning, hardly noticeable -- a
bruise, really -- and not very painful. I have a contusion on my
left leg, and some stiffness in my shoulder blade. I had a heck of a
time getting to sleep last night. I think I'm fine, but I'm going to
check with my doctor today, to make sure I know how to take care of
myself and not have any lasting problems because of this.
I was lucky. She was going slow. It was a small car. Like I say, the
vision of the car hitting my leg like that is pretty nightmarish, and I
can easily imagine a bigger car going a bit faster pulling me under it.
Or a taller car, or if I'd been at a different spot in the pedalling,
she could have hit my knee. I'm also appreciative of the several people
who stopped and asked if they could help, as I am of the girl who hit
me, for stopping; her day was almost as ruined as mine.
The thing is, I couldn't have done anything differently. There was no
traffic. She was clear across a wide street at a stop sign when I
started into the street. Any logic that would have had me waiting for
her would never let me cross a sreet ever. The experience is, of
course, going to make more watchful; if I was careful and couldn't have
done anything differently last night, there have been other times I
know where I should have done better. As a driver, too, it's a good
reminder. I bet she didn't have much better luck sleeping last night
than I did.
We need a light at that intersection -- in a few months a Target is
opening down the street, and traffic will only get worse. There are
other ways to get to the bay trail, but they involve more street
riding. My route to the trail uses Gilman Street for only 3 or 4
blocks, and has always felt safer to me than others. I've ridden
through it scores of times, and will keep doing so, but with more
trepidation.
Everyone, drivers, riders and pedestrians, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition has lots of good information about safety.
Update: Jason Meggs of the East Bay
Bicycle Coalition points on out the mailing list that the Gilman/I80
Intersection is slated for repaving and marking for bicycle lanes on
the Berkeley Bicycle plan.
Item 3a on the plan says the interchange needs repaving and
improvements. It sure does, the paving is very poor there. Robert
Raeburn also pointed out that there are plans for putting sports fields
in the vicinity, on the other side of the freeway which will increase
bicycle traffic. Berekely has made a lot of progress in the past
several years to make the city a better place to ride, and we owe the
EBBC a debt of gratitude (as well as financial support) for their part
in this.
9:53:23 AM Permalink
|
|
© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
|
|
|
|
|
