What if you could make a call at any time on your cell phone and have a vehicle come to you within minutes, take you to your local destination, and cost about as much as a bus ride? Allen Hancock's notion of demand-responsive transit fills the gap between the private automobile and public transit. Rather than fixed routes and schedules, smaller vehicles guided by intelligent software with gps (geographic positioning system), circulate to where riders are and want to go. Flexible, efficient, low-cost, it uses existing vehicles and roads. Where's the town that will implement this exciting pilot project? .
[I envisage indoor waiting spots downtown, Vehicles switch to electric as they enter the spots, so you can wait indoors, no more kerbside worries]
In the RP, one walks only to the nearest corner. Just as well, tropical heat leads to undignified sweat. On the corner one climbs into a tricycle. or a jeepney.
I prefer a jeepney, for several reasons. Tricycles... a friend of the family probably drives one, if youre off to market, and he will expect to wait for you at the market, and expect a good rate, since there is 'foreign money' around you.'
So Jeepney it is. The first concern is route. there is a reticence about displaying the route too prominently,it may be on a small sign hung from sucker hooks in the windscreen. OK having flagged down your ride, ... or waited 20 minutes at the Mall for that last passenger, you clamber on board. Into the street, lift whatever child or infant youre carrying into the back, and shuffle down the centre, its low, bend down, last on have to work past others towards the front.
On the bench seat, this may involve rather extreme squashing of the 18 or 20 existing passengers. If there space, park your infant on the bench next to you, if the jeepney fills up, put the infant on your lap. Young boys will want to stick their heads out the open sides. Most passengers are women, off to market, often with infants in delightful dress. At 183 cm, you cant really get a good look at the scenery, you have to crouch to see where you are. In the 3rd world concrete block sameness, it can be hard to find a landmark. The jerky movement of the high torque diesels, do you grip the overhead rail hard, or try to be cool and ride with the jerks? The black clouds of soot from poorly adjusted injectors, a poor world fact of life.
. "Bayad" means 'heres my fare' 7-15 pesos.. If youre at the back this is passed through a couple of passengers hands, to the driver. So passengers are implicated in the remembering of change, which they pass back. Ther driver often has a young buddy to do the money. Sometimes Jeepneys in opposite directions will halt and drivers will do some exchanges of notes, settling debts...
In the old days, Marcos days, Jeepneys had numerous chromed ornaments, little horses on springs, mounted on the bonnet. Nowadays no more, but the windscreen will still be obscured by tassels, and saints pictures. Sharp metal features of the dash-board portend impalement. Nevertheless, the front seat by the driver is a primo spot.Frequently there will be a big bass sound system.
"Para" means stop here. Grab your infant. Pile out the back, possibly into the middle of a multi-laned traffic fiasco. But missing is that western absolute arrogance, At the last moment most drivers will admit to recognising your humanity, and will avoid you.
So you can get around town.
Ship particulates
February 26, 2009 commercial ships emit almost half as much particulate pollution.. as .. cars
ships .. 0.9 teragrams/year. Shipping also contributes.. 30% of smog-forming nitrogen oxide..
..25 February 2009 .Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres..
CO2..from ships ... .3% of all human-caused emissions
The particles have a global cooling effect .. 5x > greater than the global warming effect from ships' CO2
..some ships use "cleaner," low-sulfur fuels.. ..sulfates agu... low-sulfur fuels ..require less complex lubricants. So the sulfur fuel regulations have the indirect effect of reducing the organic particles emitted,..
One surprising result of burning low-sulfur fuels is that, although total particle emissions diminish, the time that particles spend in the air appears to increase. ..
..organic and black carbon..is less likely to form cloud droplets. As a result, these particles remain suspended for longer..
earthobservatory
5M picture of Auclkand, if youre bothered
Holi
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Connex and those Jew-only highways to the West Bank settlemants...
"IDF tanks are protecting French companies Veolia (Connex) and Alstom as they conduct illegal [under international law] operations on Occupied Palestinian Territory."
The controversy surrounding Rudd's exhibited art has been a boost to the Australian Veolia campaign. It has garnered additional attention because Rudd is a nephew of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In the coming months Palestine solidarity organizations will demand that state governments in Australia "dump their contracts" with Connex and Veolia, because of the company's involvement in the illegal light rail project in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
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Another Methane graph - showing uptick from 07
treehugger
nature
nature
Funny methane flaring video
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The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (Science Essentials)
_book - by Peter Ward
volcanoes .... CO2..... heat...... anoxic oceans ..... H2S sturation ..... blamed for delay in metazoa...
Against a backdrop of global catastrophe, Animal Armageddon brings to life an unprecedented vision of ancient Earth. From the very beginning, the course of evolution has been dramatically altered by catastrophe. Numerous mass extinction events have devastated the Animal Kingdom. Each time disaster has struck, nature has shown remarkable resiliency. Animals have rebounded with with amazing biological innovation and vast increases in diversity. Humans have always had a stake in this. From tiny flatworms to the first amphibians, our own DNA had to survive for us to evolve into what we are now: the first species that can trigger its own extinction
President Evo Morales is apparently promulgating multiple species of land-ownership, including communal/tribal. Social benefit is part of these definitions.
This sounds truly radical.
So guess what slogan Capital has raised ....
of course: theatlantic "The Mugabe of the Andes?" ... Luis Eduardo Siles, a columnist and former congressman in La Paz sympathetic to the opposition.
Now we'll probably never know what part Capital played in destroying Zimbabwe. The story we are fed is that 'its the old fighter gone crazy', not the sanctions, nor the oil shock, thats killing the place.
Land reform causes a stink in the halls of Capital.
At least it does now, didnt deem to when USAniac conquerers imposed it on Japan, SKorea.?
Look for nasty action against Morales, to the degree he raises an alternate reality, Capital will feed attack dogs against him
And who gives a shit about creepy christian Mennonites? , expect USAniac rednecks to raise a ruckus...
Or maybe they'll try to send in the marines when some white USAniac land "owner" is arrested for refusing land reform... (this creepy USAniac family owns a bunch of land, the scion won Mr Venezuela" - beauty contests as colonial machinery...)
democraticunderground
Back in Caquetá, the church worker described how pesticides have run into rivers and streams, killing fish. Locals wait days before they dare drink the water. One of the most fragile ecosystems in the world "is being poisoned".
• Grace Livingstone's _book America's Backyard: the US and Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror is published this month
guardian
It was a day also for George Galloway, the leader of Viva Palestina who addressed a rally in the centre of Gaza City. He reiterated that Ismael Hania is the only and legitimate elected leader of the Palestinian people.
vivapalestina
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elsewhere
Selina Tusitala Marsh: Guys Like Gauguin
Thanks Bougainville
for desiring them young
so guys like Gauguin could dream and dream
then take his syphilitic body downstream to the tropics
to test his artistic hypothesis
about how the uncivilized
ripen like paw paw
are best slightly raw
delectably firm
dangling like golden pre-pubescent buds
seeding nympomania
for guys like Gauguin.
Thanks Balboa
for crossing the isthmus of Panama in 1513
and pronouncing our ocean the south seas
Hey thanks Vasco
for making us your underbelly
the occidental opposite
of all your nightmares
your waking dreams
inversion of all your laws
your darkest fantasies
Thanks for seeing the earth as a body
the north its head, full of rationality
reasoned seasons. of meaning
cultivated gardens of consciousness
sown in a masculine orderly fashion
a high evolution
toward the light
Thanks for making the South an erogenous zone
corporeal and sensual
emotive and natural
waiting in the shadows of dark feminine instinct
populated by the Africas, the Orient the Americas
now us
nationalgeographic
Baby Blue Whale video Costa Rica Dome
From the album:
"Colombia 2007" by Karen Skinner
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We are sisters. Judy buys a motor scooter. Vanya goes to art school. Robin falls in love. Brigid climbs the plum tree and falls down into the compost heap. In the wild garden we plant freesias, violets and snowdrops but in the house the anger bruises our soft skin. On a cold, still day we go to our father’s funeral. His suicide note is written on our hearts forever. Forgive me, he asks...
Brigid Lowry is back in NZ
nzetc