Posted by Greg Laden on August 3, 2009 Do you know what a Peridot is? No? Click here.
Barefootedness: I have a draft of a post on this, which is stuck but will soon be free. In the mean time, have a look at this.
Wild slugs. Say no more.
Excellent collection of the I35W bridge collapse (…from the recent anniversary … no, it did not collapse again. But we do have a joke about this that I can only tell you if we are in a car together driving over the bridge.)
I love Minneapolis, having family in Apple Valley. But the way I35 treats the waterfront and the city approaches are just so awful that one wonders why the opportunity to re-examine this relationship was just ignored. Yea, I know, the bridges carry a lot of traffic. I’ve been on them in summer and winter.
But still.
That is not why they were ignored. First, I should say that I’m not sure if I agree with you or not about the apporach issue, and if I do (and I might) it is possible that not much could be done about it. Maybe you could be more specific.
There is a major “surface street” bridge just down river and there are patches of urban landscape up river that have some flexibility as to how they are laid out. The surface street bridge is the bypass for the highway bridge for local traffic and the second most important foot crossing linked to the university. Down river one more bridge is an out of use RR track converted to bike path, and the next bridge down river is our next most likely collapse in the area, a double decker, foot bridge on top linking the two parts of the campus and cars below.
So yes, taking all these bridges into account, and figuring that you can mess with about a half mile of waterfront, maybe I do agree that something COULD happen, but I’d like to hear your ideas as to what.
But, again, none of that is related to the reason there was no reconsideration (also no consideration of making the bridge light rail ready).
Our governer is one off the worst governers in the country when it comes to things like vision. The bridge fell down to begin with because he failed to address the problem. His plan is very simple:
1) Be governor for two terms and during that time RAISE NO TAXES no matter what, even if the bridges fall down.
2) Any long term problems that could have been dealt with, bury and let the next administration worry about that.
3) Pray that nothing bad happens during my run as governor and during the presidential campaign.
The I 35 bridge, ironically, demonstrates the power of prayer. Or, it demonstrates (remember the I35 prayer thing) that god does not want Pawlenty to be president. If there was a god, that would be the first thing it would do.
Bottom line: The absolutely minimal amount was spent by the state on this project. The new bridge was essentiallly a Federal Freebie.
I still prefer sapphires to peridot – sapphires are much harder and come in a greater variety of colors.
Now going back to stupid Microsoft rubbish, I just wasted over 8 hours trying to resolve a problem with their compiler tools. Perhaps I was screwed over when I installed a paid-for copy while a demo copy was installed. Re-installation isn’t done yet. I can’t believe I’ve got to pay so much for this shit; I never had such problems with the free GNU compiler or even the paid-for Intel compiler. Looking through the MS fora, their monkeys are just as clueless as I am and send other programmers off on wild rabbit chases.
Hunting for rabbits will not help if your goose is cooked.
Looking forward to the barefoot post; the link was a good read.
[OT] An update on the Microsoft problems: MS Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition is a piece of shit out of the box; I had to install Service Pack 1 just so I could build and link. So all that money buys me a nicely polished turd – way to go Microsoft! Now apparently I have to install a security update – let’s see if this turd still runs after that. I swear the next guy who asks me to program for WinDuhs will be beaten to death.
Speaking of barefootedness, did you see this video story from CNN yet?
A woman got kicked out of a Burger King because her six-month old baby was barefoot. And then they manager made the false claim that the health code required it.
It’s also not true that insurance companies require that their policy owners ban bare feet.
Click here to visit my page for the novel Sungudogo
I and the BIRD … not just a Web Carnival any more
Human Evolution
Climate Change and Global Warming
Cats, Carnivores, and various Mammals
Gun Control
Birds and Bird Books
August 4, 2009
August 4, 2009
August 4, 2009
August 4, 2009
August 6, 2009
