(Walking back to Hill-Kitt, behind a group of first-years talking about California.)
Guy 1: “It’s all just earthquakes, cars, and homos. I don’t ever wanna go there” Guy 2: “What you got against homos?”Guy 1: I just think it’s not the most comfortable experience to be somewhere where like everyone around you is a homo” Guy 2: “You don’t have to like go into the Castro” Guy 1: “No it’s not just San Francisco, the homos are everywhere, dude, like 25% of the population there.” Me, after some hesitation: “I’m sorry, you’ve got a homo walking right behind you, so maybe you could keep it to yourself for a little while.”
I guess I’m glad I said something today, but I’m never sure how much to speak up in these situations — or for that matter, when a little old lady asks me if I have a girlfriend. Awkward balance between avoiding conflict and not hiding who I am.
I’ve got mail. Out of the 4932 messages in my St. Olaf account (since they switched to Gmail), 998 (yellow) are addressed to me. The remaining are 3934 (red) are mailing lists, most of which are involuntary (majors and the thoroughly abused “All Students” list).
I griped yesterday about the problems with the total lack of Minnesota River crossings for bikes. Apparently, the legislature (the previous, DFL one, not the current GOP-controlled one) actually just addressed this problem in their Trunk Highway Bridge Improvement Program, to prevent future Cedar Avenue bridges.
(165.14 Subd. 4) (d) All bridge projects funded under this section in fiscal year 2012 or later must include bicycle and pedestrian accommodations if both sides of the bridge are located in a city or the bridge links a pedestrian way, shared-use path, trail, or scenic bikeway.
Bicycle and pedestrian accommodations would not be required if:
a comprehensive assessment demonstrates that there is an absence of need for bicycle and pedestrian accommodations for the life of the bridge; or
there is a reasonable alternative bicycle and pedestrian crossing within one-quarter mile of the bridge project.
All bicycle and pedestrian accommodations should enable a connection to any existing bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in close proximity to the bridge. All pedestrian facilities must meet or exceed federal accessibility requirements as outlined in Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, codified in United States Code, title 42, chapter 126, subchapter II, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, codified in United States Code, title 29, section 794.
This won’t address existing problems, but it’s good to know that in the future, we’ll build better.
Mixed feelings on helmets. The presenter in this video is unhelpfully snide, but he makes some reasonable points. As he mentions, the European Cyclists’ Federation is opposed to helmet promotion/universality. I did not wear a helmet in Copenhagen, but, despite what he says, I really do feel a lot more comfortable on Rice County 1 or flying down a hill on Valley Grove Road with at least a bit of styrofoam around my head.
It’s consistently pissed me off that there is no legal crossing for bicycles or pedestrians between the Highway 169 and Highway 494 bridges over the Minnesota River — a gap of over 13 miles between bridges (20km). There are actually two bridges: I-35W and the Cedar Avenue Freeway, but both formally disallow cycling. There wasa bridge immediately adjacent to the Cedar Avenue Freeway bridge that allowed humans to cross, but this has been closed since 2002, with no plans for repair made at the time of closure. (For cyclists’ “safety.” One wonders how much “safer” the occasional kamikaze cyclist on the Cedar Ave Freeway is.)
It’s not particularly likely that I will be bicycling from Northfield to the Minnesota River anytime soon. It’s a schlep. But Burnsville, Eagan, and Bloomington are all similarly dense cities in the same metro area, immediately bordering one another. From a residential area in Burnsville to a public school in Bloomington, it is 3.8 miles by car (5.75 km). Or 19.6 miles by bike (31 km).
It appears as of this May, there was trail funding for the City of Bloomington to restore the old bridge. This is promising, and I’m glad to see it happen. Nevertheless, this is not a trail issue. The Minnesota Dept of Transportation excluded bicycles and pedestrians in their designs for 35W and Cedar Avenue Freeway, and it behooves them to provide some reasonable alternative (going over 5x as far is not a reasonable alternative).
Let’s put this in perspective. Mn/DOT spent $288 million to improve the I-35W/62nd Street interchange. Not because the previous interchange was unsafe or because it was impossible to cross. Because it was too slow. And the users of the road don’t pay a time for the luxurious new fourteen lanes. The repairs to this bridge would cost less than $10 million, addressing an actual complete transportation roadblock (literally).
Even more infuriating is reading the comments on the Star Tribune article about this bridge. One example:
mckensm0: “Bicyclists should pay a toll to cross the bridge. They buy something akin to the MinnPass chip and have a scanner on the bridge.”
To be clear, MinnPass is a “Lexus Lane” system, which allows people willing to pay a toll to not have to drive slow with the proles. It is not a toll for using the road, which apparently only bicycles should be subject to.
I remain shocked almost every time I look at at the Metrodome side of downtown Minneapolis. For being, you know, a city, it has a shocking amount of surface parking. So what better to compare it to than the surface parking capital of the south metro, Apple Valley “Apple Core” downtown. (With a personal thanks to the AV Convention and Visitors’ Bureau for coming up with that one).
Blue represents surface parking (exc. ramps). Red represents a no-human zone (the I-94/I-35W/Hiawatha Avenue interchange).
Blue again represents surface parking, though in this case the red is a de facto no-human zone. That is, the designers have made both streets (Cedar Ave S and Dakota County 42) so unpleasant to walk along and cross, that very few pedestrians ever attempt it. If one did attempt it, it’s 10 lanes to cross — 8 lanes with no refuge island.
While Apple Valley does still have a higher proportion of surface parking, the similarity is shocking.
Northfield News ran a particularly sanctimonious article recently on drunk driving. This seems to reflect a common attitude toward drunk driving: it’s the responsibility of the sinful lush — and if we arrest more of them, the problem will be solved.
I don’t think, however, most people driving drunk are really people who particularly want to. They’re people who want to be drunk. And want to get home. Drunk driving should absolutely be illegal, but the fact that we punish it (and socially shame it) while providing no viable alternative is seriously problematic.
In Copenhagen, it didn’t seem to be much of an issue. The only cars one saw on the streets on Friday or Saturday night were taxis. Otherwise, buses ran every 10-20 minutes, and many people (myself included) generally just biked home after having a drink. The infrastructure facilitated safe drunk transit, with relative density and plenty of safe bike routes (like Nørrebroparken, in the pic above).
We can’t snap our fingers and transform into that here in Minnesota, but at least in Northfield, we could do something about drunk driving. Here’s my thinking:
(Getting to the title of this post) St. Olaf formally disallows drinking on campus, even by students of legal age. While this rule is not generally followed, Olaf should provide a structure for it to be complied with.
I estimate about 30-40% of Olaf students are of legal age to drink (at a minimum, all seniors are). To comply with 1., the only good options for those students would be to drink at Carleton or in the bars downtown.
While St. Olaf is a physically walkable/bikeable distance from downtown, most students use motorized transit to get between downtown and campus, especially in the winter.
Because of 1-3, students do drive drunk between the bars downtown and campus. Because of the the placement of student parking, they also must wind through the heavily pedestrian-used streets on The Hill to get to student parking.
Therefore St. Olaf bears a certain responsibility to ensure students will not drive drunk. When somebody does inevitably die or is injured at the hands of student driving drunk, it will be something the college probably could have prevented.
The best way to do this is to provide a better option: quite simply, a drunk bus. St. Olaf already waste effort on “safe ride” (bringing mostly people who think it’s cold outside to the other side of campus when they say they feel “unsafe”). Why not, instead, simply have a mini-bus (like the ones already used by the Northfield Metro Express, or like the 11A bus below) running circles between the campus and downtown Northfield? It’s a short enough distance that one bus could literally run every 10-15 minutes. This would encourage compliance with Olaf’s policies and make the roads, on- and off-campus, safer for all.
And a note to students, until such a time happens that Olaf gets its act together:
The legal limit of alcohol for persons under 21 is zero.
Drunk bicycling does not qualify as a DUI in Minnesota. Bikes are not a good universal solution for this problem, but, for the time-being, get on two wheels instead of four.
These Truvia commercials are absolutely horrible. There are four of these, with all pretty much the same message: 1. women are emotional eaters, 2. they feel (rightfully) ashamed of their consumption, 3. truvia is here to help them from “sprinkling my coffee with grief.” I was already annoyed at this stupid sweetener for cropping up everywhere, each time hidden in the ingredients with a big label proclaiming, “no artificial sweeteners.”
Universitetet i Oslo har endelig oppdatert sine online ordbøker. De tidligere websidene så ut som de var laget i ca. 1996. Ingen CSS, slett ingen Ajax, og forferdelig dårlig adressen: www.dokpro.uio.no/ordboksoek.html. Den nye har fortsatt ingen Ajax og ingen sider til mobiler, men ser mye bedre ut, og er mye lettere å lese. Adressen er også forbedret, til www.nob-ordbok.uio.no, men fortsatt for mye å huske/taste inn. Hvorfor kjøper det ikke noe lett, f.eks ordboka.no? Den siden er ikke blitt oppdatert siden 2001 — jeg vill tro at de som eier den domain ville komme til å selge.
Egentlig er den (ikke gratis) danske online ordbok som er det beste eksempel på hvordan sånne ordbøkene burde være: Ordbogen.com. Enkelt adress, iPhone app, Ajax og oversettelser til engelsk og fransk.
