Clean Coal

Has anyone else noticed a shortage of information on the Web about so-called clean coal?

I am going to begin a survey of the information that is available and report it here.

Stay tuned.

A brief socialist history of the automobile

Check out this brief socialist history of the automobile at
Links – International Journal of Socialist Renewal

Matrimonial Math

The news broke today that Connecticut is about to become the third state to allow gay marriages.

I was feeling just snarky enough that I jumped immediately to the conclusion that people in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and California must just be smarter than everyone else. Er, except New Yorkers.

However, I decided to be fair and test the hypothesis. My hunt for statistics netted me a data set produced by Morgan Quitno Press, which is lately become a subsidiary of the Congressional Review. It aggregates twenty-one different measures of the effectiveness of education in each state, and ranks the states according to which is "smartest."

Massachusetts and Connecticut, as I predicted, rank second and third respectively. California has not done so well. Of course California is a big compost heap of a state and I suspect its smartness is extremely regionalized. Curiously, Vermont and New Jersey, both of which have Civil Union laws, rank first and fourth.

So smart people are more liberal?

There is a correlation between how smart a state is and whether it is colored red or blue on the New York Times electoral map. I have grouped together states according to the Times's categories and predicted outcomes--Solid Obama, Leaning Obama, Tossup, Leaning McCain, and Solid McCain--and calculated average smartness scores for each group, expressed as a GPA.

Outcome	GPA
Solid Obama	2.36
Leaning Obama	2.14
Tossup	1.87
Leaning McCain	2.27
Solid McCain	1.60

The correlation is not perfect but I'm satisfied. I do wish we were doing better than a C+, though.

Arizona, John McCain's state, comes in last at number 50, though to be fair, Barack Obama's Illinois, at number 35 is not doing a whole lot better. Maybe that's why Obama had to sit through meetings with Bill Ayres.

Likes and Dislikes

This are lists, in progress, of things I like and dislike about Miami. I wanted to have two running columns, but I can't make that look good, so one list will follow the other.

Likes
rain
geckos
self-service check-out at the public library
tiny little frogs

Dislikes
snails
Republicans
poor connectivity of bicycle and pedestrian routes

Today's Reading

In response to the recent spate of TV ads promoting high-fructose corn syrup as a healthy alternative to sugar, I did a little poking around, and, no great surprise, found that while it may or may not be bad for our bodies, it is definitely bad for the planet. The Washington Post explains:

High-Fructose Corn Syrup: Not So Sweet for the Planet

Bike of the Month

I will probably find out that this bike is already famous and that its rider is a local celebrity. I had to capture it, though, it was too good. And the rider's outfit matched.

My salad was not bad, but nothing to write home about, and it was overpriced.

I can post by text!

I just sent this to my blog via text message. What will they think of next?

Self-portrait with car and lizard

At Starbucks today, I got a cup of coffee on the house for reasons I could not fully understand, although I did catch the descriptor "nasty-tasting" as a full pot was drained into the sink. I idled as instructed for four minutes, and in casually checking out the surroundings I discovered, attached to the back of the bar, a broadsheet called "Good," or rather "GOOD" that Starbucks has begun either to publish or distribute (I couldn't tell which) that is intended to educate the American electorate on issues pertinent, I gather, to choosing a president.

Volume two of this series, now on espresso stands, treats of health care. I understood about as much of it as I did of the explanation of my free coffee. Mind you, I am fairly well equipped for understanding explanations. Or I thought I was. Perhaps the dumbing-down of America begins closer to home than I thought. But really, it would have helped if the chart and diagram labels had been placed near the charts and diagrams to which they referred. I couldn't follow the comic-book layout. Or, actually, the three-intersecting-comic-strips layout.

The business end of the paper would occupy a page in the New York Times. I'm sure there's a name for this paper size. I herewith attempt a summary of the information presented. 1. The U.S. Spends more on health care than any other nation. 2. Despite this, the U.S. has high infant mortality rates and low life expectancies, and about 1 in 6 Americans 3. There are four ways to reorganize the system. Each approach has pros and cons.

There are some interesting details thrown in. For example this line: "The United States spends $2 trillion on health care annually. That means more than $6,700 is spend annually on each American's health care." I did a little math and learned that someone is apparently spending $550 a month on my health care. I don't know who, though. Or this line: "In 2005, the most frequently prescribed therapeutic drug class was antidepressants ... Currently, 70% of the money spent on health goes to treat chronic conditions."

Later this evening, that there is an ad on the flip side of half this page. It is an ad for Saturn, the car company that likes to remind us how innovative it is. The headline is "Rethink."

On another note, I really like the geckos that routinely scamper across the sidewalk in Miami. Oh, and did I mention that I've moved to South Beach? Thus I interact much more with the sidewalk. Much happier here. I guess I'll rethink taking Wellbutrin.

Blog Titles

I am anxious about the title of this blog given that I don't know what it will really be about. I've been thinking up cute subtitles, too, such as 'reinventing the heel' which makes no sense whatsoever, and 'in dis place,' which makes even less.

Once I'd thought about entitling my blog "Spang: Saving the World One Crossword at a Time," but then I took part in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and had second thoughts. Plus who would ever Google 'spang'?

Introduction

I have many things on my mind.

For several years now, cars have been at the top of the list. I don't like them. For many reasons. The chances are that if you've found your way to my blog that you don't like them either so I probably don't need to explain to you why I don't like them. However, I am sure that the reasons will unfold as we go.

I moved to Miami at the end of June. Two months ago. I used to live in New York. Before that I lived in San Francisco, and before that I lived in New York again. New York is both a good place and a bad place for someone who hates cars. On one hand, it is a great place for getting around without a car. There is scarcely a corner of the city that is not accessible by foot, train, or bike. On the other hand, the sheer volume of humanity means that there is going to be competition for street space no matter what. I happened to live for the last six years in one of the most traffic-choked corridors in the entire city: Ninth Avenue, just north of the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel.

"Ah, Miami, what a wise move," I hear you say. I did it for love and the love part has been working out. But, as you may suspect, this is not an especially welcoming place to a person who likes to explore on foot. And my constitution prefers welcoming places. That will also, I am sure, unfold as we go along.

So I imagine this blog as an exploration of what happens when you take a person like me, with my particular predilections and my particular foibles, and plunk him down in a place like this, with its particular infrastructure and its particular mores. I make no guarantee that I will always write about transportation, though that is one of the things I spend much time thinking about. I also, however, think about love and friendship, simplicity and minimalism, economics and justice, the environment, language, and music. And we'll see what else...