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To read the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Report is to believe congestion has more than doubled since 1982 (really between 1982 and 2000). From one perspective, of course congestion must have risen, demand (Vehicle Miles Traveled, Population, etc.) increased significantly over this period while supply (Lane Miles of Road Capacity) did not increase at nearly the same rate.

But I was alive in 1982, I was in cars at that age (and driving myself the next year) (in Central Maryland). I remember congestion in the 1980s. To misquote Lloyd Bentsen, "Congestion was a friend of mine", and TTI seems to be saying to 1982 "You're no congestion". But congestion doesn't seem appreciably different from today. People complained about it then as much as now. Some bottlenecks have been fixed, new ones have emerged.

So I wonder whether congestion did, in fact, "double".

Some hypotheses:

1. Measurement issues. Continuous roadway travel time measurements were a lot scarcer in the 1980s than today. Freeways now have loop detectors on every segment, whereas there might have been a permanent recording station every 5 or 10 miles in the 1980s, so a lot more had to be estimated and approximated. There are still no good arterial measurements, the most recent Urban Mobility Report uses GPS data from Inrix, and this will clearly come to dominate congestion measures. Notably, including this measurement forced TTI to re-estimate downward their historical congestion measurements.

2. Definition: As noted by Joe Cortright's report Driven Apart, mobility is not accessibility. A city where I can reach everything in 10 minutes, but travel at 30 MPH (when freeflow is 60 MPH) is more congested than one where I can reach everything in 30 minutes, but can travel at freeflow conditions. The TTI in a sense penalizes efficient land uses.

3. Induced Demand: Highway expansion tends to get used up (this is not a bad thing of itself, just a thing), so much of road expansion gets eaten up in more traffic. Similarly highway reduction reduces travel. Duranton and Turner write "We conclude that an increased provision of roads or public transit is unlikely to relieve congestion."
This does not explain why congestion is under-estimated in the past though.

4. Congestion vs. Speed: Travel times on journey to work increased only marginally over this period. Average distances for trips rose faster than travel times, indicating average travel speeds increased. So even with increasing congestion, if travelers shifted to relatively faster (e.g. suburb to suburb freeways) from slower (e.g. suburb to city arterials), congestion can rise on each link, but travel speeds still increase. See The Rational Locator for an example of this.

5. Perspective: This previous point about perception can be refamed as one of perspective. There are differences between spatial averages (which TTI uses) and person-based averages (which individual observers perceive). So the person based average for any metropolitan resident may be the same, but the amount of space (network) covered by congestion may increase if the total amount of space which is developed increases. Similarly, if there is peak spreading, congestion occurs over a longer duration.

However, TTI is not simply saying that the amount of area that is congested increased, they are claiming, for Washington DC the delay per person increased from 20 hours per year in 1982 to 74 hours in 2010.

I am willing to believe that with recent measurements, 74 hours per year for an average commuter in DC is plausible in 2010, since that is just under 10 minutes each way each day for 225 work days per year. 10 minutes of delay on a 30 minute commute means the freeflow time on that commute (un-delayed, e.g. Sunday morning) was 20 minutes. This seems about right for the "average" commuter. Rush hour is when everyone has to slow down.

But this implies in 1982 that delay was less than 3 minutes a day per commuter each way. That seems unreasonably small when you think about it, I could have spent 3 minutes at a traffic light in DC at the time, and that certainly constitutes delay. They are saying for every person who had a 10 minute delay, 2 people had 0 delay to get an average 3 minute delay, and that is not the metropolitan Washington I was familiar with. Congestion was sufficiently important than that radio stations had regular traffic reports, and traffic helicopters, it was not something insignificant.

Of course this is impossible to fully validate, as we cannot go back in time and accurately measure speed. The best I could think of was using the Google NGram feature to track mention of some keywords in books. This proves nothing unfortunately, and suggests a small uptick in the word "traffic" in the 1990s, but is interesting none-the-less.

One however can imagine the motivation for wanting congestion to appear lower in the past than it actually was. This means congestion is rising faster, and thus creates a greater claim on the public weal than if congestion were always with us at roughly the same level.

Prior to the advent of the steam railway, London was a metropolis of just over 1 million people. It was well served by both canals and turnpikes connecting to other parts of Great Britain. Internally, there were omnibus services. The London & Greenwich Railway was the first of many railways to reach London, with the first section opening in 1836 and being completed in 1838, making it possible to reach Greenwich in twelve minutes instead of the hour required by horse-drawn omnibus or steamboat. Famously built on a viaduct, the route was initially paralleled by a tree-lined boulevard that operated as a toll road, serving those unwilling to pay rail fares. However, the toll road was disbanded when the viaduct was widened to enable more frequent services to the densely populated urban core, ultimately growing from two tracks to eleven.

Soon many other railways sought to connect to London. To avoid disruption in the core, a Royal Commission on Railway Termini, appointed in 1846, drew a box around central London and decreed no line shall enter the cordon. [This box resembles the congestion charging zone adopted in the early 21st century, which aimed to reduce cars, rather than prohibit trains]. The result was railway terminals locating on the edges of the central region. London, like many cities, has no unified railway station, as the North, South, East, and West lines have no common intersection. The problem is worse though in London, as even lines from the north run by different organizations would be build adjacent (St. Pancras/ Kings Cross), or nearly adjacent (Euston), stations without convenient interchange. Later (between 1858-60) some penetrations of the box were permitted by Parliament, but most of the City of London (the original walled city where the financial district still lies) remained untouched. While preventing railways from severing the most densely populated part of the city, which would have been expensive for both the railways and the city, it created a need for a connection between the termini to allow transfers. The Metropolitan Railway, a private concern like all railways of the era but with some support from the Corporation of the City of London, was approved by Parliament in 1854. It aimed to connect the northern termini (Paddington, Euston, St. Pancras, King's Cross, and Farringdon, which was later added to the plan) to ease movement for through travelers.

The trends in the City of London were quite different from the rest of London. The City of London has seen a long trend of depopulation from 1851 (prior to the first Underground line) and for many years saw increasing employment, lending support to the notion that the railways, especially the Underground, enabled decentralization of residences and concentration of employment.

The Metropolitan Railway opened in January 1863, and was extremely successful. Clearly the market was much larger than inter-line transfers. The firm paid dividends throughout its life. Accounting in the early years of the Metropolitan Railway, especially prior to the Regulation of Railways Act of 1868, was a bit dodgy, and dividends were reportedly paid out of capital. To quote Jackson (1986) p. 38, describing the era of 1865, ``It was . . . a house of cards, a precarious game in which the level of dividend was kept up at all costs, by finding money from somewhere, with no regard to sound accounting or financial rectitude.''. Emulation is the proof of success. Many new railway lines were proposed, the 219 London-area railway bills brought before Parliament during the period 1860-1869 totaled 1420 km (882 miles).

Some of those lines were proposed prior to the opening of the Metropolitan, indicating the smell of success was in the air, though the peak years were between 1863 and 1866, following closely on the heels of the Metropolitan's opening. The most important of these was the Metropolitan District Railway (later called the District line), which ran just north of the River Thames, but south of the Metropolitan, connecting a number of the southern railway termini (Victoria, Charing Cross, Blackfriars, Cannon Street). Proposals for what became the Circle Line service linking the Metropolitan and District (roughly inscribing the box described above) were quickly proposed, but the two lines were not connected on both ends until 1884. Both the Metropolitan and District lines were constructed using cut and cover techniques. Later lines, from the City and South London Railway (first section opened in 1890) onwards, generally used deep-level tunneling techniques to avoid disruption of city streets, existing railway lines, and public utilities when they needed to be below grade. Outside the Circle Line however, the railways could emerge above ground and competed fiercely in some markets, while operating unfettered in others, to provide suburban services. In some cases this involved building new lines, in others it involved acquiring running rights on (or ownership of) existing lines. The development of suburbs was a way to develop traffic for lines that in the city, though profitable, were operating below maximum capacity, and thus maximum profitability.

Adapted from

• Levinson, David (2008) The Orderliness Hypothesis: Does Population Density Explain the Sequence of Rail Station Opening in London? Journal of Transport History 29(1) March 2008 pp.98-114.
  

Also see:

• Levinson, David (2008) Density and Dispersion: The Co-Development of Land use and Rail in London. Journal of Economic Geography 8(1) 55-57.

Now at streets.mn How a chance encounter in St. Paul almost prevented World War II :

"While staying in St. Paul, Minnesota, Zeppelin encountered a fellow German who had served for the Union inflating a hot-air balloon. It was here Count Zeppelin first went airborne in 1863. The rest, as the say, is history."

London Reconnections: In Pictures: London Underground Stamps & £2 Coin :

"Earlier this year, the Post Office confirmed that they would be issuing a number of stamps to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the opening of the Underground. The designs for these stamps have now been made public, and are featured below. The set features two second class stamps, which focus specifically on the Metropolitan Railway, and four first class stamps taking a broader look at the Underground. In addition, there are four long-format commemorative stamps each of which features a variety of Underground posters."

In my lab today we had a discussion over the proper way to say the word "Route" dictionaries and professional linguists who were consulted give both "root" and "rout" as acceptable pronunciations, leaving us no wiser than before.

But online, we find this Dialect survey (color matching the map).

Dialect Survey Results:

"26. route (as in, "the route from one place to another") 
     a. rhymes with "hoot" (29.99%)
     b. rhymes with "out" (19.72%)
     c. I can pronounce it either way interchangeably (30.42%)
     d. I say it like "hoot" for the noun and like "out" for the verb. (15.97%)
     e. I say it like "out" for the noun and like "hoot" for the verb. (2.50%)
     f. other (1.40%)
     (11137 respondents)"

As a north-easterner myself, It was always take Root 29 or Root 95, but in the South, we were on Rout 85. In the midwest, it seems more Rout than Root. In any case the "e" is superfluous, as it doesn't modify in a consistent way, since we already have a double vowel. The word is also superfluous, since we already have the word "road" from the same root. Damn French imports.

Etymology online says: route (n.) early 13c., from O.Fr. rute "road, way, path," from L. rupta (via) "(a road) opened by force," from rupta, fem. pp. of rumpere "to break" (see rupture). Sense of "fixed or regular course for carrying things" (cf. mail route) is 1792, an extension of the meaning "customary path of animals" (early 15c.).

See also this on Highway Linguistics

Kottke: Fantastic time lapse map of Europe, 1000 - 2005 A.D.

In Vancouver, Buzzer Blog: New wayfinding signage is going up around the region

Massive Tornado, Can it Happen Here? [MPR succumbs to Sweeps Month] If you're stuck in traffic, you have no good choices"

A local Car Dealer (Walser) is encouraging trading in used cars for bikes (and cash). The campaign is here: New Wheels

The Scholarly Kitchen: The Emergence of a Citation Cartel :

"In a 1999 essay published in Science titled, ‘Scientific Communication — A Vanity Fair?’ George Franck warned us on the possibility of citation cartels — groups of editors and journals working together for mutual benefit. To date, this behavior has not been widely documented; however, when you first view it, it is astonishing.

Cell Transplantation is a medical journal published by the Cognizant Communication Corporation of Putnam Valley, New York. In recent years, its impact factor has been growing rapidly. In 2006, it was 3.482. In 2010, it had almost doubled to 6.204.

When you look at which journals cite Cell Transplantation, two journals stand out noticeably: the Medical Science Monitor, and The Scientific World Journal. According to the JCR, neither of these journals cited Cell Transplantation until 2010."

Bloomberg: Microsoft Inspired by London Tube Seeks Sleeker Designs

Bloomberg: California High-Speed Rail Spending Probed by U.S. House :

"A U.S. House of Representatives committee said it will investigate reports of conflicts of interest at California’s high-speed rail authority when it received federal money to start construction."

Bloomberg: ’Fortune 500’ of 1812 Shows U.S. Banks’ Early Influence [Look at all those Turnpikes and Canals though]

Autoblog Green: U.S. new-vehicle fuel economy hits 24.1 mpg, another record, in March

In a previous post I identified the size of the pedestrian city as on the order of 50,000, let's do this a bit more systematically.

Let's illustrate with some assumptions:

• One-way Travel time budget (B) = 0.5 h
• Walking speed (S) = 5 km/h
• Walking network radius (Rn = S/B) = 2.5 km
• Network circuity (C) = 1.25
• Walking euclidean radius (Re = Rn/C) = 2 km
• Walking euclidean area (potential) (Ae=Pr*Re^2) = 12.56 km^2
• Population density (D) = 5,000 persons per km^2 [As a point of reference, the current population density of Manhattan is 27,485/km^2, which I would argue is only enabled by 19th century technologies like elevators and transit. Rome currently has a population density of 2,101/km^2]
• Population within TTB threshold (P=D*Ae) 62,800

Obviously you can construct a spreadsheet and play with population densities, which are highly disputed in ancient times. One sees claims that the City of Rome in ancient times had a population of 1 million people, but it is unclear over what area that was measured, and some estimates of those densities far exceed the densities of modern elevator cities (like Manhattan). I believe it is possible that high crowding occurred, but I think it unlikely that such crowding extended over large areas.

Also one can have a pedestrian city that exceeds the one-way walking travel time budget, but not a city one interacts with on a daily basis. This is more the equivalent of adjacent and overlapping cities, and likely have multiple cores.

MnDaily: U to implement bike reward system [RFID Tracking comes to biking before cars, and it is voluntary, something to look at for Road Pricing]

Inner Auto Parts History Of Crash Safety : " … While the jumble of confusing ordinances continued to plague pioneer motorists, a new wrinkle was added: the "speed trap." In smaller towns, particularly, marshals and other law officials lay in wait for unsuspecting drivers, timing them by stop-watch or "by guess and by gosh." Some lawmen were authorized to shoot at tires or to stretch chains or wire across the road. Until the motorcycle became a police vehicle, the local sheriff's office was somewhat limited in their pursuit of fleeing cars, since they were either on foot or on bicycles. … " [I really like this history for some reason, but I don't know where it originates, i.e. there are no references. I suspect it is not from Inner Auto Parts originally]

KurzweilAI: Human gait could soon power portable electronics [Capturing kinetic energy rather than letting it dissipate into heat].

Thomas A. Rubin, James E. Moore and Shin Lee cite Peter Gordon on the irreversibility of infrastructure, and why "no" is never finalTen myths about US urban rail systems Transport Policy Volume 6, Issue 1, January 1999, Pages 57-73. "Local transportation authorities understand well the political mechanisms available to them, and they continue to apply their misinformation tools with full cognizance and considerable effect. Voter propositions may fail, but there is nothing to prevent local authorities from studying their message, refining the marketing context of their appeals, and proceeding again. In the end, “They can lose as often as they have to. They only need to win once.” (Gordon, 1994)." Gordon, P., 1994. Conversation with authors, Los Angeles, CA. 14 July..

TFC also sends this along:

South Indian Inscriptions Volume_3 - Inscriptions of Virarajendra I @ whatisindia.com:

"In an earlier part of this volume, it was shown that Raja kesarivarman alias Virarajendradeva I., the victory at Kudalsangamam, must have reigned in the period intervening between the reigns of Rajendradeva and of Kulottunga I.,[1] and that, apparently, his immediate predecessor was Rajakesarivarman alias Rajamahendradeva,[2]   and his immediate successor Parakesarivarman alias Adhirajendradeva.[3]  Since then, Professor Kielhorn’s calculations of the dates of an inscription at Belaturu[4] and of another at Manimangalam (No. 29 above) have established the fact that Rajendradeva ascended the throne (approximately) on the 28th May A.D. 1052,[5] while the reign of Kulottunga I. commenced (approximately) on the 9th June A.D. 1070.[6]  Further, Professor Kielhorn has shown that the date of the Manimangalam inscription of the 5th year of Virarajendra I. (No. 30 above) probably corresponds to Monday, the 10th September A.D. 1067, and that, consequently, this king ascended the throne in A.D. 1062-63.[7]

That Rajamahendra reigned between Rajendradeva and Kulottunga I., may be concluded from an Alangudi inscription of the 6th year of Parakesarivarman alias Tribhuvanachakravartin Rajarajadeva (II.),[8] which quotes successively the three following earlier dates : -

(a) Line 22. – “the third year of the lord Vijaya-Rajendradeva, who was pleased to conquer Kalyanapuram and Kollapuram and to fall asleep (i.e.,  to die[9] in battle) on an elephant.”  This statement must refer to Parakesarivarman alias Rajendradeva, who is known to have set up a pillar of victory at Kollapuram.[10]

(b) L. 55.- “the third year of king Rajakesarivarman (alias) the lord Sri-Rajamahendradeva, who, while the law of Manu[11] flourished (as) of old, rescued the great earth from being the common property (of other kings), dispelled (with his) sceptre the dark Kali (age), and was pleased to be seated on the throne of heroes under the shade of a red parasol.”

© L. 63.- “the thirty-fifth year of the glorious Kulottunga-Choladeva, who was pleased to rule after having abolished tolls.”   This refers to Kulottunga I., who bore the surname Sungandavirtton,[12] i.e., ‘the abolisher of tolls.’"

Another reference to tolls in India is here:

No. 598 (Page No 418)
(A. R. No. 598 of 1907)
Nandaluru, Rajampet Taluk, Cuddapah District
Saumyanatha temple – on the same place, left side
This is dated in Saka 1172, Saumya, Rishabha, ba. 15, Friday, Rohini corresponding to A.D. 1249, May 14, Saka year being current on which day there is stated to have been a solar eclipse. It records a gift of all the tolls including the ‘maganmai’ dues leviable at Nirandanur, for the expenses of the several festivals in the temple of Sokkapperumal, by one Perumal-Pillai the headman of Kaliyur and a toll officer, to secure the well-being of Madurantaka Pottappichchola Gandagopalar alias Manma-siddharasa. The record is incomplete.

TFC writes in about the Ramkhamhaeng Inscription:

In the time of King Ram Khamhang this land of Sukhothai is thriving. There is fish in the water and rice in the fields. The lord of the realm does not levy toll on his subjects for traveling the roads; they lead their cattle to trade or ride their horses to sell; whoever wants to trade in elephants, does so; whoever wants to trade in horses, does so; whoever wants to trade in silver or gold, does so. When any commoner or man of rank dies, his estate–his elephants, wives, children, granaries, rice, retainers, and groves of areca and betel–is left in its entirety to his children. When commoners or men of rank differ and disagree, [the King] examines the case to get at the truth and then settles it justly for them. He does not connive with thieves or favor concealers [of stolen goods]. When he sees someone’s rice he does not covet it; when he sees someone’s wealth he does not get angry. If anyone riding an elephant comes to see him to put his own country under his protection, he helps him, treats him generously, and takes care of him; if [someone comes to him] with no elephants, no horses, no young men or women of rank, no silver or gold, he gives him some, and helps him until he can establish a state [of his own]. When he captures enemy warriors, he does not kill them or beat them. He has hung a bell in the opening of the gate over there: if any commoner in the land has a grievance which sickens his belly and gripes his heart, and which he wants to make known to his ruler and lord, it is easy: he goes and strikes the bell which the King has hung there; King Ram Khamhang, the ruler of the kingdom, hears the call; he goes and questions the man, examines the case, and decides it justly for him. So the people of … Sukhothai praise him…

Early 13th century obelisk inscription. The implication of this structure of righteous rule is that toll roads were the standard and toll free was idealistic.

Now, I could have sworn one of the earlier Gupta period inscriptions in India bore something similar but my Sanskrit is non-existent.

There is controversy about this, and some writers insist, controversially, that is fake. (Sydney Morning Herald, Longform.org) Nevertheless, some things are interesting fakes. And the idea that a 19th century monarch "discovers" that the ideal of a 13th century monarch was toll free roads is suggestive of how people feel things *should* be.

Mathematician and Transportation Historian Andrew Odlyzko has just released The collapse of the Railway Mania, the development of capital markets, and Robert Lucas Nash, a forgotten pioneer of accounting and financial analysis

Abstract: It is well known that the great Railway Mania in Britain in the 1840s had a great impact on accounting. This paper contributes a description and analysis of the events that led to the two main upheavals in accounting that took place then, and of the key role played by Robert Lucas Nash in those events. He was a pioneer in accounting and financial analysis, providing studies on the financial performance of railways that were more penetrating and systematic than those available to the public from any one else. His contemporaries credited him with precipitating a market crash that led to one of two dramatic changes in accounting practices that occurred in the late 1840s. Yet his contributions have been totally forgotten.

The collapse of the Railway Mania provides interesting perspectives on the development of capital markets. The accounting revolution was just one of the byproducts of the collision of investors’ rosy profit expectations with cold reality. Shareholders’ struggles to understand, or, more precisely, to avoid understanding, the inevitability of ruin, have many similarities to the events of recent financial crashes. The Railway Mania events thus provide cautionary notes on what even penetrating accounting and financial analysis reports can accomplish. Railway share price behavior suggests that Nash’s contributions had a much smaller effect than his contemporaries gave him credit for.

One of my favorite quotes (p.8), which is still applicable:

On another line, a shareholder complained that his company’s directors kept claiming construction costs were under control for three years, and then “the cloven hoof display[ed] itself” when it was revealed that costs were over 50% higher than projected. When sections of a line were opened for service, the standard claim that shareholders and the public heard was that “traffic had exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the directors,” and it often took years before it became clear this traffic fell far short of initial projections.

Strategic misrepresentation and optimism bias are not new phenomena.

Whilst I am in England, it seems appropriate to note ... A set of scanned Annual Reports from private London Underground Railway companies can be found here. These include reports from the Metropolitan, District, City and South London, and Central lines, among others. These were the only years available in the archives at the time I visited and scanned them (via camera).

These reports date from the 1860s through the 1930s.

Pattern Cities writes about a video, Streetcar Ride in Barcelona, 1908

This incredible film, shot from the front of a Barcelona streetcar in 1908, demonstrates the degree to which modern society has engineered complexity out of our streets. It also provides a glimpse into how our city streets operated before the automobile went mainstream, a seminal 20th century moment that has damaged cities the world over.

But surely the streets of the 1900′s were not entirely crash-free, or as romantic as this film and its whimsical music make them out to be. Yet, the inherent complexity– the organized chaos of streetcars, pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, and yes, motorists all mixing together–is instructive and should make any urbanist long for a time when the tyranny of the automobile didn’t dominate the project of city building.

WSJ:

Putting on the Brakes: Mankind Nears the End of the Age of Speed : ""

The human race is slowing down.

 

When the U.S. space shuttle completes its final flight, planned for June, mankind will take another step back from its top speed. Space shuttles are the fastest reusable manned vehicles ever built. Their maximum was only exceeded by single-shot moon rockets.

The shuttles' retirement follows the grounding over recent years of other ultrafast people carriers, including the supersonic Concorde and the speedier SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. With nothing ready to replace them, our species is decelerating—perhaps for the first time in history.

It has been a good two-century sprint, says Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 covered almost 240,000 miles in less than four days to plant the first human footprint on the Moon. Through the 18th century, he noted in an email exchange, humans could travel by foot or horse at approximately six miles per hour. "In the 19th, with trains, they reached 60 mph. In the 20th, with jet aircraft, we could travel at 600 mph. Can we expect 6,000 mph in the 21st?" he wondered.

"It does not seem likely," Mr. Armstrong continued, although he holds out some hope.

The trappings of humanity's race are on display in London's Science Museum. At one end of a cavernous hall sits the first practical steam locomotive, designed in 1829 by George Stephenson, an English engineer. It was called "the Rocket" for its previously unimaginable speed of 29 mph.

Before Mr. Stephenson's marvel of wood and cast iron, "express" generally involved a pony. Railroads, Britain's gift to the world, shrank continents and slashed travel time.

(Via Alan Pisarski.)

The top speed may be dropping, but I think average speeds will continue to rise.

Nullspace (Chris Briem), a Pittsburgh-based urban economics blog discusses value capture and land value tax in Remembering when the Henry George Club ran Pittsburgh.

At the end he writes

Alas.. all that and the truth is even more complicated. If you really parse it, Henry George may be having a revival of sorts right here in Pennsylvania. When you really deconstruct the tax-math-accounting of it, a lot of TIF's and tax incentives are really a tiered tax by other means, though some Georgists react a bit badly to the analogy. We can debate TIF implementation, here and elsewhere, another day. That and things like the Pittsburgh tax abatement program (modeled a bit loosely on Philadelphia's groundbreaking tax abatement program) are effectively Georgian in intent, if not name.

The Explosions of Every Nuclear Bomb to 1998

The Explosions of Every Nuclear Bomb to 1998 This video, by artist Isao Hashimoto, charts every nuclear detonation from the US's tests in 1945 to the modern era. Even if you're versed in history, it still offers a perspective that's tough to entirely grasp in numbers alone. The pacing, mixed with an Atari-esque soundtrack is both distancing and hypnotic. As more and more countries gain nuclear technologies, the map becomes a terrifying game of Simon. By the end, it feels remarkable that we never encountered a game over...as of yet.

(Via Gizmodo .)

In the news ... Problematic plank road to be repaired . This road is next to the very nice Minneapolis Mill City Museum (for those interested in the history of breakfast cereal). The interesting thing is that the 6 year old road needs repairs, which is exactly why plank roads were abandoned the first time they were laid during the plank road boom of the mid 1800s. (Repairs were required too quickly, so total cost > total benefit).

Ref: J Majewski, C Baer, DB Klein (1993) Responding to Relative Decline: The Plank Road Boom of Antebellum New York Journal of Economic History