EGAD

Low-Car Entertainment

Nothing much to report; had a kind of busy weekend that segued smoothly into a contractor dismantling my house this week. (Actually just the windows, which all need to be replaced, because the city has developed an abundance of concern about lead paint in old windowframes.) Also, my house has been killing entirely too much time squawking at the Olympics. Haven't spotted a single protester yet. That's why NBC gets the big bucks, I assume.

At Streetsblog, I checked out photos of the new Times Square. As part of the "Broadway Boulevard" project the street has been redesigned to prioritize the types of traffic that make the city work -- i.e. primarily foot traffic. And I think the new bike lane aware traffic lights (example shown at left) are too cute.

Speaking of which, who else knew that World Carfree Day falls on my birthday? Sweet.

Two other entertaining bits I ran across in the past few days:

A joke made at an American Geophysical Union meeting has emerged fully formed in Deep Time for Dummies. Why bother memorizing 4,600,000 millennia of geological history when the Bible says you only need six? An expert maps 6,000 years of history onto the geological record, starting with:

* 23 October 4004 B.C.: Hadean Era ends with Lucifer's fall to Earth
* 4003 B.C.: Earth still largely molten , Adam and Eve cover their shame with asbestos waders

and including such world-historical highlights as "48 B.C.: All of Gaul is divided into three parts as Corsica collides with the European Plate" and

A.D. 1492: Panama's rise from sea thwarts Columbus's discovery of Japan.
A.D. 1522: Sneak asteroid attack by Hernan Cortez smashes Aztec Empire

And so on in that vein, although the modern bits of the timeline seem a tad off.

Also, check out the Periodic Table of Awesome. Finally it is revealed that the suggestively similar awesomeness of pirates, zombies, dwarves, robots, and aliens is caused by their common (halogenic) valence number.

I also like the idea of The Idea Vending Machine. It's disappointing that it only occurs to tourists to use it. And since that actually makes three entertaining bits, I hope the Idea Vending Machine includes one that reads "learn to count."